FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: UP SHIT GULF WITHOUT A PADDLE EDITION

It's good.

Does this seem a bit weird to anyone: Tubby fucks up the Reflecting Pool and demands innocent people be arrested and charged for the damage, causing a major embarrassment for D.C. US Attorney Jeanine “Glug Glug” Pirro, who has to let the top suspect go; Tubby still demands more charges; then somebody goes to the WWII Memorial with spray paint and has herself videoed defacing it, and Pirro gets to charge someone with fed vandalism. No? Just me?

Anyway, another hellacious week closes. At least none of us is stuck on a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, huh? (At least not that I know of!) Jesus, what a clusterfuck. Some people are talking about Trump’s callous dismissal of the sailors’ plight as if it’s a mistake, but he’s just doing what he always does -- making his fuckup a personal matter, because his shrunken base will always side with him if it’s Trump vs. The World rather than a question of competence or policy; the MAGA rump probably don’t like these idiots wrecking the military and losing the war, but when Tubby says “no it isn’t,” they snap to attention and say sir yes sir! 

On to the ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebies! Number one: Everyone’s favorite satirical news show, Received Opinion with Bolt Upight, tackles this hot new trend of calling Democrats communists (just kidding, that wasn’t hot when HUAC was in flower); number two, a roundup including my thinking on the Crowley-Hong primary. Enjoy! And maybe subscribe! 

SATURDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: HE CALLS THAT RELIGION BUT I KNOW HE'S GOING TO HELL WHEN HE DIES EDITION.

New Bands for Old Heads is great, and here's a reminder
that not all the bands there are some punk-hyphenate.

A day late and -- well, they always say “a dollar short” but, one, what’s a dollar worth anymore and, two, this website is free so I don’t feel like I’m shorting you, exactly.  (Subscribers to ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN don’t pay for days I don’t publish, so that’s not a “dollar short” either; even if they did pay, since the per-issue price is between 27 and 35 cents depending on the plan, they wouldn’t lose a dollar!)  But I do try to keep to the schedule, so sorry about the delay.

Anyway, I regret to report almost everything is still awful. For example, Trump’s mouthpiece Todd Blanche was approved by the Senate to serve as U.S. Attorney General, which is like approving John Mitchell after he got out of the pen. Senator Whitehouse has a good rundown, but you mainly need to know that Blanche was literally Tubby’s criminal defense lawyer and nothing in his behavior as deputy and acting AG shows his perception of his role to have changed with his title. He will continue to use the DOJ to prosecute people Tubby considers his enemies for imaginary crimes with at least as much enthusiasm as did Pam Bondi (not to mention liberal political groups as “terrorist organizations” as well) and is probably so steeped in Trump’s criminality that he has no reason to hold back in hopes that people will give him a pass when Trump’s gone. In other words he’s up there with the most hardcore, nothing-left-to-lose creeps and crooks like Miller and Rubio. 

Oh, and as a little fillip for those of you who still think there’s any such thing as a decent Republican: Here’s a letter of support for Blanche by John Ashcroft. 

But there are some glimmers of hope, among them the good showing by DSA and other progressive candidates in last week’s primaries, particularly the Democratic nomination of Abdul Al-Sayed for the Michigan Senate race. Naturally the MAGA types are going berserk over it, and my first past-paywall-promoted free ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN post of the week is about that, along with what I consider to be a complementary phenomenon: The tendency of conservatives to attack Democratic men and women of the cloth as false to their faith. I think their characterization of decent and accomplished Muslims like Al-Sayed and Zohran Mamdani dovetails with their characterization of decent and accomplished Christians like the seminarian James Talarico and Rev. Lindsay James (also mentioned in the post) as threats to their own very un-Christlike version of Christianity -- not to mention conservatives’ tendency to call liberal Jews either false to Judaism or actually antisemitic. It says a lot about what they think religion is (i.e., a fraud with which to grift the suckers).

Oh, and here also for free is my review of The Odyssey movie. Everyone else had one, so... 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: "AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE" 21st CENTURY EDITION

Oooh, this is a nice version.

Another week of mayhem and mendacity in the books, and the thing that bugged me most was the show trial of Anthony Fauci in the Senate, at which the good doctor wisely and repeatedly took the Fifth because the rightwingers were very clearly laying perjury traps for him so as to get around Biden’s preemptive pardon. Partly I’m pissed because Fauci, even before struggling to save the shitshow Tubby made of the COVID crisis, did great work on HIV/AIDS at the National Institutes of Health (probably part of what they hate him for), and anyone who fucks with the NIH crew is on my shitlist forever. But mainly it’s that this whole insane thing is such a vivid metaphor for everything that’s wrong with this stupid country in what Faine Greenwood has dubbed on Bluesky "our era of total Stupid Immoral Asshole ascendancy... [in which] all the competent people who believe in doing a good job for the sake of it conclude that they’re actively being punished for these qualities, while malignantly stupid criminals are making bank."

For one thing, that after his illustrious public service Fauci has to fend off death threats and malicious prosecution by the scum of the earth -- while the madman Kennedy runs NIH into the ground -- is like a Soviet-era satire come to life. Sovietical, too, is the way the Prestige Press is cooperating with the wingnuts to slur the guy, based largely on purloined diary entries that show Fauci noticing that the crisis had both made him suddenly famous and revealed, less suddenly, the President to be a moron -- unremarkable observations that the media dipshits now use to make Fauci out to be a monster of ambition and ego. From the New York Fucking Times:

More than 1,100 pages long and dating from 2019 to 2022, Dr. Fauci’s diary reads like a black comedy of manners in which a 79-year-old social-climbing scientist becomes the face of the government’s response to a pandemic and then the toast of the town — the toast of this town. As the death toll rises, so too does the doctor’s status and self-regard. He falls in with a fast crowd and becomes consumed by his own image.

It’s like Thackeray’s Vanity Fair crossed with The Plague by Camus.

Shawn McCreesh, author of this atrocity, is like Sinclair Lewis’ Chum Frink crossed with Andrei Zhdanov. He can wrestle Matthew Hennessey for biscuits in Hell. Oh, and the Times put Bret Stephens and Frank Bruni on it, too, and they both agree that Fauci’s diary is a terrible scandal. Here’s Bruni, who I had forgotten sucks: “This was the opposite of a call for comity, cooperation and a big tent. It was a call for rancor, rivalry and a catty clique.” The Conscience of the Cooking Section! I'd wonder what his diary looks like, except careerist drips like him probably don't express any honest and unexpected opinions even in private.  

Meanwhile at the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan opens her wizened maw to tell us that Fauci taking the Fifth “plus his diary may well have been a reputation-destroying event.” God grant it is, but not the way she and the rest of them mean it. 

