The Rude Pundit

What a motherfucker of a year this was. I mean, seriously, it's like this year took all the mothers, lined them up, and fucked them one after the other, tossing a fucked mother aside as it moved on to fuck the next one. Just nothing but day after day of brutality and hatred and ignorance and more hatred and violence and more hatred and egomania and more hatred and you get the idea. You were there. The only thing we've got is that we went through it all together. And, like we do every year in this rude joint, we memorialize the fuckery with the simple yet poignant and/or pointed poetic form of the haiku. 

Like movies about suicidal snowmen and tortured ghosts and pole-frozen tongues, some things are a tradition around the rude house. Beloved reruns are good for the soul. My favorites to trot out this week are the Invader Zim Christmas episode and Olive the Other Reindeer. Heck, I just saw Wish for Wings That Work is on YouTube, so I'm gonna put that into rotation. Even here, in Left Blogsylvania, we can indulge in revisiting old posts.

Before Threads, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, Facebook, and many other places you can get your fix of weird shit, I posted this Christmas blast back in 2004, updated yearly with new bits of freakishness (some links might not work anymore, but they were or are all real and unironic):

Xmas - And, lo, a small teddy bear will lead them:
In the days before Christmas, the Rude Pundit roamed his neighborhood, looking at the displays in the charming stores and corner markets. There he saw the agony of so many dichotomous feelings about this holiday. One window had a kneeling, praying Santa next to a baby Jesus in the manger. Santa's hat was off. He was balding. Another display had the jolly old fat man landing his sleigh and reindeer on the roof of the manger. Surprisingly, neither Mary nor Joseph seemed rattled by the noise, although a camel was looking upward, as if asking, "What the fuck?" The Rude Pundit loved that camel.

Ah, sweet camel, what the fuck, indeed. Christ and commerce, Alleluia. The Savior has been born and he thanks you for your presents. Santa showing that he'll even honor the king of the Jews in the land of Islam. There's no telling what it means (and don't get all up in the Rude Pundit's face about St. Nicholas). Except this: we want to embrace both things, good deconstructionists that we are: Santa, who soothes our greed, and Jesus, who promises us peace. Either way, we want them both to tell us we're good people, nice people. And, of course, guilt-ridden Christians want to make sure that Santa toes the party line, you know.

For the holiday, here's a few of my favorite nativity sets, none of which are intended to be mocking of the event:

That right there is the Veggie Tales Nativity. In case you don't know, Veggie Tales are cute vegetables who love Christ and salad tossing. The newborn savior up there is a carrot. Get it? A baby carrot? What a delight.


Holy shit, that bear nativity is one of the creepiest fucking things I've ever seen. Staring straight ahead with their dead eyes, it looks like a satanic cult sacrifice to some horrible bear-demon. Although, the three wise bears have provided snacks for the blood rite: salmon, honey, and berries. All go well with cub entrails.

Every year, I think, "I wonder if there's an even weirder nativity set that I can find" and every year I come across something where I think, "Yeah, that's friggin' crazy shit, man." Here, it's the snow people nativity, with a snow angel, a snow Joseph, a snow Mary, and horrible, smiling snow kings. Did Snow Mary give birth to Snow Baby Jesus? Or did they all just make Snow Baby Jesus out of snow? And the temperature in Bethlehem this time of year is in the 60s. Is that why they seem to be festooned with turds, to try to hold their globular shape a little longer?

Last night, all the broadcast TV networks, as well as the cable news ones, paused their programming to give a rapist free rein to say whatever he wanted for 20 minutes. That the rapist is the president of the United States doesn't change the fact that he's a rapist (the crime a judge said he really committed when he was found liable for sexual assault). That the networks felt cowed into showing a meaningless speech delivered by a rapist because of fears that the rapist would sue them or threaten their right to broadcast is significant. But that's the power courts and corporations have decided this particular rapist should have. 

The rapist, who is not just a rapist but a financial criminal who committed 34 felonies, bellowed and blustered as if he was trying to cover up for the fact that he's a rapist and a criminal and someone who was close friends with and likely helped a child sex trafficker. The rapist, who also stole money from his own charitable organizations, is not good with math. For instance, he lied about the number of undocumented migrants who entered the country during the administration of Joe Biden, who is not a rapist. The rapist said, "Our country was being invaded by an army of 25 million people" and that includes "11,888 murderers." Neither of those numbers are real, but let's say they are. That means that .04% of the migrants are murderers. That's fewer murderers than estimated in the general population (which I've seen at .05%). It means that migrants are less likely to be murderers than people already here. 

