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TheFerret

TheFerret's Journal
TheFerret's Journal
July 23, 2022

The Hawley Scamper, and Other Fascist Dance Crazes (Ferrrrret)

I’ve just learned we live not only in an era of rampant disinformation and ascendant fascism, but also, it would appear, to my chagrin and horror…the age of the Velveeta martini, and perhaps it’s time to pull the plug on the American experiment after all.

(Git dem links: https://showercapblog.com/the-hawley-scamper-and-other-fascist-dance-crazes/)

I know you’re all probably drowning in Cillizzafied listicles about “takeaways” from the most recent January 6th hearing, but I feel the appropriate framing goes something like Four Winners and Eight Losers From Thompson-Cheney Overdrive’s Latest Prime Time Smackdown (And Six of the Losers Are Josh Hawley From Different Angles).

Yes, the journey from Mob-Inciting Terrorist Fist Jab to Scampering For Dear Life turns out to be a short one, and now, young Joshkins finds himself the proud owner of a character-exposing video clip sure to dog his autocratic ambitions for the rest of his malignant days. Sometimes people are exactly who you think they are.

In a better world, we’d get to spend the next week or so sifting through the avalanche of Hawley-eviscerating internet content, chuckling and picking out favorites, but we’re trying to get to the bottom of a plot to violently overthrow the federal government, in order to work our way back to that whole “peaceful transfer of power” thing, which I for one plan to appreciate more going forward…assuming it ever happens again.

Anyway, this week’s installment was a deep dive on Tangerine Idi Amin’s “Stall Till the Lynching’s Done” strategy, while his brigade of brainwashed buttholes stormed the Capitol, providing yet another helpful lesson on the dangers of elevating sociopathic narcissists to positions of awesome political power, titled, “The One Where, Holy Fucking Shit, Mike Pence’s Security Detail Called Their Families To Say Goodbye.”

Yep, Off-Brand Orbán basically sat there, in a puddle of his own filth, glued to the idiot box, tweeting incitement, hoping mob violence would succeed where kakistocrat krakens and demented pillow merchants had failed. The White House sat at the precise intersection of idiocy and evil that day.

Video outtakes of the Manchurian Manchild’s statements from January 6th and 7th reveal a downright sullen tyrant, as unwilling to condemn the murderous throng as to be made to eat his peas. His aversion to asking his loser army to “stay peaceful” seems shocking, sure, until you remember there were a couple of times when Obama didn’t wear a flag pin.

And let’s be honest, as excommunicated apostate Adam Kinzinger noted, Cult45 has no intention of staying peaceful. Don’t believe me? Ask former D.C. police officer Michael Fanone.

I know decency isn’t really a “thing” on the Right anymore, but could we give it a rest with the stochastic terrorism? Please? At least for the duration of the Siri, Show Me How Stochastic Terrorism Works hearings?

No, I suppose not. Frankly, with new witnesses coming forward, necessitating a whole second wave of televised sessions this fall, now’s exactly when you want to make the rounds, distributing horse heads in potential squealers’ beds.

Still, it’s fairly terrifying to see such thuggish witness intimidation perpetrated via the official Twitter account of the House GOP. It’s a nifty little arrangement they’ve worked out, the elected officials and their pet mob…we’ll provide the permission structure, you’re in charge of the “random” acts of violence. Cozy.

Shit, the Deposed Dotard is still trying to overturn the 2020 election, fucking STILL. Congratulations on finding a depth even a festering taintfungus like Robin Vos won’t sink to, by the way.

Incidentally, Melania apparently claims she was oblivious to the whole dang riot, start to finish, because she was taking pictures of a rug. And while that’s ridiculous, bordering on insulting, I imagine that when one spends significant time around the Trumps, one swiftly concludes that lies hardly require plausibility to successfully deceive. (You’ll recall, Eric famously sued over a game of “got your nose,” seeking recovery of the purloined proboscis, as well as substantial damages for emotional distress.)

So, Garrett Ziegler, a low-level Peter Navarro minion during the Stupid Coo, won’t be graduating to pull-up pants any time soon, judging by his misogynistic meltdown following testimony before the January 6th commission. In hindsight, who but incels would staff the fast-sinking Shartanic during the final days of the Turd Reich?

Yes, it’s quite the grotesque congregation of flies swarming around the turd of late-stage Trumpism. Indicted insurrectionist bureaucrat Tina Peters, for example, simply will not stop violating the terms of her bond, because laws don’t apply to conservative white ladies, silly.

Actually, my latest scheme to monetize the blog is a steamy, sultry, direct-to-DVD series called Proto-Fascists Gone Wild, capturing all the sleaziest, sluttiest antics of the wad of burst rectal fistulas that make up the House Republican Conference. I figure there’s enough material for ten or twenty volumes. Per week.

Arizona’s Andy Biggs has to be considered a strong frontrunner for July’s Brownshirt of the Month, and with it, the coveted parking spot out front at Marm-a-Lago, after inserting the very white nationalist propaganda that’s inspired multiple mass shooters into a fucking CONGRESSIONAL HEARING ON GUN VIOLENCE.

Then there’s “Dr.” Ronny Jackson, still howling over Barack Obama’s lightly-administered spanking, and retreating into a traditional, Republican, masculinity-projection ritual, shrieking COME AND TAKE IT at the phantom liberals he imagines are after his guns, because he wants the entire world to know about the tolerance he’s built up to Viagra, I guess.

Meanwhile, Louie Gohmert could find no better use for his floor time than some daffy diatribe claiming months-past-their-expiration-date MAGA grifters Diamond and Silk are victims of some vast conspiracy involving…shit, who even knows? Antifa? “Big Tech?” Jade Helm veterans armed with Jewish space lasers?

Now, Louie’s clutched the Dumbest Man in Congress crown tightly for most of his career, but now, in dumbfuck twilight, he may not even be even the dullest twit in the Texas delegation, not with Chip “There’s a Second Amendment Right to Murder” Roy on the prowl. In a late-breaking follow-up, Roy has ironically proposed a total ban on Letting Jamie Raskin Point Out What an Empty-Headed Clod Chip Roy Is, which is expected to draw unanimous support from the Freedom Caucus.

Speaking of House Republicans, hot off voting against investigating Nazis in the military, they voted against marriage equality. Then, for good measure, they voted against protecting the right to contraception. Shit, when they’re the ones setting the agenda, expect them to oppose establishing a right to sanitary conditions in the reeducation camps. (Excuse me, Governor DeSantis, “civics boot camps.”)

Ok, so, an election denier, a Q disciple, and a neo-Confederate walk into a bar. Only not a bar, the Republican ticket for statewide office in Maryland. Seriously. Gubernatorial primary victor Dan Cox has been described, accurately, by a member of his own party, as a “QAnon whackjob.” Joins Mastriano, and quite probably that maniac in Arizona soon. Y’know, if you figured out some way to scientifically rank 2022 Republican candidates by level of delusion, Sarah Palin would probably come out in the saner half. Sleep tight.

Incest aficionado Rudy Giuliani has been ordered to testify in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ investigation, which is good, but make you sure give clear directions, or he’ll wind up drunkenly pleading the fifth in the parking lot behind Grand Jury Pool Cleaning & Supply or some shit. 

Also, the sixteen treacherous crotchtumors who planned on sneaking into the Electoral College by the back door, wearing trench coats and fake mustaches, learned they themselves are now targets of this investigation, and of course they’re already whining about it. My advice is, “commit less treason.”

But Lindsey Graham, no doubt fearing the scenario in which cellmate Steve Bannon asserts dominance and forces him to launder all those crusty shirt layers, folded after minimal yapping, and will now comply with his own subpoena. You’re too soft for insurrection, Lindsepher; perhaps there’s an opening for some sort of Proud Boys mascot?

Bannon, by the way, was convicted of the least of his many crimes, and will indeed do time. You know you’re really scum’s scum when one Presidential pardon isn’t enough to keep you out of prison.

Surely, when one attains the dizzying, rarefied heights of loserdom that only Donald John Trump has seen, the public humiliation becomes addictive. Why else would you petulantly demand the Pulitzer board retract prizes awarded for reporting on your electoral collusion with a certain hostile foreign power? Why would you waste time, money, and energy on taking such a stupid, inevitable, pointless L, unless you’re all pervy and weird about it?

So, President Biden tested positive for Covid, and of course, he’s vaxxed and boosted, so he’s fine, not that you’d know that from the yelps of delight emanating from the Right. Pour out some of the good meth on Uncle Doug Who Took Hydroxychloroquine’s grave, I guess.

Folks, this week was actually so fucked up that the blog got away from me. When you remember tonight’s post, please imagine I made hilarious, hilarious comments about the ongoing clusterfuck at the Secret Service, the latest unhinged plots to capture and punish women with the audacity to seek bodily autonomy, and whatever else I may’ve missed.

With that, I really must crash, m’loves. Stay safe, stay hydrated, stay engaged, and above all else, stay sexxxxxy. See you next week. 

July 17, 2022

Look, Torturing Child Rape Victims Has Always Been the Whole Point of America (Ferret)

If you’ve ever read this blog before, you know the opening paragraph is always some needlessly verbose variation on “can you fucking believe how fucking crazy this shit is,” and I have never once needed to deviate from that format, because seriously, can you fucking believe how fucking crazy this shit is? If you were hoping this would be the week that ends that streak, well…DiMaggio ain’t got shit on me, alas.

(Links, colors, and wonder beyond compare await ye here: https://showercapblog.com/look-torturing-child-rape-victims-has-always-been-the-whole-point-of-america/)

Frankly, I’m surprised it took as long as it did for the inevitable post-Roe horror story, of a raped 10-year-old facing nightmarish obstacles to abortion care, to surface. Less surprising was the response by America’s right wing, which revealed both ethical deficiencies and mental health disorders at heretofore unimagined levels.

The first stage of wingnut propaganda is always denial, of course, and cries of “hoax” reverberated throughout the disturbingly effective media bubble that recently led god knows how many Americans to ingest livestock medicine. No one bothered to think that maybe the relative dearth of available information was due to entirely sensible laws protecting the anonymity of such young victims of such abominable crimes, because you have to be interested in telling the truth to do that sort of basic due diligence.

Still, when an inconveniently real arrest blew up their narrative, everyone promptly apologized, provided the definition of “apology” is “an immediate pivot to anything but contrition, ideally racist in nature.”

The shrieking heads over at Fux Nooz didn’t just feverishly spread disinformation at every opportunity, (though they remain leaders in the field) they went the extra stochastic terror mile, sharing the involved doctor’s name and face with their measurably-more-violent-all-the-damn-time audience, in case, y’know, any “disturbed loner” felt like running the ol’ George Tiller play.

So now it’s a bit of a race, between the crazed, bloodthirsty mob, and the flail-wielding, zealot state, to see who gets to administer punishment to this sinner, who dared to (checks notes) provide necessary health care to a 10-year-old rape victim. Indiana AG Todd Rokita couldn’t seem to keep himself off television, so eager was he to publicly proclaim his intention to prosecute, never mind the fact that he never bothered to check to see if the doctor followed the law, which she did. Better luck next time, Inquisitor.

See, this is what this creep has been waiting for his whole miserable life. And this is how he plans to spend every working moment, for the rest of his life: hunting down and punishing the women he’s always despised. Him and millions like him.

This whiff of theocracy, after so many years of grudging acquiescence to the principles of democracy and equality, has driven the revanchist minority into a frenzy, and they’re approaching the wide-open legal landscape like Hungry Hungry Hippos, desperate to gobble up as much power as possible while we’re still sorting out the chaos, the better to enforce their will upon a resistant public.

