Bad Men Behaving Badly Chap. 746: 'Cause it's not awful enough we have to endure the racist crap spewing from our home-grown jackasses, the rest of the world just bore grim witness to it as dunk-tank Christofascist Pete Hegseth chose a D-Day remembrance to flip the script on World War 2, trash European allies for not being fascist enough, and liken (good-guy) Allies landing at Normandy to an "invasion" of brown people "with "dangerous ideologies." Fact: "This is repulsive and confused, unless you're a Nazi."

Speaking of: Last week, under cover of darkness, "shameful" Senate Republicans pushed through a "Secure America Act" (sic) gifting yet more billions to keep out more of the swarthy hordes Pete's so scared of. Without making any of the reforms Dems had demanded, they added to last year's obscene $191 billion gift to DHS another $75 billion for ICE and $65 billion for CBP, 4 to 7 times their previous budgets, with most allocated to expand detentions, deportations, facilities, goons - not, as it could, to fund free childcare for over a million kids, groceries for over 10 million households, a year of SNAP benefits to 31 million people, health care tax credits for a year etc etc ad nauseum. Their wise leader, meanwhile, was throwing tantrums on TV - "Dude is losing his shit" - because a reporter dared ask for evidence of his flood of unhinged claims.

And greasy "Secretary of War (Crimes)" Pete lurches along on his quest to turn America into a white nationalist theocracy. A buffoon of a warmonger though (because?) he never saw combat, he posts klutzy videos of himself working out; in one, he prances in a “This Is War” t-shirt. (No, this is reality TV). Sporting Crusader tattoos - Deus Vult, but whose God? - he stripped 180 unholy faiths from those the military recognizes despite a First Amendment ensuring "the free exercise of religion for everybody" - a religious purge dressed up as paperwork (telling) thousands of service members their beliefs don’t matter to the government they’re risking their lives to protect.” (After outrage, he restored the Mormons.) He cut dozens of female and Black Navy officers from leadership-approved promotions, dissing “historic so-called firsts” that make the military “less lethal.”

And to mark this weekend's 82nd anniversary of the June 6, 1944 D-Day landing of Allied forces on the beaches of Normandy - perhaps the most pivotal moment in a long bloody fight to defend democracy against fascism - he gave a pro-fascism speech, embracing a Great Replacement theory that calls for a return to the racial ideology on which fascism is based. Speaking at the American Cemetery in north-west France where about 9,400 are buried, he'd barely recalled the courage of Allied Forces from multiple countries wading ashore in history's largest amphibious operation to liberate Europe before pivoting to warn "their legacy requires our active vigilance." European leaders may have grown too "comfortable," he said with the chutzpah of the deeply ignorant, and they may have somehow "forgotten that freedom is not free."

"Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies," he intoned. "On beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive....When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not." What a pompous asshole. So: On D-Day, Ugly Americans hawking xenophobia. Equating brown-skinned migrants who want to feed and keep safe their families with "dangerous ideologies." Also: Equating anti-fascism with "dangerous ideologies"? Wait, weren't the Allies the good guys? And wait, so the Nazis were...? Americans were horrified by so much repulsive and confused: "Sewage," "straight-up white nationalism," "a cheap suit full of hate and racism - what an evil shit," "Crystal Meth Rumsfeld strikes again," "We get it, dude. Just come out and say you hate black and brown people."

Especially in Europe, critics did not hold back, and we are here for it. English historian Simon Schama decried Hegseth's "special kind of loathsomeness, a blend of historical deafness, grotesque stupidity and comically ludicrous self-importance...As if the little people’s rage against immigration somehow is superior to the war against the 3rd Reich, and entitles this comic-book nobody to lecture the actual heroes." Others blasted "something profoundly ugly happening" in our right wing..."and on D-Day, D-Day!" and "an obscene desecration" of the memories of those who fell. Like many, French P.M. Sébastien Lecornu rightly paid tribute instead to the "3,000 men, barely 20 years old," who died, offering "the breath of their youth and the sacrifice of their lives."

Europeans also called bullshit on the faux drama and utter hypocrisy of Hegseth's angry claim that, after a united D-Day era when "each nation bled," Europe is not "standing with" a U.S. now run by a lying, racist, narcissistic, war-mongering toddler who does nothing but abuse them. "America will lead and we must, but capable allies must be Right. There. With Us...In the Breach. When It Matters," he bloviated. "The men who fought and died here restored freedom to Europe,. Now freedom must be maintained by this generation of leaders and war-fighters...We stand by our allies, and we expect our allies to stand beside us." "So much nonsense," retorted Swedish economist Anders Åslund. "'We stand by our allies!’ No you don’t. You just attacked them. Immigration policies are internal matters... Doesn’t Hegseth know the most unreliable ‘ally’ by far is the US?”

And now, in the name of their mythical, bigoted, white, male, Christian Republic, the US - Hegseth, Trump, Vance et al - have the audacity to be hectoring their European “allies” to “up their white supremacy game” to stop an “invasion” of what Trump has called the brown and black “vermin” who once flocked to our “shining city on a hill,” now a beacon of hate. Hamlet's ghost: “O, what a falling-off was there.” Last weekend, in France, Hegseth didn’t even stay for the international ceremony at the cemetery where so many are buried - per Trump, all those suckers and losers. Pete likely didn’t know the denizens of a nearby village had weeks earlier asked that his visit be cancelled. "It seems to us," they said in their request, "that this man does not share our democratic values." We feel your pain.

Exciting news, patriots! After cancelling his OG concert, Dear Leader will now celebrate our 250th birthday with "the Greatest Rally, EVER!" featuring the "fabulous" 83-year-old Lee Greenwood and “a fine and highly dignified gentleman," himself. Also, for some reason, "prune-face" Bruce Springsteen and a gazillion A-list performers are holding two concerts to honor America's "songs that shaped us." Reviews call it "a rare gift" in music history, but they're all losers and lunatics.

Taking time off from nodding off (again) in a meeting, Trump as predicted has finally cancelled his much-hyped “Freedom 250 concert of has-beens and never-weres after almost all nine acts bailed; poor Vanilla Ice, reportedly the only, desperate act still ready to go on. The concerts were set to kick off his equally-fab-sounding Great American State Fair, a "once in a generation...State Fair like no other" - "Dive into the fun and feel the energy" - hosting carnival rides, "hands-on partner activations" from each state, and daily workshops with titles like Land & Prosperity, Family Life and Community Support, Everyday Health and Well Being with MAHA Monday, and Faith, Values, and Inspiration.

Trump was his usual chivalrous self in defeat after the concert went down in tacky flames. "We don't want singers with no talent, but big fees to put you to sleep," he wrote. "We’ve told them all to stay home." Instead, he giddily announced “a Rally to end all Rallies!" in "magnificent Washington D.C, now totally beautified." Because, "All we want is you, me, a few speakers, and the Greatest Music ever played, the same Music you have listened to for years!" it will feature die-hard Lee Greenwood (again), with "one of the Greatest Hits of All Time," his 1984 God Bless the U.S.A, after which he will introduce "a fine and highly dignified gentleman known as President DONALD J. TRUMP!”

There's more: The "amazing" opera singer Christopher Macchio, who has just 571 listeners on Spotify, will join in. "Not since the legendary Luciano Pavarotti has there been such a voice!” bragged Trump, though Pavarotti’s family has protested his use of the opera great's songs by arguing, "The values of brotherhood and solidarity which Luciano Pavarotti expressed throughout (his) artistic career are entirely incompatible with the worldview offered by Trump.” Also, the U.S. Army Band, Armed Forces Choir and "The President’s Own United States Marine Band" will perform “all your favorite Hits." Observers say the gig "sounds lame as fuck," but MAGA fans who go to every rally "like Deadheads with less weed and more racism" will probs love it.