Add to that the rapist's other nonsensical mathematical statements about lowering prescription prices "by as much as 400, 500 and even 600 percent," which an average fourth grader can tell you is impossible, and that, under Biden, "the typical family lost $5,000 to $10,000 in higher energy costs," which would mean bills tripled, at least, and that didn't happen, and it becomes quite obvious: The rapist is a desperate moron. And he thinks he can blind you with numbers that are completely made up. But he is a rapist, and if everyone always remembers that he's a rapist, if the corporate media were to remind us always that he is a rapist, then maybe he couldn't get away with those lies because who is going to believe a rapist. (Don't answer that. Please don't answer that.)

But the other problem the rapist has is that he is not a good speaker. He's a loud one who can make stupid faces to punctuate a point. That works at rallies where large groups of rapist worshippers gather, all predisposed to giggle as the rapist jiggles in his little dance. Because he is not a good speaker in situations like this, because he yells into a microphone and distorts his voice, because he doesn't really have a facial expression beyond stupid and sneering, because he always sounds like he's berating a waiter for not bringing an extra basket of bread fast enough, he came across as a goddamn lunatic, like the cornered rapist that he is. He was dumb enough to interrupt the season finale of Survivor, and that means that a whole bunch of people who ordinarily don't watch his mad rantings got a taste of what he's really like, with his pathetic Powerpoint presentation and petty grievances. 

They got to hear a rapist say of Biden, "He was always blaming Congress and everyone else" while at the same time blaming Biden for everything that hasn't gone right for him. They got to hear a rapist, a rapist who is a Republican president with a Republican House and Republican Senate and a Republican majority on the Supreme Court, say about the failure to do anything to prevent health insurance premiums from skyrocketing for millions of Americans, "It is not the Republicans’ fault. It’s the Democrats’ fault." They got to hear a simpering rapist begging for love and credit for things that he has completely fabricated out of his rapist mind. It's always pathetic when that happens. It's like Jeb Bush saying, "Please clap" if Jeb Bush were a rapist. In other words, we might feel pity but we just feel disgust.

A rapist yelled at America last night. A rapist insisted that he was the greatest president in history. A rapist declared that he did more than any other president has in eight years, which, if measured by destruction and death, perhaps, perhaps. I want Americans to bear in mind every time he pleads for a Nobel Peace Prize, every time he glorifies himself by putting his cursed name on something, every time he opens that lying hole in his face, that it is a rapist saying that, that he behaves like a rapist, that he objectifies everything like a rapist, and that he thinks that he should get to fuck whatever he wants. And that, really, the one thing we don't know yet is just how horrific of a rapist he is.

Let's not be naive about this shit. To an extent, pretty much every president has been a murderer, often through war crimes committed by their military. What were all the presidents who committed the genocide of indigenous Americans if not murderers? More recently, George W. Bush's "war" in Iraq was a mass murder of civilians. Among other horrors, Barack Obama was responsible for a wedding massacre and the extrajudicial killing of an American with his drone war (and, yes, some of us commented on it quite loudly and quite often). Sure, every president offered some bullshit legal justification for their more heinous acts, but that doesn't really make them not murder. History is mostly a fucking nightmare, and we need to be clear-headed about our country's role in sometimes being the monster in the nightmare. 

But something is very different about the ongoing drone missile attacks on small boats that are allegedly transporting "drugs" for "the cartels" by the administration of Donald Trump, who, somehow is not only still alive but still president. While some presidents certainly celebrated murders done in their names (and some did not, with Obama even acknowledging mistakes with his endless drone attacks), Trump and his team of groveling lickspittles have been absolutely gleeful about missile killing the people on the offending boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean. And it's not just that they might be slaughtering people who are fishermen or who are, at best, low-level transportation providers for drug runners, it's that they don't fucking care. They don't care that they are offering no proof that drugs are on the boat. And they sure as fuck don't care that the alleged "crimes" don't get the criminals the death penalty if taken to trial. 

The utter depravity runs deep, as we've learned with the revelation that someone, either Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (I am not fucking calling it the "Department of War") or Admiral Frank Bradley, ordered the military to fire again to kill two survivors of the first drone attack, two men climbing out of the ocean onto the remains of their destroyed boat, waving for help from any vehicle nearby, and instead getting bombed to pieces by the United States because "drugs." Hegseth, who always looks like he's waiting to get back to masturbating to his own dick pics, has posted a meme involving children's book and TV show turtle Franklin (who, it should be noted, is Canadian, so...go immigrants), all while shifting his story on the drone "double tap," which is when you shoot someone in the head to make sure they're dead. 

