We’ve always been drawn to satire. From Mad to SNL to Spy and beyond, satire has been the refreshment for our soul. We drink it in, savor it, remember it for decades.

Satire makes sense of the world. It brings order to chaos, the rational mastering the irrational. Satire gets at the truth, by revealing the lies. Like jazz, the genius of satire is in what remains unsaid.

We have practiced satire whenever possible. We wrote a satire column in college. We helped produce a tabloid with a satirical undertone. We launched a blog whose dominant theme is satire.

And yet we have produced little satire for a long time.

Read more »

On Tuesday, July 25, Donald Trump sat down in the Oval Office for an interview with five reporters and editors from the Wall Street Journal. Fresh on his mind was the reaction to his speech to the Boy Scout Jamboree the night before. One of the reporters in the room had called it “mixed”.

“There was no mix there,” Trump said. “That was a standing ovation from the time I walked out to the time I left, and for five minutes after I had already gone. There was no mix.”

But this wasn’t sufficient. It wasn’t enough for Donald Trump to observe the response to his speech from the audience itself. He needed to nail the point.

“I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them,” Trump said.

And there it sat, largely unknown, until Politico published the full WSJ interview transcript this past Tuesday. Now aware of the claim, the Scouts denied any phone call had taken place.

This fascinates us.

Read more »

During Tuesday night’s vote on the motion to open the Senate healthcare bill for debate, senators representing 143 million citizens voted in favor, while senators representing 179 million citizens voted against.

This was considered a tie.

To break the tie, a man who was elected with almost three million votes less than his opponent stepped in to bring the bill to the floor.

And with that, the Will of the People had been expressed.

The Senate is the only institution in American governance that does not even pretend to represent Americans. Instead, it represents territorial units of America, land instead of people. That land is not evenly divided, but the result of historical circumstance. And that land does not include the District of Columbia, which boasts more souls than Vermont or Wyoming.

There is no reason for any of this.

There are only excuses.

Read more »

You might say, with justification, that it has already happened: That the moment Donald Trump fired James Comey was the moment our government was overthrown by a hostile power.

Trump’s action was within his authority as president. But it went well beyond conventional abuse of power. He fired Comey to save his own hide. And the Republican traitors in Congress let him get away with it.

But if you’re looking for a line, a clear line that indicates Before & After, a red line that separates Democracy from Tyranny, that line hasn’t been drawn yet. It’s about to be. That line is about to be drawn so clearly that there can be no evading its consequences.

When Robert Mueller is fired, the coup against America will be complete.

Read more »

Treason, famously, is the only crime defined in the Constitution. Its conditions are specific: It requires warring against the United States, or — also famously — providing “Aid and Comfort” to its enemies. Only ten convictions exist across our history; half of those involve World War II.

Neither Tokyo Rose nor Axis Sally took up arms against their nation, but their roles as the voices of our enemies — propaganda broadcasters — were sufficient to merit trial and conviction. Their words were deemed as damaging as bullets.

Treason is a crime against a state, and the nation it represents. To commit treason is to undermine the state, to attack the nation, for the benefit of its adversaries.

We call such people traitors.

And right now, traitors are running our country.

Read more »

Trump Jr. Was Told in Email of Russian Effort to Aid Campaign [NYT]

We have found it.

Truth be told, we didn’t even know we were looking for it. For that matter, we didn’t know we needed it. We could have happily gone for days, weeks, months, not knowing, not caring, not realizing something was missing, because consciousness has a way of hiding the seams of reality.

Really. Ever notice your blind spot? Why doesn’t it show up as a hole in your vision, like a missing pixel?

Anyway, that’s where it was hiding, in our blind spot. And when we found it, we couldn’t look away, and we can’t stop looking away.

For we have found the most precious of treasures in these dark times. We have found…

A Distraction.

Read more »