Amidst other glad fails - even UFC fighters have trashed him with Star Wars rants of "Darth Vader gonna get took (sic) down" - many deem a more apt celebration of America's birthday the June 4 and 5 concerts in New Jersey by Springsteen and many fellow musicians. The guest list is so vast and illustrious - among them, Bon Jovi, Jackson Browne, Rosanne Cash, Kenny Chesney, Tom Morello, Gary Clark Jr., Dion, Dropkick Murphys, Shemekia Copeland, Keb’ Mo’, Nils Lofgren, Valerie June, Darlene Love, Public Enemy, David Sancious, Tony Trischka, Sister Sadie, Mavis Staples, Trombone Shorty, Steve Van Zandt, Jimmie Vaughan, the New Breed Brass Band - it's assumed Bruce called in favors: "They were beckoned, and graciously agreed."

Springsteen and the E Street Band just wrapped their Land of Hope and Dreams Tour - "No Kings" plastered below - in Philadelphia. Celebrating "hope over fear," it featured his most fiery political songs: Born in the USA, Death To My Hometown, No Surrender, Darkness On the Edge of Town, Streets of Minneapolis, Dylan's Chimes of Freedom. The two new concerts, titled Music America: The Songs that Shaped Us, are likewise unabashedly rabble-rousing. Held in Springsteen's Jersey backyard at Monmouth University, they will also launch the new Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music, which aims to preserve the Boss' legacy and offer "a journey through American music history" with ongoing exhibitions, archives and workshops.

This week's concerts, says Robert Santelli, "reflect everything the Center stands for" - the power of "a rich and diverse treasury of American music (to) bring people together (and) the inspiration to think about our shared history in divisive times." Casting a wide and joyful net, artists perform landmark songs from American music - blues, bluegrass, Native, rock, hip-hop, folk, jazz, country, gospel. Tickets are reasonably priced for an intimate venue, and brief narration before each performance offers context to the artist, song, and genre. Thursday night reviews praised "a magical, once-in-a-lifetime moment in music history" and a nod to "how powerful music is in telling our nation’s story." Both concerts sold out.

Bruce and the Dropkick Murphys' rousing rendition of American Land, based on a 19th-century poem by an immigrant steelworker, which asks and celebrates those "who will make his home in the American Land." In brief, all of us.

The McNicholases, the Posalskis, the Smiths, Zerillis, too
The Blacks, the Irish, Italians, the Germans and the Jews
They come across the water a thousand miles from home
With nothing in their bellies but the fire down below.

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Amidst the ongoing awful, we take wary solace in the modest routs newly inflicted on our wannabe Great Dictator. He lost yugely in multiple courts as judges reopened his bogus IRS suit, froze his slush fund, ripped his name from a D.C. landmark and, in Kenya, told him to take care of his own. Meanwhile, his trashy shitshow of a 250th celebration has devolved into "red-meat-for-the-rubes" blood sport and a dud of a concert after most of the low-rent performers bailed because, "Nobody wants the stink."

The buffoon who would be king keeps trying and flailing to rise to the authoritarian task in a spiraling presidency in free fall. Seeking to regain control of the narrative, he continues lashing out in increasingly deranged ways: After months of courts blocking his efforts to get state voter lists to steal elections, his Postal Service has proposed a Hail Mary move of only sending mail-in ballots to voters registered with the feds; he's proposed sweeping changes that would allow his toadies to kill NIH and other grants vaguely not "aligned with" his "priorities"; fighting for the dubious right to go after enemies like sacking James Comey's daughter from a New York U.S. Attorney’s Office, he's argued he has the power to fire anyone, even for pure political malice, which the latest court to shut him down called "a novel and breathtaking theory" about presidential power.

To deflect from the stubbornly enduring issue of pedo bestie Epstein, he's reflexively pivoted to his once-winning scapegoat of immigrants with maybe the most racist and "lamest shit ever": A website declaiming, "THEY WALK AMONG US" of "millions of illegals who have arrived under the cover of darkness and embedded themselves directly into our society." Complete with "alien arrest map” and more AI slopaganda - a UFO lifts a man over a wall as YMCA plays WTF - the text hisses that, for years, "Aliens (have) shopped in the same stores, attended the same classes (and) and lived seemingly normal human existences. With one exception — They do not belong here," all until when one "bold" bigot had "the courage (to) call out the real danger Aliens pose" to every American family and community. Alas, notes Dem. Gov. Ned Lamont, "We are still looking for intelligent life in the White House.”

Other horrors go on. Agriculture Sec. Brooke Rollins - net worth $15 million - boasted thanks to $186 billion in long-term cuts they’ve “lifted” 4 million hungry people off SNAP benefits so they can now achieve “the American Dream”; though cuts were in the name of “fraud,” she admitted they “don’t have actual data” (in reality zilch) got people “kick(ed) down the elevator shaft.” "Testifying" before the House, Pam Bondi threw her deputy under Epstein's bus, refused to answer questions and argued it was "not appropriate" to acknowledge survivors standing behind her. Bald mini-Nazi Stephen Miller sneered Texas' James Talarico (cis, straight, meat-eating) was the Dems' "first transgender Senate candidate." When Dems retorted, "Shut up you ugly fuck,” Miller's wife blasted "violent rhetoric." Chill Talarico: "I'm an 8th generation Texan - I've been eating BBQ since before Ken Paxton's first indictment."

Sadist Greg Bovino crawled out of his fetid cave to tell Nazis at a “Remigration Summit” in Portugal he is now “in battle” against MAGA cowards who have “lost their will” to deport brown people: “Mullin’s a great plumber...But a hundred million illegal aliens is not a leaky faucet.” Vietnam has had to exhume bodies from ancestral gravesites to make room for a shitty new Trump golf course and hotel supposedly at another site; one 72-year-old is “outraged” the U.S. paid him just $2,660 compensation for the grievous removal of his son and parents. Always classy, Trump also just posted more AI garbage, literally: He throws Colbert into a dumpster and portrays Obama’s presidential library as a giant trash can. And displaying their usual lofty priorities, Minnesota Republicans at their state convention held a moment of silence to honor...George Floyd's killer Derek Chauvin.

In glad contrast, many judges are holding the line against the darkness and stupidity. The law, and the justice it can bring, inevitably moves more slowly and quietly than the atrocities we're daily bombarded with. But it is moving, and last week several judges took the ball and damn near ran with it toward MLK's blessed arc of justice. In perhaps the least substantive but most killingly symbolic move, Judge Christopher Cooper of the U.S. District Court in D.C. ruled the boy-king can't just slap his name on the Kennedy Center when his fragile ego needs a boost. Rejecting a final, desperate board "argument" the removal of the world's most despised name would render the Center "financially nonviable" (add many LOLs here), Cooper found "no competent evidence" and ruled the Center's statute "makes crystal clear" no name can be added to it without Congress' approval.

In his decision, a response to a lawsuit brought by much-abused Dem ex-officio Board member Rep. Joyce Beatty after Trump brazenly hijacked the Board and chairmanship in 2025 - prompting pretty much any sensible performers to abandon it - Cooper ruled the foul Trump stain must come off everything - building facade, website, materials - within two weeks. An unexpected cherry on top: Cooper also found the Board was "derelict in discharging (its) responsibilities to the Center” when it voted to close it for two years of Trump's suddenly announced "renovations," and no they can't exclude Dem members, like Beatty from decisions, because democracy. Kennedy niece Maria Shriver offered a "Translation: "Due to the name change...no one wants to perform there any longer, so it's best to close it and build a new one so everybody will stop talking about that."

