Joe, Blow

Joe Mansion Is Full Of Fossil Fuel Shit…Again

July 16, 2022

Mothers of Invention — Absolutely Free

Obviously, there are many pressing issues taking up our neurological bandwidth: Russia’s brutal scorched-earth/war-crime-spree in Ukraine, intolerable gas prices and inflation in large part driven by corporate greed and the shamelessly, if not purposefully, incompetent reign of Donald Turmp, the ongoing, ever-worsening climate crisis, the riveting public hearings of the January 6 Committee, and as if that weren’t enough to curdle your colon, the looming midterm elections. Just because he was able to hide from the headlines behind this curtain of disasters, we must not forget all the damage that continues to plague America at the hands of long festering sore Sen. Joe Manchin (“D”- Coal). While Mansion was hiding, he did manage to record a campaign ad for a Ratpublican candidate in West Virginia.

At least someone is enjoying themselves as our environment and democracy crumble.
Oh wait, they are the ones ensuring these things happen.

Just the other day, Mansion came out of his hole, saw a shadow, cursed the Sun, and kicked his party and the American people in the crotch again. He has once more insisted that he will not entertain any funding for fighting the climate crisis he has worked so hard to accelerate. Nor will he support raising taxes on the rich, one of whom he has worked so hard destroying the environment in order to become. Mansion hammered in what appears to be the final nail in the Build Back Better coffin. He simply refuses to allow any talk of taxing those who owe much more than they pay, or of averting environmental disaster.

Mansion insists/pretends that “My main goal is what’s good for my country. I’m not worried about what’s good for the Democrat or Republican party. They’re going to do just fine.” Except for two things, Joe. First, asshole, it’s the Democratic Party, referring to them as the “Democrat” party is what Ratpublicans do out of disrespect. Second, Ratpublicans have shown beyond any doubt that they do not and will not do what’s good for your country – they put Donald Turmp as their choice for president, let him escape conviction on two impeachments, both of which made Bill Clinton’s blow job look like…well, a blow job, and made Watergate look like a third-rate burglary, and then after claiming that Turmp was personally and morally responsible for the January 6 insurrection, quickly returned to their regularly scheduled, unrelenting kissing of his ass. Lastly, having beaten his “colleagues” into submission on the ambitious, vastly popular and critically needed BBB, bullying them into a package he could live with, Mansion finally got his way, and then said, “Psych!”

So once again, Joe Manchin is full of fossil fuel shit. Well, it’s not so much again as still. No other senator rakes in more campaign cash from the fossil fuel industry than Old King Coal Manchin. We are still finding out more gory details of his greed and duplicity. And, dare I say…murder?

Everyone, including Joe Mansion, knows that coal kills. It kills those with no choice but to work to extract it. It kills those who happen to breathe air. It does not kill Joe Masion while he lets others do the very, very dirty work. There is no such thing as “clean coal.” There is no such thing as clean Joe Mansion.

Thankfully, folks in Manchin’s “home” state, you know, the one he is personally committed to killing with his coal profits, are preparing to make their presence felt. Maybe they can make his political future resemble the lungs of those West Virginians who are unfortunate enough to need to work in coal mines, as well as many of us who are forced to breathe the rotten fruits of their labors.

Meanwhile, Mansion’s fellow foulers in the greedy oil companies are not satisfied taking our tax dollars as insanely unnecessary subsidies. Not only are they not paying anything forward by, oh I don’t know, taking a break from making obscene profits off of anyone who needs oil to heat their homes or drive their cars, they are adding price-gouging profits to the subsidies which we involuntarily lavish upon them.

Just For The Record (High Gas Prices)

You might have noticed that when the price of oil rises, so does what we pay at the pump. But when the price of oil drops, the price at the pump is not so quick to change correspondingly. And don’t blame your local gas station, their profit margin is minimal. Oil companies on the other hand do a bit better. 

In 2021, while most Americans were sitting on financial pins and needles, ExxonMobil raked in $23B in profits, Shell amassed $19.3B, Chevron $15.6B and BP $12.9B. This of course, is in addition to the massive government subsidies these petroleum plunderers take out of our pockets. Poor little Joe Mansion’s coal interests put $500,000/year into his ever-widening toxic pockets.

It is long past time to take power away from the Ratpublicans’ favorite Democrat.

