It began in 1972, near as we can tell. You could say that it really began in 1968, or 1964, or 1954, or even 1865 — nothing happens in isolation — but if we’re gonna get at what it is, we’re gonna pin it on 1972.

1972 is the year Democrats lost their nerve. 1972 is the year George McGovern lost to Richard Nixon. Big time. Like, 49-state big time. Jokes about the Socialist Republic of Massachusetts were popular during our teen years.

Democrats never recovered from that one. It’s perverted everything they stand for. Still does.

Democrats are afraid of losing.

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“Sure, understanding today’s complex world of the future is a little like having bees live in your head,” says the Honorable Chester Cadaver. “But, there they are.”

Oh dear, now look what you’ve made us do, we’re opening with Firesign Theatre.

And yet that’s been our state of mind the past three weeks, the three weeks of the shutdown. We’ve been waiting to get our bearings, see where this is going, see what difference it makes when one wing of the Capitol isn’t run by traitors.

We still don’t have a fix. It’s all bees.

Which, truth be told, is an improvement over the past couple years.

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The Constitutional standard for impeachment is “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”. Further examples are not provided, but the named crimes suggest the gravity intended — presidents shouldn’t be impeached over a parking ticket.

The standard is suggestive in another way, in that it isn’t a standard at all. Despite the intended similarity, impeachment is not an indictment, and trial in the Senate is not trial in court. Impeachment is a political act dressed in legalism. It originates in the House and is decided in the Senate. They can define it however they want.

All they need are the votes.

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Meet Flambargh! TWAK!, skull crushing neomedievalist mass murderer from the planet Rectal 9, soon to be Senate Arms Services Committee Chair..

Roy Moore is only the first mutant freak from hell that TRUMPLIGULA! will herd into the House and Senate to transform the Congress from a deliberative organization to a barnyard of howling freaks and face-eating monsters, mostly from neoconfederate states that have been emboldened by the neonazi ravings of TRUMPLIGULA!.

In fact, as sane human beings are dissuaded from engaging in politics in AMERICA! and the entire enterprise descends into howling madness, the only entrees into congressional races we can expect from here on out are face-eating maniacs, arsonists, mass murderers, cannibals, arsonists,  bestial goat-lapping tweetee rappers and bug-eyed necrophiliacs to MAGA!

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We spent a very pleasant Sunday devouring Al Franken’s new book, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate. In it, Al Franken explains how he took Al Franken hostage to run for Senate, only to discover that Al Franken was in his heart all along. If you’ve been missing Al Franken, it turns out Al Franken never went away.

There’s a callback to his previous book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, which prompted us to relive the bygone days of 2003, when it was first published. And while wallowing in the nostalgia of John Ashcroft being a public figure, we stumbled across this passage:

“Those early months were heady days for George W. Bush. Emboldened by his landslide victory, Bush passed a $1.6 trillion tax cut which went primarily to the rich, pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol, delayed rules that would reduce acceptable levels of arsenic in the drinking water, and implemented the enormously successful Operation Ignore.”

You might forgive us for wondering whether we’ve been actually waking up to Sonny & Cher the past five months.

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We’re more than happy to join the national pearl-clutching over Donald Trump’s remarks that he won’t necessarily concede the election if he loses.

But we also happen to think that it won’t make the slightest difference.

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On behalf of the dwindling tribe of rational beings in These United States, we would like to thank Donald Trump for being utterly incompetent.

Trump’s gift for making subtext text — for putting into words what other politicians encoded in dog whistles — revealed what everyone has known, or should have known, since 1980: Conservative politics is total bullshit, an intellectual veneer riding atop an ugly racist engine.

Whatever merit was to be found in conservative “ideas” was totally irrelevant, since without the power of Angry White Voters resentful of Welfare Queens and fearful of Black Murderers, those ideas would never have gained or maintained currency.

And should that bigotry wear thin in a given election, you could always turn to faggots instead to incite an electorally remunerative moral panic.

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