Fascinating

 

Science Is So Much Cooler Than Stupidity

May 4, 2026

The emergence of the Trump-driven MAGAverse, as it is known in political parlance, bases much of what it likes to think is its “philosophy” on eschewing, if not the brutal murder, of a thing called science. They have decided as a group that what they believe is true, is true on its face. According to them, vaccines make people sick, and there is no need for cancer research, food inspections, etc. They do not believe in the Climate Crisis or for that matter, climate. The silver lining is that they do not all believe the Earth is flat.

The MAGAverse vs. The Universe

Happy Star Wars Day.

WTFF*

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*What The Fascinating Fuck

Fun Fact For The Day – Shell Shocked

Faint By Numbers

May 2, 2026

Donald Jeffrey Epstein Trump and his cadre of unfortunate attorneys pretending to comprise what once was the Department of Justice couldn’t manage to indict James Comey* for doing his job investigating Trump’s very real and successful ties to Russia who provided material support to the Trump campaign in the 2016 election.

The new game in town is a super lame, evidence-free attempt to indict Comey for threatening violence against Trump because he posted the following picture he took while walking along the beach

Team Trump’s premise is that “86” refers to a mob hit. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary

 

According to the award-wishing research team at Paying Attention™, all of this misses the actual meaning of these otherwise innocuous digits.

Think back to the mid-1960s. The great Mel Brooks created a hit television series spoofing spy shows; it was called Get Smart. The title character Maxwell Smart worked for a spy agency called CONTROL. Like his more serious fictional counterpart from the UK – James Bond, agent 007 – Maxwell Smart also had a number, as did all CONTROL agents with the exception of the Chief and the agent Larabee. Smart was Agent 86. 

Agent 86 on his shoe phone

As it turns out a character featured in the 1966 Season 2 episode was Agent 47. In the episode, Agent 47 dies, forcing Maxwell Smart to take over labor negotiations for the Guild of Surviving CONTROL Agents. So, Agent 47 was 86’d.

Case closed. 

You’re welcome.

Pulitzer please.

Or maybe the Nobel Peace Prize.

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*You may recall that James Comey was instrumental in catapulting Trump into the White House in 2016 by casting more unwarranted suspicion on Hillary Clinton’s emails eleven days before the election.

This has been your Paying Attention™ Fun Fact For The Day.

Another Dear Don Letter

May 1, 2026

Hey Don,

Americans here. Remember us? We know you’re very busy with the room for your balls – the “militarily secret” balls-room/bunker that you can’t stop blabbing about. Maybe someone should have told you that when you keep yapping in front of cameras and posting on social media someone might hear you. Also, no one in America gives a damn about your bullshit ballroom and the whole world knows exactly where your super-secret bunker is.

Anyway, maybe no one had time to read you our Dear Don letter from a few days ago. Or maybe we were unclear, or maybe your brain is mostly ketchup. We tried to warn you about how once we finally get you out of the Remains of The White House and into a never-ending series of courtrooms, your name and likeness will be removed from, at the very least, every government structure to which your toxic ego had it affixed. The name ‘Donald’ will become as popular as the name ‘Adolf’. When was the last time you met or even heard of anyone named Adolf? Tough shit for your coke-addled namesake Don, Jr.

As if you haven’t already soiled enough people, places and things with your name and/or likeness, we just heard that you want your fucking face on our passports. Apparently, special gold coins, one dollar bills, national park passes, giant banners defacing government buildings, the Kennedy Center, the U.S. Institute For Peace, the war in Iran and the

Donald Trump Memorial Epstein Files*

bearing your name or scowling fuckface weren’t enough. So you want your face and ridiculous signature on passports. This reminds me of the old joke: Does your face hurt? No? well it’s killing me.

Are you fucking kidding? First of all, how dare you place that cringe-inducing douchey scowl anywhere near the founding fathers. It doesn’t make you look tough, it makes you look like a schmuck with indigestion. Second, did it ever occur to you to pretend to smile? Or do you only do that for Putin? Or back in the day with your BFF Epstein?

Listen shit-for-brains, this is not your country. You do not own it. You are a pissing…I mean passing ship in a very long night. We know you are hoping to take this country with you to the grave, but those of us who manage to survive your Hindenburg of a presidency will still be here once you are buried at sea along with Osama bin Laden and your legacy finds itself along that of your old pal and fellow-rapist Jeffrey Epstein.

You’ll find your things out on the Remains of The White House lawn. Have someone pick them up for you and get the fuck out of our House…and please this time leave all the classified documents where they are. They do not belong to you.