So far, the United States has murdered at least 90 people in these death-penalty-without-arrest-charge-or-trial cases. Every time we hear about what really is happening, we learn that we're being lied to. Yes, more than a few of the dead were fishermen. Boats were heading away from the U.S. This is not to mention the reality that Venezuela doesn't fucking produce fentanyl. Whenever a boat is blown up and its crew is murdered, Trump or his Siren of Doom Karoline "No, Really, I'm 28 and My Husband is 60" Leavitt tell anyone questioning it to go fuck themselves with the wreckage because it was carrying enough "drugs" to kill tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans. But that's fentanyl. And illegal fentanyl almost exclusively comes from Mexico (and a little from China). The administration's response to requesting evidence that the people they are murdering are not just drug smugglers, but smugglers coming to our country has been, more or less, "Fuck you. That's our evidence." And then they mock the idea that we should take them into custody and do all those things that make us a putatively civilized country. Silly little believers in the rule of law that we are.

With a couple of exceptions, like confusing, weird elf Rand Paul, Republican support for the murders and for the idea that we are at "war" with "narcoterrorists" is high. Sen. Tom Cotton, who is an Adam's apple with a head on top, said of the murders, "I’m not just comfortable with it, I want to continue it." Republicans offer two things in defense of the murders that are just fucking galling. They are claiming, as Cotton did, that these are boats that are "crewed by associates and members of foreign terrorist organizations that are trying to kill American kids." That's based on Trump declaring cartels as terrorist groups, which is some bullshit since the goals of terrorists are to, you know, terrorize a population to achieve a political goal, not to sell things to make money. But it also implies that they want to kill Americans. Drug dealers don't want to kill their customers. That makes no fucking sense. It's like saying that Waymo taxis are just murder machines. They're not trying to kill anyone because they want people to take the driverless cars. Of course, if you're using it, you might die, but, really, that's on you. (I don't fuckin' know if I'm talking about Waymos or drugs anymore. Probably both.) 

And the other galling thing is that what Republicans cite again and again is Obama's use of drones in attack in the Middle East. House Intelligence Chair Rick Crawford of Arkansas, who calls drug running "chemical warfare" (which is levels of hysteria that George H.W. Bush could never hope to reach), said about watching the video of one of the murders off Venezuela: "Those who appear ‘troubled’ by videos of military strikes on designated terrorists have clearly never seen the Obama-ordered strikes." And Speaker Mike Johnson, who always looks like he's trying to remember where he left the key to the door to his sex torture room before the man chained there starves to death, said, "One of the things I was reminded of this morning is that under Barack Obama, President Obama, he had — I think there were 550 drone strikes on people who were targeted as enemies of the country, and nobody ever questioned it." Except everyone questioned it, including Democrats in Congress, and there were hearings and more. And Trump amped up the drones, launching many more than Obama. 

The cynical side of me wants to return to that first paragraph and say that this is very much who we are as a country precisely because of Obama's drone war. But this feels different because the fig leaf of "war" is nonexistent. Trump and the rest can claim we're at war, but Obama was at least operating under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force that started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bullshit though they may have been.

But the embrace of the savagery here is what's disturbing. The insistence that, for instance, the two men left alive after the first drone attack needed to be killed despite it being a violation of every rule for war or every law anywhere. In his nauseating interview on Meet the Press, Cotton also said, "At one point, the guy takes off his T-shirt, maybe he’s trying to get a sun tan. It doesn’t really matter what they were trying to do. What matters is that they were not in a shipwreck state, distressed, dog-paddling in the water." Who the fuck says that about people in the middle of the goddamn ocean? 

And that's what I mean about our American soul, which was hurting already. It's like the notion of having humanity or compassion is seen as something for pussies and suckers. In one of their Cletus safaris, the New York Times interviewed Trump voters about the drone murders, and four out of six were totally fine with it, not needing evidence, trusting every lie that shits out of Trump's anus mouth. One dickhead said, "I’m not losing any sleep over the two people clinging to the boat."

As we murder our way to being the world's pariah, as we torture people being held in detention facilities and concentration camps, as we turn our backs on our allies, as we enable more genocides while Trump laughably claims he's a man of peace, we are withering that soul away until we are nothing but our crimes. What we need is a concerted, unified message from Democrats that these are horrific crimes and that they will prosecute people for these murders when they have the power, that they will pursue anyone, up to and including generals, cabinet officials, and Trump, for committing murder, that we can do something to save ourselves. 

"For Girls Who Run Through Storms like Buffalos, Knowing It’s the Quickest Way Through"

By Tanaya Winder

Funny thing: I hated Dick Cheney, like hated him with a visceral, almost incomprehensible level of hate. And I'll accuse him of all kinds of horrific things, but you know what I'd never say about him? That he himself is a rapist. I'm not saying he didn't cover for those who rape and torture. I'm not saying he isn't sexual assault-adjacent because we saw what happened in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. I'm simply saying that, despite my loathing of the man, I simply have no basis to say he's a rapist or that he committed any kind of sex crimes. No one was ever reported to have accused him of that. And there are plenty of people I fucking despise who I could say that about. Indeed, if false rape allegations were genuinely, widely used to attack shitty people, you'd think that a whole lot more shitty people would be falsely accused of rape.