Ever gracious, the world's worst loser responded with a fuming, whining, 700-word tantrum. "There has never been a (boy-king) treated so unfairly by the Courts as I,” he wailed. "Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, and bring this failing Institution" - rust, rot, rats oh my! - back," he has "no interest" and will transfer said empty shell back to Congress. He also attacked both "Trump-Hating Barack Hussein Obama Judge Cooper" and his wife, a former Dem federal prosecutor, who "probably told him to do so!" Cooper "has a total Conflict of Interest," he raved, "and should be brought up on charges for not revealing these facts." God, still a prince among men. Former Rep. Joe Kennedy III: JFK "would remind us it is not buildings that define the greatness of a nation. It is the actions of its people and its leaders...and our commitment to the rights of all.”

Now judges are also coming down hard on his "felon-to-felon" slush fund. A federal judge in Virginia just froze its scuzzy $1.8 billion until a June hearing; Judge Leonie M. Brinkema barred any action “pursuant to (its) creation or operation" because "taxpayer dollars should not reward blind, and sometimes violent, loyalty to a single politician." Her ruling came as Democracy Forward filed another legal challenge charging "blatant abuse of power." Too bad, so sad: Now MAGA cronies, including dozens of convicted Jan. 6 thugs since charged or convicted for serious new crimes - child sex abuse, rape, burglary, home invasion, death threats against officials, fatal DUI crashes - may have to wait for their payouts. Even then, state Dem lawmakers - New York and New Jersey Assembly members, Gavin Newsom et al - plan to slap 100% taxes on them, with the House and Senate to wisely follow suit.

Digging even deeper in the Southern District of Florida, Judge Kathleen Williams just re-opened Trump's bullshit $10 billion lawsuit against himself - his DOJ vs IRS - after three dozen bipartisan retired judges filed a motion against his "fraud on the Court." Friday, Williams ordered Trump to respond to charges his suit, from which he laundered his billion-dollar-plus payout and lifetime audit immunity, was "premised on deception" to "avoid judicial scrutiny of a lawsuit collusive from the start." Even Kenyan courts are rejecting his outrageous schemes. After gutting international aid and facing an Ebola outbreak in DRC that's killed hundreds, Trump moved to simply bar immigrants or Americans who might have it and send them to...Kenya? As they scrambled to replicate in days care the US built over decades, the day the clinic was set to open a Kenyan court blocked a plan that, like all his others, "raises grave constitutional concerns."

Other woes, born of his boundless incompetence, beset him: At a DOJ rapidly spiraling down, the lead prosecutor for the absurd James Comey Seditious Seashell case just withdrew; experts agree it'll never make it to court. His grifty, flaking, no-bid paint job on Lincoln's Reflecting Pool - from sober grey to tacky motel pool blue - has soared from $1.8 to $13.1 million skimmed from National Park entrance fees and is getting trashed. Five countries from his Board of Peace (sic), which promised 20,000 troops to help "ease Gaza’s transition to a peaceful Jared Kushner theme park," has delivered no troops, no money, nada. His beloved gazillion-dollar ballroom remains a rubble-strewn hole in the ground amidst "a busted-ass trash palace" after another judge ruled "no statute comes close" to giving him the authority to build it. And Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin rocket exploded on its Florida launchpad; NYT Pitchbot warns of new layoffs at The Washington Post.

Finally, whaaa, nobody wants to come to his birthday party and "testament to his vision to celebrate America’s monumental 250th anniversary" with the lamest, trashiest, most corrupt and barbarous show on earth, even though after heedlessly turning the White House environs into a hoarders' trailer park he then plastered the city with banners proclaiming, "We are making D.C. safe and beautiful" Maybe the whole, crude debacle, "our latest national concussion," stems from the fact - just hear us out - a Malignant-Narcissist-In-Chief has made America's anniversary "about one hideous thing - himself." Starting with the grotesque call to mark the date by "watching men beat each other senseless in a cage on the same grounds where Lincoln walked." It's gladiatorial bread and circus - food and fun to dispel questions about empire - but "he's keeping the circus and taking away the bread."

His UFC match, with day-trading on the side, will feature combatants pummeling each other often to bloody pulp in a "sport" so violent John McCain called it “human cockfighting"; many states banned it at its inception, though its almost non-existent rules now prohibit gouging out opponents' eyes. It's an unsettling but unsurprising choice from a long "violence-curious" (except in Vietnam) bully who weirdly wears more makeup and hairspray than your average drag queen while urging supporters to beat up protesters, joking about extrajudicial killings, and injecting inane bing-bong noises into descriptions of missile strikes. Decades ago, he tried to create a mixed-martial-arts brand with a brutal fighter named Fedor the Russian: "His thing is inflicting death on people." It became Affliction Entertainment - really - but crashed after two fights, because everything he touches, even that, dies.

As a ghastly arena rises on the White House lawn, Trump is clearly hyped by the approaching blood-fest: "I have never seen anybody want anything so much as people want those tickets.” So is his wife-slapping accomplice and $3-million donor UFC CEO Dana White, who admits, "It’s really big for the brand." About 4,000 supporters will watch in person, with Trump as usual likely close enough ringside to be splattered by blood and sweat. Another 85,000 can watch on giant screens from the Ellipse, home to the Jan. 6 "rally." The Pentagon is reportedly recruiting hundreds of troops to attend in uniform, but no fatties please; they must meet height and weight requirements to "look good on camera." They also have to pay for their own travel. In another classy move, sharp-eyed observers note that renderings of the event show an American flag with just 48 stars.

At last count the other big event, a Freedom 250 concert kicking off a 16-day "Great American State Fair," will feature just two stars - or more accurately two bargain-bin, has-been-or-never-were performers, the only survivors of nine originally announced of which seven quickly dropped out. (Oof. Was it something/everything he said?) They were Young MC, Flo Rida, Bret Michaels, Morris Day & The Time, The Commodores, Vanilla Ice, "real” Milli Vanilli Fab Morvan, Martina McBride and Freedom Williams of C+C Music Factory. Full Disclosure: We haven't heard of any of them. Michaels evidently won Celebrity Apprentice in 2010, McBride's a four-time CMA Award winner who's sold 23 million albums and performed for multiple presidents, Morvan's the surviving member of a pretty pair of guys brought low by a lip-syncing scandal. Honestly, we dunno who the others are.

Within 48 hours of them being announced, most had cancelled. They cited “misleading information,” “divisive” or partisan politics, miscommunication; a couple said they’d never been contacted in the first place. Reportedly remaining are Flo Rida, Fab Morvan and possibly Freedom Williams, or, per Dean Blundell, "one nostalgia rapper, one lip-syncer with intellectual-property issues, and a guy ranting from a toilet" - that would be Williams, who filmed a seven-minute rant about "niggers," "motherfuckers," and how he doesn't give a fuck about Trump or the rest of us but after the Internet told him to bail he thought he'd fuck them all and play. Despite a broad consensus that watching the entire show as planned would be akin to "staring into a septic tank for hours," MAGA was pissed at the drop-outs, especially McBride, the headliner, railing she'd even performed for "the Obama regime."

Trump was gracious about the changes. Just kidding. In "prime wallow," he railed against "these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists'...getting the yips," and said he's thinking instead about "bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar...the man who some say is the Greatest President in History" to give a speech at a "wild MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN RALLY" with "Only Great Patriots invited." While even supporters griped another speech instead of a concert would be "lame and boring," nobody knows what latest chaos will befall the event. What many of us do know is that all the detritus of this shameful historic moment - the names, arches, gimcracks, breaches, endless cruelties of a tyrant's resolve to "impose himself on the world" must go. With a nod to Walter White, we look to Ozymandias, a poem "to outlast empires," for hope and guidance.

