MAGA's Big Sad Week

So MAGA's Dear Leader got his birthday boy parade, which shambled past nearly empty bleachers and through which he kept falling asleep, jolted awake only intermittently as the antique WWII tanks they rolled onto the streets shrieked like banshees, having not been oiled since the Eisenhower administration. 

And while he slept...?

Oh my. 

Millions and millions of us were in the streets, telling MAGA to go fuck themselves sideways.

In Minnesota, MAGA found some horrific violence they could lamprey themselves onto for a minute. And by "they", I include Senator Mike Lee, who any self-respecting deity would have smote years ago -- 

A US Senator just said that a registered Republican, who voted for Trump, and preached as a Christian Nationalist is a Marxist.

Mike Lee is a POS. pic.twitter.com/eW54PCsQZV

— Craig Bowden (@BowdenOnBass) June 15, 2025

-- and America's own Killer Ketamine Kowboy (as of late May 2025, Boston University’s “Impact Counter” model attributes approximately 300,000 excess deaths worldwide—many of them children—directly to the Trump‑Musk DOGE-led freeze and dismantling of USAID. Next year, if cuts persist, Models estimate between 483,000 to 1.14 million excess deaths across HIV, TB, malaria, nutrition, and water/sanitation programs. Which would make Trump/Musk by far the greatest mass murders in American history.)

But that desperate, leechlike attempt to feed on tragedy smothered in lies sustained them for but a moment.  The facts about the shooter came to light fairly quickly, and all that yummy yummy bile turned to ash in their mouths.

Of course millions of these mopes will simply reboot under a backup operating system and start barking madness about bullshit conspiracies and Fake News and the Deep State.  They do it every time a load-bearing lie fails, and they'll keep doing it until the day they die.  

Because, as we all know, they're just reprogrammable meatbags.  From WIRED:

Psyop’: How Far-Right Conspiracy Theories About the Minnesota Shooting Evolved to Protect MAGA Influencers like Alex Jones and Elon Musk have spent the weekend blaming the murder of Democratic lawmaker Melissa Hortman on leftists and the deep state.

...On Sunday, David Carlson, who has known the alleged shooter since fourth grade and described the 57-year-old as his best friend, dismissed the claims that the alleged shooter was a Democrat, telling reporters Sunday he “would be offended if people called him a Democrat.”

“He’s a Trump supporter, he voted for Trump, he liked Trump,” Carlson said, adding: “He listened to InfoWars.” InfoWars is the far-right conspiracy theory channel operated by Alex Jones, the school shooting conspiracist and Pizzagate conspiracy promoter who filed for bankruptcy in 2022. 

This did not stop Jones from weighing in: “Evidence mounts that the reported Minnesota assassin Vance Luther Boelter is a patsy who is being framed to cover up a larger false flag deep state operation,” Jones wrote on X.

Despite the clear evidence that the alleged shooter was a Trump supporter, those trying to lay the blame on leftists and Democrats fell back on one of the oldest tricks in the conspiracy theorist handbook: Blame the deep state. “The conspiracism about the Minnesota shooting, particularly the allegations that it's a psy-op or false flag, have become the norm with violent incidents of a political nature,” Mike Rothschild, an author who writes about conspiracy theories and extremists, tells WIRED.

However, other mopes like Scott Walker, are trying to pull what we here call a "Dowd-and-Dash" -- delete the incriminating Tweets and change the subject.

Hey there Scott Walker. I noticed you deleted this after learning that in fact the shooter was from the right. I don’t think it matters either way, violence is violence, so I’m waiting for you to tweet the same thing with corrected facts? Cuz you’re uh, to use your words, “being silent.”

[image or embed]

— Adam Kinzinger (@adamkinzinger.substack.com) June 16, 2025 at 9:30 AM

Well at least they still have the sadism of mass deportations to keep them warm at night, right?  Because Trump and Stephen "PeeWee German" Miller could not have been clearer:  

Read. 

My. 

Lips.  

Mass. 

Deportations.

But, see, here's the thing.  At some point word got out that Big Ag, fancy hotels and 500,000 Chinese students would be exempted from the Stephen Miller's gestapo deportation regime.  And if there is one thing absolutely guaranteed to trigger MAGA mopes into a flailing frenzy, it is making them look like the chumps they are, in public, in front of the Liberals.

 

And so... (a small sample from among thousands):

This alleged plan to exempt some illegal aliens from deportation is going over poorly with @realDonaldTrump’s supporters.

That’s an understatement.

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) June 15, 2025

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins needs to go.

Calling supporters "grifters" for pushing back against exceptions for employers who hire illegals in the farm, hospitality and leisure industries is a major slap in the face.

Insulting your base because you got called out is not…

— Shawn Farash (@Shawn_Farash) June 16, 2025

And of course, (to borrow from Jefferson Airplane), when the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within you dies, where do Republican goofs run shelter?

R and D are the same. No point in voting or donating to these corrupt people. I am so very disappointed with President Trump, my trust in him began to diminish when he publicly used and humiliated Elon, the only true friend he had. Everyone else around him want something, power,…

— Maria Gray (@mariagray239) June 15, 2025

That old, reliable Both Sides Do It panic room.

