Broken News – Pick Of The Shitter

December 23, 2024

Many Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

If Donald Trump is nothing else, and he is, he is the best judge of the worst people for the most important jobs in our country. Is he just fond of freaks, fuck-ups and sickos? Rapists, druggies, dumb-ass dipshits? Greedy, fascist, sociopathic religious fanatics? And these are his new, improved best people. Who else could make the utter lack of qualification a main qualification?

For example, Trump has tapped two bilious billionaires – Elon Murk and Vivek Ramasmarmy – to head up a fake department with the acronym DOGE (coincidentally the name of Murk’s cryptocurrency), which I believe stands for Department Of Gutting Everything, to eliminate any government spending that does not directly, relentlessly and excessively help needy greedy millionaires and billionaires at the expense of all the rest of us. DOGE is charged with killing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, etc. Maybe DOGE was a typo and it was meant to be DODGE – Department Of Deploying Gargantuan Excrements.

Stephen Miller, Jared The Son-in-law, RFingK, Jr., Elon Murk, DJT, Kristi Noem,

Trash Patel, Meh Oz, Pete Hegseth, Vivek Ramasmarmy. Oh my.

None of these schmucks has a speck of qualification for the post they have been nominated for. Or any post that might impact democracy, security, health or humanity. Zero.  

But wait, there’s more…

Despite the utter insanity described above, it can and likely will get worse before it gets much worse before there’s a chance in hell it gets better. For example, the super genius Rand Paul (and several members of Fascist/Trump Party) thinks it would be a good idea if Elon Murk was Speaker of the House. You’re probably saying to yourself, come on climate crisis, please end this madness for us. Where's that damn asteroid I ordered from Uber Eats? Or maybe you’re saying, but Elon is just a rich asshole who entered this country under false pretenses (Can you say illegal immigrant?), made the ugliest, dumbest vehicle in history and now owns a president, but knows nothing about governing his own behavior let alone that of the most powerful nation on the planet; plus he’s not a member of Congress. Well, guess what Dear Prudence, nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the Speaker must be a House member.

I’ll be watching so you don’t have to

So buckle up friends, lest you be hurled through the windshield when this clown-car-country crashes…though hurling toward oblivion might be pretty appealing at that point since another moment of a Trump presidency could well be what is referred to as a fate worse than death. Unfortunately, there’s only one (theoretical) way to find out.

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

We now return you to your regularly scheduled holiday prep.

Schmucks Of The Day – Two Schmucks For The Price Of One*

Jumping For Ploy

December 19, 2024

“Take over Elon, just take over.”
D.J. Trump to crowd in Butler, PA just before 2024 election.
Also, possibly the theme of his coming administration**

Very stable genius and very stable billionaire

What could possibly go wrong?

_____________________________________________
*And there be a price. A big price.
**This is already happening, but Trump will not be happy if or when he realizes he is working for Musk. Looking forward to the fallout/falling-out.

This  has been your Paying Attention™ Schmucks Of The Day. Fuck yeah.

Ya Gotta Love It – What’s Eating You?

December 17, 2024

“… even though we call this country a democracy, it’s turning out to be more and more a candy-coated dictatorship.”
                                              Frank Zappa, circa 1990

Thanks to the millions of uninformed, ignorant, racist, hate-filled knuckle-draggers who voted for a man with 34 felony convictions, more than 24 credible sexual assault/rape allegations – made all the more credible after a judge proclaimed that Trump committed what is commonly known as rape against E. Jean Carroll, and after all he did brag about his penchant for committing sexual assault – and what should have been slam-dunk cases including stealing classified government documents (which he almost certainly shared with Vladimir Putin) and inciting an insurrection/overthrow of the government to a second, wholly unnecessary and very likely historically damaging term as president, America is now poised to enter her not-fully-developed-brain-rebellious-teen years where a bunch of overpaid, egomaniacs unencumbered by sense of social norms or ethics or patriotism of any kind lash out at a country that made them what they are (they didn’t fucking build that), just like individual teens often turn on their parents at a certain age.

When my friends and I were of that age, one of our favorite slogans was “Eat the rich!” Well, now the plate is on the other table and thanks to the above-mentioned schmucks and their not-so-benevolent overlard Trump, aided and abetted by the ersatz Supreme Court, the rich will be dining on us for the foreseeable future. Not that they haven’t been nibbling on us forever, but now they can eat with impunity. No need to worry about weight-gain, gout or horrified shouts of “Cannibalism!”