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Another Memorial Day: boasts, insults, "self-defense strikes," cheap clichés from a "Secretary of War" prattling about dead boys "delivered from the battlefield into the arms of a loving Lord and savior." Spare us. And maybe revisit the war to end all wars, which didn't - its "infinity of waste" and trenches with skulls in the sides where "he who had a corpse to stand on was lucky." Pat Barker: “A society that devours its own young deserves (no) unquestioning allegiance.”

"Happy Memorial Day to all," babbled our ever-unseemly Idiot-In-Chief, "including the Dumocrats, who disrespect our Military and all of the tremendous success that it has had over the last year," because obviously the best way to honor the dead is to not acknowledge their sacrifice but to denigrate half the ravaged country they died defending. Also, at Arlington National Cemetery, the infinitely hollow, "Wherever the American soldier (falls), he does it for the destiny of a nation like no other - there’s never been anybody like you." Also, noted Private Bone Spurs, 18,000 Williams, over 20,000 Johns, and other names fell, but "not too many" Donalds. Huh.

Adding to the day's eloquence with a much-needed "monster truck rally vibe" was inexplicably non-veteran, Hegseth bestie, tawdry aging rock star Kid Rock. Because "Tokyo Rose wasn't available," he was chosen by the Pentagon to honor American service members' ultimate sacrifice in a hoodie, fedora, gold chain and sunglasses, looking like "a creature you’d expect to hiss at you from the dank depths of a garbage bin" and intoning, "We are remembering the sacrifice and service of so many who are not with us today...It’s a special day. We’re thinking of them... Keep on Kid Rocking in the free world."

Then there was bombastic, dime-store-cliché-spouting Christo-fascist Pete Hegseth urging we "remember our republic was forged and purchased with blood, American blood," evidently only male according to his pronouns. Ever a fatuous buffoon, he declaimed "the sacred names of bygone eras to the 13 souls of Epic Fury (who) answered the call when it mattered the most (and) gave the last full measure of devotion," even when he failed them in an Iranian strike in Yemen: "They stood against the darkness of the world wearing the breastplate of righteousness (and) raced to the brink so we could walk in freedom and prosperity (and) may almighty God bless our warriors." Jesus weeps.

It remains unclear how many of the up to 22 million dead, both military and civilian, and over 20 million wounded, "the butcher's bill" of World War One, came to be blessed by almighty God, especially in its Western Front's godforsaken trenches teeming with sludge, rats, mud, blood, water and disease. The war's "inconceivable loss" and "purposeless waste of a generation" is perhaps best exemplified by the Battle of Verdun, where the French, set upon by German forces, adopted a "They Shall Not Pass” mantra that in the end saw over 700,000 dead on both sides - ultimately, vast "heaps of bones."

For many, the horrors of "the greatest conflagration the world had seen" live on through the searing literature, both prose and poetry, that emerged from them. Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est epitomizes the bitter, bloody tone that often prevailed amidst its "guttering, choking, drowning" victims - Hegseth's benighted "warriors." "Bent double, like old beggars under sacks/ Knock-kneed, coughing like hags," cursing, gargling, limping bootless through sludge, "blood-shod...deaf even to the hoots/Of gas-shells dropping softly behind," they reject, "The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori."

Siegfried Sassoon lived the privileged life of a British country gentleman, writing poetry and fox hunting, until the start of World War 1, when he served as an officer with the Royal Welch Fusiliers in France. He was awarded a Military Cross, was later wounded in action, and refused to fight any longer to protest "a senseless slaughter." On June 15, 1917, he wrote "A Soldier's Declaration" as "an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those how have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers."

"I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolonging those sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust," he wrote. He was protesting, he made clear, "against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed...against the deception which is being practiced on them. Also I believe that it may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realise."

His letter was read before the House of Commons and printed in The London Times. He expected to be court-martialed; instead, he was declared "mentally unsound" and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital, where Dr. William Rivers was charged with restoring Sassoon’s “sanity” and sending him back to the trenches. The story of their real-life encounter, wherein Rivers came to diagnose war's "shell-shock" and share Sassoon's view, is powerfully told in Pat Barker's historical novel Regeneration, the first in a trilogy about the psychological carnage of war. "It (was) the Great White God de-throned. We assumed we were the measure of all things," Rivers says. "(But) nothing justifies this. Nothing nothing nothing."

Siegfried Sassoon's 1918 Suicide in the Trenches mourns "a simple soldier boy/Who grinned at life in empty joy" until he goes to war: "In winter trenches, cowed and glum/With crumps and lice and lack of rum/He put a bullet through his brain./No one spoke of him again./ You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye/Who cheer when soldier lads march by,/Sneak home and pray you'll never know/The hell where youth and laughter go." Too many of those young lie in a cemetery near Ypres, where one Inscription stands out in a sea of "For King and Country" headstones. It was written on the grave of Arthur Young by his father, a diplomat wiser than any vacuous Hegseth: "Sacrificed to the fallacy that war can end war."

In retrospect, Sunday's taxpayer-funded blasphemy fest to "rededicate" America as a Christian nation though it's not and never was looks ever more obscene amidst an unholy regime's mounting crimes and abuses. Its sectarian circus - ICE milled, vendors urged "WIVES SUBMIT," zealots screeched "We welcome Jesus!", speakers attested God is eager for the ballroom - just queasily re-shaped a 250-year-old America into the kind of country it once sought freedom from.

"Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving," a "constitutional abomination wrapped in layers of blasphemy and demagoguery," sought to proclaim America "One Nation Under God," but only a white male evangelical God; Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, commies, Jews, atheists, agnostics, black, brown, queer, Native people and even mainline Protestants need not apply. As such, it attacked what Jefferson deemed an unalienable right of conscience "which lies solely between Man & his God," defied the core constitutional tenet of separation of church and state, and "torpedoe(d) the best of American traditions - inclusivity and diversity" with, essentially, "a Jubilee of Christian Nationalism."

Its state-sponsored, right-wing fever dream marked the successful MAGA hijacking of Congress’ bipartisan, 2016 America250 commission, meant to honor the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and its core values of equality and agency before the law. Instead, Trump concocted his own Christo-fascist Freedom 250 to celebrate a racist, corporate, jingoistic narrative of America, rewriting history to create an imaginary, monolithic, jingoistic, white, male, Christian national identity that celebrates "God’s presence in our national life throughout 250 years of American history," and what is this inequality or oppression of which you speak?

Freedom 250 swiftly collected most of the $150 million appropriated by Congress, along with support from patriotic sponsors like ExxonMobil, Mastercard, Palantir, Amazon, Coinbase. Year-long festivities have included a weekly America Prays initiative; a series of Interior Department events celebrating “the triumph of the American spirit” plastered with flags, logos, Trump National Park passes; a fleet of nationwide “Freedom Trucks,” mobile museums offering right-wing takes on US history created with PragerU; a national Freedom 250 Patriot Games - Hunger Games anyone? - competition for high school athletes; a revamped Great American Farmers Market in DC with a "MAHA Monday."

On social media, meanwhile, DHS has begun declaring itself "One Homeland Under God," complete with image of church and cross and highlighted Bible verse; for April 19, it urged, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding." The Washington Monument was transformed into “the world’s tallest birthday candle," with projections celebrating historic achievements by white men like Christopher Columbus and Henry Ford, with no black, Native, female people in sight. To re-enforce the white-centric narrative, organizers have also promised a Summer Surge of thousands more ICE and DHS thugs to make the nation still whiter.

Sunday's Jubilee continued the rebrand of a newly pristine, godly history, with 14 of 15 speakers Christian, arched stained-glass windows and a looming white cross all "glorifying the name of Jesus over our nation’s capital." "Our nation more than any other was shaped by the idea that faith brought freedom," said Marco Rubio in a prerecorded speech. "This is who we are." Virginia pastor Gary Hamrick concurred, but added the imaginary threat of a "spiritual war," perhaps best personified by the scary scattered signs of protesters urging, “Celebrate Democracy, Not Theocracy.” "This is a battle in our day between good and evil," he said. "Our hope is built on Jesus' blood."