I Am The Liberal Media.

The Triumphant Return of Young Bucks and Welfare Queens

It has been more than 35 years since Lee Atwater laid out exactly how and why his Republican Party was building a string of dog-whistle factories that would enable them to wear their racism out in public and drive Southern bigots into the arms of the Party of Lincoln without the High Hats and Snooty Liberal Brahmans getting wise.

From The New York Times:

...

In 1981, during the first year of Mr. Reagan’s presidency, the late Lee Atwater gave an interview to a political science professor at Case Western Reserve University, explaining the evolution of the Southern strategy:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger,’ ” said Atwater. “By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

And as proof, anyone who bothers to take a look can plainly see the GOP running this same play out of this same racist playbook over and over again, decade after decade (from The Atlantic) --

The ‘Welfare Queen’ Is a Lie

At a campaign rally in 1976, Ronald Reagan introduced the welfare queen into the public conversation about poverty: “She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.”

The perception of who benefits from a policy is of material consequence to how it is designed. For the past 40 years, U.S. welfare policy has been designed around Reagan’s mythical welfare queen—with very real consequences for actual families in need of support.

Though it was Reagan who gave her the most salient identity, the welfare queen emerged from a long and deeply racialized history of suspicion of and resentment toward families receiving welfare in the United States...

 -- getting, meaner and blunter and more smirkingly obvious with each iteration (from an entirely different article in the New York Times) --

When, in 1976, [Reagan] talked about working people angry about the “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy T-bone steaks at the grocery store, he didn’t mean to play into racial hostility. True, as The New York Times reported,

The ex-Governor has used the grocery-line illustration before, but in states like New Hampshire where there is scant black population, he has never used the expression “young buck,” which, to whites in the South, generally denotes a large black man.

But the appearance that Reagan was playing to Southern prejudice was just an innocent mistake.

Similarly, when Reagan declared in 1980 that the Voting Rights Act had been “humiliating to the South,” he didn’t mean to signal sympathy with segregationists. It was all an innocent mistake...

And then the first Black President was elected and all of that barely concealed racist bile -- the true mother's milk of Republican politics -- came spilling right out into the open in a tidal wave of slander like this --

-- which PolitiFact rated as a pants-on-fire lie back when pants-on-fire lies from Republicans were notable enough that you didn't need both hands and both feet to keep count of the just the new ones that were hatching out of the GOP midden pile every single day:

Our ruling

Santorum said that Obama "showed us once again he believes in government handouts and dependency by waiving the work requirement for welfare."

The claim is a drastic distortion of what the Obama administration said it intends to do. By granting waivers to states, HHS is seeking to make welfare-to-work efforts more successful, not end them. The waivers would apply to individually evaluated pilot programs -- HHS is not proposing a blanket, national change to welfare law. And there have been no comments by the Obama administration indicating such a dramatic shift in policy.

Santorum falsely claims that Obama has waived welfare’s work requirement entirely. The remark is inaccurate and it inflames old resentments about able-bodied adults sitting around collecting public assistance. Pants on Fire!

And now that the GOP has gotten tired of pretending it isn't a racist shitpile. burned down the dog-whistle factories and elected the Stormfront Comment Section That Walks Like a Man, guess what's baaaack baby!

From Real Clear Politics (emphasis added):

PRESIDENT TRUMP: And by the way, what happened, what happened, is Obama took a long time, years to get Obamacare, right? Again, 10 months. We've had two runs at it. We're coming closer, closer. I think now we have a plan that's going to be great. But we're not talking about it until after taxes, and then we'll take care of health care.

Then we will have done tax cuts, the biggest in history, health care, phenomenal health care. I know you don't want this -- welfare reform. Does anyone want welfare reform?

(APPLAUSE)

And infrastructure. But welfare reform, I see it, and I've talked to people. I know people that work three jobs and they live next to somebody who doesn't work at all. And the person who is not working at all and has no intention of working at all is making more money and doing better than the person that's working his and her ass off. And it's not going to happen. Not going to happen.

President Stupid doesn't know anyone who works three jobs.

President Stupid doesn't know anyone who works their asses off doing anything other than looting the government and lying about it.

President Stupid doesn't know anyone on public assistance.

President Stupid doesn't know anyone who lives within a billion miles of social distance of anyone on public assistance.

President Stupid is a bitter, half-mad, pig-ignorant old bigot who keeps company with other bitter old bigots.  He gets his "news" straight from the from Fox and Friends Soft Serve Dung Machine, and sits on his golden shitter retweeting white supremacist filth and nutso conspiracies, picking fights with celebrities, calling for reporters and his political opponents to be locked up, yelling at uppity black people and trying to start World War Three.

When he gets bored with that, he hits the links for the umpteenth time.  Because he is a very, very lazy bitter old bigot. 

When he gets bored with that, he wanders around, grabbing random microphones and taking credit for anything that pops into his head.

He is a sick joke.

And the party that nominated him and the reprogrammable meatbags who elected people who elected him are in on that joke and think it is fucking hilarious.  

