Author: admin

The only surprising thing about this move by SCOTUS is that they did not rule in traitor trump’s favor via the shadow docket. They have the votes to do it. I guess they want to enshrine the mootness of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment by ruling on the “merits” (or lack thereof) of the so-called insurrectionist ban in the Constitution. As I have constantly said, the uber-conservative supermajority wing of justices on SCOTUS already has the end result in mind; they just need to find the legal reasoning and arguments that will get them there, which, no doubt, requires ignoring the language of the Constitution. To be sure, this SCOTUS does not care about the Constitution; all they want is to convert our democracy into a theocracy, led by an autocrat. And, I fear, with this seminal case, the liberal justices will sacrifice their principles to join the other six justices because, no matter what, this opinion needs to be unanimous. I promise you this will be the case. By a vote of 9-0, SCOTUS will keep traitor trump on the ballot in every state, sealing the doom of our democracy and forever signaling that anyone — including those who wish to destroy the government — can run for president because why the f*** not? This is what a dying, stupid country looks like! Mark my words, f***tards. Mark them well. America is doomed, and SCOTUS will crown its demise by making traitor trump the country’s first dictator! This is similar to how the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire. Oh, well. Welcome to stupid America!

President Biden gave a speech on Friday calling on Americans to defend our democracy against traitor trump. It was dark Brandon in his finest form. Finally, Biden calls out traitor trump by name, even calling him “despicable,” which is a cousin of Hillary’s “deplorable.” (Hillary was right; she’s always been right about everything!) However, the question remains: Can Biden keep up the dark Brandon mode of campaigning? Dare I say, I don’t know. (The answer should be a confident yes. But I just don’t know.) Biden has (mistakenly) failed to call out traitor trump by name for the last three, which is why, in part, the insurrection-in-chief has remained so popular. Biden and other dumbass Democrats made the fatal mistake of underestimating and ignoring traitor trump, believing he’ll “fade away,” which I correctly predicted he would never do. In fact, I also correctly predicted that the idiot would run again as soon as it was clear he lost the 2020 election. Of course, he would. While the rest of the moronic pundit and political “expert” class claimed traitor trump was politically dead after his loss and the January 6 insurrection, I was confident and sure that he was never going into that good night. And, naturally, I was right because I actually understand the true nature of the traitor-in-chief and the American people. I understand Americans are too stupid to avoid their fate, which is the demise of democracy. But I digress.

Can Biden and dumbass Democrats keep up the pressure campaign to save our democracy? To convince a benighted electorate that America’s democracy is on the 2024 ballot? Biden has this bad habit of delivering these required (and often long overdue) firey speeches every so often when he should be (should have been) doing it more frequently. Traitor trump has been a constant, daily threat to our democracy, but Biden and other dumbass Democrats treat this pervasive threat from the chief insurrectionist as an on-again, off-again bad relationship. Traitor trump, RepubliKKKlans, MAGA morons, evil evangelicals, and QAnon kooks have been slowly destroying our democracy, but Biden and dumbass Democrats want to conduct business as usual while Rome burns. Un-f***ing-believable! Also, more importantly, are the American people receptive to Biden’s pro-democracy message and intelligent enough to understand what’s at risk in this next presidential election? I doubt it. Political “experts” keep pointing to the Democrats’ 2022 midterm “successes” as validity of Biden’s pro-democracy messaging, but let’s be clear: A presidential election is always unlike any other election. Equating midterm, local, and off-year elections to the presidential contest is always wrong. The former does not inform the latter; rather, the former is a buyer’s remorse reaction to the latter. Welcome to stupid America. The end is already here! People are just too f***ing stupid to have figured out that fact yet.