Well, courage, brothers and sisters, here are a couple of free ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN items released from behind the paywall that churn some humor out of our long national nightmare. First, we visit the centrist Democratic consultants of the Kitchen Table Institute, who are working overtime (or at least billing it) to disabuse the American voters of their distaste for Netanyahu and the Iran War. Then, we go to the Oval Office to track the deterioration -- at every level -- of the Chief Executive. Enjoy! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: CIRCULATIN' LIKE CYCLOSPORA EDITION.

I never knew it was him! Infectious, ain't it?

Sorry I missed last Friday -- my normally crowded week got further squeezed by birthday celebrations, which were delightful if (given my late stage of life) a shade premonitory. In a decent society I would be not only retired but also exalted as a Living Treasure. Oh well, that’s life.

The week’s been full of awful news, and ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN got into some of it. Like the nutcake in charge of HHS. Check this latest nightmare from Garglin’ Bob:

A panel of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration, several of them sellers of experimental peptides, dismissed the concerns of the agency’s scientists on Thursday, voting in favor of allowing broad production of poorly understood peptide treatments...

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees the F.D.A., has long supported lifting restrictions on peptides. In the weeks before Thursday’s hearing, his office nominated eight new members to the committee of academics and doctors that would review the issue, six of whom have sold peptide products, some banned, with health claims backed by minimal science.

The grift, like all MAGA grifts, is dispiriting, but this dangerous lunatic’s ongoing rampage against public health makes it much worse. This is the same guy who wanted to spend $5 billion -- a tenth of the NIH’s entire budget -- studying a purported link between vaccines and autism, among other outrages. He’s also the guy who booted and keeps booting the cyclosporiasis crisis. 

And because bad news sometimes brings the silver lining of amusing absurdity, RFK’s the star of our first REBID freebie, which shows him hot on the trail of whatever miasma or evil spirit has gotten into people's bowels, and waving a smudge stick.

The second no-paywall item is a scene from the version of The Odyssey that Elon Musk says he’ll get Grok to make on account of the woke. Like everything the spaceship-exploding drug addict says, it’s bullshit. He can only relate to listeners as marks, and is constantly offering them the equivalent of perfect robots but delivering instead a mime in mechanical drag. But when he made this comment in a disastrous recent interview, I think his guard was down and it really reflects his thinking:

Musk was asked how his companies would make money in this version of the future, and he insisted that “money won’t matter in 2036.” He claimed that everyone would have a high income from doing nothing and that people might still perform some kind of labor as a hobby, much in the same way that people might grow their own tomatoes in a home garden. Musk insisted backyard tomatoes weren’t as good as those you can buy from the store, but people still do it anyway. 

If there’s a drug that makes grocery store tomatoes taste better to you than homegrown tomatoes, I don’t want to take it. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: CLEARING THE DECK IN MAINE EDITION.

No, really, is that how you pronounce "kilometre"?

We’re rid of Graham Platner at last. His removal comports with the widely-known difference in approaches to this sort of thing between the two parties; Democrats expel their sex pests while Republicans make them President. The latter are still trying to make hay of Platner's brief dalliance at the head of the Maine Democratic ticket; at The Hill, the malignant Liz Peek says that “after winning recent primary races in New York and Colorado, the elimination of the accused rapist brought the soaring far left back to earth — at least, for the moment.” 

As this claim is unsupportable, Peek spends the rest of her space shaking her fist at Zohran Mamdani, insisting the popular New York Mayor is riding for a fall because of shit no one actually cares about (e.g. “he refused to criticize the phrase ‘globalize the intifada’”). I’m surprised none of these idiots has tried “if they love collectivism so much why don’t they collectively share Platner’s guilt.” The centrist dipshits pushing other centrist dipshits to take Platner’s place (“he worked with Republicans to stop the deeply unpopular progressive push to extend government healthcare benefits to illegal immigrants”) are only slightly less bad.

Anyway, the first of this week’s Roy Edroso Breaks It Down issues to come out from behind the paywall is my Platner envoi. Here’s hoping Maine Democrats, who will soon find the Prestige Press inattentive to their state, can stop bickering and arguing about who killed who and run Susan Collins out of office. 

The other REBID freebie is a dramatic speculation on what’s up with Mitch McConnell. Coming on the heels of Jersey GOP Congressman Kean’s long-unexplained absence from work (which he finally revealed to be government-financed depression treatment of a sort that, were it proposed for actual working persons, would be supported by exactly zero Republicans), McConnell’s vanishing act and the weird coyness of his enablers reenforces the impression that Republicans not only can’t do anything for their fellow Americans while in office, they also can’t even be bothered to show up; also, the possibility that McConnell is some kind of dead can’t be discounted, as nobody thinks that trying some shenanigans with his Senate seat is beneath them. (There may not be any percentage in it, but you can imagine them lying about his demise merely out of instinct.)

Otherwise, it’s business as usual: ICE murdering a guy (and trying to remove the witnesses); Tubby choking the Iranian chicken; and the GOP prepping for November with candidates like the self-professed mass murderer who is now their official candidate for governor of Colorado. It’s as if every moment we allow the current crop of scumbags to remain in office emboldens Republicans to try and install even worse freaks and madmen. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: WATERING THE TREE OF LIBERTY EDITION.

I guess you’ve heard that, on top of his destruction of the Reflecting Pool (which he says is in great shape) and the debacle of the Great American State Fair (which he says is a huge success) Tubby plans to blow up about ten times as many fireworks as usual in DC on the 4th and have hours of flyovers, so with the continuing National Guard occupation it’ll be even more like a war zone than usual. For the first time I’m not sorry I moved away.

The photo above is from the 4th of July on the Mall in 2021, when the country had not gone mad -- or rather had briefly gone mad but temporarily come to its senses. People came and went freely then and had a good time. This year the site will be heavily restricted and you’ll have to get there by 6 pm in 100 degree heat well before the gargantuan display of noise and smoke, after which I expect ICE to sweep in among the chaos and bust heads. I don’t think Trump voters realized that fascism’s not so much fun when its brutal stupidity is aimed at you as well as at the people you hate. 

Well, honor the Declaration as best you can, far from the madness. And enjoy a couple of free ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN editions! First, there’s our favorite mainstream media politics show, Received Opinion with Bolt Upright, tackling the narrow escape of SCOTUS’ birthright citizenship ruling. When we get back in there, we oughta pack the Court so they have to hear cases in a mid-sized concert venue at least. And second, here’s one about the New Red Scare that not only conservatives but also watered-down liberals are ginning up now that voters are nominating and electing socialists instead of Better Things Are Not Possible Democratic gerontocrats, feebs, and shills. Keep panicking, guys, I want to get as much enjoyment out of this as possible. It's what Tom Paine would have wanted! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: EYE ON THE SPARROW Y'ALL EDITION.

DANCE PARTY!!