Trump’s gold-plated goon squad
(not shown, Elon Murk and Vivek Ramasmarmy who don’t have
official positions, but will be biting our legs off very soon)

Kill, Baby, Kill

Trump’s billionaire army of greedy, grifting ghouls want to gut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and welfare (except of course, corporate welfare). They are chomping at the bit to kill vaccines, unions, the United States Postal Service, the economy, the environment and by extension, you. You know, because these too-rich-fucks need the money. They want to eliminate the FDIC, which protects normal non-billionaires who might have a few non-interest-bearing dollars in banks (while the banks make money off our money). Why? Who the fuck knows? No doubt they will replace it with a concept of a very strong and powerful plan…some…day.

The rich are eating us

Apparently, 54% of voters think Trump will “do a good job” the second time around. Sure, if by ‘do a good job’ they mean trash the economy by deporting most of our workforce, leveling tariffs on the rest of the world and handing trillions of dollars to the richest/greediest among (i.e., above) us, amp up the already pulverizing climate crisis, and hand our collective health and well-being over to a guy who said heroin made him a better student, and that was before a worm ate most of his brain and then died, presumably of a heroin overdose.

Apparently, 54% of voters need to be in rubber rooms sporting jackets with very long sleeves that can wrap around the torso and be secured in a way that prevents the wearers from punching themselves in the face until they are unconscious, even though that would increase exponentially their capacity for rational thought. Oh, and guess what, all you 54%ers – the Trump presidency is about to make your miserable lives considerably worse. And guess what else – that shit is contagious; we all will have to suffer from your abject stupidity. If you think shit’s expensive now, wait ‘til you see how much Trump sneakers, guitars, bibles, fragrances, trading cards and Melania fugly xmas ornaments will cost you in a few months. Not to mention eggs, bacon and all the other things your hero just learned to call groceries. Please stop voting from now on. Oh, and STFU.

I guess one man’s convicted felon is another man’s cult leader.

Ya gotta love it.

No, seriously, ya gotta love it or you could end up in one of Trump’s for-profit gulags. Just ask ABC News, who just moved their corporate headquarters all the way up Trump's ass. And paid him $16M for a security deposit. 

Now here it is, your moment of Zappa…

I. Mangrey…and, loving it. 

Interest Of Conflict

Trump 2.NOOOOOOOOO

December 13, 2024

Ohh NOOOOOO!!!

So here we are, America – the Mr. Bill of developed nations. One foot in the grave and the other on an orange peel, well it’s actually a banana peel turned orange with mold. It’s moldy, rotten and toxic to boot.

Get ready folks. Most of us are already filled with dread, angst, pain, disbelief, nausea, ulcers, heart palpitations, night sweats, fear and loathing in anticipation of Napoleon Notsosmart pretending to take another oath of the highest office, and another crack at relegating the Great Experiment in democracy to the trash heap of history.

Il Douche will not be held to account in Florida for stealing classified documents or espionage (the evidence for which had piled up beneath Judge Aileen Cannon’s valiant and ultimately successful efforts to bury the case). Neither will he face justice in Washington, DC for inciting an insurrection/tourorists-gone-wild on January 6, 2021.

Justice in America isn’t just blind. It’s just plain dumb. The right to a speedy trial enshrined in the Constitution isn’t just the defendant’s right. The public also deserves a speedy trial, especially when the already repeatedly guilty defendant is a candidate for president, and especially when that candidate is running on a platform of retribution*, idiocy and full-on fascism. Oh, and the destruction of the middle, working and poorer classes – many of whom somehow decided to vote for their own demise. Rah, rah, retch.

It appears that the only music Trump will have to face is the Village People’s YMCA. And we all know what that looks like. His second term will be to the presidency what his signature move is to dancing, i.e., murder in the worst degree.

In case you forgot how mind-numbingly stupid that looks…

Trump’s signature dunce move

Speaking of dunce moves, Dancing Don has invited Chinese dictator Xi Jinping to his coronation inauguration. Because, of course he did. I guess Vlad and Kim were busy.

Conflict Of Interest As Feature, Not Bug

Trump has searched low and lower to find just the right diseased mutants to fill his termite-infested cabinet. Like Kari Lake to head Voice of America, which I guess will now presumably sound like fingernails on a blackboard. RFingK, Jr. – the guy who said he was a lousy student until he started using heroin, which helped him focus better (move over Ritalin) – to hold sway over all our foods and medicines. Alcoholic rape enthusiast and violent, radical Christian Pete Hegseth to fondle the Defense Department. 