From CNN, “Former President Donald Trump on Saturday suggested the Civil War could have been avoided through ‘negotiation,’ arguing that the fight to end slavery in the U.S. was ultimately unnecessary and that Abraham Lincoln should have done more to avoid bloodshed. ‘So many mistakes were made. See, there was something I think could have been negotiated, to be honest with you,’ Trump said at a campaign event in Newton, Iowa. ‘I think you could have negotiated that. All the people died. So many people died.’… Trump did not say how he would have prevented the conflict, which he also called ‘so horrible but so fascinating.’ ‘It was, I don’t know, it was just different,’ Trump said of the war. ‘I just find it – I’m so attracted to seeing it.’ After describing the wounds soldiers sustained on the battlefield, Trump said, ‘There’s nothing nice about it,’ adding the war was a ‘tough one for our country.’… ‘Which part of the Civil War “could have been negotiated”? The slavery part? The secession part? Whether Lincoln should have preserved the Union?’ Cheney wrote. ‘Question for members of the GOP – the party of Lincoln – who have endorsed Donald Trump: How can you possibly defend this?’”

Jesus-f***ing-Christ-on-the-m*****f***ing-Cross! I can’t! I just f***ing can’t anymore with this sh*t-for-brains country anymore. I just can’t. And I have no earthly idea how I will survive the daily avalanche of stupidity that will surely emanate from the empty space between traitor trump’s ears in this second term. Perhaps there will be too much revolution in the streets to occupy my attention, but I certainly cannot tolerate another four years of that idiot-in-chief standing before the American public waxing nonsensical jibberish. Sadly, it is but a mere sliver of the American populace who share my feelings of impending dread. As for the rest of the f***tards of America, they think traitor trump is some f***ing G.D. genius. They really f***ing do. Traitor trump claims before the morons of America that he’s a genius and “like a really smart person,” and they f***ing believe him. Christ! Kill me now! I live in stupid f***ing hell, and there seems to be no way to escape the stupidity. The average American idiot looks to traitor trump and thinks he really is as smart as he says he is, without question. This is what a dying country looks like, f***tards. Too stupid to endure. Welcome to stupid America!

I don’t know why, but unflattering reviews of Saltburn have stirred my ire. Let me say from the outset that Saltburn was a fantastic movie, and I was particularly taken by the performance of Barry Keoghan. Indeed, the only reason I streamed the film is because I noticed that Keoghan was in it, and the only reason I know of the actor is because of his role in The Banshees of Inisherin. Even though he was a supporting actor in the Irish-centric movie, he outshone the main characters. (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson were fine, but nothing in their performances was memorable, given that the movie was literally about two feuding men and fingers in an ass — that’s all you need to know.) Needless to say, Keoghan’s role as Oliver Quick in Saltburn was even more captivating. This guy can f***ing act! I have a relatively simple test for determining the greatest of an actor, and it is this: Do I believe him (in his role)? Has he convinced me (as his character)? Whatever the role — major or minor and beyond the words spoken — this is what I ask myself. Movie critics almost unanimously give Keoghan the praise he’s due despite some who generally panned the movie.

Also, let me say that I’m terrible at watching movies; I rarely see the plot twists coming. Although with Saltburn, I had a sense of what was in store once Oliver started evincing his true nature. But the subtleties that professional movie critics pick up on are usually lost on me. For example, when Oliver throws the mourning stone into the waterway, but it lands on a ledge instead, missing the water, it did not occur to me at the time that Oliver was lying about his father’s death. Maybe I’m just too obtuse to apprehend the foreshadowing, symbolism, and other theatrical storytelling devices in real-time. I like to watch a movie as it’s presented, uncritically, and then I ruminate on its “meaning” to the extent there is such a deeper message afterward. But it would seem that critics are particularly annoyed by the movie’s commentary — or lack thereof — on classism as it keeps coming in review after review. One critic I read was offended — for lack of a better word — that the classism storyline was underdeveloped or muddled. And this is where I start to get aggravated. (One critic said he was bored and confused by the movie. I think that the last thing a critic who pans a movie should do is claim to be confused. Saltburn was not at all a complicated movie to understand. In fact, except for the anticipated plot twist — as every thriller must eventually reveal — the film was rather straightforward in its telling. I could not fault someone for thinking that a movie like Inception as being a bit confusing — another one of my favorite movies — but Saltburn was not an incoherent piece of work. Perhaps critics who are so easily confounded should find another line of work.)