 It seems the closer we get to the big two-five-oh -- that is, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence -- the stupider the current U.S. government acts. Now Tubby and his mob are bombing Iran -- I guess they figured that tired old act needed goosing if they were going to hold the audience -- and the Supreme Court’s six ringers just cheerfully unleashed a bunch of insane rulings, including the ICE-Raid All Haitians and Syrians Decision (look out, white people of Springfield, Ohio, grandma’s gonna need a new home health aide soon and I guess it’s gonna be you!)

Plus which Vice-President Fuckface solidified his status as America’s Least Likable Politician by comparing himself to Richard Nixon. (In defense of Tricky Dick, I must say he lost the presidency once by refusing to wear makeup, whereas one cannot encounter the chipmunk visage of JD Vance without unconsciously thinking “oh, honey, too much eyeliner!”)

On the plus side, don’t mess with the Zohran: on Tuesday the Mayor of New York lugged several real lefties over the finish line in the Democratic Primary, whereupon all America’s useless centrist trimmers cried foul. (“Vote Blue No Matter Who” only goes one way, it seems;  we have to vote for Dems who promise More of the Same [Only With Slightly Less Overt Racism], but just ask them to vote for what the Party stood for in the days of FDR -- that is, the last time it was massively popular! -- and the middle-of-the-roaders go into rebellion. Fuck them and especially James Carville who, one wag observed, was probably thrown into shock by the rare sight of Democrats winning an election.)

So even with the pigs and scumsuckers running their usual games, there’s a glimmer of hope; after years of bullshit and two Trump terms of bullshit cubed-to-infinity, the Democratic Socialists look like the next big thing, and the feebs and dweebs trying the usual message of “Expect Nothing and Settle for Even Less” look like losers. Prosit! 

Here’s a Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebie about a key part of the de-Nazification process: The increasingly inescapable fact that Trump is mentally disabled.  

FRIDAY ‘ROUND-THE-HORN: RETURN TO FORM EDITION.

You know what, I never knew what this was called until this week.

Well, looky here -- for the first time in weeks I got one of these R-T-Hs published on the appropriate Friday. Of course, I had the assistance of a federal holiday. Thanks, Joe Biden!  Juneteenth has fast become one of my favorite days of observation. The first one, which I experienced in DC, was a treat, as was, in a perverse way, the bitching of white rightwingers over it. (Go here for Dan McLaughlin’s 2021 complaint at National Review that Juneteenth “is presently being pushed by progressives... who wish to use it as yet another club with which to denounce America over slavery” and that we already had too many federal holidays. No, I’m not kidding.) Now it’s a great reminder that, as fucked up as America can be, we still have the capacity to right the ship, as I hope we’re going to see in the coming months.

In that spirit, we have two (2) ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebies this week, brought out from beyond the paywall for you folks who have yet to realize what a bargain it is (SUBSCRIBE WHY DON’TCHA). 

The first is another rarity: A free Fun Friday edition. Fun Fridays are when I give a prompt, like what’s your favorite comic strip with a female lead character, and our brilliant readers (you can be one! It’s easy and cheap!) sing out. Today’s FF is about small acts of citizenship -- that is, little things you do out of civic-mindedness. The responses are well-said (natch) and heartwarming. Go on, dip in.

The second is (mostly but not entirely) about Tubby’s Iran debacle and what it says about him and us. There’s obviously a lot going on there, not the least of which is the total mismanagement of one of the few crucial duties of the executive; in this case the Commander-in-Chief, with no apparent casus belli, threw soldiers and ordnance like a tantrum, fucked up the region and world trade, and, after months of bluster and slaughter, called the whole thing off. 

The thing about it that I can’t get over is its incredible unseriousness -- most obvious in Tubby’s post-war (I guess we can say) yammering about how if no one likes it he’s gonna blame it on Vance. Imagine if LBJ went on TV and said “if Vietnam goes tits-up, remember Westmoreland did it.” This has opened the Republican floodgates for some of the craziest shit I’ve ever seen American politicians say, e.g.: 

Worse yet, I’m now seeing allegedly serious people asking why liberals like me aren’t praising Trump for ending the war. As if the old dotard weren't perfectly capable of telling his goons, “Look, there’s this classy broad I wanna bang, I said I’d give her a south sea island paradise, so go steal me one, we can tell people they had nukes.”

(BTW be fully prepared: When we haul these bastards before tribunals, they’ll start claiming they were actually in the resistance -- like Hegseth will say he kept Trump from bombing Minneapolis by dangling a suncatcher in front of him. I don’t care what Merrick Garland says, don’t go easy on him!)

A big part of our problem is that many citizens can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy, and between actual people-get-killed war and a funny show on TV. Looks like there’ll be some forced tours of former concentration camps in our future.

SATURDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: SILVER LININGS PAYBACK EDITION.

Nice cover, lovely sentiment.

Sorry for the day of delay -- still healing up from the knee thing, and carrying a full load work-wise. But I have been paying attention to the poor old world, and I can report that while it remains full of atrocities and outrages, there’s some argentum on the cloud cover and hope that the sun will break through. 

In fact, one of those atrocities -- America’s latest war crime, the extrajudicial murder of an alleged drug lord in Venezuela under the cover of diplomacy -- was probably arranged by Tubby’s goons to cheer him up because things have been going so badly from him at home.

We’ve still got some federal judges who respect the law, and they swatted the old dotard around last week, making him put back the signs he removed from federal parks because they admitted the U.S. held and abused slaves (thus stalling the “if Parson Weems were mentally disabled” approach to history with which Tubby hopes to replace current standards) and refusing to accept Todd Blanche’s pinky-swear that he won’t steal the $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization" fund as soon as John Law’s back is turned. 

And they made Trump take his whore name off the Kennedy Center -- which his minions did in the most disgraceful way, delaying as much as possible and shielding the operation from the public. Not sure whether this was out mere peevishness, or whether his sycophants hoped he’d die before the operation was completed, thus sparing themselves whatever gruesome indignities they’re usually forced to suffer when he doesn’t get his way. 

I’m not used to looking on the sunny side, so when the Blackshirts of Great Britain -- with the assistance of the equally fascist First Trillionaire -- stirred up a racist pogrom against the Muslim residents of Belfast, I made such satiric lemonade of it as I could -- in the first of last week’s unpaywalled Roy Edroso Breaks It Down editions, I considered how fucked up the Mother Country had become and noted that at least America still mostly conducted its racist persecutions under the color of the law, happy 4th of July ha ha. But I’m a bit ashamed to have said so -- because apparently, in Blighty as here, there are many good people who’ll turn out to smack the bastards down, helping the victims and making their objections known -- not only at the crime site but elsewhere, as we see in Brighton under the leadership of local hero Fatboy Slim.

