July The 47th

Worst Birthday Ever 

July 4, 2026

This year, if not for the raging racism, fascism and dumb-fuckism of the Trump Era, We The People would be celebrating the 250^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. America may have declared its independence on that day, but it would take the better part of another century before there was even a hint of humanity and equality, and another century after that before this nation could be considered an actual democracy.

Self-Evident Stuff

The truths those (mostly slave-owning) wealthy white men held to be self-evident in Philadelphia in 1776 – despite the overriding hypocrisy of slavery in which so many of the signers were wallowing (and the genocide that made white people in America possible) – have been on a rickety roller-coaster ever since. Hopping on the ride to a democratic republic seemed like a good idea at the time. To paraphrase Ben Franklin, “A good idea if you can make it real.” The waxing and waning of democratic principles and practices continues to this day. Except, if you could just stop screaming and banging your head against the wall for a moment, you can see a little way up ahead, the track is badly damaged. There just might be enough time for some roller-coaster repair person to at least duct tape the damn thing together enough so that we don’t end up doing a Thelma and Louise off the rails resulting in a high-speed sudden death and in the closing of this not-so-amusement park.

The Farce Of July

Full disclosure: The last big birthday, America’s Bicentennial in 1976, was also a fraught time. We had an unelected president, put there because he promised to pardon his traitorous predecessor, who left in disgrace one step ahead of the impeachment squad. As a member of the rag-tag Philadelphia Painted Faces Brigade, I and several others refused to be sequestered far from the focal point of the action at Independence Hall. We took our mini-protest right to the building where it happened. We braved mounted police, undercover FBI agents and angry “patriots” accosting us with the “Love it or leave it” bullshit. We thought that birthday sucked…until we got to today.

I and Anonymous

I don’t know how I would have commemorated America’s 250^th had we not been in our current dilemma. Other than this finely crafted hissy fit the Paying Attention™ team is boycotting all festivities on this day. Surely this would have been a much bigger celebration in Washington, DC had not Donald “Death-To-America” Trump been president, and had he not depressed the living fuck out of most Americans by trashing the economy, the Constitution and perpetrated the most virulent criminal enterprise ever run out of the White House…or the remains thereof. And had he not made everything about him.

from Matt Wuerker

During this shoulda-been celebratory year, love it or hate it, many of us and our ancestors have continuously worked for a more perfect union. Today, we have a fake president, who incited a coup, pardoned those of his followers who were convicted in a court of law for engaging in insurrection, and is still trying to figure a way to make off with nearly two billion of our dollars for the sole purpose of paying off his metastatic minions via his heinous, Orwellian “Anti-Weaponization Fund”. This is meant to provide Trump’s thugs to with something like a million bucks each (unless the My Pillow guy gets the four-hundred-million he’s applying for) and the confidence to rise up again in support of their dear leader and against our democracy and our Constitution when he refuses to leave office on January 20, 2029, putting an ignominious end to this great experiment we call the United States.

Rumor has it* that Trump is planning to have himself lying…I mean lying in state in perpetuity, as president-in-death, for the remainder of time, once he has shuffled off this mortal coil, and gone to meet his hopefully remorseful maker. Like Weekend at Bernie’s…with more fascism.

Trump will have little if anything to say about this nation’s 250-year history. He knows nothing of it. He cares even less. Perhaps one of his sociopathic speech writers will cajole him into making a passing reference to America while he makes this day…say it with me now…all about him.

Don’t Say Yay

You may recall when the great George Takei donated his very name to the fight against Tennessee’s dumb-ass “Don’t Say Gay” law.

George Takei vs. Tennessee's "Don't Say Gay" Bill

Perhaps one day, the rest of us can make it so the word Trump replaces the word ‘fuck’. As in, “Go Trump yourself.” or “What the Trump is going on here?” or “Don’t Trump with me you Trumping asshole.”

This could have the added benefit of being permitted on American television where squeamish fuckwit dinosaurs still rule the airwaves, and in the fucking year 20fucking26 there are still words you can’t fucking say on television. But you can buy enough guns to murder a classroom full of small children in 15 minutes, even if you are mentally unstable. And you can have a 34-time-convicted felon elected president of the United States.

Oh, I almost forgot, it’s about time for a surprise...