It seems all too often that critics are looking for the writer or director to produce some metaphysical masterpiece or reveal some earth-scattering and, heretofore, never-conceived trenchant secret of human nature. And I’m not sure why a writer or director is expected to create an exhaustive and critical exploration of a topic because it shows up in a movie. In this case, one of the subject matters in Saltburn was the rich “versus” the poor. (I have “versus” in quotes because I’m not convinced the movie should have been interpreted strictly as a competition between the two groups, as classism connotes.) True, a movie’s writer presumably includes dialogue and creates scenes with a specific purpose in mind, but critics often fail in their attempts to extrapolate more meaning than what the writer or director presents on the silver screen. In Saltburn, critics focused too much on the importance of the rich versus the poor storyline. While classism was a significant aspect of the film, it was a backdrop to its primary and more prominent themes: Obsession and desire. The objects of Oliver’s obsession and desire were both Felix and his family’s wealth. To what extent love and money were Oliver’s motivations from the very start of his encounter with Felix, or if they were something that Oliver developed over time, remains unknown. That is to say, was Felix a mark from the start? It is this open question that arguably lends to Saltburn’s mystique. (And unlike the Talented Mr. Ripley, Saltburn was edgier; Tom was a schoolboy compared to Oliver.) Classism is merely the stage on which the conflict must occur. If Filex and Oliver were both poor or rich, the movie would simply be a flat, obsessive love story turned tragic. A clash of the classes is incidental to the storytelling; it is not the story itself. If it were, I would expect a fuller exploration of the subject by the writer, but it’s not, and critics who think it is are reaching too far for somthing that is not supposed to be there.

According to NBC News, “When he inked his 100th new judge in early 2023, President Joe Biden was outpacing former President Donald Trump at putting judicial nominees on the federal bench. But as he enters his fourth year in office, Biden and the Democratic-led Senate have fallen behind the speed at which Trump and the GOP-controlled chamber were churning out new judges. To date, Biden has secured 166 confirmed judges — 126 on district courts, 39 on appeals courts and one on the Supreme Court. At this juncture, Trump had secured 187 confirmed judges — 133 on district courts, 50 on appeals courts, two on the Supreme Court and two on the U.S. Court of International Trade. Biden will need to steer 68 more judges through the Senate this year to catch Trump’s four-year total. Democrats have a 51-49 majority in the chamber and have enjoyed broad party unity behind Biden’s nominees, even winning some Republican votes for many of them.”

Honestly! We are so f***ing screwed. Dumbass Democrats are leading us right into the collapse of our democracy. I have been incredibly critical of the Democratic Party because it seems entirely unwilling and unable to fight! They fail to fight against traitor trump. They fail to fight against the RepubliKKKlan Party. Democratic Senators, in particular, are unable to coordinate themselves to accomplish the most significant task of their office: Confirm Democratic-appointed judges to the federal bench. Getting the most judges placed in the federal judiciary nominated by a Democratic president is the singular critical task of any administration. But I guess — unsurprisingly — Democrats are f***ing up this basic mission. I have spent years railing against traitor trump’s incompetence, and here we have Biden and dumbass Democrats evincing the same (or worse) level of incompetence when it comes to confirming lifetime judges. It is incomprehensible to me that after the midterm elections, when Democrats gained a seat in the Senate, confirmations have slowed down! Un-f***ing-believable! Only dumbass Democrats could pull off this level of ineptitude. I expected nothing less. Welcome to stupid America. We are doomed! Mark my words, f***tards!

From CNN, “Anxiety mounts every day that a full-scale Middle East war could erupt from the flames of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. ‘We feel and we’re afraid of it,’ Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour this week. ‘We don’t want any escalation in the war. … We don’t like a regional war because it’s dangerous to everybody. Dangerous to Lebanon, dangerous to Israel and to the countries surrounding Israel,’ he said, adding, ‘A regional war is bad for everybody.’”