It’s true, as I often say, that fascism is an international movement -- but so is resistance. 

One more REBID freebie: A consideration of the Right and their conspiracy theories -- one of which, the UFO bullshit, Trump recently re-fueled -- and how their behavior shows that even they don’t believe them.

SATURDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: A LITTLE SOMETHIN' EXTRA EDITION.

Cool new(ish) shit. Thanks, Gabbie. 

OK, so it’s not like last week when I was a month and a day late, but late is late so I apologize. In my defense, as God’s Angry Man and the uncremated conscience of my race I’m under a lot of pressure these days. Outrages spray out like Faygo at a Gathering of the Juggalos. (Deep cut, eh?) Like this:

Trump officials planned to mark 2.7 million living people as dead, whistleblower claims...

Social Security carried out a smaller version of such an effort last year, The Post previously reported, moving 6,100 immigrants into its “Death Master File” — a database used by banks, employers and government agencies to determine whether someone is alive. Some of those people later showed up at Social Security field offices to prove they were alive and were restored in agency records.

I note that in the catalogue of horrors unleashed in the reign of Tubby II, they got the DOGE creeps in there very early, rightly judging that the system would be underprepared to defend itself from their predations, and that shit like this is typical of how they view their role in government: Immiseration of the needful in the service of plunder.

The first of our Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies is a consideration of the Trump White House’s rasslin’ birthday party and its collapse. This one was published Monday, and since then more musical acts and celebrities have bowed out and Tubby has declared that he doesn’t need any “so called ‘Artists’” -- which perfectly fits my assessment of the situation and how it reflects his philosophy: In MAGAland, “not only are artists who reject the Leader useless; all artists are unnecessary when you have the Leader to entertain you.”

I’m sorry, though, that Trump has decided to get Ted Nugent and some other nostalgia acts to fill the void -- I was hoping he’d go the old-school punk DIY route and hire some DC talent, as urged in this zine I got at Red Emma’s:

Now that I could endorse! In fact if Trump and his mob were real heads, that’s the way they’d play it -- who needs the rotten corporate entertainment complex when one can make one’s own kind of music, let a hundred Telehealths bloom! 

But Tubby ain’t a real anything; he’s just a sad old clown. My second freebie is a tribute to his decrepitude -- no, there’s no happy ending (e.g. him dying screaming in a fire), just a realistic assessment of the inside of his wormy skull.

And because I’m so stinkin’ generous we have THREE (3) freebies! Here’s me on Platnervousness. I see a lot of comrades enraged that this weird guy has gotten so far; some worry he has jeopardized the fight for the Senate, and many don’t like what his rise says about institutional misogyny in U.S. politics. I take their points, but would only note that 1.) the Democrats of Maine can moot all of this on Tuesday if they so choose and 2.) I have been hearing Bizarro emulations of this theme from supporters of Donald Trump, Ken Paxton and every other twisted GOP freak, which I understand is a reflex (pretended moral outrage at Democrats is one of their major tactics) but I don’t know if they’ve thought through how this will land with their own voters, who are currently being told in Texas that James Talerico is unacceptable because he’s not a macho woman-hating asshole -- that is, the opposite of what Platner's alleged to be.  Anyway read it, get mad at me if you like -- it’s all part of the fun of civilizational collapse! 

SATURDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: BEEN AWAY, WHAT'D I MISS? EDITION.

You should be satisfied, but it ain't quite right .

A month between alicubi editions? So sorry! Been a busy, busy time, with surgery etc.

Since I know you like it fresh, I won’t reach back too many days for Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies. Here’s a quickie on the White House UFC Cage Match, our latest frontier in national self-embarrassment -- I mean of course there’s a Tubby grift angle as well, but that goes without saying; what really lifts the gorge is its willful grotesquerie. I talk a little here about exactly why it’s specifically this kind of mortifying spectacle and not, say, Donald Trump’s Night of A Thousand Tits or The Most Dangerous Game: See It Live! I will add, and I may elaborate on this someday, that there’s a whole social history to be written on the “populist” impulse to dirty up our federal government, going back perhaps to Andrew Jackson and certainly including the tendency of audiences to cheer in 1996 when they saw the part of the trailer for Independence Day where the White House was blown up. Well, maybe someday we’ll have enough real self-government that this kind of fantasy is less attractive.

And I might as well throw in this one about the ever-receding imminence of the end of the Iran War; the essay is almost a week old yet we may say it’s an evergreen because this shtick where Trump and his goons say they have the war won and the papers rush to cry PEACE IS AT HAND has been going on practically since the beginning and is still happening, on repeat. (Looking right this very minute at USA Today: “Hegseth says US ‘postured and prepared’ for reengagement with Iran.” Postured is right!) For those of us who long ago internalized that Trump is devoted to lies and in fact will never willingly tell the truth and may not be capable of it even if it would help him, this is no surprise. But the Prestige Press must pretend because it fills pages and preserves access -- while also destroying the public’s trust in them, but clearly they don’t see that as part of their remit.  

I imagine this bothers some of the morally-encumbered members of the Fourth Estate, which may be why there has been some coverage of the hilarious exodus of allegedly scheduled musical acts from that UFC thing. It’s a rare case in which you can see in real time how poisonous this regime is to anyone who would actually have to face the public about cooperating with it afterward. That’s part of why it drives conservatives berserk -- check out “Not A Single Modern Celeb Could Be Bothered To Perform For America 250” at wingnut ragesite The Federalist:

This sharp of a patriotic split between the American people, who by all accounts are excited to go all out on this extra special 4th of July, and the people who produce this country’s pop culture cannot stand. There has to be a reckoning between the American people who cry out for patriotic content and a media-entertainment complex that does everything in its power to demonize the United States. It can’t go on like this. Either patriots take back the culture, or the current pop culture regime will destroy the social fabric of the country. There are no other options.

They run all three branches of the whole damn federal government, yet they’re enraged that people who make art won’t slaver over them like Tubby’s Cabinet in one of those televised grovelfests. For the right, culture war is always a war ON culture. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: NO, *YOU* SHUT UP EDITION.

My phlebotomist was singing along to this.

One of the key features of the second Trump administration (or, as I like to call it, Tubby II) is the elevation of hypocrisy to a strategy. Normal political hypocrisy involves saying one thing while doing another and (this is crucial) hoping nobody notices. Its purpose is simply the having and eating of one’s own cake -- winning voter approval with their words while winning donor approval with their actions.

But while traditional hypocrisy relies on obfuscation, the Trumpkin variety relies on obviousness. They clearly want you to see them saying one thing and doing another because it demonstrates the limitlessness of their impunity -- that they’re not only beyond the reach of laws and norms, but also beyond the reach of logic, cause and effect, and the voters, whose disgust with all this Trump simply brushes off as if it doesn’t matter, either because he’s confident the vote is rigged or because his nihilism extends even further than his hypocrisy.

