Welcome to Stupid America!

According to The Hill, “A $1.66 trillion top-line spending agreement announced by congressional leaders this week will accelerate funding cuts to the Internal Revenue Service favored by Republicans. The bipartisan deal would cut $10 billion from the IRS during fiscal 2024, one year earlier than Democrats and Republicans previously agreed on in a deal to raise the debt limit last summer. The debt limit deal included $20 billion in overall reductions to a controversial IRS funding boost. The acceleration is the latest reduction in resources for the IRS, which was slated to receive $80 billion in funding through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The additional funding was intended to redesign the agency and reinvigorate U.S. tax collections with a focus on the richest taxpayers. But Republicans took immediate aim at the IRS funding increase, voting to repeal the entire allotment last year upon retaking the House and whittling away at it through successive funding deals.”

Only in this sh*t-for-brains country! Only in America! RepubliKKKlans and seemingly every other American constantly b*tches about the national debt, but no one wants to pay for it, and conservatives’ attacks on the I.R.S. evince a national deadbeat attitude. In large part, the debt continues to climb because the nation can’t stop spending and refuses to hold people, especially the rich, accountable to pay their fair share of taxes. And I don’t want to hear about “waste, fraud, and abuse” of spending. Look, f***tards, waste, fraud, and abuse are just a part of life — everywhere. You’ll find just as much of these economic inefficiencies in private, corporate, and personal endeavors. Hell! I cringe whenever I toss kale or chicken because it goes bad before I can eat it. The real question is how inefficient is the government. Not as much as RepubliKKKlans would have you believe. The percentage is in the low single digits, but RepubliKKKlans, MAGA morons, evil evangelicals, and QAnon kooks would have you believe the waste, fraud, and abuse is so vast, expansive, and intentional that deficit shortfalls could be overcome only if government weren’t so corrupt. So, instead of trying to fund the one department providing cash flow to the government, they want to hobble it. This is what a dying country looks like. Welcome to stupid America. The end is here!

Michelle Obama expressed in a podcast that she is terrified of another traitor trump presidency. Well, it’s about f***ing time she said so! It’s better than her “when they go low, we go high” B.S. comment. I tell ya, when she spoke that “catchphrase,” she lost most of her stock with me because it evinced the same old delusional wishful thinking and hope-casting mentality that begs to ignore reality and cedes a fighting political mentality to complacency. She finally woke up! (How ironic!) The only way to fight the MAGA moron movement is to scare the ever-loving-bejesus out of voters and nothing less. She’s started the fire. Let’s hope she can keep it up.

From NPR, “President Biden was just getting rolling in a campaign speech at Mother Emanuel AME — a Black church where nine people where [sic] killed by a white supremacist shooter in 2015 — when a group of protesters interrupted his remarks. ‘If you really care about the lives lost here, you should honor the lives and also call for a ceasefire in Palestine,’ a woman shouted, followed by chants of ‘Ceasefire now!'”

I have said this more times than I can count: If younger generations always vote more progressively than previous generations, then we’d be living in a f***ing utopia right now. Do you see an American utopia? I don’t. Not even f***ing close. Yet, I keep hearing dumbass Democrats and other f***tard progressive political pundits who claim to be “experts” that the youth vote is going to save America from another traitor trump presidency. Are you f***ing kidding me?!?! Poll after poll shows that Biden is losing support among key groups (e.g., youth, Blacks, and Latinos) in the coalition that got him election in 2020. This is a real f***ing concern. Even the Biden campaign is worried, and they should be because this sh*t-for-brains country can’t get its f***ing act together to collectively recognize that traitor trump is a clear and present danger to our democracy. Oh, no! Not this nation of f***tards! Half the country is unified to re-elect traitor trump to usher in an era of the American dictatorship, while the rest of America b*tches about the Israel-Hamas war and whatever else Biden has “failed” to do for them lately (i.e., voting rights legislation, student loan debt, home prices, inflation, etc.). These youth, Black, and Latino voters are ready to abandon Biden because they’re persnickety, whiney ***holes who only vote every four years and then expect Biden to perform miracles. (And it only takes a small percentage of this coalition group to impact the next election for the worse.) Yet, it never f***ing fails. It happened with Obama. He was swept into office with high expectations and momentum, but then the exact same coalition of his supporters (i.e., youth, Blacks, and Latinos) failed to show up to the polls two years later in the midterm elections, and Democrats got crushed, losing any ability to control Congress. Then, these same groups wondered why Obama couldn’t get anything done. This is what a country of morons looks like. The same coalition of f***tards (a generation after Obama) is doing it again — did it again! (News flash: Democrats lost control of the House in the 2022 midterms. How has that worked out for them? Mostly gridlock.) Un-f***ing-believable. This country never f***ing learns! Americans don’t learn, don’t know history, and are unimaginative. Because they lack these assets, the youth, Black voters, and Latino voters are clueless as to what traitor trump has in store for America in his second term despite telegraphing plainly and openly his intentions. I know history, and I can imagine quite a lot, so I’m terrified of traitor trump’s return to the White House. But whatever! Idiot Americans are about to f*** around and find out!

I give up at this point! Ya, know what? F*** it! F*** it all. If the idiot generation of youth and the Black vote and the Latino vote are that disappointed with Biden, then fine. F***ing stay home or vote for traitor trump or vote third party (Christ!), which is a vote for traitor trump. A very recent TikTok clip — exemplifying everything you need to know about the state of the youth and minority vote — is seared in my mind: A young Black female who voted for Biden in 2020 says she’s not voting for him again. In her words, “Sorry, but not sorry!” Fine! Whatever! I don’t f***ing care at this point. If she and like-minded voters really think a protest vote against Biden or failing to vote altogether is going to get them closer to their imagined better America, then good f***ing luck with that, morons! I can’t help you. You are lost. (I assume this TikToker has no idea there is a war on women’s bodies.) How can you reason with stupidity? How can you convince people who are oblivious to the obvious? When we lose our democracy and when America becomes the hellscape they had hoped to avoid by voting for Biden the first time but were too petulant to re-elect him, then I don’t want to hear their b*tching about how bad things have become. (And don’t get me started about “Biden is too old” sh*t! You know who else is old? Your grandparents. I assume you’ve thrown them under the bus already as irrelevant, right?) This country is so f***ing lost; I fear it cannot be redeemed at this point. There is simply too much stupidity that the country cannot be fixed. Oh, well. Welcome to f***tard America! Too stupid to endure! We get the government we deserve and desire!

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.