FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: A TARIFF-IC REVERSAL EDITION.

A little spring for your step.

Tubby got defied by the usually compliant U.S. Supreme Court on tariffs, which just goes to show that in this country a Republican president can do all kinds of evil shit but he better not fuck with the shareholders’ money, because that’s more serious than death.

Being who and what he is, Trump says he’s gonna find a loophole, probably based on some stray comments by Justice Gorsuch in his concurrence with Roberts’ opinion. (It makes sense that Gorsuch, trying very hard to play the reasonable non-joiner in his filing, winds up giving Trump something he can at least pretend supports his actions.) 

It’s worth remembering that Trump’s not in there to help anyone but himself. Just because he lets billionaires continue to get off tax- and consequence-free doesn’t mean he’s actively trying to help them. He has a nostalgic feeling for Reagan-era oligarchy, and considers the rich endlessly fucking the poor to be the natural order of things, but that just means keeping the status quo -- he still needles the oligarchs for tributes and donations, and as he gets more senile and belligerent I expect we’ll see him make them carry him around in a chair like Idi Amin. 

But the tariffs only matter to him as an idée fixe -- something he’s convinced will be a big success because he’s a genius and everything he does is brilliant. He doesn’t care if the SCOTUS ruling makes his pursuit of alternate justifications even more painful for his subjects, who already chafe at the high prices the now-outlawed tariffs caused. If they squawk, that just means more people to tell “fuck you” as he steers the ship of state into an iceberg. 

The ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN free issues for this week predate the tariff ruling but touch upon the logic I discuss: There’s this one about the vandal mentality of Trump and his crew -- how positive results for his supporters are not anywhere near as important as punishment of his, and the conservative movement’s, longtime enemies -- and here’s another, a little more optimistic, on how that nihilism is affecting a lot of voters who were heretofore happy to go along with the gag.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: BIG FASH AND SMALL VICTORIES EDITION.

Eatin' up suckers as if I was Pac-Man.

 Even though they lie like they breathe and are still fucking shit up in Minneapolis, the administration’s announcement that DHS is doing a “drawdown” there is meaningful because it shows that even these id monsters realize they’ve run into heavy weather. Their whole  M.O. has been smash-and-grab from the DOGE rampage to now; letting the peons see that they don’t give a shit what they think is part of the terrorization process. So when they get stopped, as opposed to just running out of things to destroy, it’s noteworthy -- it means they actually have been made to give a shit, which means their terrorism has not yet reached escape velocity, and can be effectively challenged.

Again, don’t get it twisted -- they’re still building concentration camps (which the Prestige Press still has trouble calling by their proper name, despite the obvious intended purpose of spending billions of dollars on giant prisons for brown and black people). But those camps are getting pushback even in towns not associated with “resistance” -- and by pushback I mean some towns are actually getting  those camps stopped. Yeah, they can always go somewhere else, but it's meaningful whenever someone says "no" and they can't just walk over them; their carte blanche is tarnished.

And voters are picking up on it -- which is clearly why Gallup said, hey, guess we ought to stop doing Presidential approval polling because huggermugger rutabaga synergy etc. This cowardice is discussed in this week’s first ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie, as is the misbehavior of  Tubby’s moll Bondi at a Congressional hearing -- which shows, among other things, that at least a few of his gang are still out there making a show of impunity; I think it’s meant to rally and reassure such adherents as they still have, because normies have all but given up on them.

Our remaining REBID freebie is a little dramatic scene, such as some of you enjoy, about how Tubby intends to fight back against growing disapproval of his anti-immigrant policies. Worth a try, anyway.

I’ll just add that The Atlantic, like the New Yorker and other classy mags before them, has shipped a Rod Dreher puff piece, taking his pseud sanctimony and Just The Tip Trumperism at face value (“’I had never been enthusiastic about Trump,’ Dreher told me, ‘but I was enthusiastic about him this time because it seemed like only somebody like him could put a stop’ to ‘wokeness and the madness of transgenderism’”). The author even tells us “the story of Dreher’s personal Calvary begins with his father,” and his divorce “took a terrible toll and left him almost entirely alone.” An asshole dad and a divorce! Can you blame the guy for being a fascist? Anyway, here and here are a couple of my old funsies at the wispy God-botherer’s expense.  Enjoy! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: LEMON, IT'S WEDNESDAY EDITION.