We saw that for sure with the White House Correspondents Dinner almost-assassination -- after years of Trump calling for violence against his opponents, he and his propagandists insisted that it was Democrats who had made our politics a shooting gallery and demanded “lowering the temperature” by firing Jimmy Kimmel for a joke about Trump’s decrepitude, indicting James Comey for a restaurant reference, and everybody shutting up about our Beloved President unless they came with words of praise such as his cabinet lavishes on him in their Daily Affirmations in the Oval Office. 

Our first ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie, released to non-subscribers today, is about why that’s a lot of hooey and how a much earlier and better (like that’s tough) but still thin-skinned President tried it on his subjects and got his ass kicked. (Note to Secret Service: Figurative language.) 

Our second freebie is an assessment of the Roberts’ Court’s latest outrage, Louisiana v. Callais, which effectively killed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act -- and, since Shelby County v. Holder had already invalidated preclearance, pretty much killed the Voting Rights Act itself, though the conservatives’ cowardice kept them from admitting it. The Republicans are not fooled, and are racing the write black districts out of their voter maps.

It’s a shame, but we can hope (and cajole, and threaten) (Note to Secret Service: Figurative -- oh, who am I kidding, they don’t care about Democrats) our party leaders and politicians into fighting fire with fire and redistricting them right back. Though I usually counsel against counting on the GOP to make mistakes, I also think under the present conditions the GOP will probably dummymander themselves in several states. The rest we must trust to the righteous fury of the electorate, and there we have an advantage over our opponents, because that we need only the truth to stoke.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: BACK IN THE SADDLE EDITION.

Let's take the temperature down a bit.

Yeah, been a few weeks since I did this -- sorry about that, life’s a bitch and sometimes it's hard to get it on a leash. 

ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN has not faltered, though -- still five days a week of premium content. Also cheap! If you want a steady flow feel free to sign up. 

No sense in going back two weeks for outrages to review -- though, talking of ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN, here are a couple of editions concerning JD Vance’s recent dispute with the Holy Father that I’ve brought out from behind the paywall. 

Trump’s beef with Leo XIV is just stupid — he’s old, senile, and vicious, and thinks everything including the mandate of heaven should be his. Vance is another matter: As with everything else he does as Vice-President, his theological dispute with the actual Pope was an act of craven suck-uppery to his boss, of the sort that has made him a figure of fun and contempt across the political spectrum; but the fact that he became a Catholic a couple of minutes ago and decided to lecture the literally infallible leader of his Church on Just War Theory really lifts the degree of insufferability. If Vance keeps it up he’ll have us lapsed Catholics back in the pews by Christmas.

Speaking of moxie, it’s also rich that, when New York Mayor Mamdani recently proposed an exceedingly modest tax on unoccupied second homes in the city worth more than $5 million, and used hedge fun tycoon Ken Griffin’s pied-a-terre as a backdrop, Griffin threatened to retaliate by withdrawing his plan to build a new tower in Manhattan. Oh, no! How will New York live without yet another big, expensive building! This stuff probably plays well with rightwing rubes who think Atlas Shrugged was a documentary, but if Griffin’s really red-mad about it, let him go build his tower in Bumfuck. I bet the employees who would suddenly find their workplace relocated to a red state business park will be thrilled. 

Meanwhile I see Tubby proposed (or pretended to propose -- as he can never be trusted to tell the truth, one can only speculate of the level of lying he’s at) to kick Spain out of NATO because they criticized him on Iran. Again, this probably excites what remains of the MAGA base, who have no idea how anything works, but I bet the other NATO members feel very differently about it; they’re smart enough, too, to reckon that with Trump no capitulation will satisfy, that if they flatter him on this he’ll next require them to send troops and, who knows, maybe kiss his ass in Harrods’ window, so they’d better stand by a partner they can actually count on rather than indulge the feckless Putinite. 

Trump’s mismanagement is something only the badly damaged would consent to assist, and that helps explain why his lieutenants are such transparent frauds and losers and why many of them seem to be cracking under the strain of even the modest requirements of their sinecures. Take hard-drinking FBI Director Kash Patel, for example, who seems to spend more time getting liquored up and then denying he was liquored up than catching crooks (though he can be counted on to stumble over to the press conference when Tubby pushes through another transparently phony political prosecution). The only thing that works efficiently in this administration is its constant looting of the U.S. Treasury. Like all honest people I worry that Trump and his goons may steal the coming elections that are otherwise destined to curtail his power, but if we can avoid that we’re going to have to do more to clean up afterwards than walk through the White House with a smudge stick. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: ANOTHER ONE JUST LIKE THE OTHER ONE EDITION.

The original orchestrations are grand, but this is just irresistible.

Pam Bondi’s departure is meaningless — Tubby has a huge crabbucket of equally loathsome suckups and crooks and Todd Blanche ain’t exactly a step up. So I’m not taking any special pleasure from it, not even after seeing all the stories like how she begged for her job and how her USAG portrait has been stuffed in a closet.

(And I'm certainly not arsed on feminist grounds. Trump deliberately humiliated several women before laying a hand on masc incompetents like Pete Hegseth? You don’t say! I mean we knew he was a white supremacist but who could have guessed the convicted sex criminal was also a misogynist? Please. Bondi knew, and thought, as all such people do, that she would be the exception.)  

No, Tubby’s treatment of Bondi doesn’t put me in sympathy with her — none of these people deserve any better. It only points up the dispensability of all his factota. He might as well train feral children in Skinner boxes to do these jobs. Stephen Miller falling down a manhole might change the particular character of some administration outrages, but if Trump had to swap in, say, Mike Lee or some demented county clerk from Oshkosh, atrocities would still be the order of the day. 

Let’s not kid ourselves, as the New York Times did in February, that the Epstein mess was due to Bondi’s “incompetence.” (Hilariously, the rightwing Washington Examiner is taking that same tack now: “Trump’s chance to reestablish Justice Department credibility after Pam Bondi fired.”) She was put on the same mission that all Trump apparatchiks get — to turn every public scandal into a cudgel against Democrats and a shiny halo for Trump. But while Bessent, Lutnick, and those guys merely have to lie about the health of the economy — a fraud in which the market and the media have been helpful — and shield Trump from the actual results, Bondi had to pretend a pedo ring in which Tubby was balls deep was actually a Democratic scandal, a much harder job.

It must have felt great to wave those fake “Epstein Files: Phase 1” binders at the press last year, but Bondi knew she’d have to work fast to backfill (all while prosecuting Trump’s enemies and other crimes against justice) and the job just got too big for her; plus Congress got sick of being insulted by her and kept up the pressure. And the stink it raised, Trump couldn’t miss. 