Because, as Montana crackpot/state Rep. Brad Tschida put it, with the eloquence of Ray Liotta in the dinner scene from Hannibal*, a woman’s womb “serves no specific purpose to her life or well-being,” so fucking OF COURSE the state is allowed to treat her like fetus tupperware. While it’s entirely clear the Founding Fathers never intended religious freedom to imply a right to pretend biological science is imaginary in order to justify the dehumanization of half the populace, it would appear Amy Coney Barrett disagrees, so here we are.

Indicted Texas AG Ken Paxton, eager to kill as many women as possible, sued the federal government, hoping to further limit access to abortion care, specifically in cases where the mother’s life is in danger. Senate Republicans blocked a bill   guaranteeing the right to cross state lines in search of non-dominionist health services. And Ted Cruz helpfully reminded us of his vindictive cabal’s eagerness to claw back even more civil rights, with Obergefell next in their greedy, regressive sights. Because they will never, ever, ever, ever, ever fucking stop.

Thanks to the Failing New York Times, the cautionary tale of Ray Epps, targeted by the very hate cult he joined, is just, y’know…sitting around, waiting for anybody who might need t’hear it. Not unlike the widely ignored Frankenstein story. In case anybody out there is still capable of, or interested in learning.

Glancing at the sign in the break room, I see America has gone zero weeks without a news outlet publishing a terrorist-sanitizing op-ed, attempting to paint the goddamn Proud Boys of all people as apple pie-spattered, Norman Rockwell-designed, teddy bear guard dogs. Written, did I mention, by a Proud Boy’s wife. Not the choice I’d’ve made; I think we’re normalizing political violence at an alarming enough rate, thanks.

Speaking of the Proud Boys, and who doesn’t a love a week with multiple headlines referencing our burgeoning Brownshirt movement, the January 6th commission showed the world that video of Roger Stone taking their loser cosplay brigade’s pathetic, white supremacist “oath.” Always fun to have members of domestic terror orgs advising Presidents. Our democracy is almost too healthy, really.

Seems like the appropriate place to bring up the feral House GOP Conference unanimously voting against an amendment to the annual defense spending bill ordering the Pentagon to investigate white supremacist/neo-Nazi activity in our military. Also, all the current and former members of that military charged with crimes committed during the Capitol Riot. And the Oath Keeper “death list.” Because training violent insurrectionists in the ways of war seems a bit, I dunno, counter to the national interest.

One of the skeevy freaks of the alt-right incite-o-sphere called for a “Red Wedding” on January 6th, and as a bit of nerd/geek/I’m-wearing-a luchador-mask-for-pity’s-sake/dork, I resent these thugs appropriating my culture. Or any culture, really; the “we created western civilization” crowd never created shit. Creating is not their thing. Hurting people is.

And Paul Ryan wept. Apparently. That’s from the Book of Spineless Enablers, 11:35. But yeah, we’re told one of the chief architects of the civilization-devouring conflagration that is the modern GOP was momentarily moved to sorrow by the completely predictable consequences of his misspent life’s vicious work. How touching.

Honestly, I was almost grateful for the crude, geopolitical slapstick of the John Bolton interlude. Ol’ Murderstache can’t get his pants on without stepping on two or three rakes, which goes a long way towards explaining his Turd Midas contributions to the flow of human history.

Well, well, well, looks like Steve Bannon may be one slug the salt shaker’s finally caught up to; his legal stall tactics have almost run out, and now leaked audio (it should be illegal to publish “leaked” and “Bannon” in the same headline, by the way) reveals the Stoopid Coo ringleaders plotted from the very beginning to Just Lie, Baby, blowing yet another cavernous hole in the “Donald Trump was but an innocent fawn, who opposed the peaceful transfer of power for unspecified but totally noble reasons” defense.

And I guess when he’s not stumbling around Marm-a-Lago, absentmindedly tampering with witnesses, the Deposed Dotard spends his days plotting the launch date for the third presidential campaign he believes will keep him out of prison. Y’know, if somebody’d just subtly place, say, a wood chipper at the bottom of the escalator this time…

So, the cornered rats of Trumpworld think they can stick Mark Meadows with the soggy cracker and slink away, huh? I mean, excellent choice; Marky Mark’s a walking confession, and he richly deserves all the comeuppance the universe can muster. And to the lingering collaborators, what can I say but…(lightly taps NYT Epps profile).

Still, the Mark Meadows Miles Over His Head in Fascist Bullshit subplot has been a personal favorite. Can you fucking believe, this overmatchedest of all possible cretins attempted to cajole a resigning staffer into sticking around, because “we're actually going to be staying.” That’s a whole lotta misguided confidence for a fellow working off a blueprint designed by Sidney “No Reasonable Person Would Believe Anyone as Batshit as Me” Powell, and Rudy Giuliani, in his How Many Four Seasons Could There Possibly Be phase.

“Dr.” Ronny Jackson, one of the very smallest of the many small men who yielded to Donald Trump’s corruption with no resistance whatsoever, whimpered that the infinitely more decent of the two Presidents he served sent him the I’m-not-mad-just-disappointed letter he’s earned ten thousand times over. Honestly, I think I’d be willing to accept a little more oppression if it meant being spared the whining.

Speaking of the institutional rot that is Donald Trump’s first and only successful endeavor, I guess the Secret Service wants us to believe their mega-suspicious deletion of texts from a certain blustery, January Wednesday was Just One of Those O-So-Normal Things™️, and, speaking as someone who was born yesterday, I’m inclined to take them at their word.

…especially after Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony regarding Wee Donnie One-Term’s manchild meltdown got confirmed. Say, did that on-the-record refutation ever actually go down? No? Why, it’s almost like the offer was only ever designed to muddy the waters in the immediate aftermath of the most damning testimony yet regarding a criminal conspiracy perpetrated by idiots who frankly left us too much evidence to keep straight.

None of their manic tactics actually worked, which strikes your humble, bathrobed blogger as a solid reason to abandon them, for those unmoved by the whole “right and wrong” thing, anyway; but of course, “ineffective and morally repugnant” is the GOP’s policy wheelhouse, so it’s full steam ahead on electoral cheating. New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin got caught submitting 13,000 invalid, mostly photocopied signatures, in an effort to procure an extra spot on the ballot, as a third-party candidate; and then Colorado Congressthug Ken Buck got his fascist ass recorded asking a party official to straight-up submit fraudulent election results. Kinda makes you wonder how much fuckery is going undetected, huh?

Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign has been like an Advent calendar; every day, you open a tiny, perforated, cardboard door, and behind it is a fresh, new example of the ABJECT FUCKING MADNESS of the idea of electing Herschel Walker to the United States Senate. Anyway, dude’s take on air pollution put in me mind, for whatever reason, of the kid who sat next to me for most of first grade, who did not outgrow his booger-eating phase during the period of our acquaintance. Vote Warnock.

Lauren Boebert’s shrine to psychopathy, the “gun-themed” restaurant that propelled her to MAGA stardom in the first place, has closed, alas, so if you’re looking for someplace in Rifle, (yes, “Rifle”) Colorado to get hammered and bust a gut every time anybody shouts, “let’s go, Brandon,” well, there’s always the parking lot behind the laundromat, where Eddie from high school sells meth, which is doubly convenient, now that I think of it.

Now, considering the Category 5 shitstorm documented in the preceding 7,292 paragraphs, the week’s good news is as unsurprising as it is encouraging. Turns out, these loony Republican candidates are as close to broke as they deserve to be, while their Dem opponents make like Scrooge McDuck, (Beto, in particular, is making it rain) proving the American public has no intention of submitting docilely to dirtbag idiot supremacy just yet.

And that excites me. And I hope it excites you, too. And I hope it inspires folks to join the Do the Damn Work camp, because maybe there’s easier self-satisfaction to be found in the Whine About Joe Manchin camp, but the work remains either way.

With that, the sweet release of craft beer beckons, so I must leave you. Stay safe out there, my friends, and we’ll return to our regular Shower Cap time next week, same Shower Cap channel.

*Don’t look that one up if you’re squeamish, by the way.

July 9, 2022

The News, or: An Incomprehensibly Vast Sea of Buttholes, Stretching Beyond the Horizon (El Ferret)

Keeping up on current events, one winds up banging one’s head on one’s desk with some regularity, so I can’t be certain I’m not hallucinating most of this…that’d be preferable, honestly. I would like to request hallucinations of a more enjoyable nature, however. Cartoons or pornography, I’m not particular.

(Makes more sense with th’links: https://showercapblog.com/the-news-or-an-incomprehensibly-vast-sea-of-buttholes-stretching-beyond-the-horizon/)

So, in my lonesome wanderings through the wasteland called “the news,” I stumbled across a conversation in which Alex Jones suggested to Marjorie Taylor Greene that she should run for president, because she’s “smarter” than Trump, and smoke’s been pouring out of my ears ever since.

The question, “who is less intelligent, Donald John Trump, or Marjorie Taylor Greene?” is…it feels almost too big wrap your mind around. Cosmic. Unknowable.

I mean, who can forget the spectacle of that dizzy twit, babbling about disinfectant injections and ultraviolet light, expectantly waiting to be showered with gratitude and hooker piss, while the world watched Deborah Birx’s soul flee her body? That dude’s pretty fucking dumb.

But Marj’s brain resembles nothing so much as a single tapeworm, forever devouring its own ass end. This week alone, she fell for the shittiest imaginable photoshopping, yet still felt confident enough to dismiss recent mass shootings as Democrat false flag plots, based on nothing but the same voices in her head that told her Jewish space lasers cause wildfires.

It’s too close to call, folks.

I suppose the good news is, even bathsalt-garglers like Jones are looking to move on from the Deposed Dotard, thanks to the January 6th commission’s tight, sturdy work. Hey, I’ll take my silver linings where I finds ‘em. Times is hard.

Ah, but who shall inherit the death cult high priesthood, and with it, the power to command America’s burgeoning, bloodthirsty, endlessly bilkable, white grievance blob? All sorts of putrid, viscous consensus seems to be congealing around Ron DeSantis, for his culture war cruelty. “See how effectively I harness the power of the state to harm the people you despise?” he coos, and because he does so without shitting himself or tweeting slurs, he comes off like Trump But Seriously a Genius, Bro…Republican standards are what they are.   

Down in Florida, Ron-Ron’s malevolent “don’t say gay” bill just kicked in, and with it, the desired climate of fear. I confess I’m at a loss to explain what’s gained by making it unsafe for a public school teacher to display a photograph of their spouse in the classroom, beyond delighting the hateful…oh, silly me, it was right in front of me the whole time.

They have “civics boot camps” in DeSantistan now, and isn’t that a positively perky bit of branding? You can picture Snape sending Harry Potter to a civics boot camp, can’tcha?

Well, we’ve come to the “trans children fleeing Texas for their own safety” stage of American history, and y’know what, I’m starting to think the “don’t worry kid, democracy’s basically on autopilot” vibe my 7th grade civics textbook gave off was maybe a wee bit hubristic.

Republican gun laws once again ushered an angry young creep from homicidal ideation to mass slaughter with ease and accommodation you sure as shit don’t get at the post office, admittedly with an assist from the little turd’s father, who figured what his knife-collecting, violence-threatening spawn really needed was access to weapons of war. A toddler orphaned for your shitty judgment, Dad. Nice work.

Now, wingnuts hate the aftermath of a mass shooting, (this one absolutely ruined Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey’s holiday festivities) because they know their official position is so socipathically batshit that only brain-dead nutjobs can regurgitate it without shame. On the other hand, there are no kinks in the “brain-dead Republican nutjob” supply chain.

