BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Beam me up Bernie … and Elizabeth and Kamala and Kirsten and about a dozen other Democrat candidates! In what other-worldly universe, parallel or otherwise, does the following sound like a winning strategy? “Medicare For ALL, period, whether or not you like the private coverage you currently have OR might prefer to purchase instead;” “Open borders;” “Free healthcare and college educations for every American citizen AND everyone who enters this country legally or ILLEGALLY;” Did I mention COMPLETE sustenance as well? Oh, and yes, we’ll STILL maintain our military might! ALL of it fully paid […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: The Imperial Wizard Prez
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY The Feces in Chief hosts a gathering of some 200 social media bigots at the nation’s house and America’s so-called “news” disseminators barely raise a whimper! Why? Because they’re too goddamn busy filling their headlines and newscasts with House Dem internecine warfare, divisions and discontent, mostly centered around Nancy Pelosi and the belligerence of a few fellow House members. You know what? I’ve changed my mind. I no longer give a shit–or even a teeny weeny iota–who the Democrats choose as their standard bearers. I’ll support financially and physically whoever they select so long as […]
WORTH REPEATING: Did Nazi That Coming
DAILY DOT: Residents in a Philadelphia neighborhood are accusing the far-right, neo-fascist organization the Proud Boys of making armed “house calls” to harass and threaten private citizens. At the center of the reported house calls is community organizer Gwen Snyder, who according to her Patreon page, researches and writes about “radical white supremacy, corporate greed, and other pressing justice issues.” Due to the work she does, Snyder has been on the receiving end of threatening behavior for months, but things appear to have escalated over the weekend of July 1 when she and others detailed late-night visits from armed Proud […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Liar-In-Chief
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Ever noticed how CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS and, of course, Fox News, along with every other major news disseminator–with the commendable exceptions of the New York Daily News and Phawker.com–are seemingly loathe to declare, “he’s a LIAR,” “he’s LYING,” “he LIES,” or “he LIED” when describing whatever it was that Trump inevitably LIED about the last time he parted his lips! Why is that? Why those, “that appears to be a falsehood,” “it simply strains credulity,” “that’s highly questionable,” or the even gentler “that’s not necessarily true.” Why the wrist patting? Why the pussyfooting? […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Rapist In Chief
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly, and puts his mouth against my lips. I am so shocked I shove him back and start laughing again. He seizes both my arms and pushes me up against the wall a second time, and, as I become aware of how large he is, he holds me against the wall with his shoulder and jams his hand under my coat dress and pulls down my tights. I am astonished by what I’m about to write: I […]
WORTH REPEATING: That Way Lies Fascism
TALKING POINTS MEMO: The ideas this group is pushing basically go back to what is often called “Catholic integralism”. (Most of the players are Catholic, though Hawley comes from the Protestant side of this traditionalist grouping.) This is a form of anti-pluralist Catholic political ideology most associated with quasi-fascist governments in Spain and Portugal and political movements in France (Vichy being the example in power) and other European countries. The basic thrust is a political vision that prioritizes hierarchical social cohesion and has the government takes a leading role enforcing traditionalist cultural and social values and keeping conservative Christianity as […]
CLIMATE SCIENCE DENIAL: A Measured Response
Brilliant.
DEAR PRESIDENT TRUMP: Congratulations On Being Only The Second Fattest Man On The Stage For A Change — Also, This Looks A Little Gay
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Memorial Day is unquestionably the most important, most hallowed, most patriotic of ALL national holidays. It pays homage to the more than 2,750,000 men and women who bravely made the ultimate sacrifice protecting and defending the rights, privileges and liberties the rest of us so often take for granted. So, where was the five-time draft-dodging president of this great nation? You were hitting the links and watching sumo wrestling with the Prime Minister of Japan a couple thousand miles away. Did you have to be there? Nope. Were you forced to choose this particular holiday […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
Illustration by STATS via THE NIB FRESH AIR: The NRA, which has, for decades, been regarded as an unstoppable, powerful, political force, is now being torn by internal conflicts. A power struggle at the top of the leadership came to a head last month at the NRA’s annual convention. Leaked documents have revealed the CEO’s extravagant spending on clothes and travel with the use of NRA money. The NRA is suing its own advertising PR company. Its revenues are falling, and its tax-exempt status is being investigated by the New York state attorney general. My guest is New York Times […]
WORTH REPEATING: Avenatti Agonistes
Photo by BENJAMIN LOWY via New York Times VANITY FAIR: ichael Avenatti was looking at his phone, scrolling through his Twitter mentions, when it all came crashing down. Not long before noon on March 25, he was walking toward an escalator in the newly opened 720,000-square-foot shopping mall in the middle of Hudson Yards. It’s a city within a city, purpose-built for people who don’t much like Manhattan even if they want to live here, with restaurants run by Michelin-starred chefs, shiny new high-rise apartment buildings, and headquarters for companies like WarnerMedia and Related and, as it happened, the law […]
WORTH REPEATING: This Is How Democracy Dies
THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: For the American right, Donald Trump’s inauguration as the forty-fifth president of the United States was a moment of political rebirth. Elements of American conservatism had long fostered a reactionary counterculture, which defined the push for civil rights as oppression, resisted the equality of women and the transgression of conventional heterosexual norms, pilloried the hegemony of the liberal media, and was suspicious of globalism and its corporate liberal institutions, including the UN and the WTO. Already in the 1950s this reactionary politics had secured a niche on the right wing of the GOP. It […]
MUST SEE TV: ‘Safety Glasses Off, Motherf*ckers!’
PREVIOUSLY: On Friday April 21st, 2017 Bill Nye — bow-tied science communicator, advocate for reason and critical thinking skills, wouldbe astronaut, bane of creationists and climate science denialists, not to mention superstitious kooks and cranks of every ideological stripe — returned to the small screen with Netflix’s Bill Nye Saves The World. To mark the auspicious return of reason and fact to American airwaves, we present this encore edition of our 2014 interview with Dr. Nye. DISCUSSED: Why he believes in evolution and you should too, Carl Sagan, marijuana, why he wouldn’t sign up for the one-way trip to colonize […]
WORTH REPEATING: 1021 Former Federal Prosecutors Sign Petition Asserting If Not For The DOJ Policy Prohibiting The Indictment Of A Sitting President Donald Trump Would Be Charged With Multiple Felonies Outlined In The Mueller Report
MEDIUM: We are former federal prosecutors. We served under both Republican and Democratic administrations at different levels of the federal system: as line attorneys, supervisors, special prosecutors, United States Attorneys, and senior officials at the Department of Justice. The offices in which we served were small, medium, and large; urban, suburban, and rural; and located in all parts of our country. Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting […]