Elon Musk: Liar? Idiot? Putin Stooge? All Three?

You have, no doubt, seen the photos of Elon Musk jumping around like a chihuahua on crack at a recent Trump Lie Fest. It was especially impressive considering that from previous photos I've seen, Musk's body appears to be made entirely from marshmallows. 

What you may not know is, that like many "I did it all by myself" Libertarians before him, Musk's businesses have all relied on government money, either through loans or contracts. His fabulous fortune is due to American taxpayers propping him up, to the tune of many billions of dollars. Your tax dollars at work again.

So much for the rugged individualist, the self-made man. Myths. All myths.

He's cosplaying as an Edison level inventor. Nope. Never invented anything, except his own legend.

And a "free speech loving patriot." Nope again.

Unless your idea of free speech includes a deluge of unchallenged MAGA lies, which flood his soapbox, Twitter/X, every goddamn day. It's heaven for Russian bots, and like walking through a field of fresh dog shit for the rest of us.

As far as being just a concerned, First Amendment loving, "American patriot", in truth he is a South African immigrant, whose family's fortune, like many white South Africans, depended on apartheid. 

(And that father of his? WOW. Like Fred Trump's most infamous spawn, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.)

If Elon isn't a paid Putin stooge, he certainly acts like a paid Putin stooge.

And, since he's gone all in supporting Traitor Trump, to my mind that makes him just another traitor, too.

The sooner this little man heads to Mars, the better for humanity. Oh, and let's make sure he takes Peter Thiel with him.

Crashing And Burning Are Totally On-Brand For Tesla, Aren't They?

So this is what happens when you rush technology into the market place before it's ready.

Your "self driving" cars run over things. Or into things.

Sometimes they burst into flames, too, as a sort of bonus.

Not to worry, though.

I'm sure once Elon "My Entire Body Is Made From Marshmallows" Musk decides he's finished ruining Twitter by making it a safe place for every Nazi, white supremacist, Putin apologist, Russian Bot, and brain dead Republican/Libertarian, and fixes his super genius gaze on the problems with Tesla, everything will be just fine.

Uh huh.

The sooner this twat blasts off for Mars, the better off we'll all be.

Things We Don't Talk About Enough

America's eugenics movement inspired the Nazis. Oops.

Republican presidential candidates committed treason on at least three separate occasions: Nixon's team meddled in the Paris peace accords in 1968, promising the North Vietnamese a "better" deal if they'd reject LBJ's proposed deal. Reagan's team talked to the Iranians in 1980, promising them a "better" deal if they'd reject Carter's deal for the hostages. And Trump, of course, is so far up Putin's ass that he can count the Republican Congressmen nesting there.

Slavery and stolen land helped build this great land of ours.

Guns DO kill people. All the fucking time.

Nobody needs an AR-15 for self protection.

People who like to throw their Second Amendment "rights" in your face always leave out the part that says "a well regulated militia."

Back in the 1950's, the decade that conservatives are so nostalgic for, the corporate tax rate was 45%, and the personal tax rate for the richest people topped out at 91%.

(Actually, it's the 1850's that they're really longing for.)

There's way too many Catholics on the Supreme Court. And the Republican ones are seemingly longing for a return of the Inquisition.

Churches that decide to meddle in politics should be taxed.

Apparently the Christo-fascist majority on the Supreme Court think that their black robes and lifetime appointments make them bullet proof. I guess we'll see.

Libertarians have never built a goddamn thing by themselves.

Without massive government support, all those Billionaire Libertarians would just be a gaggle of cranks sitting at the far end of some dive bar, talking to themselves.

 

What Fresh Hell Is This?

A sometime contributor to The Arizona Republic, Jon Gabriel, who publishes something called Ricochet, which from all appearances is just chock full of Conservative/Libertarian nonsense, recently wrote an opinion piece for the paper stating that he thinks Kamala Harris isn't cut out to be Vice President. With that sentiment in mind, perhaps we should recall some of her predecessors:

Richard Nixon was Eisenhower's veep. Enough said.

Spiro Agnew was Nixon's veep. And, quelle surprise, a convicted crook. Birds of a feather, I guess. 

 

Gerald Ford replaced Agnew and all he did was pardon Mr. I Am Not A Crook for his various crimes.

 

George H.W. Bush was neck deep in Iran-Contra while the Great Communicator and Mommy consulted their astrologist. 