It’s like a bad improv game, where you have to deliver an indignant jeremiad based on some drunken audience member’s random suggestion. “Weed!” bellows Laura Ingraham. “Uppity broads!” sneers Tucker Carlson. There aren’t a lot of options left, frankly. Once Republicans get around to blaming mass shootings on bike lanes, watermelon Oreos, and the season of That ‘70s Show they did without Topher Grace, they will have suggested literally everything except the glaringly obvious truth.

But if you want to see the issue through the eyes of a guy who’s spent years jabbing at his brain with an ice pick, check out Scott Adams’ Twitter feed, for some deep philosophizin’ on violence, mental health, and euthanizing your own children for the good of humanity. What the living fuck, dude. We’re repossessing more than one “#1 Dad” mug this week. Jesus.

Boy, nothing exposes the all-consuming insecurity animating every single white supremacist better than a masked mediocrity march, of the type staged by…by…oh hell, one of those loser cosplay clubs…the Proud Boys? The Klan Kids? The “I’ve Built an Entire Personality Around Hating a Star Wars Movie” Gang? Really, who gives a shit?

“Ja we are the master race oh god please don’t tell my boss I was here or my mom or the girl at the Hardee’s I go to twice a week I don’t think she’s noticed the restraining order is about to expire.” ‘Course, I dunno why these creeps’re bothering with masks, considering the state of the discourse on the campaign trail.

In the Arizona gubernatorial primary, Trump-endorsed candidate Kari Lake, with the true fanatic’s audacity, proclaimed her opponent’s refusal to embrace the debunked-a-thousand-times-o‘er Big Lie “disqualifying,” even “sickening,” prompting Zombie George Orwell to slowly mouth, “damn, girl” at such a tidy bit of gaslighting.

Ol’ Donnie One-Term sure can pick ‘em. He’s also endorsed Kristina Karamo, who believes, in addition to the Big Lie, and all sorts of additional wacky, wacky shit, that abortion is a satanic child sacrifice ritual. As Michigan’s Secretary of State, Karamo would oversee elections, which maybe isn’t the best idea.

Seems Herschel Walker’s campaign staff are clear-eyed about their boss’ well-stocked buffet of shortcomings, calling him a “pathological liar,” among other, um, “criticisms,” so naturally they spend their days laboring to get him elected to the United States Senate, because you really can’t get anywhere in Republican politics anymore without enabling a manifestly unfit psychopath or two.

See, these skeevy little climbers’re aspiring Lindsey Grahams, each and every one dreaming of their glorious moment in the sun, manipulating their very own overmatched cretin, before they have their own subpoenas to defy, over their own crimes against American democracy. It’s the proto-fascist circle of life.

On the topic of Lindsepher Grahamwich, he’s still recovering in the burn ward at Walter Reed, alongside fellow “essential lapdog in Trump’s kennel” Kevin McCarthy, following release of a profile titled, “The Most Pathetic Men in America,” which you’ll enjoy, if you haven’t seen it already.

I guess Jim Comey and Andrew McCabe both, in another of those wacky coincidences that pop up from time to time under vindictive tyrants, received the same ultra-rare, ultra-intrusive, “random” IRS audit, which seems scandalous, sure, until you remember Hillary Clinton beat Vince Foster to death with a bottle of hot sauce, which she then used to season his face before eating it.

So, some asshat blew up this strange monument in Georgia, almost certainly motivated by dipshit wingnut conspiracy theories about “globalism” and “satanism,” because these days, the American experiment is mostly about figuring out how much schmuck terrorism modern society is willing to tolerate.

Again, I don’t want it to seem like I’m asking for better Nazis, but goddamn, we must have the stupidest right-wing extremists of all time. It’s a plague of dumbfucks, hopped up on talk radio and ivermectin. We’re probably about six weeks away from some Dilbert acolyte detonating a dirty bomb next to some pizza parlor’s nonexistent basement.

Adam Kinzinger’s getting to be like that guy at the office who won’t stop yakking about his boring-ass kid, only instead of meandering anecdotes about junior hockey exploits, he keeps going on and on about all the threats of violence he and his family receive. I mean, yeah, the GOP’s feral base wants you dead for daring to place country above party, WE GET IT, DUDE.

Honestly though, there’s just so goshdarn much right-wing violence to talk about these days. If you’ve got the stomach for it, here’s an article on the rise of online Christian fascist propaganda, which introduced me to the term “#ChristPilled,” and in so doing, sent a mighty shiver down my jaded, bathrobed spine. ChristPilled…yikes. Haven’t seen the last of that one.

It was certainly overdue, but the Conservative Party in Great Britain finally initiated the ritual defenestration of Boris Johnson, over his loutish incompetence and general asshattery, and I haven’t felt such anglophilic envy since I discovered the Stone Roses in college.

Ok, that’s enough for now, I don’t have the strength to get into the shit that’s happening elsewhere; suffice to say, we’re not running out of awful.

Incidentally, next week’s blog is gonna be delayed till Saturday, owing to a rare opportunity to spend my Friday doing something more fun than sifting through the turds that fall from Tucker Carlson’s mouth. Stay safe out there, friends. 

July 2, 2022

Everything is Terrible, But At Least We Can Still Laugh at Ted Cruz's Shitty, Shitty Beard (Ferrret)

Every day is a thrilling new adventure, here in th’Land of the Free slash th’Home of the Brave; you tuck yourself in at night, never knowing which of your rights the power-drunk, illegitimate SCOTUS majority will take from you next. When you wake up, you don’t feel any different; you’re pretty much the same soul inside pretty much the same body, but your personhood has been legally diminished by zealots. It’s…odd.

(I imagine this is incomprehensible at this point without the links: https://showercapblog.com/everything-is-terrible-but-at-least-we-can-still-laugh-at-ted-cruzs-shitty-shitty-beard/)

Yeah, America was rolling along nicely, until the dominionists came to town.

Lately, I keep thinking about an old line of Dubya’s: “They hate our freedoms,” remember that one? I always thought it was a weird thing to suggest, but now I understand, he was speaking from a place of deep, personal experience, as a member of one fanatical religious group speaking about another.

While one certainly expects a conservative death cult to be regressive, I suppose one can never fully grasp the extent of the regressiveness until the death cult seizes a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court. They really, truly, madly, deeply despise our freedoms, and thus, well…they’re taking them away.

The legal theories are consistent, if batshit: if we’re not allowed to protect our children from gun violence, why should we be allowed to protect all life on Earth from climate change? All suffering is God’s will, most especially suffering inflicted by the minoritarian despot firm of Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Roberts, Alito, Thomas, & Coney Barrett.

As we settle into our new role as an international cautionary tale, the domestic Right is responding to the new reproductive rights landscape like a cannibal gang that just devoured a meth den. They’re euphoric about all the women they get to hurt right away, sure, but they’re also already feverishly concocting grotesque new weapons for the theocracy to deploy in the campaign against female autonomy.

We’re talking about laws to prohibit women from exercising their rights in more civilized states. Laws to punish those who do. And it’s only the first week.

With the resentment-fueled Wingnut God of Hate squatting in the halls of justice, a wave of fresh attacks on LGBTQ rights is next on the agenda; Texas AG Ken Paxton is standing giddily by with an archaic anti-sodomy law he can’t fucking wait to take out for a test drive.

(Away from the headline-grabbing stuff about all the decades of progress these six unelected asshats just pissed on, Justice Thomas casually slid a Taylor Greene-worthy conspiracy theory into one of his dissents, in case anybody’s wounds were insufficiently salted.)

Oh, and to really rub the Constitution’s nose in it, the robed fuckheads also took a great, big, scary step towards eliminating liberty from their own religion, bet we haven’t heard the last of that shit. “Yeah, WE can pray wherever we want. We’ll pray with our knees on your motherfucking necks, Derek Chauvin-style.”

Because the Lauren Boeberts of the world are sick and goshdarn tired of this bullshit separation of (their) church and (our) state. They’ve got a god who says they’re allowed to push everyone else around, which is a pretty convenient god, if you ask me, but the Supreme Court just made Him Governor of California, CEO of Facebook, and People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive from now until the sun goes out.

The Professor Marvel Memorial “Pay No Attention to the Fascist Behind the Curtain” award goes to Trump-endorsed Congresscreep Mary Miller, who, as you are no doubt aware, referred to the tyrannical usurpation of Americans’ civil rights as “a victory for white life.” Yes, the same Mary Miller who initially rose to national prominence by opining “Hitler was right on one thing,” why do you ask?

Anyway, the least surprising thing that made me weep tears of rage this week (say, that could be a regular feature) was discovering the ghost of Todd Akin, still haunting the GOP, ratting his chains, and moaning about Legitimate Rape. Perhaps Yesli Vega, the Republican candidate in Virginia’s 7th congressional district, was simply failed by her sex ed teachers…but then, perhaps she’s just one more malicious idiot in a party that values malice and idiocy.

(Vega’s running to unseat the amazing Abigail Spanberger, who y’all remember from the big, beautiful, Blue Wave of ‘18. Which I bring up in case anybody out there is looking for a race to adopt.)

Anyhoo, the political movement that re-canonizes Kyle Rittenhouse every other week is desperate to spin the narrative that it is Democrats who are the Violent Ones, Actually, and many a vein popped in many a deplorable forehead, as they collectively strained to will a post-Roe “Night of Rage” into being. Reality, as is so often the case with these folks, proved unaccommodating.

Still, evidence of Democratic brutality is liberally (GET IT) strewn about us, if we’re honest. Nancy Pelosi assaulted that kid, for example, and poor Rudy Giuliani was beaten so badly his subpar son’s political career died. And let us not forget Secretary Clinton, with her predilection for noshing ‘pon the faces of infants.

Meanwhile, famed conservative ethicist Eric “Possibly the Cruelest Genetic Joke on a Stumplike Family Tree” Trump opined that street violence in service to a known lie was “fair game,” and frankly “rad as hell” and definitely “something the rubes should do more of so my shitbag dad doesn’t go to prison, because if the government takes the money, I’d last about nine minutes on my own. Seriously, I’d starve, I don’t even know how to tie my own fucking shoes.”

Oh, and “an off-duty Rhode Island cop running for state senate has been charged with assault after punching his political rival in the face at an abortion-rights protest,” or so says the lamestream media. Now, without clicking, I wonder, can you guess which political parties these two electoral adversaries have chosen for themselves? The assaulter and the assaultee? The criminal and his victim? Since we’re talking about “nights of rage” and political violence and whatnot? Betcha can.

Until further notice, the target of the Two Minutes Hate shall be former Mark Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who violated the First MAGA Commandment: Thou shalt not mention what an unhinged, ketchup-splattering manchild the Turd Emperor is, especially not under oath, in front of the entire country.

Copy editors the world over struggled, mostly in vain, to find synonyms for “explosive testimony*,” as Hutchinson, newly free of her Trump-funded “lawyer,” walked the nation through Donnie Dotard’s autocratic mid-coup meltdown, as his dream of personally leading a loser crusade to the Capitol, in order to murder his way to a second term, slipped through those tiny, inadequate fingers.

Fixated as ever on crowd size, Pumpkin Spice Pol Pot tried to have metal detectors removed, hoping to give a frothing wad of known-to-be-armed thugs a Loudermilk-style tour of the building, because hey, Mike Pence wasn’t gonna lynch himself.

And maybe somebody in the rapidly-falling Turd Reich could have done something to stop this horrifying, herky-jerky fashgasm, but I guess everybody was too busy staring at their phone, or frantically digging through the sofa cushions for pardons.

Oh, and the mighty Cognitive Test-Passer may or may not have physically assaulted Secret Service agents in an attempt to commander his vehicle, so he could sit up front and watch his precious hate mob slaughter Congress in his name.