Gil Scott-Heron – Winter In America

I. Mangrey freaking out.

Thought For The Day

The world is a ghetto. The Earth is a pizza.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Lemmings

July 15, 2022

Turmp’s loyal cultists cannot be discouraged from supporting their Orange Jeebus no matter what incontrovertible evidence seeps into their almost impenetrable, sclerotic brains. Even after Turmp is charged with a crime, even if he ends up in jail, he will not be disqualified from holding public office. It certainly would not dissuade his cretinous flock. They will follow him to the ends of the Earth.

With any luck, the Earth really is flat.

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

You're welcome.

What is your thought for the day?

Deeply Rooted In The Nation’s History And Traditions

Deeply Troubling In The Nation’s History And Traditions

July 13, 2022

Dead or alive?

The notion of things “deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions” was used by Scam Alito as an excuse to overturn 50 years of the previously deeply-rooted-in-the-nation’s-history-and-traditions right of women to control what they do with their own bodies. Slavery, one of America’s most debilitating birth defects – along with the genocide of the land’s original inhabitants – is in fact deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions. It remained so for almost a century, after which time it was dragged kicking and screaming out of existence. This was followed by another century of hatred, oppression and lynching.*

Things that are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution: not shooting unarmed Black men in the back 60 times or kneeling on their necks until and well after they are dead, the number of justices on the Supreme Court, the stupid fucking filibuster, abortions, same sex marriage, marriage of any kind, sex of any kind, women, Clarence Thomas, Cheez Whiz, Mitch Fucking McConnell, privacy, computers, assault rifles, science and common sense.

You know what is in the Constitution? The Ninth Amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Abort the Court! Replace the Disgrace!

So-called originalists like Antonin Scalia, who is thankfully still dead, like to pretend that this penultimate of the original ten amendments (not commandments, as some would have us believe) does not exist. The one that says, “Just in case we might have left a few things out, or I don’t know, maybe if things change next month or in a hundred years (like maybe if someone invents something more deadly than a musket, or if we someday realize that slavery is bad, and women should have the right to vote), it should be understood that we did not think of everything. Who the fuck could?”

Recall that Scalia, Thomas and their fellow farcical phonies also disingenuously proclaim that they know what the founders had in mind when they crafted and drafted the schematic for America. Funny thing – the founders themselves often disagreed with each other, and not infrequently with themselves. Yet, they were able to back their egos up enough to compromise sufficiently to reach consensus and begin a great experiment in governance. Those days, and those egos are long fucking gone.

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*The genocide of Native Americans continued unabated, and rather than being dragged kicking and/or screaming out of existence, was mostly swept under the rug and continues in slow motion since there were and are not enough of them to sufficiently rub our noses in it.

I. Mangrey, deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions (for better or worse).              

                                                                                       

Schmuck Of The Day

God, If You’re Listening…

July 12, 2022

“The church is supposed to direct the government; the government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our founding fathers intended it. I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk that’s not in the Constitution, it was in a stinkin’ letter and it means nothin’ like they say it does.”*
              Insane, ignorant moron Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Loonyville)

Is that God I see there behind Boebert? Or is she just mad to see me?

Apparently, after ignoring the entire body of the Constitution, Ms. Boebert continued ignoring the text until she got to the last 14 words of the Second Amendment. Chances are good that it was the most reading she’s done in her whole life. She likely passed out right after this monumental task and woke up in Congress representing a Colorado district with a decimal point in front of its collective IQ. After electing Boebert, they are running headlong toward a negative number.

I am not saying the following to be rude or mean, just accurate. Lauren Boebert is one dumb fuck.

Two-For-One Special Schmuck Of The Day (So Many Schmucks, So Little Time)

Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano – a radical Christian nationalist – called the separation of church and state a “myth,” adding, “In November we are going to take our state back, my God will make it so.”** I sure hope his God is not anyone else’s; his God sounds like a real putz.

Mastriano (r) outside the Capitol hoping

to witness the Big Steal on Jan 6

In case that was not bad enough for you, Mastriano weighed in on the Extreme Court’s recent disemboweling of Roe v. Wade thusly: “My body, my choice’ is ridiculous nonsense here.”

Doug Mastriano is one sick fuck.

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*This statement should be immediately disqualifying to serve in Congress. As if Boebert had anything at all that would actually qualify her to serve. Boebert should look into public service in Iran.
** This statement should be immediately disqualifying to serve in government.