To head the FBI Trump wants Trash Patel, looney conspiracy fetishist – especially Trump’s Big Lie – who said he would “shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state’” to dismember the FBI. Patel wants to eliminate the intelligence unit of the FBI. All of Trump’s nominees despise intelligence in all forms.

It goes on and on and on, like metastatic cancer.

John Dean once told Nixon that the Watergate cover-up was a “cancer on the presidency." Our 47^th president is a cancer on America. And we all know how Nixon’s presidency ended up.

It seems very few who matter are planning to hold fast and fight Trump’s Anschluss…I mean onslaught. All the while, Trump and his henchman Elon Murk (once an illegal immigrant himself) are busy threatening senators in order to get them to approve Trump’s malignant misfits, his hand-picked goon squad destined to destroy each and every department under the umbrella of the federal government. And we all know how well the man whose ruining mate called him “America’s Hitler” handles umbrellas.

“Is it raining where you are my darling? Tough shit.”

As noted here previously, this is likely to get worse before it gets much worse.

_________________________________________________
*That would be retribution against those who dared stand up for the rule of law, democracy and the Constitution.

I. Mangrey reporting.                                         

                                                                       

In Memoriam

On This Day In 1980

December 8, 2024

John Lennon Memorial – Strawberry Fields, Central Park, NYC

December 8, 1980, another date that will live in infamy. The day legendary musician, songwriter and activist John Lennon was gunned down in front of the The Dakota apartment building in Manhattan. Further proof that, as Mike Love wrote in the Beach Boys’ Student Demonstration Time, “The pen is mightier than the sword, but no match for a gun.”

John Lennon statue – Havana, Cuba

Watching The Wheels

Nobody Told Me

Gimme Some Truth

Also, today would have been Jim Morrison’s 81^st birthday.

People Are Strange

An American Prayer

One more for the road…

Instant Karma*

_____________________________________________________________________
*Can we please have some right now for a most deserving individual and his cult?

Question For The Day – The Pro-Rape Party

Fuck Around, Find Out

December 6, 2024

From Newt Gingrich cheating on his wife and dumping her while she was fighting cancer, to Larry Craig trying to make time with an undercover cop in an airport men’s room, to uber pig Clarence Thomas, to the more current crop like rapey Brett Kavanaugh, Matt “Ewwww” Gaetz, sociopathic, radical Christian freak Pete Hegseth, Bobby Brainworm, and of course there’s admitted, found-legally-liable, unrepentant (“alleged”) serial assaulter/rapist Donald “They Let You Do It”* Trump.

Today’s Question For The Day:

Can you even name one Ratpublican who has not been credibly accused of sexual misbehavior?**

_________________________________________________
*They damn well did not let him do it, but the Supreme Court let him do it.
**Not counting Lindsey Graham, who very existence is an assault on sexuality, and who anatomically resembles a Ken doll. Allegedly.

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

Ya Gotta Love It - The Worst People

He Knows The Worst People*

December 2, 2024

Before he was a demented, deranged, disgraced, twice-impeached, failed insurrection leader and ex-one-term-president – NOW with 34 felony convictions! and a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card from his Supreme(ly anti-democratic) Court – president, Trump told us he knew the best people. This of course turned out to be one of many thousands of lies Il Douche would tell the American public during his (GULP) first term.

Let’s, for the sake of argument, say he did know and hire the best people after getting crushed in the popular vote but becoming president anyway in 2016. He fired most of them, at least those who did not quickly resign in disgrace, in short order and now refers to them as disgruntled losers with Trump Derangement Syndrome. Trump wants to try some of them for treason and have them executed (for telling the truth, which is a crime in Trump World) once he resumes weaponizing the Department of Justice for his own perverse purposes.

For his second term, Trump has said nothing about knowing the best people. He has in fact chosen the absolute fucking worst of the worst – from accused rapist Pete Hegseth, to partial-brained ex-junkie RF’ingK, Jr., to Russian asset Tulsi Gabbard, WrestleManiac Linda McMahon, to medico/conman Meh Oz, to puppy whisperer…I mean murderer Kristi Noem, to Trump-pardoned convicted criminal Charles (father of Jared) Kushner, each one more worst than the last, and each one likely worse than Trump’s last battalion of brutish buffoons. Not one of these freaks has anything within a thousand miles of a qualification other than being on tv, being a sexual predator, and/or showing an almost fanatical devotion to the Trump.

Trump’s latest disaster-in-waiting is Kash Patel who had this to say about QAnon, “There’s a lot of good to it,” and he agreed with the statement “Q has been so right on so many things.” Name one. This unrelenting, undissenting, unrepenting kisser of Trump’s ass is Der Furor’s pick to head up the FBI. Should be fun.