Also, Jesus merch. As the faithful braved three-hour lines in the heat and prayed, arms lifted to the sky, vendors handed out "Jesus Saves" bracelets and buttons that said, “WIVES SUBMIT, HUSBANDS LOVE, CHILDREN OBEY.” There were "Thank you Jesus!" signs, a huge "Jesus Make America Godly Again" banner, $47 Freedom 250 baseball caps, t-shirts that read, "God Guns Family Freedom" and "Forever In Our Hearts, Charlie Kirk." "We welcome Jesus into this place!" declared one speaker. Another noted, "It's hard to believe it would take two centuries for the Lord to raise up a great man to bring that ballroom to stand where it needs to stand." (Jesus.)

Pete Hegseth,on video, was typically unshy about praising Jesus. He dubiously zeroed in on The Prayer at Valley Forge, a 1975 painting by Arnold Friberg of George Washington praying in the snow widely deemed a romanticized legend, not fact. Historians argue Washington was a deist and freemason who rarely mentioned God or Jesus, whose favorite Biblical quote - "But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid" - symbolizes peace, safety, religious freedom, and who always prayed standing. Still, Hegseth ran with it: Washington "did not lose faith," and "let us pray as he did...without ceasing...on bended knee, for our Lord and savior Jesus Christ."

Trump took an even more sketchy approach: He went golfing and sent in a slurry, pre-taped Bible reading recycled from the last fake Christian event three weeks ago. Then, moments after it aired, the self-described peace president went on a frenzied, genocidal social media spree, posting on his crappy app over 30 times in two hours. He threatened Iran: "The Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them." He posted bizarre, AI, warmongering images: Manning a spacecraft, firing away with massive explosions and mushroom clouds, personally arresting an alien, a real one. Say what? Praise Jesus.

Still, spineless, smarmy, unholy Mike Johnson was the worst. Having already whined about "naysayers" who view Christian Nationalism as "a derogatory term," he gave a long hollow prayer about his task to "bring us straight to the Lord, whose mighty hand has been upon our (freest and most benevolent) nation since the very beginning." But now "sinister ideologies sow confusion among our people," attacking our history as "one of oppression and hypocrisy and failure." So "grant us the moral clarity to rise above partisan differences," says the guy who keeps shutting down Congress to block Dem policies. Finally, unconscionably, he prayed for “mercy upon our land.”

Mercy. He seeks mercy.

Mercy for the hundreds of people in the Congo and elsewhere dying of an Ebola outbreak after Trump gutted USAID and its dedicated outbreak response team because it helped people who aren't white, thus triggering what could be over 14 million preventable deaths by 2030?

Mercy for those killed at San Diego's biggest mosque amidst a Trump-fuelled rising tide of Islamophobia? Mercy for those ripped off or otherwise betrayed in a rabid mob by a $1.8 billion slush fund, or "pardon on steroids," in the "most brazen act of presidential corruption this century."

Mercy for the estimated 145,000 U.S. citizen brown children who had a parent detained by ICE and are now scattered across the country, or the 22,000 who lost both parents? Mercy for the woman, a domestic violence victim, detained and deported whom ICE is now blaming for the murder of her own child by her ex-partner?

Mercy for the 21-year-old Honduran with no criminal record just arrested and detained by ICE outside a New York immigration court less than 24 hours after a federal judge's ruling such arrests are illegal, because, as one ICE thug responded when shown the ruling, "We don't care"?

Mercy for 18-year-old, Chicago-born, Mexico-raised Kevin González, being treated in Chicago for metastatic stage-four colon cancer when his health began failing? His parents in Mexico sought emergency visas to travel to the US to say their final goodbyes; when DHS denied them, citing “previous unlawful entries into the US," in desperation they tried to cross the border without permission and were detained by ICE in Arizona. Kevin pleaded in vain for their release; ultimately, he checked himself out of the hospital and flew to his grandmother's home in Mexico to be with family at the end. Finally, in Kevin's last hours, a judge in Arizona ordered their release. They arrived at his bedside on the afternoon of May 9. His sobbing mom called him, “Chiquito," "little one”; his father knelt by his son's bed, asking for forgiveness if he ever let him down. Kevin died the next day.

Mercy? Does Mike Johnson want mercy for Kevin and his parents?

Fuck Mike Johnson and all his fucking odious cohort. Fuck their prayers, and their Jesus, and their cruelty, and their fucking despicable hypocrisy, which knows no bounds. What would Jesus do? Not this, any of it.

Oh man. Same old clown show, awash with boondoggles, each more cringey than the last. As the mad man-child deconstructs DC and slaps his hideous face and name everywhere - historic buildings, fascist arches, garish statues, possibly imaginary gold phones - others have taken his lead with their own patriotic spinoffs. Cue "Fuck You" upgrades, a Strait to Hell arcade for a video-game war, and a Trump/Epstein "Memorial Reading Room" packed with 3.5 million pages of files, where "the truth is hard to deny."

Trump's narcissistic vandalizing of D.C. - couldn't his KKK dad have just hugged him now and then? - is "something dictators have done throughout history," noted Bernie Sanders of his proposed SERVE Act, or Stop Executive Renaming for Vanity and Ego. Co-sponsored by six Senate Dems, the bill would bar any sitting president from naming federal properties after themselves, an act both "arrogant" and illegal. At this rate many weary Americans would likely argue, "Let the chiseling off begin," but for now the bill sits in legislative limbo and we're stuck with the resulting atrocities; they continue to multiply like locusts, even as he's proposed a $10-billion fund for more "beautification" projects around "the capital of the greatest Nation in the history of the world."

Though he increasingly nods off in public - or per the White House, blinks - he still clutches at a farcical show of dominance he's leaned on in the endless self-glorification campaign that is his execrable life. There are posts quoting fictional "fans": "Remarkable leadership,” "Master of the Deal,” "THE GREATEST PRESIDENT WE HAVE EVER KNOWN." From the guy who's "confused the country for his living room," there's D.C's re-branding: the plaques, name changes, razed East Wing for a billion-dollar "albatross" nobody wants. There are new massive Stalin-esque banners at construction sites proclaiming, “Thank you, PRESIDENT TRUMP”- "like Michael Scott buying himself a World’s Best Boss coffee mug" we paid for - to which unenthused residents added, "Fuck You Cunt."

Snug in a delusional bubble where his approval is def not in the toilet, he feels free to rant, lie, melt down online without consequence. In one manic night, he posts 55 times in three hours: “Arrest Obama the traitor” and “DEMONIC FORCE,” also Hillary, Brennan, Comey, Kelly. Asked how much he thinks about the cost to Americans of his calamitous war, he blurts, “Not even a little bit.” His lackeys follow suit: Ka$h Patel yells, lies, hustles bourbon, pads his stats and takes a "VIP snorkel" in Pearl Harbor around the tomb of 900 U.S. soldiers as Sean Duffy takes his nine offspring on a "patriotic," seven-month Great American Road Trip filmed for YouTube and complete with "head-spinning" corporate sponsorship, both on the taxpayers' now-rapidly-shrinking dime.

Meanwhile, another project nobody asked for - draining and repainting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, aka "reflective pond," from traditional grey to garish blue - has shockingly veered off course. After boasting his bestest golf course pool painters could easy-peasy do a no-bid, $1.8 million, "smart and beautiful construction" that Dems stupidly opposed - "Dumacrats love sewage" - the cost has soared to $13.1 million, it's now by a contractor he "did not know and have never used before,” staff are worried the job is behind schedule, with "uneven application" leaving bubbles, holes and "mottled shades of blue" in the pool, and a judge has set a May 21 hearing for a lawsuit charging the project wasn't properly vetted, ditto a color "more appropriate to a resort or theme park."

