Aldous J Pennyfarthing

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.

Before Vladimir Putin decided it was a swell idea to take his mass murdering to the next level, you almost had to squint to see the traitorous stains who walked among us. But the “savvy genius” who got hopelessly bogged down in Ukraine in less time than it takes Donald Trump to get his head stuck in a jumbo jar of Nutella shined a black light on some of our seedier nooks and crannies and—lo and behold!—looks like treason was the reason for the appeasin’.

Well, if I were driving around in circles all day to protest pandemic mandates that have largely been rescinded, I might get pretty frustrated, too. Troop TruckNutz—aka the “People’s Convoy”—has been doing God knows what on the D.C. Beltway lately, for reasons known only to them. And it’s started to get pretty pathetic, frankly.

It would be one thing if they were harassing and endangering commuters for an absurd reason—i.e.

If there’s anything more pathetic than Texas Sen. Ted Cruz being pusillanimous, it’s Ted Cruz trying to act tough. Lately he’s been supporting the D.C. trucker convoy—the shambolic caravan of dead-ender, pro-death troglodytes that suddenly seems as culturally relevant as C.W. McCall’s seminal 1975 hit Convoy.

Donald Trump’s Truth Social—the plucky startup that aims to disrupt the social media space in the same way Trump Steaks transformed how Americans befouled their colons—is soaring on gossamer wings straight into a comically large bug zapper.

It’s difficult to fathom how anyone trusts Trump in any arena these days, much less in business. He’s arguably a worse businessman than he was a president, and he was a worse president than a human being.

Okay, so you may have read that headline and thought, “What? Tucker Carlson is finally souring on Putin’s war?” Oh, no. Don’t worry. It’s not like we’ve entered Bizarro World or anything. No, we’re simply at the stage in Vladimir Putin’s career when Russian state TV is obliquely questioning its supreme leader’s infallible judgment. Normal stuff. No biggie.

Donald Trump Jr. is at it again, folks. 

Hats off to whoever managed to sandblast the flop sweat and happy powder from Patrick Bateman Trump Jr.’s face before he hit “record” on his latest video. Otherwise, this whole spectacle could have been borderline embarrassing.

Okay, let’s be fair about this. You could argue that the U.S. had a legitimate interest in propping up global oil prices during the COVID-caused 2020 recession in order to aid domestic producers. I figured I’d be fair at the outset because MAGAs never are, particularly when it comes to this issue.

Generalissimo Sean Hannity, the high commander for war strategy at Fox News, has an idea that will end the war! Erm, sorry—I meant “world.” Those two words sound so similar. 

Anyone with any sense of history knows that the last thing President Joe Biden can do is send the U.S. military into Ukraine while Russia conducts its war of aggression. Nor can NATO—which includes three nuclear powers—get involved.

Ukrainians are fighting for their fledgling democracy and independence, but this fight is bigger than just one country. In a very real sense, they’re fighting for us and for everyone on the planet who loves democracy and hates autocracy. Contrary to the traitorous whining of the Putin-appeasing GOP, President Biden has been a rock throughout this crisis, assembling a coalition that’s brought the hammer down on Putin’s economy and left his long-term plans in cinders.

Sometimes I wonder what might have happened had Jim Comey kept his mouth shut prior to the 2016 election, and if Hillary Clinton were now in the second year of her second term. The House hearings on Mr. Potato Head would have been something, I’m sure. That said, it’s hard to believe we’d be in the position we’re in now, after four years of nearly unrestrained GOP Putin-enabling led by the li’l Russian marionette himself.

The most shocking part about this story isn’t Marco Rubio’s hypocrisy. That’s a given, like Donald Trump’s slovenly ineptitude or early summer squalls that drop hailstones the size of Louie Gohmert’s head. No, the truly surprising part is that his hypocrisy was so incandescent it actually drew flak from Fox News.

Donald Trump has apparently run afoul of the law—again.

Everything about the image is perfect—in a way. If Donald Trump ever achieves his longstanding goal of turning America into a giant kleptocratic Chuck E. Cheese, this will be the new flag of Colorado—in honor of the state’s governor-for-life, Lauren J. “Le Petomane” Boebert.

It’s a perfect snapshot of America in the Year of Our Lord 2022. A crass deference to shallow values and superficial virtues? Check.

While I can only assume Donald Trump is terrified of any book that hasn’t been hollowed out and stuffed with lunchmeats, he’s apparently really nervous about The New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman’s upcoming tell-all-that-maybe-should-have-been-told-years-ago magnum opus.