 

Dan Quayle was out spelled by a child. 

 

Dick "The Dark Lord" Cheney gleefully led George "Simple W." Bush deeper into the Middle East abyss that we still haven't emerged from.

 

And Mike Pence was last seen cuddling up to the man whose followers desperately wanted to hang him not so long ago. Grovel much?

 

Quite a list, huh? All they have in common was their white maleness, their sterling Conservative Credentials, and that "R" beside their names. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Not cut out for? Don't make me laugh.

 

Thinning The Herd

For a group of people who don't believe in evolution, conservatives sure do love social Darwinism.

You start with the young. Weaken--or take away entirely--their public schools, hot lunch programs, Head Start, after school activities. Close as many public facilities as possible. Make getting gunned down at school a distinct possibility. Living with that constant fear in the pit of their stomachs will get them ready for adulthood. If they survive to adulthood. Remember to repeatedly tell them that nonsense about pulling themselves up by their bootstraps!

Then there's the sick. Take away as much health care as you can. Make it impossible for people with pre-existing conditions to get insurance. Let the drug companies charge whatever they want. Encourage people to go broke from paying hospital bills. Hey, it's their choice: that expensive, necessary surgery or food and housing. And you have to make choices in this life!

Finally, the old. Gut their pensions. Starve Social Security. Plenty of greeter jobs at WalMart, you lazy old fucks!

If you're a heartless Republican (or Libertarian) prick, dreaming sweet wet dreams of Ayn Rand's river of bullshit and the glories of the Free Market, it's really not that hard to do these things.

Poor people are such a drag. They had every opportunity in this greatest nation on the face of the earth to make enough money to pay for private schools, gold plated healthcare, and a happy and long retirement. And they just didn't do it.

Better off dead, you know?

Those Poor, Unappreciated, Needy Billionaires

Why do some billionaires, who have self-evidently benefited from our system to an extreme, want to destroy our system?

This is a puzzling question, to me at least.

Take the Koch brothers (please).

They are each worth upward of 50 billion dollars. Think about that for a second. 50 billion is 50 thousand million. If they never made another penny, they could each spend a million dollars a day for 137 years.

They achieved some of this wealth from inheritance, of course, but the vast majority of it they have "earned" under our system of government, including our economic system, and our taxation system.

Unfortunately, 50 billion apiece just isn't enough. In some way they still feel cheated. Poor things. They think they are overtaxed and over regulated, and that they would've done much better in the imaginary, libertarian, no-holds-barred, free market paradise that they dream of. 

So they've decided to buy up every politician they can to make sure that in the future they get a "fair" shake.

Perhaps by doing away with pesky things like clean air and water laws, OSHA, the EPA, unions, the minimum wage, and estate taxes.

Of course, contrary to 37 years of Republican economic policy, the more that flows to the top .1% the less there is for everyone else.

What pleasure do they, and their ilk, get from taking things away from poorer people? It must be intense, perhaps even sexual in nature.

A Handy Field Guide To The Various Kinds Of Trump Voters

First you've got the Angry White males in general. They're mad about most everything and they think Trump will restore the Greatness of America that they believe has been lost. They don't like political correctness, they don't like "uppity" minorities or women, they don't like immigrants, they don't like gays, they desperately want to go back to a mythical past where the "other" understood its subordinate place in the grand scheme of things. (This category includes the docile females that cower before their angry male masters.)

You've got the aggrieved working class whites, who have suffered and who do need help, but who somehow missed the part of the Trump economic plan where you outsource work to China and bring in Polish scabs to save a buck. But he's not a woman and he's white, so they're all in. These are people who already are benefiting from government programs or will need to very soon, but still have a deep hatred for Big Government because it only helps "the other".

There's the "he's going to cut our taxes" crowd. That's the only thing that matters to them. Ever. I call it the "I've got mine-fuck you!" crowd. (Many of these people are Libertarians. I would point out that no advanced civilization has ever been based on libertarian principles. Ever. I would also point out that their patron saint Ayn Rand was a mediocre novelist and a dime store philosopher. But, yeah, she probably would have cut their taxes, so it's all good.)