Christ! If I have to read one more MSM article trying to wish us into a wider regional war, then I’m going to lose my f***ing G.D. mind! Every f***ing day, these idiot political pundits and “experts” keep turning up the fear factor that the Israel-Hamas war is suddenly going to engulf us all. F***ing non-sense. Look, morons! No country in their right mind — including Iran — is going to pick a fight with Israel and her allies (e.g., the U.S.). The militaries of these Middle Eastern countries are notoriously bad — just f***ing awful. By comparison, they’re ill-trained and ill-equipped. And they know it!

Have you seen these soldiers “march” on parade? They are ridiculous, and I’m not sure how to describe it. They “march” as if they’re running in place, but they “run” with a “stride” whereby they kinda jump and alternate bringing up their knees to their chest. It’s awkward looking, and they can’t seem to coordinate their movements, so they all “march” to a slightly different beat. Or they (unnecessarily) swing their arms wildly, also out of sync with each other. An army that can’t march correctly, can’t f***ing fight. I learned that in the first and second Iraqi wars. Armies in Muslim countries are pathetic. This is why these people resort to terrorist attacks and guerrilla warfare tactics because, as a military unit, they are unable to coordinate their marching, let alone their fighting.

This is why Israel can conduct successful attacks inside Lebonan and Syria, and these countries can’t do a f***ing thing about it. They dare not retaliate. So, Lebonan and Syria just have to live with Israel’s impunity to act. The I.D.F. and the U.S. would destroy these nations’ military forces in a New York minute. Given the extreme volatility of Muslims in the Middle East, a country on the losing side of a fight would descend into even greater turmoil, and the government regime would be toppled a la the Arab Spring. So, stop with the hand-wringing! This war will remain contained to Israel, Hamas, and these fringy terrorist groups annoying the rest of the world as usual. The fighting will eventually burn itself out.

The Havard Crimson writes, “Growing plagiarism allegations plagued the final weeks of former Harvard President Claudine Gay’s tenure, setting the stage for her resignation Tuesday afternoon. The allegations — many of which are individually minor but span Gay’s entire academic career — cast scrutiny on her scholarship. Many within and without the University have argued that she ought to be held to the same standard as Harvard’s own students and faculty and called for her resignation. … The new claims involve Gay’s 1997 Harvard dissertation and one previously unaddressed academic article — ‘The Effect of Minority Districts and Minority Representation on Political Participation in California,’ published in 2001 by the Public Policy Institute of California — in which Gay used a description of the Voting Rights Act which closely mirrored a description in a 1999 book by David T. Canon. But Canon, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, told the Free Beacon that he is ‘not at all concerned about the passages.’ ‘This isn’t even close to an example of academic plagiarism,’ he said. … Following an independent review, the Corporation announced that though instances of improper citations had been identified in Gay’s scholarship, they did not violate Harvard’s standards for research misconduct.”

And then from the AP, “Reviews by Harvard found multiple shortcomings in Gay’s academic citations, including several instances of ‘duplicative language.’ The university concluded the errors ‘were not considered intentional or reckless’ and didn’t rise to misconduct. But the allegations continued, with new ones as recently as Monday. … Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who helped orchestrate the effort against Gay, celebrated her departure as a win in his campaign against elite institutions of higher education. On X, formerly Twitter, he wrote ‘SCALPED,’ as if Gay was a trophy of violence, invoking a gruesome practice taken up by white colonists who sought to eradicate Native Americans and also used by some tribes against their enemies.”

As someone who has written countless research papers at university and a dissertation for my doctoral work, this plagiarism “scandal” intrigues me. First, I should note that these “charges” of plagiarism are being ginned up by a right-wing racist troll (Rufo). I find it rich that conservatives, who are hostile to learning and enlightenment, think they understand the scholarly process. They, like the rest of their brethren moronic base, apprehend nothing. Conservatives and the conservative hoards of zombie followers (RepubliKKKlans, MAGA morons, evil evangelicals, and QAnon kooks) are too f***ing dumb, which is why they’re always so offended by smart people and aggrieved because they were at the bottom of their class in high school or community college, or they are dropouts altogether and never succeeded at much in their lives. So it’s ironic that these people should nitpick claims of “plagiarism” against a real scholar and the world’s best university.