And together they are going to hurt an awful lot of people very badly before this nightmare comes to an end.

Behold, a Tip Jar!

She Is Trampling out the Vintage

Where the Grapes of Wealth are stored.

I wonder which of her books about corporate cruelty -- "Pigs at the Trough" or perhaps "Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream"? -- Ms. Huffington offered as a lovely parting gift to the 900 journalists and others who were sacked in order to fund her AOL windfall.

I also wonder which of her books on the villainy and irredeemable insanity of the Right -- "Fanatics & Fools" or "Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe" -- she offered as a lovely Welcome Wagon token to the irredeemably bent, lunatic fringe Right wing propagandist Andrew Breitbart as he was brought on-board the Huffington Pose Post as a front-page contributor? (Having enticed Bloody Mary Matalin into coming on her dreadful radio show to espouse the virtues of civility and Centrism, and spent a chunk of her winter canoodling at Davos with our Ant Overlords,

After stopping by dueling parties hosted by Time/Fortune and the University of Chicago, I made it over to the Morosani hotel (where there was no evidence of that morning's explosion) for the Coca-Cola cocktail reception, hosted by its CEO, Muhtar Kent. And I do mean hosted. His ebullience was all-embracing, constantly introducing his guests to one another: "Arianna, you must meet my great Greek friend... Charlie [Rose], did you see Tim Geithner?" 

After the Coke party, I made my way to a dinner hosted by Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, Rev. Sally Grover Bingham, Kathryn Murdoch, and Doug Shorenstein that focused on innovative ways to protect our oceans against overfishing. During the meal, David Gergen and I moderated a discussion that touched on many concepts I knew little about, including "catch shares" (which work by allotting a percentage of a catch to fishermen, while meeting conservation goals). It's a very "beyond left and right solution" to the problem that has garnered investments from the Carlyle Group and support from the Murdoch family. Worth noting: fish was served at dinner.

I credit Ms. Huffington with a innate and enthusiastic sense for at sloughing off any inconvenience principles as the social occasion and business opportunity demands.)

All of which apparently momentarily dragged Bill Keller's (the man who pays David Brooks and Ross Douthat to play with their poo on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times) attention away from his unholy work at an undisclosed Swiss laboratory [where he has (allegedly) been trying to re-animate the mortal remains of William Safire] long enough to publicly tsk-tsk Ms. Huffington.

Sample:

"Aggregation" ... too often ... amounts to taking words written by other people, packaging them on your own Web site and harvesting revenue that might otherwise be directed to the originators of the material. In Somalia this would be called piracy. In the mediasphere, it is a respected business model.

And:

Buying an aggregator and calling it a content play is a little like a company's announcing plans to improve its cash position by hiring a counterfeiter.

Ms' Huffington answered back, but as you cannot help notice...

"Perhaps unsettled by the fact that, when combined, The Huffington Post and AOL News have over 70 percent more unique visitors than the New York Times, and that HuffPost/AOL News' combined page views in January 2011 were double the page views of the Times (1.5 billion vs. 750 million), New York Times executive editor Bill Keller decided to unleash an exceptionally misinformed attack on HuffPost in a column released today and slated for this weekend's NYT Magazine.

..."

...that, despite her citations below the lede (Google it yourself: Arianna doesn't need any eyeballs from me), the roundhouse Ms. Huffington throws is clearly not about her journalistic chops or writing skills or her capacity to inform her audience or limn her ideals. No, she's bragging about the effectiveness of her business model. Her ability to drive traffic.

Because up in the blogosphere's skyboxes, that is what this has always been about.

And so, like Doug Quail shaking off a cheapo memory implant from Rekal, Incorporate ("We Remember It For You Wholesale"), some of us now awaken to find a world where people who gained wealth and power by proclaiming themselves to be our allies against brutal, existential adversaries...are actually not that way at all.

They are actually quite chummy

with those "adversaries"

and are setting up shop with them

a couple of blocks away, where the prospects are better, and the rubes haven't quite caught on yet.

Because that, boys and girls, is life in the NBA, where even after the bloodiest-seeming fights during which things one can never take back are flung with abandon, the next day Ruling Class Mommy and Ruling Class Daddy always kinda kiss and sorta make up (from the same Bill Keller a few days later):

Also, for the record, I like Arianna Huffington. Sorry to disappoint those folks yearning for a Wrestlemania smackdown, but I think she’s a shrewd entrepreneur and a charming woman. Also, we seem to share a belief in hiring professional journalists; she’s hired some good ones from The Times. (We won’t dwell on the fact that her new owners at AOL laid off 200 journalists to help pay for the acquisition of The Huffington Post.) So, really, I like Arianna.

because that's what the marketplace demands.

And so, finally, two hardworking pros can put down their respective media-empire joysticks for a few hours and retire to the back room away from the frantic, meaningless puppet-theater dickwaving that keeps the yokels goggling and the lovely, lovely traffic rolling in to partake in the one activity every red-blooded, multinational mogul enjoys.

Money fight!

Her truth is marching on.

One Side Utterly Vindicated

Other Side remains willful, obdurate.