Marco Rubio is probably the least insane of all Trump’s turds. Rubio is only about four-feet tall and he is head-and-shoulders above the rest of Trump’s Tragic Trash Heap.

Like the Dirty Dozen – a team of soldiers, recruited from murderers, rapists and criminals on death row, who are promised commuted sentences – chosen to save America, Trump’s Dirty Douchebags intend to end America. 

_______________________________________________
*And they will be in charge of every fucking thing very soon unless they get Gaetzed.

Ya gotta love it. Or else.

Question For The Day – S & M Edition

A Wolf In Rabid Hyena’s Clothing

November 30, 2024

You are probably aware of the cavalcade of creeps, kooks, crumb-bums and cretins (and some, I assume, are criminals) Trump has been putting forward to populate his award-losing administration, whose sole purpose is to end the Great Experiment that has been American democracy.

This ghoul is Stephen Miller, Trump lackey and architect of the Trump policy of separating migrant children from their parents. No need to keep records, or ensure that they be reunited once the cruel and unusual punishment of being held in detention camps abated. Miller is a sociopathic, anti-democratic, Machiavellian, racist tool. And now the sociopathic, anti-democratic, Machiavellian, racist president’s deputy chief-of-staff for policy.

Today’s Question For The Day:

Is it a coincidence that Stephen Miller’s initials are S & M?

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

Thought For Thanksgiving Day

  

Cloudy With A Chance Of Mass Deportations

November 28, 2024

I don't know if you're aware of this, many people are saying it, but this Thanksgiving, just as they did 403 years ago, they're eating the turkeys, they're eating the yams, they're eating the foods of the people who live there.

Too bad the Indians didn’t build a wall to keep out the uninvited migrants that soiled their shores for all eternity before there was even a Mexico to pay for it.

Statue of Lenni-Lenape chief of the Turtle Clan Tamanend located where

almost no one can easily see it in Philadelphia at the entrance to Interstate 95

Talk About Illegal Aliens…

Picture Tamanend or Sitting Bull, descending a golden escalator and addressing a crowd of paid onlookers

When the Euro trash sent their people they were not sending their best. They sent people that had lots of problems, and they brought those problems with them. They brought disease, they brought crime and genocide, they were rapists. And now we know that pretty much none of them were good people. Their descendants are no bargain either.

Be on the lookout for pasty-faced white folks giving thanks for the God-given good fortune of entering this land illegally and slaughtering the original inhabitants so that this country – founded as it was on genocide, slavery and unbridled power for rich white men – might one day elect a convicted felon, rapist and traitor-to-democracy to lead the descendants of the original interlopers who stole this land and then shit all over it.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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

                                                                                     

Paying Attention™ Secret Word

Cloudy With A Chance Of Hurricane-Force Stupidity

November 26, 2024

Countless autopsies, endless forensics are underway as the dust settles and the nuclear…I’m sorry, noocular winter sets in after America put a figurative shotgun her mouth and fingers the trigger. Or as some people refer to it, the election of DarnOld Trump to a dangerous second bite at the apple. This time with more fascism.

Don't forget that the day after the election the most popular Google search was “Can I change my vote?” Anyone asking that question should be banned from voting because of today’s secret word.

One big question on many lips is: why did so many people vote for abortion rights while simultaneously voting for Trump and other Fascist/Trump Party candidates?

We here at Paying Attention™ think we have the answer: at any given moment, it is much easier to be stupid than smart, and too many people in this country are simply too stupid for words.

So we will say no more about that.

Need More Proof?

Here are some smart people:

Noam Chomsky on stupid people, circa 2012

Humans are, you know, we are very smart, but despite our wisdom we keep doing some very stupid things. One of the most powerful forces in history, actually is human stupidity.
                                     Yuval Noah Harari

I rest his case.

This has been your Paying Attention™ Secret Word.

Paying Attention™ Request Line

Ariel Baddass on the air and taking your requests

November 24, 2024

Our newly hired DJ Ariel Baddass convinced management to add a request/dedication line for folks to hear what they want, when they want it, and send it on out there to someone special.

Hey boys and girls, cats and kitties, all the ships and clippers at sea. This is Ariel B – so glad to be back on the air. Been on kind of a forced hiatus. Got asked to leave my last gig after my tribute to the great Joey Reynolds. As Joey did on his last day at WIBG in Philly back in the early ‘70s, I locked myself in the booth and played John Lennon’s Give Peace a Chance for an hour or so, until they brought in a locksmith and a very large gentleman to help me to my car. Thanks to the good folks at Paying Attention™ for hookin’ me up to once again play the platters, spin the saucers, dish out the discs and respect the stacks of wax here at PA Central. I hope to make you proud playin’ the hits, the misses, and anything else you wanna hear.