This has been your Paying Attention™ Double Schmuck Of The Day. Feh.

Biden, His Time?

Fuck Joe Manchin Biden Already

July 9, 2022

Joe Biden is facing unprecedented challenges. He had to follow the most criminal, anti-democratic, ignorant, vengeful and most impeached president in American history. Biden had to carry on after his predecessor attempted to overturn the 2020 election. After the tool he helped insert into the White House had been ousted in a landslide, Vladimir Putin went berserk and invaded Ukraine, razing the entire country and upending the word’s economy. Biden also had to try to reverse Turmp’s deadly response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Biden of course, has had to deal with all of this while the disloyal opposition, led by Bitch BcConnell (I’m sorry, I have a cold) and fellow traveler Joe Mansion stood in constant, unwavering obstruction at every turn. On top of that, the Turmp-addled Extreme Court has decided that they run the country, legislating from the besotted bench on everything from shooting down gun control, to aborting reproductive rights, to eviscerating environmental protection and coming soon to an ex-democracy near you – our handing our entire election infrastructure over to the party that believes any election they lost was illegitimate. And don’t look now, but rumor has it (as of this moment) that Clarence Thomas hopes to rescind the Fourteenth Amendment. According to Thomas, “I would rather see Black people once again in chains, where they always belonged, than allow a bunch of Democrats, liberals, Blacks, women and Jews have any say in how this country goes about its business.”* In case you missed it, Clarence Thomas, by all appearances, is an African American, though it would not be surprising to hear him deny it. Certainly, his actions have done nothing to contradict that impression.

Cleaning up after Turmp was never going to be easy – trying to bring this country back from the brink of fascism and irrelevance. The political equivalent of rebuilding Hiroshima. Thanks to the juggernaut campaign of perpetual upstart Bernie Sanders, Biden – for decades, the senator from Delaware Citibank – had to at least appear to walk away from the pro-corporate, centrist nature of his entire political career.

Biden has talked a pretty good game since running for and taking office. And it is understandable that he would go out of his way to bring a completely different persona from the feces-flinging, rabid-dog, psycho-killer image (and reality) of Donald Turmp. That walk-softly-and-carry-a-limp-stick, kindly grandpa façade Biden exuded was all well and good at first, but what this country – especially those who voted for Biden – needs now is a fighter. An energetic defender of women, people of color and all the people without “Inc.” after their names. Biden thinks he is still living in a political ecosystem where one can reach agreements with the opposing party. Wake up and smell the napalm, Joe.

The Joe You Know

Biden helped usher Clarence Thomas onto the Supreme Court, in part by protecting Uncle T from the extremely credible allegations of Anita Hill and others who accused Thomas of sexual misconduct.

Biden sponsored a bankruptcy bill that successfully erected numerous roadblocks for everyday Americans struggling with debt in order to protect credit card companies, and doing so just before the financial crisis of 2008. You may remember that Obama and Biden subsequently bailed out the banks and not the people in their attempt to pull the U.S. out of the economic disaster left behind by George WTF Bush. As if the Biden Backed Bankruptcy Bill was not bad enough, it completely eliminated the ability to discharge generally usurious student loan debt. It is very likely that this was the single piece of legislation most responsible for our current student debt crisis.

That was then, this is now…

Defenders of Social Security on Tuesday urged the U.S. Senate to block President Joe Biden's little-noticed nomination of Andrew Biggs—an American Enterprise Institute senior fellow with a history of supporting Social Security privatization—to serve on the independent and bipartisan Social Security Advisory Board (call your senators at 202-224-3121 to put a stop to this one).

It appears that not only was there some sort of unconfirmed backroom deal percolating between Biden and McConnell to appoint an anti-abortion Federalist Society denizen as a federal judge –- set to take effect just as McConnell’s hand-picked coat-hanger aficionados aborted Roe v. Wade. Any Democrat who thinks dealing with McConnell will end well has either been asleep for the past 20 years or just lacks the balls to kick Moscow Mitch where his may or may not still be. Or maybe I’m just sick to death of rich, old white guys running things.

Just like the extremely weak gun reform shepherded through by Dems and signed into law by Biden, which did little more than give Ratpublicans the ability to claim they did something, Biden’s new executive order on abortion access is more window dressing than body armor. And Biden wonders why his poll numbers are so low. Turmp at least had the advantage of the unwavering stupidity and Sterno-drinking-blind loyalty of his millions of fanatical followers. Biden is getting no love from either side of the aisle while he puts us all to sleep.

