From the moment he announced an extensive military attack against Iran by posting an edited social media video at 2:30 a.m. Saturday, President Trump made clear that he would be taking a different tone and approach than his wartime predecessors.
Mr. Trump did not scramble back to the White House from Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Palm Beach, to oversee the U.S. and Israeli strikes. He did not deliver a televised address informing the public of the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was the nation’s supreme leader for nearly four decades.
Instead, the president capped an extraordinary day of U.S. aggression abroad by attending a glitzy fund-raising dinner at his club.
With this REMF at the top of the org’ chart the old joke applies more than ever: What’s the difference between the U.S. armed forces and Scouting America? The Scouts have adult leadership.
Maybe the headline should be “Forrrrrrr’d, Mar … a-Lago!”
Gen. Carl’s Jr. von Clownswitz: “War is neither a scientific game nor an international sport; it is an act of violence, characterized by destruction. Now where’s my cheeseburger?”
Should’ve given the feckin’ eejit his prize.
That lightweight bitch-slap to his tiny puckered hole of a mouth, coupled with The Supremes 86ing (well, 6-3ing) his insane tariffs scheme, and finally the shit ratings for his impromptu “Dope-rah” skit — a.k.a. the State of the Union — pretty much guaranteed he was going to pull the trigger on another half-baked, open-ended Charlie Fox in Iran so he can feel better about his poorly hung, pants-shitting, Adderall-addled, senile old self.
“Operation Fucking Shit Up: This Time We Mean It!” will annihilate Iran’s nuclear program, which was annihilated in the last go-round, except, oops, not. Bonus: It makes Congress look even more like Blanche DuBois and has every journo in the world working on a weekend.
Some people voted for this shit. Not me.
If I were running Cuba I might think about applying to become our 51st state — well, 52nd, behind Venezuela. Maybe 53rd if Mexico’s as quick on the draw as they were with “El Mencho.”
But that’s no guarantee of safety. Hair Füror has already shown he’s OK with invading U.S. territory and killing U.S. citizens if no one else is handy.
Rather than endure The Pestilence breaking wind from the face, I dined informally, at my desk — a bowl of chili, a wedge of buttered cornbread, and a pint of Guinness 0 — while reading about the late and very much unheralded poet Everette Hawthorne Maddox.
Herself was in Fanta Se with a visiting gal pal. Miss Mia Sopaipilla was sprawled nearby in her crinkle tube. The TV was darkly silent in the living room.
I could’ve watched the whole dismal spectacle on the MacBook Pro, but decided that since nobody was paying me to do that, and that I was actually paying for it to take place, I was already down dozens of dollars and not likely to turn a profit on the project anytime soon. A visit to any third-string primate house would have been more informative, with less shit-flinging. Better to read about Maddox for free over at The Poetry Foundation, courtesy of James McWilliams.
Maddox, whom Andrei Codrescu called the “Christ of New Orleans,” published three books of poetry between 1975 and 1988. He died in 1989, just 44 years old, of complications from esophageal cancer. Hundreds crammed into a New Orleans bar to give a proper sendoff to the jobless, homeless, divorced alcoholic who slept in the bed behind the driver’s seat of an 18-wheeler parked outside a used-furniture store. I’d never heard of him before, but McWilliams brought him to life for me:
“Everyone should have an epitaph ready, just in case,” [Maddox] said in a rare radio interview in 1983. He called his version, written around 1974, ‘Hypothetical Self-Epitaph,’ and it comes as close to anything else he wrote to capturing his inner character:
What if I just caved in gave out, pulled over to the side of the road of life, & expired like an old Driver’s license? You might say He didn’t get far in 31 years. But I’d say That’s all right, it was the world’s longest trip on an empty tank.
His few books are hard to find. A plaque in the courtyard of the Maple Leaf Bar on Oak Street calls him “a mess.” McWilliams, who argues that he nevertheless deserves our attention, writes:
The man was dark and troubled, more so than most. But he aimed to offer his audience — his friends, as we’ll see — the brightest reflection of that darkness that he could project.
Contrast that with what The Pestilence offered in last night’s State of the Union address, which the legacy media swarmed like rats to an overflowing Dumpster and declared a record in terms of duration, if not in unfiltered bullshit. Talk about your long trips on an empty tank.
Yeah, I think I made the right call. I toasted Maddox’s memory with my fake beer, scratched Miss Mia behind the ears, and went to bed early.
• Editor’s note: “I Hope it’s Not Over and Good-By,” selected poems by Everette Hawthorne Maddox, is available from the University of New Orleans Press.
Barking mad and talking out his arsehole as per usual.
His Excremency King Piggy the Sticky-Fingered will be farting higher than his ass this evening during what the legacy media insists upon calling “the State of the Union address” but will almost certainly be more along the lines of the late George Carlin’s “Complaints and Grievances,” only not funny.
I will not be watching for mental-health reasons. Not his mental health; that leaky vessel has sailed, caught fire, exploded, and sunk. My mental health. What with the tariffs and inflation and whatnot, new TVs are way too pricey for me to be shooting ours in a fit of rage.
What say we all give it a miss this time around? If the senile old toad doesn’t stroke out tonight in what he promises will be a long airing of Crimes Against Him, he might just get ferried across the Styx tomorrow by the sort of ratings you might expect from a live goat fuck on the Trinity Broadcasting Network.
“Not dead yet, I suppose?” I remarked to Herself as I set about my morning chores.
“Nope,” she replied.
Humph. And they call this a national holiday?
I haven’t checked the news yet, being only a cup and a half of joe into my day. Has His Excremency ordered up a platoon of virgins to take turns massaging his tiny wand? Good luck finding any in the immediate vicinity. Nothing but worn-out old pros with scabby knees and callused lips in that shabby, shameless army. (And yes, I’m looking at you, Lindsey Graham.) The USS Nimitz has fewer years on the job and has seen less action, too.
Speaking of elderly vessels, has Hair Füror ordered a strike group to menace the emperor penguins at Antarctica? Probably in league with the terrorist sheep of the Falkland Islands. Show ’em what a real emperor looks like! Bonus: Antarctica has coal! Clean, beautiful coal!
Mustn’t forget the terrorists right here at home, of course. The proles actually expect to be able to vote during the midterms! Ho ho. That’s easily managed. While Congress is out of town this week, just change all the locks at the Capitol, issue the appropriate executive orders — “Thank you for your service, kapow, kapow, etc.” — and achtung! 535 fewer speedbumps on the autobahn to 1933. If anyone turns up at the polls, well … ICE already has all the funding it needs. Danke, suckers.
Nevertheless I remain hopeful. Herself and I have birthdays coming up and if our good buddy Jeebus loves us we may yet be treated to the sight of a regiment of flag-pinned toadies doing it hand to hand over who will be The One to “don” (har de har har) the departed cult leader’s Depends of Domination as he rides that golden escalator down to his cardboard condo at the Lake of Fire.
A word to the unwise: Just because those drawers are yellow doesn’t mean they’re golden. Pulling them on with rubber gloves and burning eyes will be a Feat of Strength that will make Arthur pulling the sword from the stone look like Stephen Miller pulling his pud in a rental van parked across from an elementary-school playground at recess, unaware of the bomb attached to his gas tank.
Because no matter how this shit shakes out, nobody wants that dude around to sing his songs. He knows where all the bodies are buried. More than a few of them are probably in his basement freezer.