So, once again let us say with the utmost sincerity,

Thank you for your attention to this matter,
Most Americans

BONUS: LETTER TO AMERICANS

Albert Brooks

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*We’ll give you one thing; you have flung so much feces all over the place that it is getting harder and harder to focus on the Donald Trump Memorial Epstein Files.

Get Out Of The Vote

April 30, 2026

When the first draft of this piece was created a more than a month ago, “Get Out Of The Vote” was conceived to imply that the Fascist/Trump/Epstein Party was trying get out of the midterms, knowing full well that they are likely to get buried alive. A possible tsunami and an avalanche, if not an earthquake. You might have noticed the constant torrent of worst things ever during that time that caused this piece to get lost in the morass.

Here’s the original bit…

With all the other shit hitting the fan these days* it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that Donald “Death To America” Trump is feverishly working all angles to derail the historic shellacking it looks like he is about to experience and deny to his (hopefully sooner than later) last breath.

The Fascist/Trump/Epstein Party (formerly known as the Republican Party) is desperate. Their blind, stupid faith in a man most of them have always hated with a passion (Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, JD Vance, Marco Rubio leap to mind) has caused a large majority of Americans to hate their festering guts. Trump is the Peed Piper and the Party are all the little children, under a spell of their own casting, following the Psychotic Siren Song straight over the edge and into a deep crevasse. They refuse and simply seem unable to turn away from their certain demise. They cannot win these midterms. Not if people are permitted to vote.

The Fascist/Trump/Epstein Party, like the Republican Party before them, would win very few down-ballot elections without the perverted gerrymandering with which they have been able to paralyze Congressional elections.

Trump and his metastatic minions are doing everything they can to fuck up our elections right now. The Orwellian SAVE (Sabotage All Verifiable Elections) Act – which Trump insists we call the SAVE America Act, so the SAVE Act it is – is meant to SAVE the Fascist/Trump/Epstein Party from all but disappearing for the time being at least. That of course is a fate they have been cultivating, nurturing and demanding by their actions…and not just a few of their words.

Dominion Voting Systems Corporation was a North American company that produced and sold electronic voting hardware and software, including voting machines and tabulators, in Canada and the United States.

However, since that time…

The inimitable (that’s not a complement) racist/corporatist-majority (I mean, let’s just start calling it what it is) Roberts Court has, according to the dissenting opinion by Justice Elena Kagan in the Louisiana congressional map decision accomplished

“[the] latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”

The same phrase “Get Out Of The Vote” can now also be seen to connote the white nationalist movement, in this case represented very ably by the Roberts Court** saying to non-whites – Get the fuck out of our vote.

Can you imagine the uproar, the toupees on fire if an activist liberal Court decided to tear up the rule book to disenfranchise white voters? Especially six months before a major election?

To this day, the only reason this country, founded as it was on genocide (racism) and slavery (racism), has diversity in government is because laws protecting this are enforced. Eliminating such laws has been a perpetual wet dream of John Roberts for at least 45 years. This is not hyperbole. When Roberts swore under oath that he would simply call balls and strikes from the bench if appointed as Chief Justice. I guess he meant as he would if he was in the white league back when professional baseball was segregated.

Possible (very likely) result of the recent decision in the Racist States***

If anyone needed more evidence for expanding the Supreme Court enough to take decisions like this (and there are quite a few), tear them up and replace them with the laws that were ruined by criminals like Thomas, Alito, Roberts and their accomplices on this ersatz Roberts Court, this should suffice. That, and the need to take back the House, the Senate and the presidency this November in order to pass laws enshrining democracy once again.

But Wait, There’s More

According to WIRED, “former” GOP operative Scott Leiendecker bought Dominion Voting Systems in 2025 under a new company called Liberty Vote. This gives him ownership of voting systems used in 27 states. The article stated that “Election experts don't know what to think.” Everyone else knows exactly what to think.

Fox “News” agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million and acknowledged the court's earlier ruling that Fox had broadcast false statements about Dominion, though the settlement did not require an apology. This was the largest known media settlement for defamation in U.S. history.

One More Thing

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*Trump launched his disastrous war in Iran to distract from the Donald Trump Memorial Epstein Files, which he then brought back in order to distract from Iran, which he tried to re-distract from by firing Kristi Noem, and then Pam Bondi, followed by the coincidental distraction of Krash Patel’s Hegseth-level alcoholism…just off the top of my head.
**We will not refer to this illegitimate, anti-democracy cadre in black robes (which should, for the Seditious Six be swapped out for white ones with hoods) as the Supreme Court. No one should.
***Formerly known as Red States. Again, let’s call it what it is.

I. Mangrey reporting. While it’s still legal.                                                        

                                                                          

Paying Attention™ Secret Word

Don’t Tell Anybody…Tell Everybody

April 29, 2026

In case you haven’t heard, there is good trouble afoot this week. Hundreds of concerned citizen groups are calling for a nationwide day of economic disruption on May 1^st, which is this Friday. 