Oh, and let's not forget the Christian hypocrites. Here you've got a thrice married sexual predator, with a condescending, indeed mocking, attitude toward women and minorities. He has refused to pay people who did work for him and his companies have gone bankrupt multiple times, cheating hundreds if not thousands, of small, family run businesses in the process. But, Donald J. Trump will let you keep as many guns as you want (just like Jesus would) and, well, he's white and not a woman, so praise the Lord!

Then you've got the Alt-Right white supremacists. Cuz he's gonna deal with the dark skin people, wherever they're from. Even, maybe especially, native born American citizens. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were a mistake, y'all.

Throw in a tiny handful of Latinos and blacks who obviously aren't getting enough oxygen to their brains.

And finally, you've got the sort of people who just like to watch stuff burn. And what bigger fire could you have than a Donald J. Trump presidency?

Baby, it's a Big Tent!

It's Nothing Personal. It's Just Business.

Remember old Joe Stalin?

Psychopathic murderer of millions--friend and foe alike?

Fred Koch's business partner? (look it up.)

Yes, the Koch Bros' daddy made a fortune doing business with Stalin Inc. aka the Soviet Union.

But hey, a bucks a buck! Am I right?

And as long as there are dollars to be made, it really doesn't matter how they are made.

Or with whom.

That is the reductio ad absurdum of capitalism.

Therefore, the Koch Brothers will pollute all the air and water they have to to extract every last ounce of oil or coal or minerals or whatever it is...

And why they would sell off our national parks to the highest bidders.

You might see these parks as an ongoing gift to all of us. Part of our common inheritance.

That's where you're wrong. You'll never get rich, certainly not Koch rich, with that kind of socialist thinking. What the national parks really are are under-performing assets. And every asset needs to be maximized.

Now, you might think that's crazy, but when you see every single thing on earth as a potential dollar to be made, it makes perfect sense.

We Regulate Businesses Because Some Businessmen Are Crooked As A Dog's Hind Leg

I love it when the bought and paid for conservative politicians (of both parties) start whining about "onerous government regulations" stifling business.

If only we could unleash the might of the free market and pure capitalism, everything would be perfect!

The primary reason we have these regulations is because at some point, some upstanding business man, usually a pillar of the community, and quite probably a life long Republican, decided to see how much he could fuck over the populace.

Whether by poisoning the air, water, or food supply, or screwing over his workers, or cutting corners on safety, or any one of a seemingly endless number of shortcuts to save himself a buck, all while potentially harming the rest of us.

Now, the conservative/libertarian argument against regulation is that, if you hurt and/or kill enough people, eventually you'll be forced out of business by the "self-correcting" marketplace..............

Eventually.

That is just about the stupidest argument I can think of. A clever child wouldn't make that argument.

And yet we have allegedly "serious" politicians who do just that.

Madness, I tells ya. Shear madness.

This Space For Sale

Since, as they say at the Audubon Society, it's never too early to feather your own nest, I'd like to announce that my Republican presidential endorsement for 2016 is up for sale to the highest bidder.

And in keeping with the finest traditions of the Citizens United era of this great land of ours, I expect it to go for a pretty penny.

So, get out your checkbooks boys! Call all of your fave billionaires and get busy bribing me.

In the interest of full disclosure my endorsement doesn't include my vote. I wouldn't vote for any of you if you put a gun to my head. Jesus, what a bunch of pandering scum!

But still, if there's money to be made off this election, and there surely is, I want my share.

And I really don't care who it comes from: Shelly "King of the Jews" Adelson,  either Koch brother, one of those libertarian halfwits that Silicon Valley seems to crap out on a regular basis, or any other billionaire weasel trying to buy up our democracy.

I ain't particular.

All I ask is small bills and non-sequential serial numbers.

Thank You,

And God Bless America.

Hey, Let's Just Pretend None Of This Ever Happened

History is such a messy thing. I mean, gosh, you've got slavery and racism and religious wars, you've got genocide against native peoples, you've got Dark Ages, and Inquisitions, and all manner of barbarism. And let's not forget the constant ongoing thievery of the ruling classes.

No wonder our conservative Republican and Libertarian friends want to rewrite it, erasing all of the bad stuff from high school history curricula.

Children's heads should never be troubled by the truth. A questioning child is an unruly child, after all....

Thank God there are, all across this great land of ours, Republican controlled school boards and legislatures sworn to protect the little darlings!