Since even the mafia-style witness tampering failed to impede delivery of this evidence, Cult45 is freaking the fuck out, and quite a few enterprising young Brownshirt Scouts are going for their Smear Campaign merit badge. The Velveeta Vulgarian himself waddled over to Newsmax for a round of stochastic terror softball, and looka here, even Q (not the fun one, the one that incites violence) returned from exile to join the dogpile.

Now, I sincerely hope I still live in a country that will permit Cassidy Hutchinson to live out her natural lifespan in safety, but…I confess I have some doubts.

Anyway.

Despite a half decade of residence in this shit-flooded zone, the sight of a former U.S. Army Lieutenant General and National Security Advisor to the President of the United States of America, pleading the fifth when asked, “so is the peaceful transfer of power for cucks, or what?” still made me projectile vomit, so I guess I’m not totally desensitized yet, that’s nice.

And I’m not alone, it would appear; more rats than usual abandoned ship this week, because if there’s one thing Americans can’t stand, it’s wasted ketchup. When even the Washington Examiner thinks you’re too crazy/shitty/reckless/stupid/did I mention shitty to ever hold power again, you know you absolutely suck.

Rudy Giuliani deflected Hutchinson’s testimony with the deftness we’ve come to expect from the guy who booked Four Seasons Total Landscaping, before returning to his day job as the MyPillow guy’s spokesdoofus.

Now, this shitstorm is so thick, you can’t see two feet in front of your face, right? There’s a lot going on, most of it’s fucking awful, and we need leaders, now more than ever. So, how’s the sheltie’s-ass-bearded junior Senator from Texas filling his time these days? I’m glad you asked; he’s picking a fight with Sesame Street over Covid vaccines, yes, another one, in yet another doomed attempt to squeeze adulation out of the very death cult that once thrilled to his public emasculation by a superior primate.

Hell, you couldn’t get above the fold in my stupid blog, Ted, and I’m a drunken weirdo in a luchador mask. Everything about you sucks as much as your beard, and you will never, ever get elected President. Where history remembers you at all, it will be as a punchline, though it must be said, a legitimately amusing one.

Ron Johnson seems to be having trouble keeping his excuses for insurrecting straight, but maybe we’re being a bit hard on the poor guy; with a brain that succumbs to every conspiracy theory that drifts across his field of vision, you can’t really expect the man to navigate the finer points of a conspiracy to overthrow the whole dang constitutional order. Whether or not such a brain should be consulted in the lawmaking process is a question for the voters of Wisconsin, I suppose.

For any future historians arguing about how the fuck the most advanced nation in human history managed to sink so far into this morass of madness, well, with Teddy and RoJo making up 2% of the upper house of our federal legislature, we never had a fucking chance. Incidentally, tell me somebody’s watching Tommy Tuberville, he can’t be left unsupervised.

Meanwhile, Vlad the Miscalculator’s war of aggression rolls on according to plan, assuming the plan involved sovereign default and NATO expansion and retreating in shame from Snake Island, (which merits a robust “Go fuck yourself,” I think) and okay, maybe it’s not going so great, but he will not rest until he’s denazified every shopping mall in Ukraine.

GRIM SHIT, INNIT? But hey, at least Ketanji Brown Jackson got sworn in, hopefully laying the foundation for the court that’ll someday overturn all this hot kakistocrat trash.

Fucking hell. That’s enough, I think. More than enough. Lordy. Okay, well, try not to get gored by a bison, though if you do get gored by a bison, I certainly hope you get better.

*Volatile evidence delivery? Nitroglycerin-like witnessery? 

June 25, 2022

I Hope Ruth Bader Ginsburg Haunts the Shit Out of These Assholes (Th'Ferret)

So, I was feeling kinda judgy about the latest cynical serving of Jurassic Product, you know, “you honestly expect me to believe they’d keep making dinosaurs after five movies’ worth of T-rex rampages” kind of stuff, but then I gave a moment’s passing thought to American society’s capacity/willingness to learn from history’s mistakes, and I didn’t feel so fancy anymore.

(Some of this stuff makes no damn sense without links, so click here: https://showercapblog.com/i-hope-ruth-bader-ginsburg-haunts-the-shit-out-of-these-assholes/)

So, a theocrat, a drunken mediocrity and an insurrectionists’ spouse walk into a bar. Excuse me, not a bar, I meant “the Supreme Court,” where the illegitimately installed operatives of a tyrannical minority continue incinerating the Constitution with their purloined blowtorch. Yeah, the evil fucks went and did it. I suppose you don’t go to all the trouble of stealing that sort of power without plans to abuse it.

Anyway, in accordance with the dictates of our dominionist overlords, all members of the gender which shall henceforth be referred to as “broodmare” must provide a permission slip, certifying completion of all domestic chores, before reading this blog, signed by a male guardian/owner. Sorry, I don’t make the rules, the most malicious zealots alive do.   

Of course, it’s not all medieval regression at the Supreme Court; while women lose rights by the bushel, guns gain new privileges every day. Yes, still dripping blood from Uvalde and Sandy Hook, they strut obscenely to and fro, squawking about how much they value the lives of children. Anyway, looking forward to 2028’s Gaetz-Greitens Act, formally enfranchising the nation’s firearms.

Oh, and more fun, American taxpayers are now obligated to fund any wingnut indoctrination camp masquerading as a “religious school.” I’m starting to understand why this ideology has trouble attracting an electoral majority.

Of course, even this radical assault on human rights and the will of the people isn’t enough for Clarence Thomas, who’s already getting new boots made for the next set of necks.

Fucking hell, and that’s just the SCOTUS beat.

The week started innocently enough, with a more-laughable-than-usual deployment of the right-wing nutjobosphere’s clunky, sputtering, faux outrage machine, in service to the, let’s call it “questionable” legal theory that a briefly detained Stephen Colbert film crew is somehow morally and legally equivalent to a certain hate-crazed mob that inflicted 140 casualties on Capitol law enforcement. And that seems silly, yes, but remember, there’s always a fifty-fifty chance Chuck Todd’ll platform your horseshit as a completely valid point of view.

But then the Republican Party of the Revanchist Shithole Called Texas had to go and make things scary. They’re not fucking around down there, folks. And can I just say, I’m honestly surprised that Texas Log Cabin Republicans thought the state GOP convention, in the summer of 2022, would be a safe space. Physically. This is not 2015. It’s not even 2020.

No, it’s Openly Menace Dan Crenshaw and His Staff in the Halls time now, folks. When DAN CRENSHAW isn’t crazy enough for your roving gang of thugs, gun control was needed yesterday.

Which brings us to John Cornyn, another fella who was lucky to get out of that Klan rally alive. Hey, looks like we’re actually going to get a new federal gun control law, how ‘bout that? And yeah, John, how ‘bout how quickly the throng turned on you? Like lightning, wasn’t it? For your grudging, meager efforts to finally, FINALLY do as little as humanly possible to stem the flow of little kids’ blood pooling on the floor of the U.S. Senate?

Outside of the bubbling undercurrent of potential street violence, and gosh, won’t that be fun to normalize, the rest of the convention was…well, equally appalling. Fealty sworn to known lies and unapologetic bigotry. Democracy is for cucks, stuff like that. Starting to get 1939 MSG vibes from GOP gatherings, which I don’t love.

Anyway, to all the Texas Republicans who suddenly understand how it feels to have your life threatened by this hate mob y’all built, (and armed, that was smart; real long-term thinkers, conservative lawmakers) you are welcome to pick up a bucket and start fighting this fire any damn day now.

Because Eric “Violent Sex Criminal” Greitens might just ride that terrifying There’s Only One Real Pro-Political Violence Candidate in This Race And His Name is Me ad all the way to Washington, even as Herschel Walker twists a life of lies and abuse into ever more and more evangelical adulation. This is, as Shakespeare so famously said, some deeply fucked-up shit.

Y’know what? Somebody in Congress should investigate this stuff, especially the way it exploded in a sloppy, premature, frankly embarrassing orgasm of loser white boy terrorism last January. Hang on, I’m receiving a note…oh right, the hearings!

Actually, Bennie and the Jets’re doing a damn fine job. They understand the assignment, and they’re weaving a concise, compelling, emotionally impactful narrative. And holy crud, it’s lookin’ more and more like they’re actually reaching some changeable minds! I thought we were just about out of those, y’know?

‘Course, all the mountains of damning, irrefutable evidence certainly didn’t hurt the cause. Hindsight is 20/20, but I admit I never appreciated the way the first 44-or-so Presidents declined the opportunity to spend the transition period pursuing increasingly outlandish schemes to cling to power. Especially considering history has more or less proven Italian satellites cost Martin Van Buren reelection.

Yes, on one level, this was a bungling wad of dumbasses, lurching haphazardly about, trying stupid, stupid shit that was never going to fucking work, but it was still quite a bit fashier than you’d like to see from the White House. Ideally. Not to seem critical or anything.

Quite a lot of eager little brownshirts in the Freedumb Caucus, too, now that I think of it…Biggs, Brooks, Greene, Jordan, Gohmert, Gosar, Perry, all groveling for pardons after their treacherous machinations collapsed…bonus audacity points to Matt “Oh, And Leave Some Blank Space So I Can Write In A Few Sex Crimes Later” Gaetz.

And Ron Johnson can pretend to be on the phone with his Canadian girlfriend all he likes, he’s still been caught red-handed participating in a conspiracy to overturn a free and fair election, but hey, at least it’s been a couple weeks since he found any wacky new Covid conspiracy theories to uncritically parrot.

Well, Jeffrey Clark finally received his overdue federal law enforcement raid, no doubt uncovering the nude Jon McNaughton portrait he had commissioned back when he believed he had the Attorney General’s salary to look forward to. Much has been made of Jeffrey’s manifest unfitness for the post, as though that wasn’t the whole reason Pumpkin Spice Pol Pot wanted him in the first place. “Sure, the resume’s a little thin, but I just find the way he goes, ‘whatever you require, Mein Führer’ endearing, don’t you?”

I guess I could spend the decades it would take to untangle the twisted ethical logic behind Rusty Bowers’ “Well, he asked me to violate my oath and my faith and tried to end democracy in America, but HECK YEAH I’d vote for him again!” stance, but fuck it, that’s Rusty’s therapist’s job. I’m tired.

Noted lynch mob target Michael Pence figured this was the appropriate week to feebly wheeze that Joe Biden is the dishonestest fellow to e’er sully the Oval with his rank untruthfulhood and lying liarpants, and Mike, my dude, while I appreciate that you still need to run face-first into this windmill a couple more times before you understand your completely obvious place in MAGA history, there is only one major political party in this country that does not actively seek your death, and I just think you should be nicer to us is all.

Because we are nowhere near done with stories of th’Base’s steadily increasing fondness for violence, and threats of violence. The hearings spent a whole day on that shit, because the Republican Party just incites that much terrorism.

So I’ll take “Recent Death Threats to United States Congressmen” for $200, Alex.

“This Iraq-veteran-slash-death-cult-apostate’s wife received an anonymous letter threatening the life of their 5-month-old child”

Who is Adam Kinzinger. Same category, $400.

“This former Presidential candidate received a homophobic death threat immediately (fucking IMMEDIATELY) after being targeted on Twitter, with debunked conspiracy theories for good measure, by Marjorie Taylor Greene”

Who is Eric Swalwell. I hope the readers don’t expect to me to take this bit any further, Alex, but I think it worked up to this point. This has been fun, we should do it again.

Apparently it’s just now occurring to Off-Brand Orbán, here in the inevitable aftermath of Kevin McCarthy’s the-fuck-were-you-thinking, Gym-Jordon-or-nuthin’ “strategy”concerning the January 6th commission, that the wannabe Speaker might be not be so great at leadering. All MAGA political operations are like that snake story, only with  “idiot” instead of “snake,” have you noticed that?