More winning in Miami, where another lawsuit charges three acres of multi-million-dollar waterfront land were illegally grifted by DeSantis to Trump for $10 for his presidential “library,” actually a gaudy hotel with no books but more vitally two gold statues of, you know. They will presumably join in grotesque kinship with the $300,000, crypto-bro-funded, bronze and gold leaf Don Colossus just unveiled at Doral Miami, "where the Republic is currently moldering." Before "a robotic chorus of evangelical functionaries who (have) transformed themselves into the most theologically humiliated cohort in modern memory," the statue was honored as, not an idolatrous golden calf, insisted Pastor Mark Burns, but "a celebration of life" and symbol of "the hand of God over (Trump’s) life." Definitely not a cult.

Tacky is as tacky doesBluesky screenshot

Despite being heralded as God's second favorite son - one who "understands the Scriptures better than the Pope" - Trump is also widely deemed "an economic serial killer" presiding over an "America First Corporate Graveyard," skyrocketing inflation, national debt, farm bankruptcies, and energy costs, and possibly "the largest single act of grand larceny in American history" with a $10 billion payout by his own DOJ against his own IRS to settle his bullshit lawsuit for their leak of his tax returns, which every other president has released. Still, because grifting chutzpah thy name is, and because there's never enough money to fill the ugly gaping hole where a soul should be, he's still running penny-ante scams. Up next: Trump Mobile, "for the forgotten MAGA man."

Last June, his huckster spawn announced the launch of "a sleek, gold smartphone engineered for performance.” The T1 Phone, "proudly designed and built in the United States,” would be available in August at $499. For almost a year, they urged followers to make $100 "deposits" to "pre-order" the beauties; over half a million did, ponying up about $59 million. Then, the bait and switch. The terms of service quietly changed: The "deposit" provided "a conditional opportunity" to buy if Trump Mobile chose to sell. Pricing, production schedules, shipping costs were "non-binding." "Made in the USA" became "Proudly American Designed." "Delivery" dates got pushed back. Unexplained charges appeared. A reporter who called "Customer Service" got “Omega Auto Care." To date, no fantasy Trump phones have shipped. Cheap Crooks 'R Us.

"Service for the forgotten MAGA man"Image from Bluesky

Also, liars. With even neo-cons now deeming the Iran War potentially more of a debacle than Vietnam, the good folks at Secret Handshake, creators of the Trump/Epstein bestie statues, decided that with the regime hyping war like a video game, they might as well turn it into one. Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell , which is also online, features three working, arcade video games set up inside DC's War Memorial; they promise "high-octane, flag-waving, boots-on-the-ground...pure pixelated patriotism," or, per Hegseth, "laser-focused maximum reps annihilation mission crushing (with) sustained unrelenting pressure." Battles - by tweet, not gun - pit US forces against ”Iranian schoolgirl,“ "DEIyatollah,“ low-flow shower heads, the Pope and other "threats to American freedom."

Games open with Trump declaring, “Another big, beautiful day as the best President ever.” Options for the prompt, “Ready to ROCK Iran back to the Stone Ages?” are “Not Yet...” “Yes” and “Hell Yes.” Yells Pete, “Let’s liberate some oil!” Trump can order a Diet Coke or bomb Iran; search for barrels of oil, ideas for Truth Social posts, or endless threats that lead nowhere; he vows to “fight this war and win it by hamburger o’clock.” Melania: “I WAS NEVER ON THE EPSTEIN JET...Did you burn the files yet?” JD, fat-faced: “I love couch.” The only way you can lose is by trying to hold Melania’s hand, which abruptly ends the game; otherwise, it’s impossible to end or win it. Irony never dies: Images have surfaced of bored National Guardsmen - a $1 million a day deployment - playing.

Another piece of protest art brings the truth of "one of the most horrific crimes in American history” to Trump's hometown. "The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room,” in New York's Tribeca, is a first-of-its-kind, 5,000-square-foot installation containing all the unsealed Epstein files - 3.5 million pages printed and bound into 3,437 volumes weighing 17,000 pounds, "a physical, undeniable record of corruption, cover-ups, and crime." The pop-up project in the Mriya Gallery was created by the non-profit Primary Facts; it took them about a month to print the files. The exhibit is on view through May 21; admission to groups for a one-hour session is free; organizers are raising funds to cover the New York premiere and bring it to other cities.

The Trumpsonian installation is built around a candlelit tribute to Epstein's more than 1,200 victims and survivors, whose names are all redacted here in closed binders - unlike at the DOJ, where they were badly, only partly redacted, a failure adding insult to injury along with an ongoing, multi-pronged cover-up. The Trump and Epstein Reading Room also includes a timeline documenting the decades-long crimes, legal proceedings and intersections between the two men's lives, all underlining the criminal absurdity of federal claims "there's nothing left to investigate." The vast trove of information, organizers say, is "what 3.5 million pages of evidence looks like." Trump, as deeply complicit as he is narcissistic, "wanted his name on stuff." Now, here it is.

From the TrumpsonianImage from Memorial Reading Room

In a triumphal move back toward democratic rule, Hungary's new leader Péter Magyar took his oath of office Saturday in a "regime-change" ceremony rich with symbolism before thousands of jubilant constituents. The sense of a hopeful new political era resonated in Magyar's tribute to a victory for "ordinary, flesh-and-blood people" - and in the gleeful moves and air guitar of unstoppable "dancing machine" and new Health Minister Zsolt Hegedűs. Lookit this guy boogie. Damn, we can't wait.

The day's celebration" marked Magya's stunning defeat last month of authoritarian Viktor Orbán after 16 years in power. A 45-year-old lawyer who founded the center-right Tisza party in 2024, Magyar won a two-thirds majority over Orbán’s nationalist Fidesz party, which will allow him to roll back many of Orbán’s policies. Tisza now controls 141 seats in the 199-seat Parliament, with over a quarter held by women; Fidesz won 52 seats, down from 135, and far-right Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland) took six. Magyar has vowed to restore democratic institutions, clamp down on corruption, repair ties with the EU, where Orbán often vetoed key decisions including support for Ukraine, and unlock about $20 billion of EU funds to help jump-start Hungary's struggling economy,

Magya was sworn in at the sprawling Parliament building as tens of thousands of Hungarians gathered outside in Kossuth Square. Marking the sea change his victory represents, the EU flag flew for the first time since Orbán’ removed it in 2014, and the Beethoven-inspired European anthem Ode to Joy, symbolizing peace and solidarity, rang out. "Today, every freedom-loving person in the world would like to be Hungarian a little," Magya told the crowd in a message aimed at healing the deep divisions of Orbán's rule. "You have taught (the) world that the most ordinary, flesh-and-blood people can defeat the most vicious tyranny...Today is the fulfillment of a long journey made together (to) once again be a common homeland for all Hungarians."

As the party went all day and into the night - when Magyar took on DJ duties - the high point of its joy and fervor may have come after Magyar's speech when Zsolt Hegedűs, unable to restrain himself, broke out into dancing as the singer Jalja began performing The Hanging Tree: "Strange things have happened here." Hungary's new 56-year-old Health Minister and an internationally recognised orthopaedic surgeon who spent 10 years working for the UK's NHS, Hegedűs had already gone viral last month when, on stage after Magyar's landslide victory, he busted out some fiery dance moves and air guitar in his excitement. This time, he said he wasn't planning a repeat performance. Then the music started...And 140 Party members joined in.