So farewell, worst USAG ever, soon to be eclipsed by one or more even worse. Blanche is doing his best to blow off the Epstein Files; lotsa luck, fucker. Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking any possible replacement not ordered by an International Court of Justice consent decree could make a bit of difference.

Meantime Trump is clowning in our faces, saying out loud (and don't you believe the leak was inadvertent) that he'll pull money from Medicare and Medicaid to fund his idiot war. Would his stooges in Congress dare vote for such a thing? If not, maybe he'll use the government data snatched by his DOGE goons to just cybersteal the funds. Whether it's because he expects to drop dead shortly (fingers crossed) or to steal the election, he no longer even pretends to care what anyone thinks. Nothing will change that - not a new AG, Secretary of State, Speaker of the House, or anything else. 

Speaking of performative cruelty: Our ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN free link this week is about Trump's visit to the Supreme Court. It's possible that he hoped to fluster some of the weaker wingnut justices like Boof Kavanaugh into asking what he imagines are the right kind of questions (probably along the lines of "what if a Messican raped your daughter"); it's also possible that he sought material for his inevitable post-decision tantrum (maybe SG Sauer will be his first penis-bearing dismissal). My guess is that he's just buried so deep in his fantasy world and thinks merely showing up at the scene of a decision affects it, like a governmental version of the King's Touch. Before this farce is over he'll have his major sycophants like Tim Cook and Musk carrying him around in a chair -- not worth all the democracy-destruction, certainly, but at least good for a laugh. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: PHONEY WAR EDITION.

He looks like a high school science teacher but sometimes
Michael Franks gets into Wesley Willis territory.

One good thing about everything getting stupider is, I no longer have the unsettling feeling that what I’m reading in the news doesn’t make sense -- now I’m sure it doesn’t. This week I read in the Prestige Press coverage of the Iran War that according to Tubby (and many of them don’t even put “Trump claims” or even “Trump says,” they just take his word for it) we have either won the war or will win it as soon as he decides we won, that the big question is really what country gets to host the peace talks, and by the way Iran sent him a prize. (“What did Iran give Trump?” gushes USA Today. “He called the gift a ‘very nice thing.’” At no point does USA Today hint that maybe the famously truth-averse president was making it up.)

Look at this at Axios: “Iran's Parliament speaker takes center role in peace talks.” Politico says Trump is “eyeing” the speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, “as a potential partner — and even a future leader.” They keep giving us the inside dope on the alleged peace talks that Iran keeps telling us do not exist. 

That’s what this week’s free link for non-subscribers to ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN is about: The weird fantasy that Trump has created, and the media dopes support, to make this look like a real war instead of a series of mass murders calculated to distract from the Epstein files. 

Well, it’s not like there’s anything back home to worry about, besides skyrocketing prices, chaos at the airports (which House Republicans have just voted to extend until they get enough money for ICE that they can be a real Gestapo), and the usual lawbreaking by Tubby’s minions. The courts are so far doing a fair job of holding them back but they can't be expected to keep it up forever -- all good reasons to get in the streets Saturday. Because if they can't even hold the Mar-a-Lago district, we can beat these assholes everywhere else, too. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: WAR ARE THEY NOW? EDITION.

Riddim.

Remember “The Surge” in Iraq? Now, with Iran, we have multiple Surges -- of bullshit! From “Regime Change” to “Imminent Threat,” the excuses for the war keep coming and are all transparent fakes: Everyone knows Tubby pulled this caper a.) to distract from the Epstein Files and b.) because he’s nuts, and not just playing nuts as a strategic thing but plain nuts and surrounded by suck-ups who dare not challenge his insane and homicidal whims.

The Prestige Press is talking about the conflagration of the Middle East like it’s D-Day and the “D” doesn’t stand for Duh (Axios: “Trump mulls risky Kharg Island takeover to force Iran to open strait.” Fat Boy probably thinks it’s like Skull Island or some other comic book movie thing. I wonder if they let him push around toy soldiers on a map with a long stick.) The more bought-in wingnut publications are trying to fast-forward the rubes to dreams of Glorious Victory (Washington Times: “Rival opposition groups jockey for primacy in a post-regime Iran” -- this conjures images of guys in Ayatollah outfits standing on soapboxes going "If elected I pledge --" before they're blown to smithereens).

My favorite may be ham-faced pundit Erick Erickson, in this bit before his paywall mercifully intervenes:

I would prefer it if we thoroughly destabilized the regime, and the people could take it back. That is the ideal goal. I have had conversations with some intimately familiar with both the President and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s thinking, who have also spoken to those tied to the Saudi Crown Prince...

I like to think these "intimately familiar" sources are just some good ol' boys who got faked out by FBI agents dressed like sheiks, as in ABSCAM.

Trump’s factota have no interest in running the country, let alone the war, in a competent manner but they do work hard at propaganda: Here’s the latest load shovel-passed to the Wall Street Journal: 

Trump Told Inner Circle Some Mass Deportation Policies Went Too Far

President directs a new approach as some advisers believe immigration is no longer as strong a political issue for Trump

 “If The Czar Only Knew” turns into “Pssst, I Hear Someone Told The Czar and He’s Deeply Concerned!” 

WASHINGTON—President Trump is seeking to lower the profile of his mass deportation effort, and has directed his top advisers to adopt a new approach on one of his central campaign promises, according to people familiar with the matter.

In conversations with top advisers and his wife Melania, Trump has become convinced that some of his administration’s deportation policies have gone too far, and voters don’t like the term “mass deportation.” 

“Dunnald. Dees ICE is nawt good.”

“So have ‘em put your glass in the chiller instead. Now leave me alone, I’m busy pushing these soldiers around with a stick.” 

The president has told them he wants to see more attention on arresting “bad guys” and less chaos in American cities, according to people familiar with the matter.

So now when they kidnap normal people their social media staff will paste gang tats on them with Photoshop -- hang on, they already tried that. Well, then my guess is this is just an ass-covering fraud! Always a safe bet.

As usual, subscribers got five ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN editions this week -- here’s a free one for non-subscribers, inspired by the New York Times’ ridiculous attempt to cover for Trump’s Caligulan humiliation of his subordinates with improperly-sized shoes. I think mine's a little more ridiculous but frankly it's a close call.  

ROY’S 2026 OSCAR PREDICTIONS (FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY)

OK cats and kitties it’s OSCAR DAY! Feel the excitement! 

I've been making Oscar predictions for years, peppered with what I used to call “sucker bets” until I realized I was using that term incorrectly. What I meant was, I sometimes get so sure that one specific nominee is perfectly suited to winning that I convince myself this feeling for the justice of their claim is actually a premonition of victory. That is, I play hunches.

