Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Remember the old days, when Democrats and Republicans argued over trivialities, like the capital gains tax and Michael Dukakis’ tank helmet, not whether democracy was a good idea? Look where we are now. Democrats, as always, have been full-throated in defense of Western liberal democracy, whereas Republicans have been making Magi-like treks to Hungary to quaff from the cold, clear, invigorating wellspring of Viktor Orban-style authoritarianism.

When conservatives’ racist dog whistles prompt certain dogs to go on killing rampages—as happened over the weekend in Buffalo—folks like Sen. Ron Johnson are only too happy to exploit their dim-bulb reputations in order to scurry away from controversies of their own making.

Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert has a unique plan for addressing our nation’s outsized child care crisis. (Of course, by “outsized child care crisis,” I mean that our country is a laggard when it comes to providing adequate child care benefits, not that we’ve been forced to care about an outsized child, though that’s also definitely true.

In the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection, after briefly acknowledging that Emperor Pulp-itine (Latin designation: Circus Peanutus) had no clothes, Sen. Lindsey Graham has been doing what otherwise might be seen as a public service: furiously fig-leafing the ocher oaf’s irriguous dingly bits 24/7.

Michael Flynn served in the Trump administration for approximately as long as it takes Donald Trump’s languorous, M.C. Escher-like grotesquerie of a colon to pass a Happy Meal. He was our country’s national security adviser for about three weeks in early 2017, during which time he did his level best to make Vladimir Putin’s dewiest wet dreams come true.

Fake outrage is kind of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s bag, and if you have the sense God gave a Gosar, you might even think he’s good at it. Gaslighting and projection are Republicans’ go-to answers to every controversy these days, and they’re now furiously spinning reality to make it appear as if the current protests outside SCOTUS justices’ homes—and the “appalling” leak of a draft decision ending Roe v.

As bad as Donald Trump’s presidency was, rest assured it could have been way, way worse. And believe me, I get how bad it was. On its best days, it was like a happy-ending massage from Edward Scissorhands. On its worst days, it was like a shiatsu massage from Edward’s younger brother, Larry Used-Heroin-Needle Thumbs.

And yet some people still think he could—and/or should—be president again. Yeah, him. The scamp who attempted to 86 Western democracy.

Despite Donald Trump’s early assurances that he beat Chiiiii-na all the time, one of his favorite pastimes as president was losing to the country—while encouraging its worst excesses. 

Trump made a big show of acting tough toward China—imposing tariffs that succeeded in punishing our own citizens far more than Xi Jinping’s—but he ultimately lost his trade war, and rather decisively at that.

There’s a scene in the Bible where Lot offers up his daughters to be raped by a mob in order to protect two angels he’d invited into his home. Turns out the rapists had actually wanted to rape the angels, but Lot decided that would be be gauche, since they were invited guests. So, yeah—he offered the raping rabble his daughters. And Lot explicitly sweetened the deal by revealing that his daughters were both virgins.

With all the hullabaloo over Associate Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked draft opinion reducing any American with a uterus to an involuntary fetus decanter, another Jesus-adjacent SCOTUS decision flew under the radar on Monday. 

The high court ruled that the city of Boston violated the First Amendment rights of a group that wanted to raise a Christian flag outside city hall as part of a program that welcomed various emblems in celebration of civic pride.

The entire Republican brand has been built on a wobbly foundation of vile lies and exaggerations. It has to be.

We now know that Senate Minority Bleater Mitch McConnell was “exhilarated” after Jan. 6 because he thought the events of the day had finally discredited Donald Trump.

Do you think maybe Democrats could make political hay out of the fact that Russia’s Putin-controlled media wants to return Donald Trump—to whom congressional Republicans have more or less permanently Human Centipeded themselves—to his porcelain palace throne?

So there’s this guy Putin, see?

I’m trying to think of anything more undignified than sucking up to colossal loser Donald Trump after everything that’s happened in the past few years—telling him he won elections he lost, groveling for his endorsement, buying overpriced tchotchkes at his cult compound/golf resort, and pretending you’re not staring directly into the sallow, rheumy eyes of primordial evil.

I wouldn’t hire Trump to manage a Chuck E.

Whenever I think about former Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, I can’t help but picture him living in a little wren’s nest inside Donald Trump’s neck wattle, occasionally poking his head out to catch cascading donut sprinkles on his lolling lemur tongue as he fecklessly plots his enemies’ downfall from the safety of his Lilliputian villain’s lair.

How is it possible that Donald Trump has harshly criticized everyone from Twilight actress Kristen Stewart to a Gold Star mother, but he still hasn’t—as far as anyone can determine—even mildly rebuked murderous despot Vladimir Putin?

Fox News host Sean Hannity is such a shameless sycophant he has to check into a Motel 6 whenever Trump gets a colonoscopy, but even he couldn’t get the big ocher disgrace to trash Russia’s bumbling Hitler.