I. Mangrey perusing the playlist

DJ: Let’s hit the ground spinning and take our first call. And who do we have on the line?

Caller: Hi, I’m Ed long time managing editor, first time caller.

DJ: Hi Ed. What’s your request and who are you dedicating it to? We’re here to make it happen.

Caller: Thanks Ariel. Since the Combine (think Cuckoo’s Nest) is flexing its fascist muscles right now, beyond what we allowed ourselves to believe was possible, and enveloping us all in a real fog, I need to hear some Rage Against The Machine; a song of your choice. And I’d like this to go out to everyone who voted for Kamala Harris and keeping full-blown fascism out of America. Please bring back our regular horrible kleptocrats. I miss them already.

The Chief

Rage Against The Machine – Killing In the Name

Okay folks, though it’s always a pleasure playing your requests, this one’s from me to the late, great Hannibal Lecter…I mean Chief Bromden and to  all of you trying desperately to survive our dystopian present. Enjoy this quickie from Woody Guthrie – All You Fascists Bound To Lose.

Woody Guthrie – All You Fascists Bound To Lose

Send us your requests and dedications and we’ll get ‘em on the air.

Thinking Outside The Brain

All Fluxed Up

November 22, 2024

The recent disastrous election of a mentally ill convicted felon who previously incited a violent coup attempt has this nation in a state of massive fucks…I mean flux…nah, let’s go with fucks.

Expert Explains Why, Essentially, You’re Fucked | Onion Now: Focus

There's thinking outside the box and there's thinking outside the brain. The former often leads to revelation and innovation, the latter is what we get from Trump.

 

Wow, remember when this was almost true?

Trump’s new cabinet picks may be his way of trying to get us to admit that the completely unqualified and inappropriate, purposely incompetent, frequently corrupt mental midgets of his first administration weren’t so bad after all.

Wow, remember when SCOTUS said this was actually true?

Sorry to keep harping on this, but #47 continues to unveil his cuckoo-for-cocoa-puffs cabinet picks. He has chosen Russian asset/stooge Tulsi Gabbard to be the next Director of National Intelligence. This is only slightly better than giving Putin himself daily briefings – in fact, it might be the exact same thing.

Next up, RFK, Jr. and his magic brain worm have been tapped as the head of Health and Human Services. 

Bobby's brain worm is dead…we’re next

The ex-heroin junkie and current cuckoo bird and whale decapitator was recently spotted in his quest to “make America healthy again” eating McDonalds and drinking a Coke with his new BFFs on a private jet (which burns up much more fossil fuel per passenger, but who give a flying fuck now that Trump is appointing a fracking exec as energy secretary – now that’s what I call healthy). I guess Bobby, Jr., who was hungry enough to eat a bear, couldn’t find any edible dead ones on the plane.

And what the fuck is Dumb, Jr. doing?

Some are saying that Trump forced Bobby to eat the food he despises, but surely that won’t be the worst thing he has to swallow in order to stay in Donny’s good graces. At least he didn’t need to be on his knees for this one. Stay tuned.

For his next trick, #47 is putting up a number of his personal criminal attorneys (double entendre or not – you make the call) to head up the Department of Justice under the wandering eye of Matt Gaetz.

Unlike most Americans, I'm not looking for a president I could have a drink with, I'm looking for a president who can think me under the table. I want the smartest guy in the room, not the most sociopathic.

Democrats, Take Note

Meanwhile in New Zealand, Māori lawmakers performed the haka, a traditional ceremonial dance, in parliament on Thursday to protest against a bill that aims to reinterpret a centuries-old document seen as New Zealand's founding treaty with its Indigenous people.

Māori lawmakers protest a bill that would reinterpret a centuries-old document
(Can you say U.S. Constitution?)

The good news here is…

 

 

Well, I tried.

If you are not presently afraid of clowns, you will be now.

Prepare yourself for Trump's newest surreality tv show: Real Cabinuts of Washington, DC

Frank Zappa –Trouble Every Day

I. Mangrey, still at it. I couldn't have done it without me.

LATE UPDATE:

Asshole, pervert, scumbag Matt Gaetz has withdrawn his stupid face from consideration as Trump’s insane pick for Attorney General. Hopefully, the investigation into his sexual exploits with under-age girls and illegal drug use will still be made public in case Gaetz ever wants to show his giant head in public again.