"I could see the audience had been waiting for this," he said. "I didn’t want to let down the people.” So off he went, delighting everyone (except, possibly, his kids if he has any) with his slick moves. The next day, he ascribed it all to his "emotional roller-coaster" since Magyar's victory, with his chance to repair Hungary's health care system, take down Orbán's hate-mongering propaganda, urge people to focus on their mental health. "It's not that I'm going to start dancing in Parliament, but I want (to) encourage people to adopt a healthy lifestyle...Go outside, dance, be together," he said. "The weight has begun to lift from people’s shoulders." America, weary, ravaged, hungry for peace, just imagine the miracle of it. And for now enjoy his glee.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

With no grown-ups in sight, a feckless war lurches and whipsaws on, run by a regime full of clowns, drunks, losers, grifters, all steadfastly defying the will of the people. Trump rants, Hegseth lies, Rubio punts, and shameless, "bad paranoid mess" Ka$h Patel, who actually likes to spell his name that way, is gifting bottles of personally branded bourbon - "KASH PATEL, FBI Director," boasting "strong notes of insecurity" - on all sides. Nothing to see here.

The dizzying pivots on Iran go on, with Dear Leader "paralyzed" by what he started and can't for the life of him figure out how to end. The military blockade of Iran's ports is "the greatest military maneuver in history"; also, if Iran doesn't give in to his demands, they will be "blown off the face of the earth." The "already legendary Epic Fury" is almost over, and the Hormuz Strait will be "OPEN TO ALL" if Iran just agrees to the 14-point US plan they dismiss as "a wish-list." One day, Project Freedom is "a gift to the world" that will get all 2,000 stranded ships through the Strait; the next day, with two ships through and Navy commanders resisting, he pulls the plug in the name of an almost-here "complete and final agreement" that doesn't exist. It turns out he veered away because the Saudis, angry and mistrustful, wouldn't let him use their bases or air space; NATO countries are also increasingly.barring the US from their bases. Iran's chief negotiator: "Operation Trust Me Bro failed.”

There’s more bad if unsurprising news: Pete and Donnie "lied through their teeth" about how the war's gone: Iranian airstrikes did far more damage to US military sites - hitting or destroying at least 228 hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft, key radar, defense, communication systems - than they've acknowledged, and Iran's military might is far from "obliterated." The lies flew through, in part, because they “requested” that several large satellite imagery providers withhold images of the war to tightly control a bogus “winning” narrative. The result, critics say: “Not since Vietnam has there been a more systematic effort by an administration to lie about the costs, consequences, and results of a war.” Meanwhile, NATO is increasingly moving on without the US - who can blame them - and even Australia is pissed at the economic chaos: “Interest Rates Rise Because Some (Emotionally-Stunted) Fuckwit in America Wasn’t Hugged Enough As A Child."

Amidst the carnage, a “once-in-a-lifetime stupid“ Trump posts bonkers AI memes - Biden as ”COWARD," Obama as ”TRAITOR" - and proof the Iran war is shorter than Afghanistan: "Wow! Study this chart!“ His clowns flail. Todd Blanche wants SCOTUS to let the DOJ trash E. Jean Carroll's $83.3 million win. Howard Lutnick told the House his relationship with Epstein was "inexplicable.” Hegseth still inexplicably pursues Mark Kelly for obeying the law though multiple judges tell him to stop; Pete also posted a cringe video of "performative dipshittery wrapped in fictional jingoism," insisting a proposed $1.5 trillion military budget is “putting the American taxpayer first.” Also: "Arsenal for freedom" WTF? GOP tax cuts for the rich and slashing of Obamacare tax credits will see millions lose health care and food stamps, which they call cutting fraud: "Let them eat ballrooms." ICE promises, "Mass deportations are coming." America wants none of this shit.

They also likely don't want much of what Trump's FBI - which boasts, "Law and order is back," complete with vows to hunt down "bad guys" at the World Cup - is selling. Especially given its alleged director, fresh off drunken drunken revels celebrating with his hockey "friends" in Milan and reportedly, perennially panicking about being fired after a series of scandals, is now facing yet more bad press thanks toThe Atlantic's Sarah Fitzpatrick, who's been lauded as "a fearless badass" for staying on his sketchy trail. Her first story, on April 17, cited two dozen FBI sources "alarmed" by Patel's erratic behavior, "conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences" after nights of boozing. Patel responded with a sputtering, typo-riddled, $250-million lawsuit charging Fitzpatrick and The Atlantic with an elaborate, organized-crime-like conspiracy. The FBI also reportedly launched a criminal leak investigation, usually reserved for "insider threats" involving classified documents, into who told Fitzpatrick what.

This week, Fitzpatrick followed up with another boozy story: Patel travels with a stash of personalized, bespoke, presumably taxpayer-funded Ka$h Patel bourbon he regularly hands out wherever he goes, including on official FBI business. The bottles bear the label, “KASH PATEL FBI DIRECTOR” with the rendering of an FBI shield; around it, text reads, with his preferred spelling, Director Ka$h Patel. An eagle holds the shield in its talons; sometimes the 750-milliliter bottles bear Patel’s signature. They also bear the imprint of Kentucky distillery Woodford Reserve, who have helped out MAGA before. In 2025, they gifted bottles to attendees of the 2025 inauguration luncheon, part of the swag arranged by Mitch McConnell's team. They also created a commemorative "Trump Presidential Woodford Reserve Whiskey, part of their Spirited Gifts line. It's unclear to what extent they've been impacted by or spared from Trump's infamous tariffs.

Patel is already known to have "a great affection" for swag: "He is known as being very merch forward." The Ka$h-branded crap on his website - “Choose Freedom. Shop Based" - has included t-shirts, beanies, faux-camo Fight with Kash hoodies, Fight With Kash Punisher scarf, “Justice for All” #J6PC tees to support Jan, 6 rioters, “government gangsters” playing cards, tacky juvenile "Steel Wall Art," and his children's book The Plot Against the King, about a heroic wizard, Kash the Distinguished Discoverer, who helps "King Donald" uncover conspiracies and crush his enemies. Profits supposedly go to a non-profit Kash Patel Foundation that “supports whistleblowers, education, defamation cases, etc." Patel was also already a bourbon fan during Trump's first term; he reportedly kept a barrel of bourbon at the National Security Council which was regularly brought out to celebrate successes.

In her account, Fitzpatrick lists places and occasions, including FBI events, where Patel has given out bottles of his bourbon. She reports that, when a bottle went missing during a March FBI "training seminar" with Ultimate Fighting Championship athletes in Quantico, Virginia, the incident caused Patel to "lose his mind"; he was so angry he threatened to make his staff take polygraph tests and face prosecution if they were found to have been involved. The FBI did not deny Patel gives out the whiskey; they defended the gifts as "routine" within the FBI, where Bureau officials "exchange commemorative items in formal gift settings consistent with ethics rules." A spokesperson "declined to clarify which ethical rules he is following, or which past directors also did it. When Fitzpatrick asked a former longtime senior official if he'd ever seen personally branded booze gifted, "He burst out laughing."

Several current and former FBI leaders said the action was "unheard-of," noting, "The FBI has traditionally had a zero-tolerance approach to unauthorized use of alcohol on the job or its misuse off duty.” Said one, "Handing out bottles of liquor at our premier law-enforcement agency - it makes me frightened for the country." Others called it "weird," "uncomfortable," "a "shitshow," "a misunderstanding of the Bureau's culture of quiet professionalism," “demoralizing because it suggests one set of standards for the director and another for the rest of the Bureau." Then again, said one, "If you make allegations against Patel, you're screwed." "The Kash Patel bourbon has strong notes of insecurity, narcissism, incompetence and alcohol-fueled national security risk,” wrote Dem lawmakers online. "Pairs well with taxpayer-funded getaways and the occasional SWAT-assisted wake-up call.”