I cringed so hard my forearms snapped, watching Lindsey Graham, clearly shell-shocked by the enormity of Everything He’s Done, tremblingly praise his deposed master for…his ability to instill fear. Jeeeeeeeezus. Boot polish makers must put an addictive chemical in their shit, exactly like cigarettes, but it’s only dudes like Lindsey Graham who ever find out about it.

Yeah, Lindsepher, when a fascist gets a taste of real power, and tries to seize more, the first thing he does is, he goes looking for a few weak men. Donald Trump found you. And how lucky he was in the finding, and how unlucky the rest of us. Don’t worry, history won’t forgetcha, and someday very soon, a weaselly character actor might just win an Academy Award for playing you. I hope you live to see it. Sincerely.

The newest Republican Representative is already lying to cover up her history of spreading Q shit, and with distressing ease and comfort, I might add. Oh, and congressional candidate Jerone Davison hired Austin “Baby Q” Steinbart to run his campaign…who is “Baby Q,” you ask? Well, that is quite a tale. A tale that involves time travel, a prison sentence, and, ahem, a “synthetic penis.”  Soon, “moderate” Republicans will be the ones who just believe in Pizzagate, maybe a Jewish space laser or two, scoffing haughtily at the Lizard People Made Me Dry Hump That Mailbox Caucus.

Well, I’ve gotta head out, throw up some fencing to fend off the velociraptors that’re surely on their way. You stay safe out there. I, uh, hope nobody takes any more of your rights away.

June 18, 2022

The Law Firm of Giuliani, Eastman, & Clark: Insurrecting Incompetently Since 2020 (Ferrrrrret)

Are we absolutely certain it was heat that killed all those cows in Kansas? Did anybody check to see if any of them had, like, a Twitter account? Cellphone with a couple news apps? Because it’s been a lot lately, y’know? Just…a lot.

(Links aplenty await those who dare to click…here: https://showercapblog.com/the-law-firm-of-giuliani-eastman-clark-insurrecting-incompetently-since-2020/)

Well, the second week of the Capitol Riot hearings kicked off with the image of a shitfaced Rudy Giuliani, stumbling around on election night, leaking god knows how many bodily fluids, in search of any potential collaborators who might’ve been feelin’ a little DTI, (that’s “down to insurrect” in the parlance of the modern young person) and degenerated into primal, gibbering delirium from there.

As you’ll recall, the whole bath-salts-on-rye-toast legal theory animating the Stoopid Coo was the attempt to recast then-Vice President Pence as some sort of human Get Out of Jail Free card, or a lamp you could rub (not in front of Mother, of course) to get three treasonous wishes.

And no, that does not make a metric lick of sense, but given Donald Trump’s well-established lack of regard for human life, and a management style based on elevating whatever turd-gargling moron happens to tell him what he wants to hear, the dumbest of all possible constitutional crises was probably inevitable.

Leading the charge were the likes of John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark, subpar bureaucrat types driven to high crimes by the intoxicating prospect of ruling America forever. They fully understood what they were attempting was immoral, and illegal, and would surely lead to widespread unrest and violence, but, y’know…YOLO.

Ol’ Johnny E certainly left the digital paper trail of a man who expected to see the end of the rule of law in the United States. Lordy. How long till we learn Ginni Thomas had a few Oath Keepers over for an afternoon of cucumber sandwiches, bridge, and bomb-making?

For a man who couldn’t pass a third grade social studies test, Eastman was actually quite astute in his assessment that what John Eastman needed after weeks of sustained treachery was a presidential pardon, because hey, even a stopped clock. He didn’t get one, by the way…you gotta camp out for that shit, hoss.

On the grassroots level, plans were equally Gohmertian, as the shit-from-unusually-stupid-bats plan outlined in the Proud Boys’ “1776 Returns” document demonstrates. I’m endlessly thankful for the American fascist’s cerebral deficiencies; sometimes I wonder if our best tools for derailing dictatorship won’t ultimately prove to be unheeded warnings on hair dryers and chainsaws and whatnot.

Even with so much historic fuckery to document, the January 6th committee still made time to remind Cult45 that their cheap, grifter god pockets every dollar they donate, with nary a stray nickel set aside for the restoration of American greatness, but we’re talking about the most bilkable creatures to e’er walk the Earth; they’d only spend it on doomsday food buckets and pro-lynching t-shirts.

Georgia Congressthug Barry Loudermilk has changed his story regarding the tour of the Capitol he led last January 5th so many times, you’d think he was auditioning for a gig with the Uvalde PD. I believe the latest-but-by-no-means-last version asks us to believe the charming fellow who recorded himself threatening multiple Congressmen wasn’t conducting reconnaissance, he was merely a wall sconce aficionado. We’re not all docile death cultists, Barry.

Seditious attorney Jenna Ellis joined Doug “Nice Swing State Ya Got There, Be a Shame If Anybody Imposed Christian Nationalism On It” Mastriano’s gubernatorial campaign, and my, my, isn’t Josh Shapiro looking all handsome lately, with his well-tailored suits and lack of authoritarian tendencies?

Four opposition researchers working for Raphael Warnock’s Senate campaign died from exhaustion this week, and at press time, it is believed as many as 1 in 12 Americans may be Herschel Walker’s unclaimed children.

It must also be noted that Herschel has never been an FBI agent, or a law enforcement officer of any kind; and most of us haven’t, I suppose, but then, most of us aren’t running for federal office on a resume conjured from the self-aggrandizing daydreams of a domestic abuser. Other Walker claims, for example that he invented the spatula, and taught Tony Hawk to skate, are probably legit, though.

But yeah, the 2022 GOP primary season continues to unfold like a swarm of plague rats drowning in a Lollapalooza porta potty.

More than 100 of the Party o’ Lincoln’s nominees spout the Deposed Dotard’s debunked election lies, including candidates for the very offices tasked with overseeing elections. See, Americans’re actually totally unified in striving to learn from the mistakes of January 6th…there’s just a bit of a partisan gap on what, precisely, those mistakes were.

And if you want a fun little teaser of the world our elephantine countrymen hope to build, look no further than Otero County, New Mexico, where the elected commission/canvassing board, led by convicted Capitol Rioter/self-professed “Cowboy for Trump” Couy Griffin, refused to certify recent primary election results, just cuz. Just cuz they’re crazy people who’ve been handed a little power to abuse, and they’re testing the fences to see how much they can get away with.

Oh, and yet another QAnon adherent, Mayra Flores, has been elected to Congress, so expect Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bill banning federal funding for Jewish space lasers to pick up steam, unless the deep state intervenes.

Flores will fit right in with caucusmate Greg Steube, who is apparently caveman-at-a-flume-park-level stupefied by the tricksy images on the magic talking television box, and wouldn’t it be neat if our elected leaders were better at discerning reality than house cats?

Lord knows, reality is hard on a wingnut, whether he’s dying on a ventilator despite a bellyful of ivermectin, or throwing an unhinged, juvenile, misogynistic, career-ending shitfit in a Wisconsin courtroom, defending the Big Lie. Not just their policies, but their delusions must be granted supremacy now, you see.

I know the Constitution doesn’t explicitly guarantee liberty from the tyranny of the imaginary, but that’s only because the Founding Fathers failed to adequately grasp the bottom limits of human intelligence. If you’re feeling up for a peek into the mouth of madness, check out WaPo’s profile of a woman who calls herself “Burnitdown,” a diehard MAGA drone who has, for years, dutifully poured every proffered drop of poison into her skull, until her brain was functionally pickled. And now she’s active in local politics. Sleep tight.

Speaking of conservative activists, 31 of the sorriest specimens of what passes for manhood on the alt-right helpfully bundled their subpar asses together in the back of a U-Haul, so law enforcement could arrest them all together, before they could execute their planned attack on a Pride parade in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

And though this latest white supremacist terror plot (my punch card filled up again, remind me to redeem my free slushee) occurred in the middle of an incessant barrage of anti-LGBTQ fear-mongering by prominent Republicans ranging from Ron DeSantis to Ken Paxton to the screeching heads of Fux Nooz, it’s unfair to draw the obvious conclusion, because CANCELCULTURELAMESTREAMMEDIACRITICALRACETHEORY, and you can’t deny the logic in that.

Golly, the Children of the Candy Corn must’ve busted out the good meth, such were their wild, triumphal writhings at the news that Anthony Fauci tested positive for Covid. I guess when JFK Jr. keeps no-showing your resurrection parties, you learn to settle.

Meanwhile, DeSantis, in an act of almost incomprehensible madness and malice, made his government an unnecessary obstacle between parents and the life-saving coronavirus vaccine, now that it’s finally been approved for use in young children. Death cult politics sure get wacky, huh? “Fuck your kids’ health, Daddy’s got brainwashed imbeciles to pander to!”

Montana Governor Greg Gianforte pulled a Cancun Cruz, and left the miserable plebs, excuse me, “his constituents” to rot during a flooding crisis, while he vacationed abroad, no doubt in search of exotic new journalists to assault. Republicans have a thousand ways to tell their voters, “I do not care if you live or die screaming,” but of course, said voters are famous for their feces-clogged ear canals.

Alas and alack, the official pillow of sedition will no longer be available for purchase on the shelves of your local Walmart, but on the bright side, watching Mike Lindell melt down hasn’t gotten old yet.

Well, I imagine everyone’s barf bag is more or less full by now, so I’ll sign off here. Stay safe out there, m‘loves. Like the old folk saying goes, “may no U-Hauls stuffed with armed white nationalists cross your path.” 

June 11, 2022

Maybe The Real Capitol Riot Is The Friends We Made Along the Way (Ferret)

I know I can’t be the only one out there who keeps the Hamilton cast recording on in the car, just as I’m surely not the only one who shouts “oh go fuck yourself” every time they get to the part that goes “look around, at how lucky we are to be alive right now.” Read the goddamn room, Hamilton.

(It all makes more sense with links, promise: https://showercapblog.com/maybe-the-real-capitol-riot-is-the-friends-we-made-along-the-way/)

There must be some kind of unofficial competition between Republican officeholders, to see who can indignantly shriek the nuttiest gobbledygook in the wake of a school shooting. And like, I grok that Republicans instinctually, unquestioningly circle the wagons around any proffered talking point, however ridiculous, (the Kochs train ‘em well) but all this sputtering, fake outrage about the unforgivably bounteous number of doors threatening our children's safety…how do you get through that shit without giggling, or, y’know, melting into a puddle of shame?

For that matter, how many pens do you have shove up your fucking nose before suggesting the problem isn’t guns, but smartphones? Do they not have smartphones in Europe, Congressman?

But the trophy (a bronzed urinal, surely, overflowing with ivermectin and hooker piss) goes to Wisconsin’s official State Idiot: Ron Johnson, who I’m certain would lose a spelling bee to a yak. “Why are we even talking about gun control when the true mass-murderer of innocent children is HUNTER BIDEN’S LAPTOP DERP DERPY DERP”  To even allow such a preposterous thought to congeal, let alone to express it, in front of recording devices…if dumbfuckery is an art form, RoJo is its Picasso.

Another giant in that field would be Louie Gohmert, who actually went on television to lament, “If you're a Republican, you can't even lie to Congress or lie to an FBI agent or they're coming after you,” in the latest of ten thousand headlines I initially dismissed as satire. Nobody ever got rich overestimating Louie’s intellect, Cap.