Eventually Donald Trump has to run out of marks, right? This feels like if Mussolini had escaped at the end of World War II and started selling knockoff Avon products out of the back of his van. Hey, Wall Street investors! Donald Trump is a grifter! If you want to invest in social media, you’d be better off using your savings to buy more MySpace friends. At least that platform actually exists, unlike the ocher oaf’s newest scam, Truth Social.

It’s nearly inconceivable the amount of time, energy, and money Donald Trump’s fans have poured into challenging the results of the 2020 election, simply because Trump couldn’t squeeze the words “I lost” out of the one orifice on his body that’s borderline capable of such elocution.

This feels a little like defending an evil serial-killer clown from a raging, sulfurous hellmouth demon who tries to steal his balloons, but here goes: Sarah Palin didn’t deserve this. And Roger Ailes (may he wallow in peace) is still, with apologies to Arnold Ziffel, a gross pig.

Can anyone still say with a straight face that Donald Trump wasn’t trying to illegally overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election? Everything he did from Nov. 3, 2020 to Jan.

It would be nice if we could clone White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki thousands of times and send the newly minted Psaki Corps out to every drunk uncle and horse paste-chugging churl in the U.S., but we don’t have that technology. (Plus it might be unethical or something.

To say that Joe Manchin appears out of touch with the pressing needs of his constituents and Americans as a whole would be a grotesque understatement. The Build Back Better bill would be a godsend to millions of Americans who struggle to pay their monthly bills, find affordable child care and—not for nothing—worry about the effects of climate change on their children’s future.

So what do you do if “too many” Black people vote in an election? You pass laws to frustrate and discourage them, of course! But why rest on your ugly racist laurels when there are still so many pesky murder laws standing in the way of regress? What if “too many” white people are being prosecuted for murdering Black joggers who obviously shouldn’t be jogging and certainly shouldn’t be Black while doing it?

The San Jose, California, City Council is requiring gun owners to carry liability insurance and pay a fee in what the city says is the first ordinance of its kind in the U.S. The city council passed the law on Tuesday, and it will likely take effect in August.

Since it’s already quasi-legal for teenagers to kill protesters in Wisconsin, Badger State Republicans are hoping to further enshrine the kiddos’ right to be public menaces. Call it the “Kyle Rittenhouse Will Blow Your Face Off for Giving Him the Stink Eye, but this Time He’ll Have a Permit” Incel Aggro Act of 2022.

News flash for the anti-maskers among us: Refusing to mask up on a crowded flight to London doesn’t make you Rosa Parks. It makes you an unbelievable asshole. This is not a hill worth dying on—though, come to think of it, you may very well die. Just not on a hill.

Not content to risk and/or ruin her own life, a woman who refused to wear a mask on a flight from Miami to London Wednesday night prompted the pilot to actually turn the plane around and head back home.

The hair-on-fire emergency in the quaggy swamplands of Florida Man’s brain these days isn’t COVID-19—it’s the ghastly thought that somewhere within the sea-buffeted borders of America’s enormous schwanzstucker, a sports-baller might get gruesomely Theismanned without hearing a musical tribute to our nation first.

During and after the Jan. 6 insurrection, before Fox News went all-in on greasing the skids for fascism, some of its most celebrated on-air personalities acted as though Donald Trump had been hit with a protoplasmic growth ray and was rampaging from sea to rising sea popping whole Taco Bell Expresses in his mouth like Fiddle Faddle.

Republicans are really on a roll, aren’t they? First, they support Donald Trump, then Vladimir Putin—and now they’re using the copious political capital they’ve built up with the pig-ignorant half of America to go all-in for COVID-19. I shudder to think what’s next. Maybe they can repeal car-seat laws so toddlers are free to catapult into chemical freight trucks, as God and the Founders intended.

We’ve come a long way from the days of Bill “I Didn’t Inhale” Clinton and our overwrought collective freakout over ordinary and decidedly normal cannabis use. Not that long ago, video of a U.S. Senate candidate smoking weed in a field would be considered lurid oppo research. But now, at least one candidate, Gary Chambers, is featuring it in his campaign advertising. 

Now, I doubt Chambers will win.

You know, I’m starting to agree with the MAGA crowd about masks. I don’t really need one, because I’ve been face-palming pretty much nonstop since 2017. That’s gotta filter out most coronavirus, right? As for the vaccine—I got all my shots. But, sadly, there’s no immunity—artificial or otherwise—against the goofball gormlessness of the Republican Party.

I keep hearing about bipartisanship. Oh, what is this fey, bashful woodland creature of which you speak, Republicans? It sounds simply enchanting—and, yes, I would love to believe it exists. But it just doesn’t. I’m quite certain I saw Mitch McConnell beating it to death with a shovel in a roadside ditch after he hit it with his car.