"I knew one day I'd have to watch powerful men burn the world down. I just didn't expect them to be such losers." - Rebecca Shaw in The Guardian

Ka$h Patel, FBI Director and MoonshinerPhoto from The Atlantic

Hoo boy. The stupid and evil, somehow accelerating, burn. America's so-called leader, the "Worst That Has Ever Drawn Breath," manifests ever more cognitive dissonance on steroids. Absurd, addled, vindictive, looming above "a circus of death and chaos," he commits war crimes, guts voting rights, plots devastation, abases decency, murders mercy, yet whines about mean jokes. But as America reels, Banksy, Bruce, Platner and others increasingly declare, "We are not fucking doing this anymore."

Amidst what the head of Amnesty International calls "the year of the predators," humanity itself is under attack, most notably by our ludicrous narcissist and his "casual, bewildering cruelty." Despite his foolishness, Nesrine Malik writes, "This is what evil looks like": See history's portrayals of Hitler - "the startling insignificance of this man who has set the world agog" - and Mussolini, "that funny man, that consummate buffoon." Trump's "farcical puniness," Malik notes, is "a projection onto the world, not of large intent, but of smallness and fear...The consequences of his violence are secondary to the validation that comes from inflicting it (to) erase his terror of humiliation (and) feed his sociopathic appetite for escalation." Thus can deeply silly still equal dangerous.

Daily, the large and small atrocities are both, albeit without the resonance of the label "fascist" only because he lacks the wit, intent and coherence it requires. The war in Iran veers on: "Another day, another pivot. Trump flails." It's won, not, won but not by enough, it's not a war, we made a deal, we don't want a deal, talks are going well, we don't wanna talk, Iran struck a school full of young girls, or if we did it's Obama's fault. Give me ballroom or give me death: The solution to gun violence that kills 12 children a day, wounds 32 more and has affected over 390,000 kids since Columbine - is to build one rich white guy who's never expressed any grief over any of them a gilded bunker of his own. The way to keep more people safe is to kill as many as possible, including by firing squad.

Also, Bill Maher, Hakeem Jeffries, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel are low IQ losers, James Comey tried to kill and "inflict bodily harm on" him with "aggravated beachy seashell pictures," he's so "young, vital, vibrant" he could've joined the Artemis II astronauts easy like he aced his three screening tests for dementia - "A lion, a giraffe, a bear, and a shark. Which one is the bear?" - which the Villages audience def couldn't do, ditto sketchy Harvard Law graduate Hussein Obama. America's response to his musing what we'd do if a con man moron turned up - "How do you get to be president and you're stupid?": "That would suck - we'd probably have unprovoked wars, high gas prices and all our allies would hate us," "He's so close to getting it," "The Irony Meter is dead after spontaneously combusting," and "You're a fucking moron." Also, so grotesquely weird.

Latest bonkers Jesus/doctor post with an umbilical-cord-eating eagle. Nothing to see here.Image from Truth Social

Meanwhile, the Orwellian rules for what you can/can’t see/say keep spooling out, lies sold as half-truths to justify a brazen, racist, whitewashing of both present and past under the shameless moniker of content “inappropriately disparaging Americans past or living,” but always white. Among dozens of changes at our National Parks, gone are signs about the contributions of Native Americans and women, warnings about climate change "not grounded in real science," evidence of Founding Fathers owning slaves and explorers' atrocities against Native tribes. But you do get Trump's loathsome mug plastered on park passes, like on our money, buildings, passports ad nauseum. Happily, fighting back for years have been patriots like the Resistance Rangers, the Alt National Park Service and whatever genius slapped these "Sex Offender" flyers across D.C.'s parks.

Hence incrementally, far too slowly but feeding vital hope and our frayed spirits, the flip side of our grim absurdist timeline begins to emerge as Trump and his monstrous clowns flail, fail, dig their own dank holes. So many horrors should have sparked it -Gaza, ICE, USAID, the boundless greed, cruelty, stupidity. Instead, prices did it, a non-stop, staggering incompetence that saw people being screwed once too often and lied to about one too many senseless wars. Last week, Banksy registered his own anti-imperialist protest in a middle-of-the-night dropping into the heart of ceremonial London a large statue mocking such Blind Patriotism. Mirroring the classical style of surrounding monuments celebrating the British Empire's inglorious colonial past, he presents a suited man, his flag flying into his face, one foot poised to step off into his own demise. Much like, you know.

Banksy's new Blind Nationalism art work amidst London's colonial monumentsImage from Banksy Instagram page

Kicking off his Land of Hope and Dreams American tour several weeks ago, Bruce Springsteen offered his own fiery rebuttal to "a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless and treasonous administration," which drew roars from a huge first night crowd in Minneapolis. Equal parts celebration and call to action, The Boss insisted, "This is still America, and - shades of the Big Lebowski, "this will not stand." Summoning "the righteous power of art, music and rock and roll in dangerous times," he asked the crowd to "join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unbridled corruption, resistance over complacency, unity over division, and peace over....(lights come up to segue into) "WAR! What is it good for? Absolutely nothin'!" complete with Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello shredding a solo. A righteous, dynamic pair.

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In contrast, standing grotesque and slumped-shouldered in a dingy, empty corner, is the small, mad man-child who spent Monday bellowing to a weary world that Iran will be "blown off the face of the Earth" if it targets U.S. ships in the Strait of Hormuz, which his inane recklessness closed in the first place. Online, in "the most desperate shit" to ever make its demonic way from the White House, a juvenile lackey posted him saying, "Winning it" on a loop for over 60 minutes, which still didn't make it so. The text read, "Can't stop, won't stop." Please fucking do. A horrified America: "This is a real tweet from a real account about a real man who leads a real country." Kyle Kulinski, on "the war criminal of all war criminals" who makes genocidal threats and bleats about insults: “We are not fucking doing this anymore. You don't get to say shit."

Still, one Tom Wellborn says it best in, “A Eulogy for the Worst That Has Ever Drawn Breath,” subtitled “Being a Complete and Unflinching Account of the Most Loathsome Specimen Ever to Consume Resources, Occupy Space, and Insult the Patience of a Universe That Deserved So Much Better." "There are villains, and then there are monsters, and then there are creatures so cosmically, transcendently... terrible that language itself recoils," he begins. "Grammar buckles. Syntax weeps...He is this thing. He is the thing past the thing past the thing. He is the sub-basement of the human condition, the moldy crawlspace beneath that sub-basement, and the writhing centipede beneath that."

"He has no morals. Not a single one. Not even the bad morals that at least imply a moral framework: the corrupt cop who loves his dog, the mob boss who goes to church. No. He exists in a morality vacuum so total that ethicists have proposed naming it after him...A being entirely without moral content. Not evil, because evil requires intention. Simply absent of the entire apparatus...A moral negative space shaped vaguely like a man...He has no empathy....like a raisin...He is incapable of the most basic social theater that even sociopaths manage....He takes without asking. He takes everything without asking. He takes things that aren’t takeable...The principle being: I can....He is stupid in a way that is almost majestic...His stupidity (is) total. Unified....He has been wrong about everything, always, without exception..."

"He is callous the way concrete is callous: not through malice, not through choice, but through an utter material inability to register (another) person’s pain...You could show him the face of grief, and he would wonder aloud if there was parking nearby...He is vicious the way a blunt instrument is vicious: through sheer, undirected force, through the momentum of his own awfulness...He is smelted fury with no purpose, unforged, unbent, uselessly molten....(He is) a statistical outlier so extreme that evolution seems to be embarrassed by him, a glitch in the long project of civilization...And the most horrifying part...He will never know any of this. He will never know what he is." Name it, damn it, take it down. Maine's Graham Platner hopes to help do that. We wish him well.

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