1. Here's the thing that bugs the living shit out of me about 8 Democratic senators negotiating a budget deal with Republicans to end the government shutdown that has gone on for over 40 days: we, the base, had the backs of Democrats and even that wasn't enough to stiffen their spines for the long haul. It makes our party look like cowardly assholes, and it's a betrayal of an energy and movement that has been growing, from the massive No Kings protests to the overwhelming vote for Democratic candidates and causes all around the country (not just in the Northeast). Motherfuckers, we were ready to go, with money, with recruitment to races that weren't even in play, with enthusiasm and excitement and a base that was being repopulated with Gen Z voters. There's plenty of time before the midterms to get that momentum going again, but this is one hell of a mess to get through.

2. From the outset, Democrats should have asked for so much more than an extension on ACA health care subsidies and restoring funding to Medicaid and Medicare that the Big Barfy Bill cut. But they decided to narrow it down to those items, and we went along with it. And then Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who should be falling on his sword and resigning, negotiated that down to a one-year extension of the subsidies. And then the Hateable Eight negotiated that down to "we'll go fuck ourselves with our Obamacare subsidy request if you don't hit us too hard." Sure, they got a guarantee that federal workers fired during the shutdown would be rehired and a pinky-swear on a vote on the subsidies after the government reopens. But that's pretty fucking close to nothing. It's like getting promised an orgy and you show up lubed and tumescent, only to be told that not only is there no one else there, but you can only masturbate to an old, crispy Sears catalog. 

3. I know you've heard lots of scenarios about why this happened, from bougie frustration at being inconvenienced at the airport to genuine concern for the hungry to general cowardice to getting lobbied by airlines. Lemme take it in a different direction. 

If I were a Democratic senator forced at gunpoint to spin this in a way that doesn't make us look like total feckless bitches, I'd say the following: "The American people need to understand that the president of the United States is a fucking psychopath surrounded by fucking psychopaths with a Supreme Court majority of fucking psychopaths and fucking psychopaths running the Legislative Branch. The only difference between the House and Senate is that the House psychos are more open about how deranged they are and the Senate psychos are better spoken. Except for Tuberville. He's just a piece of shit psycho. 

"I don't use the word 'psychopath' lightly. But they all take pleasure in causing other people to suffer and in killing without remorse. The president has innocent people murdered when he bombs boats. He allows ICE to pepper spray children and babies so that an immigrant parent with a traffic violation can be treated like a terrorist, tearing families apart. And he has no problem letting Americans starve to death or become desperate for food as a negotiating strategy. He doesn't care at all if you and your children can't eat. In fact, he has gone to court to make sure you can't eat. That's the behavior of a fucking psychopath. And Republicans in the Senate are not just enabling the psychopath president. They are cheering him on, saying they like his serial murders and assaults on children. And they have wanted to make sure that millions of Americans don't get health care since this whole thing began. Fucking psychos. 

"I know some people like to use the idea that you can't negotiate with terrorists to justify standing firm. But the thing is that you can. Terrorists want something. They have goals and are willing to bargain. Terrorists have more self-respect than Republicans. And even most terrorists wouldn't do something that kills thousands, if not tens of thousands of their own supporters. But Republicans have no problem causing their voters pain along with everyone else. There is no one rational on their side.

"So how the fuck do you negotiate with elected officials who are willing to massacre the very people who put them in power? The psychopaths were going to happily put Americans through hell on food insecurity just so they could continue to put Americans through hell on health insurance because that's what psychopaths do. And the bonus bullshit is that we could do all the work of getting what we want and then the psycho president just vetoes it and we're all fucked again. Or it could have been all approved and voted into law and then Trump might just ignore the law and freeze the spending because of 'security' or an 'emergency' that is completely fictional and the cockmites at the Supreme Court will just let him. It all fucking sucks and we fucking suck for giving in. But at least we got a completely unenforceable promise of a vote on ACA subsidies and we saved SNAP and a few jobs. Now I'm gonna go home and cry.

"But before I do, lemme talk to you shitheels in red states. You need to give your representatives and senators as much shit as possible for doing this to the country. Or just admit you're the gimps of the GOP."

4. Of course, what Democrats should have done is give much the same speech and say, "And that's why we have to fight. No deal." We'd have gone to the fucking barricades for that kind of ballsiness.