Sure, there’s a certain schadenfreude to the spectacle of treacherous crotchfungus Mo Brooks’ feverish groveling to procure an un-un-endorsement from his moth-chewed loser god, but it kinda gives me the embarrassment shivers, and anyway, boot-licking isn’t what I’d call an admirable leadership trait in the best of times, but in this era of ascendant fascism, well…

Have you seen the skeevy little freak Wee Donnie One-Term hitched his wagon to in the Arizona Senate race? Blake Masters burst onto the national scene this week with a barrage of batshit conspiracy theories and unapologetic bigotry, so you know Cult45’s gonna love him, and I’m suddenly much more interested in Mark Kelly’s reelection campaign, aren’t you?

By the way, a new poll shows nearly 7 in 10 members of the Party o’ Personal Responsibility™️ have found solace from their shortcomings in the pathetic, racist lie known as “great replacement theory,” quite possibly because of the politicians and pundits who pour it down their willing throats 24/7.

(At the risk of escalating partisan tensions, lemme address the tiki torch crowd real quick: kids, replacing you is actually a highly rational act. Look at yourselves. You suck. You absolutely fucking suck. It’s not some zany coincidence that domestic terror organizations recruit from the same pool of angry, weak-minded losers that make up the ISISes of the world, y’know.)

Speaking of, seems our old friend Marjorie Taylor Guam hired pedophilia apologist Milo Yiannopoulos as an intern, so you know that office water cooler is set to become the spot for trendy young Washington fascists to see and be seen. Anyway, yeah, Nazis congregating on the staff of a U.S. Representative, that’s probably suboptimal.

And while we’re on that distressingly specific topic, a Republican candidate for the United States Congress got caught straight up praising Hitler, and with a lead-in like that, I bet you think this paragraph couldn’t get too terribly much darker. Oh, my sweet, summer child. Y’see, Carl Paladino, manifestly unfit for office even before we heard him refer to Adolf Hitler as “the kind of leader we need today” on account of how “inspirational” he was, boasts the endorsement of one Elise Stefanik, the fashiest lil’ climber you ever did see, and the House GOP’s third-ranking leader.

We’ve normalized some pretty freaky shit in this country over the past half-decade or so, but I feel like cutting the guy who goes, “What we need is a Hitler!” loose shouldn’t be a particularly hard call. Now, it seems fairly obvious that anyone who fails to clear that low, low moral hurdle shouldn’t get a seat at the table where laws get made, but I bet saying so counts as “critical race theory,” so I expect Ron DeSantis’ shock troops to break down my door any minute now.

Meanwhile, Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley got arrested by the FBI for misdemeanors committed at the Capitol Riot. And yeah, it feels like low-hanging fruit to jocularly insinuate these charges will lead to a surge in the polls and the endorsement of the 45th President of the United States, but it also feels like a headline we’ll see before next Wednesday.

Wouldn’t it be cool to live in a country where this shit was disqualifying? The racist, violence-inciting conspiracy theories, and the criminal assaults on our fundamental democratic rights? Where a psychopath like Doug Mastriano gets laughed out of the building, instead of winning his primary?

Is this a bad time to bring up the political assassination in Wisconsin? Or do we only have time for the above-the-fold domestic terrorist violence this week?

Yeah, let’s move on to January 6th, since Bennie Thompson and friends finally began unveiling their VH1-style Behind the Insurrection doc.

Or, if you’d prefer to remain snug in a propaganda bubble where the Big Lie reigns unchallenged and horse dewormer cures all ailments, I’m sure there’s still plenty of room up Tucker Carlson’s ass.

Heck, you didn’t think the leechlike Murdoch clan went to all the trouble of radicalizing millions just to relinquish control of the narrative after one teensy-weensy death cult uprising, didja? Still, taking Liar Tuck’s White Power Hour commercial-free for the evening, lest the drones accidentally stumble across reality whilst seeking refuge from the monotony of MyPillow ads? Zombie Orwell tips a rotting cap to such sinister eye for detail.

Also, Off-Brand Orbán’s free speech mosh pit, “Truth Social,” can’t seem to stop censoring posts about the hearings, while simultaneously platforming his desperate deluge of disinformation, and who, I ask, in my best Newhartian deadpan, could have predicted such ethical inconsistency from a Devin Nunes venture?

‘Course, if I’d cravenly compromised away as much integrity and decency as the modern American Right, I’d live in mortal terror of mirrors, too. It must be damn near impossible to stand the sight of yourself, when you’ve the done the things that, say, Mark Meadows has done.

The simple, unavoidable truth is, these feebleminded asshats pulled a metric fuckton of insane, criminal, utterly immoral shit, in a concerted if deranged effort to end American democracy, and seize power for themselves in perpetuity. And I just think that sort of thing ought to be discouraged is all.

Supreme Court Justices’ wives should not be pressuring 29 state-level lawmakers to thwart the electorate’s will, for example. And if your cause is truly just n’ pure, there shouldn’t be any need to plot in “complete secrecy,” surely. By the time folks start spitballing about hiring armed “contractors” to seize voting equipment, I feel as though one’s moral compass should be fully anthropomorphized and screaming at you to get your shit together.

But no, you not only stayed aboard the crazy train, you offered the goddamn Proud Boys and Oath Keepers a ride, and they did what bloodthirsty neo-fascist thugs do when handed a permission structure and institutional cover: they tried to take what they wanted by force. Which was the plan all along, hence the seditious conspiracy indictments cluttering up the joint lately.

Y’all built a lynch mob that waged war on Capitol law enforcement, with officers “slipping in people’s blood” defending your collaborating asses, and after a brief, frantic scramble for pardons, you once again absolved yourselves of any wrongdoing, and went straight back to work inciting the next murderous maniac, and the next one and the next one and the next one. God damn you one and all.

Ron DeSantis may not be particularly interested in keeping his constituents alive, but he always keeps an eye out for a new front to open in his vindictively regressive culture war, as he seeks to claim the White House on behalf of the fearful and mediocre. The Tampa Bay Rays, the Special Olympics, parents who love their children…there’s plenty of room on Ron-Ron’s enemies list, and heaven knows his supporters have more than enough hatred to go ‘round.

Oh, incidentally, DeSantis’ casually anti-Semitic press secretary, Christina Pushaw, got caught working illegally as a good, old-fashioned, Manafort-style, unregistered agent of a foreign autocrat. America first tho.

With his dreams of epic conquest largely dashed, Vlad the Miscalculator has settled into a reduced set of goals more befitting one of his petty thug stature; he’s basically just a dolphin-killing grain smuggler now, and I bet his mom sure is proud.

And while headlines reading Yup It’s Still Hell on Earth Over There test the limits of our battered collective attention span, we can’t forget about the folks defending freedom on the front lines of this worldwide madness outbreak, because they’re fighting for you and me, too. Apathy is the tyrant’s BFF, you know; they go to brunch together and drink mimosas and gossip about all the people they’d like to throw into camps.

So rest up, Resisters, looks like there may be a bit of work ahead of us. I myself am juuuuust about ready to fall into the waiting arms of a six pack of Boulevard and The Boys From Brazil, because I’m in the mood to watch a few Nazis get fucked up, for some reason. Stay safe, m’loves. 

June 4, 2022

The Peach Tree Dish of Liberty Must Be Refreshed From Time to Time With the Ravings of Idiots

Scanning through the week’s insanity, I’m overwhelmed with unanswerable questions. Why do we live like this? Does it truly have to be this way? And wait, does this mean John Hinckley’s room is available? Because I could use the peace and quiet.

(I promise this makes more sense with all the links, available here: https://showercapblog.com/the-peach-tree-dish-of-liberty-must-be-refreshed-from-time-to-time-with-the-ravings-of-idiots/)

Can you believe it’s already been 100 days of shirtless rodeo clown savagery in Ukraine? What do you even get a genocidal dipshit for the anniversary of his biggest fuckup? I’d suggest a war crimes trial, but maybe a gift card? To one of the hundreds of companies he chased out of Russia with his mad thirst for blood?

Here at home, you could hardly sleep for the howling lamentations of Cult45, when their sad, cut-rate, diet, caffeine-free-with-extra-carcinogens Bob Mueller turned out to be exactly as incompetent as every other subpar creep they worship. Having faceplanted so pathetically in his frivolous prosecution of Some Guy Nobody’s Heard Of, what hope remains, I ask you, that John Durham is capable of bringing Hillary Clinton to justice for all the baby faces she’s noshed upon?

And the Michael Flynn unmasking kerfuffle fizzled out, too, so there’s definitely no joy in Wingnut Mudville tonight. I almost feel bad, but when your dominant personality trait is “easily deceived,” you have to expect this sort of thing.

Meanwhile, legal difficulties keep mounting for Turd Reich figures like Jared Kushner and Peter Navarro, further evidence of the American justice system’s unfair bias against prosecuting imaginary crimes in favor of real ones.

In defiance of all odds, I have somehow not yet lost my life in one of the 230-and-counting mass shootings that have taken place in the United States in 2022, but the day is young, I suppose. Before this paragraph ends, seven of you out there reading this will perish in some hail of AR-15 fire or other. Condolences to your loved ones.

(In addition, by the time any survivors arrive at this sentence, police officials in Uvalde, TX, will have changed their self-exonerating bullshit story no fewer than nineteen additional times.)

Because Oklahoma Republicans, in their wisdom, made it illegal to inconvenience a homicidal maniac in the slightest way, one of the nation’s many shitbag losers was once again able to procure a machine designed to expediently slaughter as many human beings as possible, and around three hours later, he used it to shoot up a hospital.

“Say, I’m looking to murder my doctor, and everyone who happens to be near my doctor, ideally before my current fit of rage subsides. Got anything for that?”

“But of course, sir! I’d offer to wrap it, but it’s clear you’re in a hurry!”

Of course, no amount of senseless suffering will force those responsible for the nation’s surge in child funerals to abandon their fanaticism. In fact, considering the predilection for insider trading in Yertle’s caucus of sociopaths, I’d hardly be surprised to learn that, say, Richard Burr held a substantial stake in some kiddie coffin manufacturer.

Given their commitment to doing absolutely fucking nothing to stop these preventable tragedies, you’d think Republicans would be swimming in free time, (in addition to the blood, of course) but the pious, theatrical gaslighting required to keep a white resentment cult in a state of perpetual sputtering rage is surprisingly labor-intensive.

It’s not that any of the indignant gibberish needs to make sense; quite the contrary, logic is filthy elitism you cuck; it’s just that fresh nonsense must constantly be generated, as each new atrocity further exposes the bloody, lunatic sham of right wing gun policy.

And Uvalde completely obliterated the myth of the Good Guy With His Holy Gun, as surely as if Jesus came back just to taint-punt Wayne LaPierre into the sun. There’s no cover left, just a pack of hyperventilating nutjobs who would happily send ten million children to early graves rather than surrender a single bullet.

So they pile their indecency onto shoulders already burdened with grief; their predictably foul shrieking about false flags, the demented decrepitude of their attempts to blame abortion or weed or oh let’s say Moe, and above all else, their unshakable resolve to guaran-damn-tee this shit happens again and again and again.

Ignored in all their wild-eyed plans to force children to crawl into classrooms via pet doors, each guarded by an entire platoon, is the helpful example set by the non-batshit, civilized world, where GUN CONTROL FUCKING WORKS.

Ah well, you can lead a Republican to reality, but you can’t make him…waitasec, what am I saying? You categorically cannot lead a Republican to reality, he’ll die with ivermectin dribbling down his chin first.

You sort of want some revered television journalist to sit Marjorie Taylor Greene down, in some overdecorated room, and have her walk us, slowly and in great detail, through the no doubt complex workings of the “peach tree dish.” How, precisely, does Bill Gates turn the peach trees into fake meat? What is the role of the dish in this process? Can it be any dish, or does it have to be one a colony of flesh-eating bacteria used to gain access to your cranium? People have a right to know this shit.