Question For The Day:

How fucking fucked up and/or depressingly apropos is it that America is celebrating our 250^th birthday with fucking Donald Fucking Trump as our fucking, fucked-up president?

Asking for a friend.

Bonus Question:

Considering the unfuckingbelievable fact that Flag Day is also the birthday of Donald January 6, 2021 Trump, is this, as suggested by H.L. Mencken, what America was always meant to be?

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*A rumor that originated right here, right now…but you didn’t hear it from us.

This has been your Paying Attention™ Question For The Day.

Zappa/Beefheart – Bicentennial tribute

Schmuck Of The Day – Old Schmuck Donald

Saluting A Frequently Returning “Champion”

July 3, 2026

He’s calling it The Great American State Fair.

Donald Death-to-America Trump’s celebration of himself, and by accident the 250^th anniversary of the independence of the country he barely pretends to lead, is in full swing. Well, not so much swing as collapse – just like Old Donald himself. Just ask (off the record, of course) the 22 specialists who recently examined him.

As you can see (below), there are literally tens of people blanketing, well not so much blanketing as dotting the National Mall for the big event.

Darn Old Trump is scheduled to address the “crowd” tomorrow with what he described as a very long speech, so the crowd size (like the temperature) just might hit triple digits. That is, until he starts blathering on. If recent events are any indication, once he starts relitigating the 2020 election, how mean everyone is to him, what a great job he is doing, Barack Hussein Obama, Sleepy Joe Biden and how low gas prices are, people will decide it’s too hot, he’s too stupid, and use their time more productively, like leaping in front of a bus or lying across some train tracks.

Desperate crowds flee the Orange Gas Cloud

This has been your Paying Attention™ Schmuck Of The Day. Schmuck on!

Question For The Night – Job Security?

Takes One To Know One

July 2, 2026

As we approach the recognition* of the 250^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a somewhat unrelated question.

Today’s Question For The Night:

Is Howard Lutnick still on Trump’s cabinet because he, possibly more than anyone else still living and not named Ghislain Maxwell, knows everything Donald Jeffrey Epstein Trump did in the

Donald Trump Memorial Epstein Files

especially the ones that have already been 86ed?

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*Any actual celebration will be tainted by the fact that we currently have a criminal, traitorous, fascist occupying the Remains-of-the-White-House. It’s a bit hard to whoop it up with our democracy teetering on the brink death.

This has been your Paying Attention™ Question For The Night.

Fascinating

Crow Bar

July 1, 2026

I for one will welcome our new corvine overlords.

Thought For The Day – Calling Doctor Jesus

What’s Up Don?

June 30, 2026

I hate to dredge this up again, but you probably remember when Deathbed Donald reposted an image depicting him as Jesus Christ healing the sick. Donny the Anti-Christ claimed he had no idea that was supposed to be Jesus with light emanating from his hands as he laid them on an obviously unwell man. Donald lied that he thought the image depicted him as a doctor. I wonder how many of the 22 doctors that were recently required to figure out what the actual fuck is wrong with Der Furor were adorned with flowing robes and shawls and holding balls of light.

Dr. Donald J. Christ, MT

Dear Don:

Why the fuck would anyone in their right mind ever equate you with being a doctor? Aren’t you the guy who suggested ingesting bleach or shining a strong, powerful light up the ass to cure COVID. Aren’t you the guy who said there would be fewer COVID cases if there was less testing? Am I remembering that right? Yes, I am. So, you think someone sees you as a doctor? Jack “Dr. Death” Ke vorkian, the father of physician assisted suicide kept his patients in better health than you ever would, even if you could. You don’t heal the sick, you make the sick. You have no concept of the motto “First do no harm.” Harm is all you do.

Fake physician, heal thyself…think Kevorkian.

Signed,
Unsigned

This has been your Paying Attention™ Thought For The Day.

Schmucks Of The Day – Court Is In Secession

Courting Disasters

June 29, 2026

The traitorous, Trumpist anti-Constitution stupor majority on the Extreme Court are the big winners this time around. The racist, misogynist, anti-democracy Psycho Six – led by the blatantly, objectively and shamelessly criminal scumbags Sam Alito and Clarence “Uncle” Thomas, and happily aided and abetted by Chief Injustice John “Racism In America Is Over” Roberts, who has been fighting against voting rights since the 1980s.