That has worked out for me a few times, most spectacularly with Green Book in 2019*. My strong hunch was that Roma was too much more like a museum installation than a movie (at the time, that is -- by 2021, the similarly offbeat Nomadland was able to win) and Green Book was the kind of slop the dopes like (see also CODA). 

But usually my long shots don’t work out. In Oscar as in baseball, the sabermetricians have won out -- when I look at the vast resources employed by GoldDerby or other such award handicapping sites, and how influenced they are by the Bill James method and, of course, the crunches of Kalshi and Polymarket, I feel like some old sweaty, suspenders-wearing gump out of Damon Runyon at the sports desk saying a team is “due” and “has heart” while the crisp sabermetricians run their algos and put bets in DraftKings. 

This year I’m leaning in the direction of conventional wisdom, mainly based on GoldDerby and such like. But you know what? I am more an antique Runyon than a James. If it’s not fun and a little fanciful, I don’t see the point. So I do have a few, let us say, outside choices, marked here with a 🍭 icon. Keep that in mind and remember: For entertainment purposes only! 

(My reviews of the ten Best Picture nominees:  Bugonia, F1, Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, Sinners, and Train Dreams.)

* year award was presented, not when movie debuted

🍭 BEST PICTURE: Sinners. I buy the theory that it’s between this and One Battle After Another. Best reason to lean Sinners’ way is the magic of the premise. That other recent black visionary film Get Out had it too, but eight years ago the voters weren’t ready (plus Peele’s application of the magic tends creepy-negative, something else voters usually avoid). This year they’re ready. I LOST!

BEST ACTOR: Michael B. Jordan, Sinners. God did I want to put Ethan Hawke here!  I still have a strong feeling that he may upset and I may put down a side bet on him. But the odds are too great. Aside from Hawke, the contenders here are subtle -- that is, the performances of Moura and DiCaprio are vivid but not showy, and while Chalamet is energetic let’s just say he doesn’t show a lot of range (except from his previous more languid characterizations). Jordan’s twins are distinct in the way Jeremy Irons’ were in Dead Ringers; no giving one of them a higher voice or anything like that, just different responses to the same trauma. And he makes the sale.

BEST ACTRESS: Jessie Buckley, Hamnet. I have no Ethan Hawke premonitions for Rose Byrne, though her performance in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You had not only sensitivity and full character immersion but also nerve -- showing that woman’s collapse without flashy thespic signposts, just letting us see what she would do, was bold and paid off. But Buckley was excellent and she got the tears. I missed Kate Hudson, to my shame; Reinsve and Stone were excellent. But this isn’t their year.

🍭 BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Delroy Lindo, Sinners. From the moment Stack, Smoke, and Sammie came upon Delta Slim with his harmonica I reveled in this old pro’s performance and I know I’m not the only one. As I mentioned in my Sinners review, the story he tells after he and the guys drive through a chain gang containing some old friends is, beat by beat, an acting lesson. All honor to the other nominees, including Sean Penn -- who is favored here, but whose expressionistic performance, while well-suited to the movie, seems to me like the kind of thing that would turns some voters off.  I LOST!

🍭 BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another. Sort of a long shot; she was favored until Amy Madigan moved up, and was possibly pushed down by some controversy over the character’s allegedly stereotypical roots. Me? I think that’s like saying Aunt Gladys relies on stereotypes of Wiccans. Until this moment I was predicting Madigan -- yeah, I know what I just said about Sean Penn, but from what little I saw of Weapons (sorry I hate child-peril movies) Aunt Gladys doesn’t seem that out of key with the other characters -- just more interesting. All the other nominees are great but subtle, but Madigan and Taylor punched through the screen and I think Taylor’s presence in a top nominee film gets the win.  I LOST!

BEST DIRECTOR: Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another. 

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Ryan Coogler, Sinners.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another.

No need to make this complicated. Ryan Coogler will be around a long time.

🍭 BEST CASTING: Jennifer Venditti, Marty Supreme. Fun new category! Sinners is favored but of all these nominees I was most captivated by the widely varied human beings who turned up in The Secret Agent -- it was like Jodorowsky meets Costa-Gavras. But the Academy voters probably know about and approve of the real-life non-actor machers Safdie seamlessly fit into his movie.  I LOST!

🍭BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Autumn Durald Arkapaw, Sinners. Cotton fields, rickety main street, deep dark woods, smoky club, all o’ercast with magic. The favored OBAA image-making is pretty cool, too, but with a brighter, flatter California palate, and I think Arkapaw has the edge in lushness. 

🍭 BEST EDITING: Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme. Car go fast means = good editing? Bullitt/F1! Tricky storytelling = good editing? The Social Network/OBBA! But as with winners like Whiplash and Dunkirk, voters dig cutting that really feels kinetic.  I LOST!

BEST SCORE: Ludwig Goransson, Sinners. Category is stacked, but the scene in which Annie and Smoke meet after years and renegotiate their union, with the blues sounds turning into something more like symphonic, did it for me. (Don’t be surprised if Max Richter’s Hamnet score leaps in, though; maybe people will attribute their tears to it.)

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau, Frankenstein.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Kate Hawley, Frankenstein.

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING: Mike Hill, Jordan Samuel, and Cliona Furey, Frankenstein

Outside chance for another win for Ruth E. Carter, the Edith Head of black cinema. But del Toro movies sure look designed.

BEST SONG: “Golden,” KPop Demon Hunters. Duh.

🍭 BEST SOUND: Amanda Villavieja, Laia Casanovas and Yasmina Praderas, Sirat. I have an explanation! Everyone says F1 and maybe in the theater the cars sounded great but at home I didn’t feel it; plus I couldn’t make out what Javier Bardem was saying half the time and I know that was not me. As with Sound of Metal in 2019, part of idea of Sirat (I am told) is the sound. Voters love when they can recognize that.  I LOST!

BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM: Sentimental Value. Nearly always, a Best Picture nomination plus a Best Director nomination makes this inevitable. 

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM: Florence Miailhe and Ron Dyens, Butterfly.  I LOST!

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM: Lee Knight and James Dean, A Friend of Dorothy.  I LOST!

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM: Joshua Seftel and Conall Jones, All the Empty Rooms.

I’ve actually seen 13 of these 15 nominees, which is probably the most dangerous ground on which to predict. They're all good! I wavered on a few: Two People Exchanging Saliva is very much in the mode of the 2024 Live Short winner I Am Not a Robot (this category is very rich this year), and I loved The Girl Who Cried Pearls. But I agree with the oddsmakers on these. And maybe they'll bring cuddly old Miriam Margolyes out on stage for it. (BTW, see Perfectly a Strangeness if you can. Such an eerie little thing.)

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett, Avatar: Fire and Ash. Love them 3-D living cartoon cat people! 

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Geeta Gandbhir, Alisa Payne, Nikon Kwantu and Sam Bisbee, The Perfect Neighbor. Haven’t seen a one, but my wife loved it.   I LOST!