In short, plagiarism is passing off someone else’s work or idea as your own. Failing to credit someone’s work can be overt or subtle, and the subtle form of plagiarism is difficult to detect and unintentionally avoid. (And it’s not always obvious where someone else’s idea ends and a researcher’s new idea begins or where a similar theory overlaps. A researcher can arrive at the same idea as someone else but may not know it. Is that person plagiarizing?) Nonetheless, overt or direct plagiarism is rather easy to catch. Anyone who has run their paper through Turnitin understands the score they receive is based on matching phrases and sentences to existing works. Exact matches better be in quotation marks and accompanied with a citation. And near matches should also include a citation. And, ideally, the amount of “matching” — even if adequately sourced — should be relatively minimal compared to the rest of your work since a research paper is supposed to be mostly your ideas and your wording, not so heavily based on others. It would appear that Dr. Gay was a bit sloppy in this regard, which is why her allegations of plagiarism (“duplicative language”) were not considered intentional and egregious misconduct.

According to ABC News, “A Nevada judge was attacked Wednesday by a defendant [Deobra Delone Redden, 30] in a felony battery case who leaped over a defense table and the judge’s bench, landing atop her and sparking a bloody brawl involving court officials and attorneys, officials and witnesses said. In a violent scene captured by courtroom video, Clark County District Judge Mary Kay Holthus fell back from her seat against a wall and suffered some injuries but was not hospitalized, courthouse officials said.” The question is this: Do you want to be that stereotypical guy who gives ammunition to racists, or do you want to fly above the hate? The pictures hold the answer.

In an excellent piece from The New Republic, Brynn Tannehill writes:

Which is to say, an unbreakable plurality of the GOP explicitly wants fascism. Another 29 percent are OK with it as long as it doesn’t directly affect them (though I expect a lot of them are going to unexpectedly get their faces eaten by leopards). And of the remaining 28 percent who don’t like it, Trump’s approval ratings within the GOP as president suggest that most who don’t like what he is saying will pull the lever for him anyway in November 2024. … Some might point out that only 28 percent of U.S. voters are registered as Republicans. True, but Republican-leaning independents constitute another 17 percent, and actual swing voters are relatively rare. So the best-case scenario is that only 14 percent of voters are really dedicated to installing a fascist dictatorship. However, history tells us that that is a sufficient critical mass to send a country spinning into horror. … Which leaves us where we are today. One party is dedicated to bringing about a dictatorship that plans to seize power for “a generation or two,” purging society of the enemies that are purportedly destroying the nation from within. The other party is a vaguely center-left coalition, too weak to bring about effective change because the country’s Constitution and societal fragmentation make it politically and legally impossible. … As bad as this is, I haven’t even gotten to the really depressing part. Most people assume that if fascism came to America, we would recognize it as individuals and refuse to go along with it. In reality, very few people are directly affected by living in an authoritarian country; life is mostly “boring and tolerable” for the majority. “Yes,” most people would say, “but if asked to do things I know were wrong, I would refuse to comply. Because I’m an American, and I know better.” Except, we’re already testing this every day in red states, and failing miserably [i.e., abortion rights in Texas]. … Ultimately, when the power of the state comes to bear on people, including Americans, the vast majority will not do the right thing. Most (sane) people admire Martin Niemöller, but when confronted with the reality of how fascism corrupts ordinary men, almost no one emulates his willingness to do the right thing by defying the state. When Trump takes power and turns the full might of the government against anyone who might resist, the guardrails of individual conscience will evaporate faster than a snow flurry in hell [emphasis added].

