Sunday, November 11, 2018

JUST TRYING TO KEEP TRACK!

In the five days since the mid-term elections that saw Democrats take back control of the House and 7 more state governorships than before, here are a few things that have happened.

Another broken, selfish, useless fucking monster went on a killing spree, this time at a students' favorite country music bar in Thousand Oaks, California, killing 12 -- including a veteran police officer and a young man who'd only recently survived the Las Vegas massacre -- and providing a live, running Instagram of his murder spree before finally turning the gun on himself. If the killer (whom I will not be naming) had survived, I think the cruelest, most barbaric punishment I can think up for him would be if scientists could figure out a way to make him feel the way he made victim Cody Coffman's father feel in this excruciating video footage:


On Tuesday, the 2018 mid-term election was held, and even though they're still figuring things out, counting mail-in votes and verifying provisional ballots and things of that nature, what we DO know for sure at this point is that the the results were a lot better for the Democrats than most people seem to think. In fact, despite all the hand-wringing on the day in question, more votes were cast for Democrats than for Republicans by a whopping 10 points... and that's just votes COUNTED! When you factor in all the Republican attempts to prevent minorities, students and other traditionally Democratic constituencies from voting, the ratio of votes CAST for each party was probably even more lopsided. So yes, it was a Blue Wave, indeed, and a big one too, even if it didn't feel very much like it on the day.

Some of the most satisfying losses from the election had to be Trump's hand-picked election-rigger-in-chief Kris Kobach, Moscow's Man in Washington Dana Rohrabacher, and Wisconsin's apparently irremovable governor (until Tuesday), the oleaginous Scott Walker. Read more about them, and other losers who lost, in this VICE article.

Once the election was over and done with, Trump didn't lose any time before firing his much-abused Attorney General, Jefferson Beauregard Bedford Forrest Sessions III, and installing Matthew Whitaker, aka Marlon Brando from Apocalypse Now, in his stead*. Normally, Sessions' job would have gone to his second in command, Rod Rosenstein, until confirmation hearings could be held for the new AG. But seeing as Trump hates Rosenstein for refusing to tongue-bathe his anal fissures while Whitaker has long since proven his analingual allegiance to Trump, and seeing as both Whitaker and Trump are filthy, rotten scam artists and are thus inherently simpatico, and seeing as from the neck down they're both the same proportionate size and shape of the box a refrigerator comes in, Trump's choice was obvious.


Losing the House of Representatives and a bunch of state governorships to the Democrats hasn't exactly been doing Donald Trump's state of mind any good. First came his ludicrous attempts to spin last Tuesday's results as a "big win" for him personally (pro tip: it wasn't). Next, just one day later, he lost his freaking mind on CNN's Jim Acosta for basically no reason whatsoever, repeating his dangerous and nonsensical "enemy of the people" slur. Oh, President Rotten Jack-O-Lantern really put on a show:


The next day, the White House revoked Acosta's press credentials, banning him from future briefings, and causing consternation among other journalistic outlets. In trying to defend Trump's ludicrous, stress-induced extended tantrum, White House spokes-pig Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted from her official government account a video ostensibly showing that Acosta had "put his hands on" the intern whom Trump had tasked with stealing Acosta's microphone mid-question:


Now, the fact that the video in question shows pretty much the exact fucking opposite of what the White House says it does (the intern is far more rough and rude than Acosta) is bad enough. Topping off this ludicrous endeavor is the fact that the video had also been doctored, either by InfoWars' perpetually moist-looking Paul Joseph Watson, or by whatever other Fascist/White Supremacist he got the video from in the first place, to make it reflect more poorly on Acosta. That it failed utterly to convince any but the most far gone True Believer is a minor comfort, indeed, to the realization that the White House has apparently conscripted Alex Jones in its ongoing War Against Reality.

You'd think the whole Acosta thing would have gotten Trump's hatred for journalists out of his system, but nope. Just one day later, this happened:


Maybe it's the fact that the reporter in question, Abby Phillip, is both female and Black -- two types of people that Trump has historically had the most problems with -- that worsened his notoriously mercurial mood. But whatever the case, this was a particularly shitteous display from the Combover-in-Chief, and more proof (as if more was needed) that he's cracking under the weight of the self-inflicted, Hellish reality that is now poised to come crashing down on him, any fucking day now.

So what better way to unwind than a nice trip to France to celebrate Armistice Day with America's greatest allies? You'd think the prospect of a bunch of free top-notch French meals would calm him down a bit, but nope... Air Force One hadn't even landed by the time Trump took out his frustrated hatred on the Republican-allergic California electorate by saying the wildfires that have killed dozens and destroyed entire communities in the last few days were, in fact, their own damn fault:

This prompted a rather glorious response tweet by national treasure Julia Louis Dreyfus:

And nothing more be said about this... than that.

Finally, like the shitty little cherry on top of a fecal sundae, Trump provided what would be (and very well may end up being) the kind of lightning rod, turning point moment that sends his Presidency into a nose-dive from which it will be impossible, under normal circumstances, to recover. The tactless, hateful goon fucking skipped out on a long-scheduled Armistice Day commemoration at a cemetery where thousands of American soldiers are buried in the greatest honor... because of a light fucking drizzle. And the American people, including a lot of Republicans and even some former fans of his... well... they're not very pleased, apparently.

And so, until more notable stuff happens, that's what the week looked like to yer old pal Jerky.

***

* I was originally going to go with The Judge from Cormac McCarthy's novel, Blood Meridian, but I figure maybe 1% of you would have got that one, max, so I went for the easier joke. My apologies.