There you go, folks! Don’t lose all your money! 

UPDATE: I did 61% -- not my worst, not my best! All honor to the winners, who were very good. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: I'D LIKE TO THANK THE LITTLE PEOPLE EDITION.

Look, they can't all be winners.

One of the neat things about human beings is, we can be suffering through horrific political and societal collapse and still find fun and excitement in stupid diversions. For a lot of you it's sports -- for me it's the Oscars, which gets me to watch a bunch of movies at the beginning of the year and, when the awards are imminent (they're on Sunday night), puzzle over possible winners. I'll have those predictions by Sunday afternoon -- meantime if you wish you can pursue my reviews of the ten Best Picture nominees:  Bugonia, F1, Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, Sinners, and Train Dreams. 

Also our first ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie this week is related; it's one of our Fun Friday, audience-participation things -- what are some of your favorite awards show moments? (BTW there are a lot of All Best Picture Winners Ranked lists out there, but let us never forget that Gone With The Wind is the absolute worst.)

OK, coffee break over, everyone back on your heads! The week in America was the absolute worst too. In Operation Epstein Fury, we killed a bunch of Iranians of all ages and some of our own servicemembers while Tubby yammered whatever contradictory ideas about what's going on went sloshing through his brain, his mouthpiece Drunky Pete snarled at the press for not printing his preferred bullshit, and Israel threw in extra war crimes for shits and giggles. Oh, and Tubby threw Putin a piece of the action. Trumpwar: Like regular war only stupider.

American conservatives are doing their part for the war effort by intensifying their usual demands that all Muslims be thrown out of the U.S., with Somehow Senator Tommy Tuberville taking the lead. (Why NPR calls Tuberville's ravings bigotry-in-quotes rather than just plain bigotry is beyond me -- haha, kidding, we all know why.) Some, like Erick Erickson, try for a Daily Double by blaming some crimes by Muslim-Americans on Democrats because they refuse to fund the DHS/ICE death machine, though it's hard to see how their ham-fisted immigrant hunts would have stopped these citizens and legally-present residents anyway -- I know their goons attack those people too, but it's a hell of a roundabout way of get at them; I guess their hope is that Tubby will just authorize outright racial pogroms, so that white people will be the ones committing all the crimes in America instead of just most of them.   

Oh, and here's your fuckface of the week, Nathan Cavanaugh, the smug little DOGE shit who fucked up the National Endowment for the Humanities for "DEI" content that, his recently released testimony in a lawsuit reveals, he identified simply by the presence of buzzwords offensive to Tubby ("because it explicitly says LGBTQ"). He said under examination that he had been made qualified to judge such material, despite no relevant experience, by "reading books and being well-informed outside of traditional experience"; under further questioning about the books that so educated him, Cavanaugh admits "there were no books." So it's fair to assume he just listened to Joe Rogan and took part in typical Young Republican edgelord chats until Elon Musk recruited him for his wrecking crew. Nuremberg II is gonna be lit. 

Oh, yeah, there's another ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie, about AI-generated actress Tilly Norwood; it starts with a rundown of some of my more measured commentary on the LLM scam, which is fortunate because by the time I got to addressing the insane video they sorta-created to promote this slop-hologram my rage was incandescent and not necessarily coherent. But see what you can make of it! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: IRAQ BUT DUMBER EDITION.

Doo-wop is such a deep well.

It’s Drunky Pete Warfighter time! It’s a weird war for sure, done Trump style -- no warning, no reason, and especially no serious attempt to get the public onside. I mean they’re claiming this is not a new war (or not a war at all, depending on who’s phumphering), merely Trump ending Iran’s 47-year war on us, which is so dumb only hardcore neocons can even pretend to believe it, and putting out social media video with cut-ups from war and superhero movies that even the dumbest MAGA will find insulting to their intelligence. 

Meanwhile, as we saw with his war on fishing boats, Trump bombs combatants and non-combatants alike  and declares this a great success every day, amplified by the ballwashers of the Prestige Press (e.g., “As Iran war rages, Israel seizes chance to finish the job against Hezbollah”). 

God knows you’ve seen plenty about how nuts this is, but if you want more and better, have I got a two-parter for you at ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN! It’s about the similarities and differences between this stupid war and the 2003 stupid war in Iraq. Here’s Part One and Part Two. These are FREE to non-subscribers; subscribers get this kind of thing five days a week for low, low prices, just saying.

Lastly, I want to point out that Trump already showed he wants to fuck with accurate economic measures by firing people who make sure they’re accurate, so as bad as the new jobs report is? You know it’s worse. And it’s not gonna get better until we get these guys out, so check your registration, volunteer as a poll-watcher, and tell your electeds not to pass the SAVE Act or any other Trump election overturn scheme.   

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: TOO GRIM TO BE FUNNY & VICE VERSA EDITION.

Ry Cooder doesn't get enough love.

If the actions of this administration weren’t so harmful to actual human beings, I could enjoy them as living satires of human folly. Kansas demanding trans people turn over their drivers’ licenses? (Now driving while trans is even more dangerous than driving while black -- and if you’re tempted to say, “well, they’re not going to kill trans drivers,” maybe check the eliminationist rhetoric conservatives have mainstreamed.) And forbidding U.S. military officers to attend Ivy League schools because they might be taught “social justice activism”? (Because once exposed to woke education -- which to a ruff tuff creampuff like Hegseth is synonymous with indoctrination, because in his conception of society no one would ever become a teacher except to bend the young to their will -- even the most tough-minded serviceman helplessly succumbs and turns hippie.)

At least we can enjoy the Ellisons’ acquisition, via the Paramount Skydance takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery,  of CNN. True, the rightwing scheme of taking over and vandalizing media entities like CBS News as vengeance for years of perceived “liberal media” persecution is disgusting, but look on the bright side: Those entities were shit anyway. Every time I come across CNN in a waiting room or rest home, it’s bawling some LCD bullshit as if trying to get the attention of hyperactive monkeys. True, whatever capacity these institutions had for investigative journalism will be wrecked, but let’s face it, their will to make good use of those resources was already fading with their ratings anyway; the real talent is all in independent media now, and the opportunity to put some muscle behind it and make a real difference is there waiting for some smart, civic-minded rich guy to pick it up -- now, if only there were more (or any) smart, civic-minded rich guys out there.

This week’s ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie (yes, just one, this particular indie journo enterprise needs paid subscribers, and can’t be giving it away like a soft-hearted country gal in the big city) is a post-mortem not so much on Tuesday’s State of the Union as on the very idea of paying attention to Tubby’s cheeseball spectacles in the first place. I mean, the guy who’s planning to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary with a wrestling match is not going to show us anything except how low the country has sunk, and we know, brother, we know.