Biden appears to be moving in cowardly slow motion at a time when he needs to stomp on the accelerator (notice I did not say ‘gas pedal’) and bring on the road rage before he gets t-boned in the midterms.

Take that thing out of reverse and floor it, gramps

All of this begs the question: Is Joe Biden just ineffective and ill-equipped for this moment in history, or just returning to his roots?

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*Possibly not a real quote…at least not one spoken aloud.

I. Mangrey reconfiguring.

Question (And Sociopathic Answer) For The Day

It’s A Freak Country

July 8, 2022

Larry Kudlow to Mike Pence:

“Have you ever seen a president who refuses to accept blame and commits so many falsehoods, I’m being very polite here, calling it falsehoods. Falsehoods, on any given day he’s out there just sayin’ stuff that just ain’t true. You ever see anything like that?”

Mike Pence:

“Never in my lifetime.”

This has been your Paying Attention™ Question (And Sociopathic Answer) For The Day.

Fun Fact For The Day

It’s All So Cheesy

July 6, 2022

One of the attorneys advising Donald Turmp during the lead-up to Trump’s attempted coup goes by the name of Kenneth Chesebro. On November 18, 2020 Cheese Bro – a Wisconsinite – advised that fake-president Turmp’s campaign should organize its own fake (i.e., illegal) electors in swing states that Turmp had lost.

Chesebro laid out in detail what (illegal) actions Mike Pence should take on January 6, 2021 to subvert the election. He provided a paper trail by spelling out his treason in memos to Rudy Giuliani and Turmp (not so) legal advisor John Eastman.

Cheese Bro provided a Microsoft Word document template for the fake elector plot and allegedly worked with the chair of the Georgia GOP to have 16 people secretly meet in the state capitol building to serve as fake electors.

He has now been subpoenaed – along with Giuliani, Eastman, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Turmp) and other Turmpworld denizens – to appear before a grand jury in Georgia to splain hisself.

Just thought you might like to know.

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

Happy Fourth Of Koyaanisqatsi

Make America The Colonies Again

July 4, 2017

July 4, 2022

Philip Glass - Koyaanisqatsi

I. Mangrey Martin Niemöller

First they came for the recent meager gun control regulations, discarding over 100 years of precedent, and many of us said something because a huge majority of us wanted gun control very badly.

Then they came for a woman’s right to choose, overturning 50 years of admitted (lied-about) super-precedent, and a large majority of us rose up in disgust, horror and disbelief, because a large majority of us were strongly in favor of women being treated like people, with the right to control their own bodies.

Then, they came for our ability to combat the climate crisis by crippling the Environmental Protection Agency as part of their longstanding collusion with corporate greed and devastation, even though most people in this country don’t want the Earth to become inhospitable to human existence.

Then they said, “Fuck anyone who doesn’t like our racist, radical-Christian, corporate-owned, gun-obsessed fascism, we’re just getting started.”*

Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Clowney Barrett
Be afraid. Be very afraid. They won’t go near brains, but they will eat your soul.

The three (in)justices appointed by the disgraced, twice-impeached, treasonous, ex-one-term-president and failed blogger, who lost the popular vote by a large margin, and then again by a huge margin. We are now living in a tyranny of the minority. A minority that wants to take this country back to, at best the Monarchy Era preceding 1776, but evidently, back to something more like the Middle Ages, but with assault weapons. They are a dangerous, backward-looking, theocratic cabal of dimwitted nimrods. Other than that, they’re very nice people…just kidding, deep down they are all arrogant, unserious people. And this super tiny, unelected, incredibly unpopular minority is one that cannot be regulated, cajoled, or stopped. For decades to come, unless...**

The Pioneers - Time Hard

The Pig Lie

Stay tuned as the Extreme Court goes gunning to abort election law. The Court is poised to take power away from state courts and hand over control of election results to state legislatures. Hypocrisy much? Just so happens this is the very maneuver the Children of The Big Lie wanted to pull off in order to overturn the legitimate election of Joe Biden. It’s time to over-ride – preferably, run roughshod over – this Court with the will of the people before it’s too late.

Olivia Rodrigo - Fuck You (feat. Lily Allen) (Glastonbury 2022)

Clarence Thomas immediately threatened to go after same-sex marriage and contraceptives. Yes, you read that right – contraceptives.  If that diseased mutant was not in an interracial marriage would that also be on his hit list? Yes. It would.