Bingo! Basically, it’s what I’ve been saying for years. This sh*t-for-brains country is going to unwittingly fall into fascism because people are bored, stupid, and don’t care. And it doesn’t take that many to lead us into an American dictatorship. Indeed, I will go one step further than many authors and pundits who are raising alarm bells by saying fascism in America is guaranteed! Traitor trump is sure to win (with only a plurality of the vote), but no one believes me. And people simply just don’t f***ing care. F***tards of America are pathetic, apathetic, and just too f***ing G.D. stupid to keep their democracy. How many times must I say it? Oh, well. You heard it here first. Welcome to stupid, stupid America. The end is here; you just haven’t realized it yet.

According to the Texas Tribune, “Federal regulations do not require emergency rooms to perform life-saving abortions if it would run afoul of state law, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. After the overturn of Roe v. Wade in June 2022, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sent hospitals guidance, reminding them of their obligation to offer stabilizing care, including medically necessary abortions, under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). ‘When a state law prohibits abortion and does not include an exception for the life of the pregnant person — or draws the exception more narrowly than EMTALA’s emergency medical condition definition — that state law is preempted,’ the guidance said. … ‘We agree with the district court that EMTALA does not provide an unqualified right for the pregnant mother to abort her child,’ Englehardt wrote. ‘EMTALA does not mandate medical treatments, let alone abortion care, nor does it preempt Texas law.’”

Then according to the AP, “Thousands of women stocked up on abortion pills just in case they needed them, new research shows, with demand peaking in the past couple years at times when it looked like the medications might become harder to get. … Medication abortion accounts for more than half of all abortions in the U.S., and typically involves two drugs: mifepristone and misoprostol. A research letter published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine looked at requests for these pills from people who weren’t pregnant and sought them through Aid Access, a European online telemedicine service that prescribes them for future and immediate use. … ‘People are looking at looming threats to reproductive health access, looming threats to their reproductive rights, and potentially thinking to themselves: How can I prepare for this? Or how can I get around this or get out ahead of this?’ said Dr. Abigail Aiken, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the letter’s authors.”

Why do I highlight these two stories? For one, they were both published within a day of each other, and, second, they evince a nation wherein women are continuing to lose their bodily autonomy. Texas, especially, is bending over backward to ensure no women can get an abortion, particularly in an emergency. Oh, well. And I love how women are stocking up on abortion pills, expecting the worst. It’s probably a good thing since abortion pills will soon be outlawed once SCOTUS rules on a case before them this year. Mark my words! But the primary reason I bring these two articles together to opine is this: No one cares! I’ve said this repeatedly until I’m blue in the face. No! One! F***ing! Cares! Oh, sure, some care. Those in emergency rooms and requesting abortion pill prescriptions care, but they are a minority. The vast majority don’t care. How can I be so sure? How can I say this with conviction? Look around. What do you see? Nothing! Again, I say: Unless and until women take to the streets to demand their rights back, unless and until women and those men who support women’s rights engage in civil disobedience like those in the 1960s demanding civil rights for Black Americans, and unless and until women and men get serious about ousting RepubliKKKlans from political office — rather than implying voting on abortion protection ballot measures and constitutional amendments — then Americans are not serious about protecting women’s rights. I don’t see a large-scale, nationwide outcry. I see some protests. I see some people showing up to the polls to pass specific measures in specific states to protect the right to choose. But I don’t see anything that approaches en-mass movement. And I certainly don’t see the American voter holding the one and only party that wants to take women’s rights back to the 1850s. Instead, I see the RepubliKKKlan Party gaining more seats (e.g., in the U.S. House). It’s as if f***tard Americans don’t believe RepubliKKKlans when they say they’re not done with restricting women’s rights. I don’t know what it will take for idiot Americans to wake up or to convince them. Perhaps Americans are completely incorrigible. Perhaps America is beyond saving at this point, and the lack of urgency to push back against women losing the right to healthcare is emblematic of a hopeless nation. Oh, well. No one cares because abortion rights are always someone else’s problem. Welcome to stupid America!