Better to teach them happy fantasies and Bible stories about how well cared for and content the slaves were, how Reagan was a saint, FDR was the devil, how evil welfare is, how wonderful the free market system, how benevolent the job creators were and are. Evolution is the Devil's work, Darwin only wants to deceive you, Jesus rode a dinosaur, and the Founding Fathers were inspired by God Himself.

Don't worry, be happy! After all, ignorance is bliss, baby! Pure, unadulterated All-American bliss!

Crazy White Men With Guns

No, it's not the next Quentin Tarantino movie. It's the country we live in.

That pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?

"My right to own as many guns and as much ammo as I can afford trumps you and your kids right to safety."

So sayeth that towering intellect, Libertarian Republican sage Joe the Plumber. Because...uh...Black Panthers?

And Fox News agrees.

So that settles it.

True Or False: Doug MacEachern Is A Libertarian Hack

Last Sunday, Doug MacEachern, who is one of the crack team of editorial columnists at The Arizona Republic, (to my knowledge the only daily paper in a major metropolitan area to NEVER win a Pulitzer Prize for anything other than cartoons), took up his quill pen, and ever ready righteous indignation, to warn us--yet again--of the dangers of creeping unionism in Phoenix. Oh, those pesky labor unions with their demands for a living wage, safe workplaces, and, horrors, benefits. They must be stopped! And MacEachern, the Paul Revere of the Arizona branch of the Free Market/To Hell With The Workers Club, is just the guy to do it.

For those of you fortunate enough to never have read any of his work, MacEachern has been writing essentially the same column for at least 20 years. Always some variation of "the unions are bad, regulations are bad, multiculturalism is bad, liberals are very bad, the free market is the only thing that will save us" crap that the right, and libertarians in particular, spew out on a regular basis.

The cornerstones of their "ideal" Arizona are low taxes and low wages and the "freedom" to fuck over your workers. Because, uh, I don't know, Ayn Rand? The fact that this method has never delivered the results they swore it would, and has in fact resulted in Arizona being the southwestern version of Mississippi, does not deter them from constantly repeating them. That's the thing about True Believers: They have faith and that's what really matters. Not facts--faith. "If only we could drive wages down even lower and remove all taxes...then you'll see how right we are!" Uh huh.

So, of course, unions are the root cause of all the bad in our would be capitalist paradise--at least in the bullshit fantasy libertarian world that Dougie Mac flits around in.

Dying Is Easy, Comedy Is Hard

For a moment I thought I'd stumbled onto the funniest political satire I've heard in years.

The most absurd, illogical nonsense offered up with a straight face. I was reminded of that Python bit about the Really Loony Party. Superb daftness.

Then it dawned on me that I was watching taped coverage of CPAC.

And they really mean that shit.

Ted "And You Thought Rick Perry Was The Biggest Asshole In Texas" Cruz and Rand "The Federal Government Is Worthless And That's Why I Fit Right In" Paul.

Sarah "Pay Me My Money Down" Palin and Ann "If I Were Just A Little More Feminine I'd Pass As A Female Impersonator" Coulter.

And let's not forget Louis "I'm No More Crazy Than The People Who Elected Me" Gohmert.

Wow.

I mean, WOW!

Calling CPAC a freak show is insulting to sideshow freaks everywhere.

Point Of Pride

Fanfare please!

In case you missed it, Arizona leads the nation in cuts to education!!!

Was there ever any doubt?

Since almost everyone agrees that education is the key to our future, this might seem like really bad news.

And it would be, if we cared about the future...

But that's not how we roll in the Grand Canyon State!

To Hell with the future, we want to live in an imaginary, libertarian past.

So sure, it would be nice for Arizona to be first in funding for education, but let's face it, that's never, ever going to happen.

However, there is a silver lining:

Being the worst guarantees a surplus of stupid people, which is good news for all of the minimum wage paying employers.

And, in addition to being stupid, many of them will also be angry, and those two qualities combined guarantees a strong Republican Tea Party base for a long, long time.

So it's a win win for Arizona!

Wretched excess and an excess of wretches

Poor Charlie Sheen. What's the point of making $2 million a week if you can't spend it the way you want? This is America, after all. For over 200 years brave men and women have laid down their lives so that rich people can have the freedom to live by their own rules. If you take that away from us, the terrorists have won.

Where are all the Libertarians when you really need them, that's what I want to know.