Especially since Marj used the extra attention generated by this latest episode of Lookit This Idiot to proffer her views on the issues of the day, such as, “Christian nationalism is rad, actually, and also, disagreeing with me makes you a terrorist,” for example.

…and Kevin McCarthy can’t wait to get this fascist twit back onto her congressional committees, which goes a long way towards explaining how he finds himself the subject of articles asking why more people don’t openly discuss his deficient intellect. (I confess, I assumed everyone did. And more or less constantly.)

Well, J.D. Vance and Paul Gosar are coming for your porno, ya filthy preverts, and don’t they seem like a pair of sexually healthy humans who should definitely be in charge of what people are allowed to wank to? You know Gosar uses some Cronenbergian apparatus involving terrifying, orifice-specific dentistry tools, and of course J.D. requires lubricant aid, in the form of his own tears, shed whilst contemplating the tattered, shit-stained remnants of his soul.

Good gravy, you know you’re emitting trench-warfare-level, banned-under-the-Geneva-Conventions loserstink when Herschel Walker, with his distressingly radical platform matched by a disturbing personal history of abuse, distances himself from your pathetic grifter ass.

Are we 100% sure Doug Mastriano is real, and not, like, six MAGA hats in a trench coat? He’s a busy little beaver either way, complying with investigations into his insurrectionist shenanigans by both the FBI and the January 6th committee, yet still making time to spout the craziest goddamn shit you will ever hear in your fucking life.

For example: Doug’s not a Nazi for working day and night to remove your constitutional right to elect non-Doug candidates, but you're a Nazi for wanting to keep your children alive. What a nifty little trick that is!

Now, Dougie certainly seems like the sort of fellow who knows his way around a peach tree dish, but if it sounds like he wants to take away a bunch of your rights, that’s only because he does! But don’t worry, God sent him!  

You know, I don’t think a governorship is such a good fit for this guy. Given the Mastriano: For a Post-Democracy Pennsylvania! theme dominating his campaign. Nope, not the sort of fellow you’d want running such an enormous swing state, ideally. May I respectfully recommend Josh Shapiro?

I suppose it’s only natural for a vindictive, regressive minority to target the machinery of democracy; it’s much harder to steal folks’ rights when they possess the power to replace you with someone who won’t.

And they’re really going for it, friends. There’s an organized effort underway to seize control of the nation’s election infrastructure in order to smash it to bits with bats and tire irons. That’s Bannonism, and if that happens to hit your ear as faintly rhyming with “rash schism,” well, I’m sure it’s just a trick of the wind.

Mastriano’s a big part of the movement. So’s Rayla Campbell, a maniac seeking the powers of the Massachusetts secretary of state’s office because she thinks Kindergarten teachers have taken to spicing up the ABC’s with fellatio tricks n’ tips from Cosmopolitan.

And yes, the Deposed Dotard’s Big Lie brigade got whooped in Georgia last week, and yes, that’s fantastic, but the primaries are a long way from over, campers.

And if this is all somehow too subtle for anyone, if anybody out there is still in denial about how many stanzas deep we are in that First They Came For poem, here’s a little article, which attracted distressingly little attention if you ask me, about the proto-Brownshirt Proud Boys infiltrating the Republican Party of Miami-Dade County. Why yes, the same Proud Boys that keep pleading guilty to great big felonies committed during the Capitol Riot, why do you ask?

Oh look, Michael Avenatti is going to prison, that’s welcome news, though I must take this moment to remind everyone that I called dibs on Hinckley’s cell.

Surely somewhere there’s a hole deep and dark enough that none of this insanity could reach me, but until I find it, I suppose I shall have to make do with a beer or six. Well, congratulations to everyone who made it all the way to the bottom without getting shot by a teenager! Keep your head down and maybe we’ll all be around to do this again next week*!

*No promises.

May 28, 2022

Well, If Your Kink Is Getting Lectured By Malevolent Cowards, This Week Was GreatN (Ferret)

So, Republicans’ meticulously maintained system of intentionally insane gun laws once again extracted its toll. And since they remain ideologically opposed to (checks notes) protecting children from gun violence, we may as well start the countdown to the next one. I understand folks come to this page for jokes, and I’ll do my best, but no fucking promises tonight.

(I promise this ranting makes more sense with the links, at least marginally: https://showercapblog.com/well-if-your-kink-is-getting-lectured-by-malevolent-cowards-this-week-was-great/)

As you are no doubt aware, an unthinkable tragedy occurred in Texas this week, when Beto O’Rourke disrupted a sacred Republican gaslighting ritual, the traditional post-mass-shooting Wingnut Victimhood Pageant, and just when they were getting to the thoughts n’ prayers, too.

Yeah, that’s really how these slugs’re playing it this time ‘round. Because shame is for cucks.

Truly, nothing reveals the pus-encrusted heart of modern conservatism more than a classroom full of butchered children. And they know this. Used to be, when a shitbag with an assault rifle slaughtered enough grade school kids, the bloodbath’s legislative enablers would at least slink into the shadows for a few days, to allow the sane, decent folk of the nation to howl in grief and rage over this price they force us to pay and pay and pay.

Even that small grace is too much to ask of these rat bastards nowadays, and yes, we’ve long understood that the cruelty is the point with these people, but their defiant, profane insistence that it is their position, atop a mass child grave, that constitutes the moral high ground…I know I say “fuck these evil scumbags” a lot, but fuck these evil scumbags.

They fully understand their position is indefensible, of course. Look at Ted Cruz, who, for all his cowardice, trained in argumentation at the finest schools in the country; he can neither navigate nor endure a simple, reasonable, entirely foreseeable discussion of current events with a journalist. He can do nothing but scamper away, whinging about how unfairly he’s been treated.

Listening to the howling rageweasels of the right wing media bubble, you could be forgiven for assuming the Uvalde massacre was something that happened to them; all roads lead back to the persecution of the poor, trod upon Real Murican, you see. To lift a finger to halt this senseless, preventable carnage would be an intolerable assault on their way of life.

Shit, they might just have to start a whole dang civil war over it. Don’t say they didn’t warn you. (That Tucker Carlson communicates like a textbook domestic abuser is another of those zany coincidences, I’m sure.)

But y’know what, creeps? Your way of life is trash. Outside of the immeasurable suffering you inflict on the world with your firearm fetish, y’all just responded to a global pandemic by throwing suicidal tantrums on a culture-wide scale. You’re not being oppressed, you losers, you’re just idiots who make terrible decisions.

This particular elementary school slaughterhouse is proving especially inconvenient for the gun manufacturers and their legislative puppets, since it so perfectly exposes the cynical sham of the deliberately useless “policies” they’ve implemented in their long, vile crusade to avoid doing the one thing that actually works.

The “good guys with guns” could not possibly have fucked things up any more, which is pretty impressive when you remember the last GGwG from a major school shooting. The district did all the things Republicans have haughtily insisted would keep kids safe. They did not keep kids safe.

And to suggest, as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton did while the bodies were still warm, that somehow the answer here is even more deadly weapons in our schools, is not just madness, but politically incorrect, 60’s-exploitation-film-set-in-an-asylum-level madness.

What sane person would invent an imaginary epidemic of feral pig attacks to justify inaction in the face of the mass murder of children? Who fucking behaves that way? What, at long last, Senator Cassidy, is fucking wrong with you?

My own take on the divisive feral pigs issue, incidentally, is that we should stop electing them to the fucking Senate.

Oh, by the way, Senate Republicans blocked Democrats’ domestic terrorism prevention bill, to get the crowd warmed up for the main event, when they’ll block any meaningful gun control legislation, because these kids’ graves aren’t gonna piss on themselves.    

Of course, no mass shooting is complete without the ceremonial Furious Republican Blaming of Random Shit. An extremely incomplete list:

Doors. “Wokeness.” The 1994 Los Angeles Dodgers’ bullpen. Critical race theory. The homeless. Bob. Carol. Ted. Alice. I guess none of it needs to make sense anymore, if it ever did; Cult45 is only too happy to blindly regurgitate whatever the yapping heads happen to screech.

US Congressman/open white nationalist Paul Gosar leaped aboard a disinformation campaign designed to pin the shooting on a transgender woman, because that’s just the sort of thing you do when your first impulse in any given situation is “spread more hate.” I’m starting to doubt there’s any bottom to this depravity, but if there is, Paul’s my pick to get there first.

And I imagine scientists could only speculate on the long-term effects of the parasitic relationship between Jason Whitlock and the psychic tapeworm devouring the remaining six ounces his brain.

Then there’s Herschel Walker. Headlines are like, What the Actual Fuck is This Idiot Saying It’s Literally Gibberish Holy Balls They’re Trying to Make Him a Fucking Senator We Are All Going to Die. At this point, I feel like, given what we know about Walker, any rational human would find the idea of making him a federal lawmaker absurd. 800,000 Georgia Republicans are really into Ionesco, I guess.

Since we’re here, yeah, I guess we may as well stumble over to the outhouse of horrors that is the 2022 Republican primary calendar.

Now, I enjoy a good Donald Trump is a Loser Who Loses So Very Hard story as much as the next guy, and, given his extensively documented shortcomings as an evaluator of fitness for office, I certainly support the idea of breaking his power as GOP kingmaker, but let us not forget that Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger are experienced, professional vote suppressors, who pursue all the same anti-democracy goals, with a fraction of the fuss.

Still, Chris Christie smells blood, and sure, it’s probably just leftover ketchup from a McDonald’s run during his errand boy days, but I say, dogpile away, campers, though I’ve seen enough horror films to know this fucker’s nowhere near done yet.

Wee Michael Pence busted out his best Ric Flair strut, too, as though we wouldn’t notice he couldn’t quite find the courage to oppose the guy who tried to have him lynched until the Perdue campaign was pronounced medically deceased. Whatever.

I suppose this is the appropriate spot to mention the new revelation, that Off-Brand Orbán was such a big fan of the “Hang Mike Pence” chants on January 6th that he couldn’t keep his enthusiasm to himself. Which gives all those gossipy, “Pence breaks with Trump” headlines a lil’ edge, don’tcha think?

…but they’re still never gonna vote for ya, Mikey. The faithful don’t elect Judas, that’s not how that story goes. You ate shit for four years, scorched your immortal soul beyond redemption, and all you have to show for it is history’s soggiest cracker. Them’s the breaks, you enabling taintfungus. You deserve it, by the way. You deserve it sooooooooooo much.

What a goddamn shitshow. At least somebody finally flushed the last lingering floater of the Bush clan. Bye.

Seems kinda stalemate-y in Ukraine this week, or maybe domestic atrocities simply drained me of the capacity to pay attention, who knows?

Vlad the Miscalculator may have finally shrunk his goals to a size his moron army can manage by pressing the Make Bomb Go button, but the whole world still caught him frantically rifling through his closet for Cold War tanks to replace the toys he’s so petulantly smashed.

However, now that the Shart of War has banned Morgan Freeman and John McCain from entering his shithole police state, expect Ukrainian military strategy to collapse, reliant as it is on dead legislators’ vacation plans.

So, turns out Donald Trump Jr. pays people to bait bears so he can shoot them, which is pretty much the least surprising thing I’ve ever read. The level of self-delusion it must take to look at these embarrassing people, and see strength…well, it helps explain the ivermectin thing, I suppose.

I know you’ve all worn through several fainting couches since first we met, but apparently Jared Kushner and Steve Mnuchin abused their government posts to engage in cartoonishly corrupt dealings with the journalist-dismembering House of Saud. I’m thinking of selling Shower Cap-branded smelling salts to help readers through paragraphs like this one.