Their list of heinous transgressions is almost endless…and ending our democracy. It will take nothing short of a miracle to extricate this nation from this Court’s legal-ish quicksand and reacquaint ourselves with the Constitution that provides a decent framework, yet requires no small amount of modernization along with serious and far-reaching safeguards against the kinds of depredations perpetrated by the current crop of crooked creeps controlling this Court.

Spot the loonies

Fuck these clowns and the whores the rode in on.

This has been your Paying Attention™ Schmucks Of The Day. Schmuck on!

BOUNS TRACK

Monty Python – Spot The Looney

Broken News – Transparency In Government

From The Department Of Redundancy Department Circular File

June 29, 2026

Our intrepid, unpaid gaggle of interns discovered the existence of a cabinet position that has been kept secret. However, once you learn of this new department, so much of what we have been seeing for the past eighteen months will make much more – for lack of a better word – sense.

Seal of the United States Department of the Inferior

This has been a Paying Attention™ Special Broken News report.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled nap.

A Dummy Without A Ventriloquist

A New Definition Of Insanity: Donald Trump

June 28, 2026

On the Re-fucked-up Pool:

“And then the fake news says, “Oh, well, it didn’t work. Of course it worked. Everything I does works. What I do works. In fact I looked at it just a little while ago, it looks perfect already but we’re fixing it.”
   Donald “Lying-Stupid-And-Wrong-As-Usual” Trump, June 24, 2026

On Dems winning the midterms:

“You’ll live in squalor. There’ll be no food. There’ll be no housing. There’ll be no military, no law and order. There’ll be no nothing. There’ll be no nothing. You’ll be a third world inhabitant in every way and everyone will suffer or die.”
    Donald “Talking-About-Himself-As-Usual” Trump, June 26, 2026

Says the guy doesn’t care that he caused food prices to go through the roof, refused to sign a housing bill just days earlier because he was having a tantrum, has depleted our military capabilities for a war of choice that he lost bigly, is running a massive criminal enterprise out of the Remains-of-the-White House, and killed more Americans than any other president.

It looks perfect already but we’re fixing it.

Dear Don:

Sir, it is difficult to type with all the tears in my eyes. I am admittedly not a big, strong guy who never cried before. But now, as I think about you, the tears are streaming from my eyes. These invisible vandals who took a box cutter or knife of some kind, as you so strongly keep saying, and sliced up the big, blue, beautiful indestructible pool, or pond, or lake covering, must pay for their non-existent crime of the century. Plus, it looks perfect already but we’re fixing it? Can you hear yourself taking, sir?

Also, having no nothing is a good thing. You must be a stupid person. And seriously, learn the fucking language, King Minus.

And please, and I mean this sincerely, with all due respect – please, go fuck yourself, or get some big, strong man with tears in his eyes to do it for you. A grateful nation will thank you.

Yours Bigly,
I. Mangrey

Vance Actually Fucking Said This™*

  

Loser From Another Planet

June 27, 2026

“If Watergate happened tomorrow it would be like a twelve-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”
                 JD Vance, June 26, 2026 (and looking quite orangey)

Is it my imagination, or is JD looking more orangier than ever?

Once again, we call on our guru of grammar, the sensei of sentences, the duke of definitions, the prince of phrases, the one, the only, Inigo Montoya. This time paraphrasing…

You made this comment. I do not think it means what you think it means.

It is a stupid comment. And you are an idiot. And a fascist. And Trump’s bitch. You’re killing my country. Prepare to die.

Inigo Montoya

Vance is, among other things, and this might be his best feature, a fucking asshole. After the above quote, he cackled on about Nixon being forced out by the “deep state”. Hey JD, it’s called the Congress of the United States. It was Nixon’s own party who told him to get out of town before they impeached him. It was none other than ultra-conservative senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) who told Sicky Dick to his lying, paranoid, treasonous face that Nixon’s time was up. So fuck off as far as the eye can see JD.

And Vance is the one without dementia. Did he get syphilis from fucking that couch?

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*As with the usual subject of this special feature, the full context does not make it any better. Also, good chance this feature will be popping up constantly for at least the next four years. Sorry.

This has been another painful edition of Don Trump Actually Fucking Said This™*
Remember, it will get worse before it gets much worse.