May 1^st, May Day is historically the day of the worker. The day of the People. Well, we the people are getting stomped, screwed and skewered by this criminal, fascist administration. It is not the first time, but it is one of the worst times. We need to keep showing them we are paying attention. That we have had enough of their shit. That we are ready to take back the power they stole.

MAYDAY! MAYDAY! May Day.

Close your business. Call out sick. Skip school. Buy nothing.

May Day Strong:
                      No Work,
                             No School,
                                    No Shopping

Power of, by and for the people!

Unlike all the rallies, marches and protests of the past year or so, this time you don’t even have to go anywhere or do anything. In fact, that’s the point. This is the easiest, and perhaps most direct, and if done en masse, most effective display of displeasure and people power yet.

All we have to do is: STAY HOME. Or possibly join others in the streets if the spirit moves you. But mainly, don’t work, don’t go to school, don’t go shopping or buy online, don’t support the workings of the system. For just one day. For now.

Ala Mario Savio, place your bodies upon the gears

Mario Savio, 1964

Feel free to not get off your ass. All you need to do is nothing. Let’s show them who is in charge. Let’s shut this whole thing down.

Charles Mingus Septet – Don't Let It Happen Here (1965) 

This has been your Paying Attention™ Secret Word.

A Dear Don Letter

April 28, 2026

It seems there are those among us who harbor a less than favorable view of the objectively vile creature residing in the Remains of The White House. One such individual is now in custody after what is being called an assassination attempt on Not-So-Good King Don.

Don was thwarted in his plan to deliver what he described as a very nasty verbal assault on the media, who dare to speak out against his deadly criminal enterprise. After his planned hit-and-run screech at the Remains of The White House Correspondents Dinner, where he meant to excoriate the press and run away before anyone could respond, was cut short by a heavily weaponized attacker, the most despised president in American history had this to say with a sickening smirk while standing between two of the dumbest fucks ever to serve this country at the highest level.

Trump, bookended by raging alcoholic Patel and raging moron Mullin

“I was all set to really rip it. And I said to my people ‘this would be the most inappropriate speech ever made,’ I have to say. But I don’t know if I could ever be as rough as I was going to be tonight.”

Oops. If you zoom out it turns out Don is standing amidst not two, but four of the dumbest fucks every to serve this country at the highest level, who were quite amused at their boss’ above comments.

Trump, flanked by four flunky fuck-ups

So there’s that. So sorry we won’t get to hear that particular psychotic word salad.

I. Mangrey reporting. Suck on it Donny.

Thought For The Day – 25 Is Bigger Than 30

Cloudy With A Chance Of Blunder Showers

April 27, 2026

It has continued to be unbelievable, scary and sickening to see Trump have approval ratings in the forties. WTF. How is it possible for that many people to have anything but monstrous contempt for a conman, egomaniac, convicted felon, bestie with king of the pedophiles, and himself an adjudicated sexual assaulter? (One judge stated that what Trump was found guilty of amounted to “rape” according to common understanding of the act.)

For quite some time I have been telling myself and others that I would be pretty happy or something like it if Trump’s approval rating hit 25%. More recently, I’ve come to feel like I would feel, if not happy, at least somewhat relieved if he hit 30%. 

With all his many “accomplishments” piling up, Darn Old Trump seems to be accelerating his march to the bottom. He is currently somewhere between 37 and 32% overall approval – depending on the poll. For context, Der Furor was at 34% right after he incited a vicious, brutal mob to hang Mike Pence, lay siege to the Capitol and stage a violent insurrection. Then Trump pardoned all the criminals.

So, I’ll settle for him having a 30% approval rating, but I’m still hoping for 25%.

I only have one more thing to say about that:

Don’t trust any percent over thirty.

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

Headline Of The Day – Schadenfreude Edition

One Less Serial Killer  

April 26, 2026

From Crooks & Liars

The elephant, who goes by the name Dexter, did not return our calls for inclusion in this article. Nonetheless, we thank her for her service.

This has been your Paying Attention™ Headline Of The Day.

Fun Fact For The Day – Immigrants Are Dangerous

Deportation Is Cruel And Unjust*

April 24, 2026

Was that not in fact fun?

Bonus Fun Fact

Donald Jeffrey Epstein Trump’s father’s full given name was – and maybe this explains a great deal about Donny’s delusions – Frederick Christ "Fred" Trump.

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*According to draft-dodging deportee Friedrich "Frederick" Trump – paternal grandfather of our current messiah…I mean president.

This has been your Paying Attention™ Fun Fact For The Day.