Yikes. I bet everybody could use a couple of those Donald Trump is a Loser Who Loses So Very Hard stories I mentioned a little while back, right? Fear not, the week saw not one, but two massive legal setbacks for the Deposed Dotard and his criminal spawn. Death, taxes, Donald Trump losing in court.

It appears Elise Stefanik’s revolting history of spouting the white nationalist great replacement theory* landed her on Gameshow Göring’s 2024 running mate shortlist, in the event you’re still in denial about living in Hell. Nobody ever got fired from The Apprentice for Nazi shit, y’know.

Meanwhile, in Michigan, five separate Republican candidates for Governor have been disqualified for submitting fraudulent petition signatures. Also, looks like we can add “incinerating documents in the West Wing” to the list of Mark Meadows’ crimes against American democracy.

Oh, and monkeypox, too. Because fuck you, that’s why.

Yeah, this week sure did lob a steady stream of paving stones right at our collective groin, but don’t you dare give up. Because Australia just booted their own cheap Trump knockoff, and Brazil looks ready to follow suit. And hey, check out the crowd that showed up at the NRA’s unseemly propaganda festival today. Times are hot rhino shit on melba toast lately, I grant you, but this fever will break, and we will be the ones to help break it.

There’s certainly no shortage of bastards in the grinding-you-down business these days, but fuck them. All that horse dewormer is gonna catch up to ‘em someday real soon, you’ll see.

Ok, I need to go drink beer and watch professional wrestling for a couple days. Stay safe, my loves, and take care of yourselves, there’s plenty of work ahead of us.

*Which, it turns out, was about Mike Pence all along.

May 21, 2022

Another Week at the Mercy of the Murderously Mediocre (Ferrety ol' Ferret)

Keeping up with the news these days makes me feel like someone is using my skull for a vomitorium, at a party where somebody’s gross cousin brought really bad acid. Well, there’s no way that image didn’t whet your appetite, so I’ll take the liberty of assuming you’ve been hooked, and proceed.

(As ever, links + additional sensory stimulation awaits those bold enough to click here: https://showercapblog.com/another-week-at-the-mercy-of-the-murderously-mediocre/)

Vladimir Putin spends his days cross-legged on the bathroom floor, helplessly fixated on his inevitable place in the history books, as Czar Fuckup the Great Big Fucking Fuckup Who Fucked Up So Hard We Will Literally Never Stop Talking About It So Long as Humanity Persists, and sobbing. Goes through a ton of…I dunno, maybe Ben & Jerry’s, maybe cheap, Soviet-era meth.

It’s not fair, really. Call of Duty makes war look so fun n’ easy, but the reality is full of boring-yet-crucial details, like “do I understand how fuel works,” “are these tanks, or rolling death traps,” and “seriously, is anyone in this piece of shit army even literate?”

See, when you neglect that shit, you can wind up, say, shoveling the tattered remnants of your pathetic armored divisions directly into the waiting maw of enemy artillery, while your legion of clowns repeatedly fails to construct a pontoon bridge. Hypothetically speaking, of course. That would be really embarrassing, though, wouldn’t it? Like the Spanish Armada, but dumber.

Tank graveyards: betcha can’t leave just one.

Anyway, consequences pile up in a hurry when you suck this much, so Vladimir the Terrible (At His Job) now appears to be drastically scaling back battlefield objectives for the second time in less than three months. At this pace, by Labor Day, he’ll be attempting to encircle a single Ukrainian Denny’s.

And fucking that up, too.

Did you know Pootie has his own sad, caffeine-free diet shithole NATO? It’s called the “Collective Security Treaty Organization,” and while they’re considering an application from Ron DeSantis’ new secret election police force, the current roster is Russia and five former Soviet Republics with the approximate combined GDP of a reasonably busy Starbucks.

So, this fearsome alliance held a little meeting, presumably in Lukashenko’s basement, where the Belarusian strongman, who totally isn’t Putin’s puppet, (there’s a perfectly logical explanation for the KGB cufflinks that keep turning up in his stool, SHUT UP) tried to get the team all fired up about hopping on the boondoggle bandwagon. And everyone basically looked at their shoes until it was time to leave, because allies are tough to come by when you’re smashing your own military to bits for spite.

Of course, the Russians insist they’re the Real Victims™️ of their war of aggression, which flaunts their kinship with our own domestic right wing in a rather instructive manner, don’t you think?

They whine about NATO expansion, as though it’s unfair, and frankly, more than a little tacky of their neighbors to do anything but patiently await their own annexation. They whine at talk of using their seized assets (brilliant move leaving all that shit in foreign banks, by the way; that’ll come up in those history books we mentioned) to rebuild the sovereign nation they chose to invade. They whine that their enemies refuse to stop exploiting their ever-expanding smorgasbord of self-inflicted errors, and then they launch another missile at another hospital.

Yes, my dude, you are being kicked while you are down. If you don’t like it, pull your butchers back. You could give that order right now.*

But no, they’re pulling all this creepy, cultural redecorating, shipping Russian statues and textbooks and shit into occupied areas. Personally, I’d wait to see if the cheap, plastic army men can actually hold any of this fuckin’ territory before I invested in remodeling, but I suppose it’s hardly reasonable to expect budgetary prudence at this late date.

wE’Re GOiNg tO ReBUilD maRiUPOl aS a REsoRt tOWn, they yelp. You can mark me down as skeptical on that score, comrades, but feel free to invest your kids’ college money. I mean, those of you who remain in Ukraine are unlikely to do so above ground.

Because pricks have begun appearing in the propaganda bubble, (and I’m not just talking about Tucker Carlson, ayyyyyyyyyy) and you’re already scrambling to find fresh meat to toss to the howitzers, and now you can’t even drown your sorrows in a fucking McFlurry. Heck, even the handful of collaborators you’ve managed to dig up are hot trash.

Just to sum shit up, Vladkins…when they’re afraid of ya, they don’t talk about how weird ya smell.

Oh, and what a diverting gaffe from our 43th President, ho ho ho! Dubya is surely well into the Nightly Visits From Dickensian Ghosts phase of his post-presidency, so expect more of this sort of thing.

The power-mad, illegitimate SCOTUS majority decided it was simply too goshdarn difficult to bribe elected officials under current law, in Ted Cruz’s name, just to be extra shitty about it. Dunno what to tell you, the voodoo dolls I ordered off Etsy didn’t work.

Big win for the American Right in Buffalo this week, as the stochastic terror tree they tend with such care once again bore fruit, in the form of the latest subpar white boy mass murderer. Just in time for the midterms.

Now, you might expect a pundit or a politician to respond to news that their own rhetoric is indistinguishable from that of a white nationalist terrorist with something resembling contrition, or shame, but you have to understand, from where they sit, these fucks are so achingly close to a world where they can openly applaud this violence, LIKE THEY WANT TO, that it’s pretty irritating, being forced to go through the motions, say, “oh, shooting people is wrong”…since it’s not something they actually believe.

Oh, you’re exaggerating, Cap, that’s not fair, I bet Kyle Rittenhouse gets invited to hang out with the undisputed leader of the Republican Party for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with the two human beings he shot to death. I’m sure he’s insightful and amusing on a wide variety of non-murder topics.

We will not be receiving an apology from Elise Stefanik, let alone her absolutely warranted resignation, is what I’m saying. White nationalist rhetoric, is, after all, the entire reason she has Liz Cheney’s old job. And of course, should you criticize her, she’ll simply call you a pedophile until one of her fans takes matters into their own hands.

The yapping heads of the wingnut media bubble predictably provided the sweet, soothing balm of fresh victimhood to their audience of disinformation junkies, madly blaming the tragedy not on the unapologetic racism of a manifesto-confirmed white nationalist, but abortion, or “wokeness,” or the unfinished Minesweeper game on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

And it was a false flag anyway, so honestly, don’t give it another thought. (Unless you’re inspired to perpetrate a terrorist attack of your own, in which case, please follow these digital breadcrumbs until your mind is completely shattered, at which point you will be directed to the nearest gun shop.)

Nope, no one will be apologizing for this system functioning exactly as designed. Tucker Carlson’s work is measured in corpses, folks. Shit, Laura Ingraham would sue the manifesto for plagiarism if there was money in it. Meanwhile, Matt Schlapp’s over in Hungary, explicitly pitching abortion bans as offense against the “great replacement.”

Jeeeeeeezus. Even the NRA generally had the decency to slink into the shadows for a couple days, while the bodies cooled. See, it’s that lack of shame that gives fascism its kick.

Boy, there’s nothin’ quite like primary night in an era of ascendant authoritarianism, amirite? Grab a sixer, heat up some pizza rolls, wait around to see just how much Nazi shit our neighbors are in the mood for this week…the answer is never “zero” anymore, which isn’t great, if you ask me.

Still, Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin was unable to ride her newfound celebrity in the white nationalist community to a promotion, and I’ll drink to that news. Shit, I’ll do a line of coke off Brad Little’s ass to that news; we should party like it’s 1945 every single time these shitbags lose.

For example, I’m expecting a Supreme Court showdown over the cake I’m having baked for my Madison Cawthorn Won’t Be in Congress Anymore bash this weekend.

It’s tricky, trying to pin down exactly which line young Maddy crossed to earn his death cult defenestration; must’ve been the kinky videos, or the Eyes Wide Shut Was Basically About Kevin McCarthy allegations, cuz it certainly wasn’t the penchant for gun crime or the Hitler vacation. It’s hard to tell when you’re dealing with people who guzzle livestock medication and worship a game show host who has to pay for sex.

Still, not nearly enough Congressmen vow revenge upon electoral defeat, y’know? Like, tell me Eric Cantor spends his days constructing an enormous trebuchet, and searching Zillow for a property juuuuuuust the right distance from Dave Brat’s house.

Anyway, it’s “Dark MAGA” the little crotchpimple wants now, which must mean, like, a colon tumor with teeth, erupting hourly, spewing corrosive diarrhea…what else could those three syllables possibly imply?

Which brings us to Doug Mastriano: 2020 election truther, devotee of all letters found ‘twixt P and R, and, since this is Hell, the official Republican nominee for the Pennsylvania governorship.

Doug is one of those loons who composes apocalyptic fanfic about “real men” saving civilization from the vile, hedonistic forces of People Who Disagree With Doug Mastriano, who must, of course, be destroyed at all costs, and he’s running on the promise to commit the crimes no one was willing to commit last time out. “Vote for me, and I’ll hand-pick the votes that count, in this pivotal swing state.”

“Vote for me, and we’ll never give the power back.”

Pennsylvania Dems think they’ve got the next Todd Akin here, but as someone who spent a substantial chunk of 2016 reveling in Donald Trump’s toxic unelectability, I’m gonna leave my gloating pants in the closet for now. If you can spare a buck, give Josh Shapiro’s campaign a boost, because democracy is pretty cool, and I imagine we’d all like to keep it around.

Well, not all of us. Not Doug, certainly. Not Ginni Thomas. Or Mark Meadows. Not Donald Trump, or his dirtbag lawyer, John Eastman. Not Jody Hice, or any of the other MAGA candidates seeking control over our election infrastructure. Not the Republican primary electorate in Pennsylvania, that’s for sure…we’re actually in the fight of our goddamn lives, aren’t we?

…with a regressive grievance cult that finds feeding hungry children during a formula crisis immoral. I’m willing to admit some of my previous assumptions about the fundamental decency of the average American were on the overoptimistic side.

See? Vomitorium. And while there’s no reason to think beer can wash the memory of any of this crap away, I’m gonna give it a try anyway, for science. Stay safe out there, folks.

*Putin reads my blog, right? Or Lavrov gives him bullet points, anyhow. 

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