For many of us, “throwing your life away” might look like refusing a safe and effective vaccine that keeps your lungs from turning into turbid sacks of wet cement. But Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has other ideas. To her way of thinking, military service really is for losers and suckers.

In an April 9 interview with once-and-future DJT rectal parasite Lou Dobbs, Greene disparaged our military, concluding that joining the U.S.

Back in 2016, when Donald Trump was campaigning to be governor of Vladimir Putin’s new vassal state, the Democratic People’s Republic of Ivankaland (fka the United States), he made a truly shocking statement suggesting that America’s “Second Amendment people” could stop a future President Hillary Clinton from picking Supreme Court justices.

Richard Grenell was a terrible choice for acting director of national intelligence—which is precisely why Donald Trump chose him. It’s like when Trump is rudely confronted with a salad bar and has to choose between piling fresh greens on his plate or bobbing for stray croutons in the ranch dressing trough. His squishy id will wail like a toddler until he picks the most immediately gratifying option.

In the case of Grenell, Trump liked the way he looked on the teevee.

Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, whom God created to conclusively disprove white supremacy, is trying to explain away his video appearance at shrieking anti-Semite Nick Fuentes’ white power-palooza carnival in February, and that explanation is just as craven as you might imagine.

The GOP’s crack team of doctors (sorry, “quack” team—damn you, autocorrect!) includes such luminaries as Mehmet Oz, Ben Carson, Scott Atlas, and Ronny Jackson, the dude who turned a slovenly heap of fly-pocked Crisco into a Greek Adonis through the magic of barmy bullsh*t.

Now Jackson, who leveraged his unique proximity to Donald Trump’s eminently unkissable bum into a congressional seat, is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee.

For a law-and-order party, Republicans don’t seem all that interested in actual laws. At least not the ones that apply to them. They may believe the world is safer from loose cigarettes and indiscriminate hoodie-wearing, but open government corruption? Meh.

For example, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appears to be modeling his administration after the serial lawlessness of the Trump cabal, whose lodestar has always been Vladimir Putin.

A teacher once told me to write what you know. Since there’s very little call for stories about incrementally turning into Gollum as I shun natural light, social interaction, and the impudent inveigling of relatives trying to coax me out of my Reefer Madness redoubts and into the so-called “world,” I like to write about weed.

The GOP is no longer a serious political party. It’s a vaudeville show, and all they care about these days is performing. Not performing good deeds, mind you. Just performing. And the top clowns were all feeling their oats on Wednesday. 

Whether he’s concocting ad hoc reasons for flying to Cancun during a deadly deep freeze or insisting there really is candy in the back of his windowless white van, it’s safe to say that Sen. Ted Cruz can rarely be trusted.

Donald Trump’s Hitler Goof rallies have been drawing less and less interest lately, in part because windmill cancer has tragically taken so many of his rural devotees and also because Fox News no longer sees any benefit to broadcasting them. And why would they? His shtick never changes. It’s like watching a throng of mutant space orangutans break into a flash-orgy on the veranda of your local Olive Garden.

If you’re wondering when the Republican Party first took a hard right turn onto Loopy Lane, you need look no further than 2008, when a desperate Sen. John McCain, trying to distance himself from the noxious mound of still-moldering viscera that was the Bush II administration, tapped Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in a bid to balance the Republican presidential ticket.

Let’s see: In the past few years, Republicans have hitched themselves to Vladimir Putin, violent insurrectionists who tried to overthrow the legitimate government of the United States, a sore-loser campaign to undermine democracy, a former president who stole boxes of classified information from the White House and called a murderous tyrant a savvy genius, and a cruel campaign to gut  (particularly poor and vulnerable) people’s reproductive freedoms.

On Thursday, the House voted 424-8 to suspend normal trade relations with Russia in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine. Congress rarely achieves that kind of consensus on anything, unless the vote is for not telling Ted Cruz about the weekly after-work happy hour, but Ukraine’s plight has united Americans—on both sides of the aisle—like nothing else in years.

Vladimir Putin’s fatal error was assuming everyone in the United States was as weak, venal, oafish, and self-aggrandizing as Donald Trump, when in reality no more than half of us are. Of course, if you’d spent more time around Trump and Steven Seagal than with almost any other American, you’d probably think you could buy off the country for a G.I. Joe Cobra kimono and a jumbo tub of Cool Ranch-flavored Crisco.

New York Rep. Elise Stefanik—the third-ranking Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives—has at last captured the national zeitgeist! Americans aren’t worried about Ukraine, the economy, creeping fascism here and abroad, COVID-19, or any of the other stories the lamestream media keep pushing. The brutal truth is that most people are concerned about the continued availability of calorie-dense refined sugar in schools!

Seriously.