Thoughts…

…and prayers

This is all incredibly fucked up.

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*Oh yeah, and they pissed all over the Separation of Church and State.
**HEY DEMOCRATS, EXPAND THE FUCKING SUPREME COURT ASAP!!! The “Supreme” Court is even less popular that you. Run on expanding the fucking Court. If you don’t, the Ratpublicans will do it as soon they decide they need want to. Like to make abortions completely illegal by federal fucking law. Like to make any mention of Climate Crisis a felony.***
***As if they hadn’t done enough already with the Citizens United and Shelby County decisions

I. Mangrey revolted.

BONUS GOLDEN OLDIE:

Zappa/Beefheart – 200 Years Old

Taking The Fourth

Original Spin

July 1, 2022

The cancerous legacy of America’s disgraced, twice-impeached, treasonous, ex-one-term-president and failed blogger continues to poison the legacy of America itself. A legacy, I might remind you, that began with the (still ongoing, albeit in slower motion) genocide of the land’s original inhabitants, followed by the inhuman kidnapping and brutal (even by historical standards) enslavement of Africans. Throughout all of this gaudy freedom, women were given neither respect or rights of any kind. At least they weren’t slaves…well, not technically. In what can best be classified as utterly disgraceful, it was decided to count a slave as 3/5 of a person, but women did not even get a mention, honorable or otherwise.

Eventually, the genocide of Native Americans slowed down, the slavery of Black people was outlawed (unless you count the prison system), and women were finally given all the rights previously reserved for white men…just kidding, they were eventually permitted to vote and hold office. Oh, and, many decades later, finally allowed to make 82 cents on the male pay dollar for the same, and often better work.

Women’s Wrongs

One woman, Rep. Mary Miller (R-ILL), an anti-government libertarian who also gave Hitler kudos in the past, seems fine with all that has just happened and all that is about to happen. The day after the judicial murder of Roe v. Wade, Miller had this to say, “President (sic) Trump (sick), on behalf of all the MAGA patriots in America, I want to thank you for the historic victory for white life in the Supreme Court yesterday.” Miller’s campaign later tried to walk back what was at best a Freudian slip, saying she misspoke, though she could be seen reading directly from her script as those words fouled the air, and after uttering those blatantly racist words was seen applauding along with the considerably racist crowd who were also applauding and loudly cheering. Miller did not see fit to “correct” herself in real time.

Miller, triumphant after lauding “white life.” And look who’s right there behind her.

History Lessen

At long last, America would become what it set out to be – a world for rich, white men to run roughshod over not only their nation, but as much of the world as they could get their greedy hands on. Oops, I don’t think that was what was ultimately hoped for, though it sure was what was originally designed. And we finally elected a Black president, though he was immediately succeeded by the most racist white motherfucker in modern, if not all of, American history – a president, I may remind you, that was only elected on the technicality we call the Electoral College (also a racist artifact), a feat he thankfully could only accomplish one time – but don’t tell him that. He’s like the Japanese soldier who continued fighting WWII several decades after everyone else in the world agreed it had ended. Unlike the Civil War here at home that far too many think is still going on. It is unclear how many of these super-geniuses also believe that the Earth is flat.

Now that the Extreme Court has done its Medieval Two-Step backwards with their heinous assault on women’s rights, women’s health and women’s literal bodies, we are living in a fundamentalist…I mean fundamentally Cowardly New World.

Zappa – Jesus Thinks You’re A Jerk

Anyway, America’s birthday is nigh. Hence the nostalgic longing above. Independence Day. A day that has been celebrated for more than two centuries (at least by white folks).

I know many of you are looking forward to the upcoming holiday weekend as our great and glorious nation prepares to celebrate the Fourth of July – American Independence Day. Sure, you might not be feeling quite as gung-ho or patriotic as in other times, but fuck it, a day off is a day off. But, not so fast hippie trash, you will have to burn your flags some other day. Rumor has it that the Extreme Court (ostensibly) of the United States will be canceling Independence Day – and in short order any semblance of independence – since Independence Day is not in the Constitution that six of the (in)justices claim to be upholding.

Holding-up something is not the same as upholding it.

“Remember, there’s a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.” 
Frank Zappa

I. Mangrey resisting.