Sabor.

Here’s where I'd repeat the 30 Rock What A Week joke except I assume even people who never saw the show know that one by now because every week is What A Week. 

ICE and Border Patrol continue their reign of terror in Minneapolis (and elsewhere; let’s not forget they haven’t completely vacated their previous terrorization targets like Chicago and Los Angeles). I reckon this week’s historical shorthand -- i.e., what Rick Perlstein or whoever will use to portray Feb. 1-7 years hence, if we haven’t all been locked up in concentration camps -- would be feds snatching a child and being forced to give him back, only to try and snatch him back and snatch another child (yes, I know they snatch children all the time), and a federal agent kicking a puppy, which matches perfectly the purpose and character of these occupations. Some fucking drawdown. 

Also proceeding apace: The enshittification of the news. As Bari Weiss continues to sabotage CBS News, Jeff Bezos obliged Mr. Big with some massive layoffs at the Washington Post. Our first ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie for non-subscribers gets into that, and the long-term revenge mission behind it. 

Meanwhile Tubby’s mayhem continues. Facing dismal polls (and some truly catastrophic special election results) he’s trying to steal the midterms with the help of Tulsi Gabbard -- whose unusual presence at the FBI raid on the Georgia 2020 election files is further proof that they need a validated trusty on hand every time they do something shady to keep the agents from blowing the whistle. And, apparently hoping to shore up his hardcore constituency, he circulated a racist video of the Obamas. 

And Trump’s shutting down the Kennedy Center for two years, allegedly for renovations (supported by his longtime lies about the building’s condition) but obviously because artists are bailing left and right because of his thuggish management. His dreams of what the place could be are the subject of our second ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie, which also alludes in the end to another Trump headline from the week -- one less damaging than the others but every bit as emblematic.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: IS IT FASH YET? EDITION.

You better run.

Tubby and his mob have been busy, seizing voting records in Georgia (presumably to manipulate in furtherance of his years-long Stolen Election scam) and arresting black journalists for the crime of covering a protest in a Minneapolis church. Looks like I was right on the money calling them Nazis well before they began their rampages.

Naturally, as they get more obvious about their fascism -- so much so that even centrists who doubted it are coming around --  their Prestige Press enablers increasingly rush to say nuh-uh. Did you guess Megan McArdle would be among them? My sympathies, you’ve been paying attention! 

McArdle is willing to admit to “Trump’s authoritarian instincts, bellicose contempt for norms and fundamental disrespect for America’s democratic traditions,” presumably because those abstractions sound much better than “Sending masked goons to abduct and murder citizens, using the Armed Forces to loot foreign countries and put the money in The Leader’s private offshore account, shaking down law firms and college for payoffs, etc.” 

But fascism? Come now, he’s no Hitler -- the courts still oppose him, sometimes, without actually punishing him or anyone else for his crimes (thanks, Supreme Court!). Though McArdle says “America looks less like a liberal democracy than it did a decade ago — much less than I would have believed possible before 2016,” she judges it impossible that in the next two or five or ten years he can surprise her yet again and make it all the way to full Hitler. Fool me twice, right? 

Anyway, McArdle says, it’s you stupid resistance liberals who are the real problem, using big fancy words like “fascist” that just confuse people:

Saying “He’s a fascist” (or an authoritarian, or a caudillo) will not do the trick. It’s more likely to be counterproductive, as people look up from our scribblings and observe that elections are still happening, courts are still demanding due process and the press is still free to complain about Dear Leader... it will be much easier to convince them that he’s just a bad president who should be replaced by someone who has different policies. 

So stop being dramatic when everything is so (relatively) normal, and count on fixing this with the free elections that will certainly be allowed once Tulsi Gabbard gets done making those seized Georgia ballots conform to the boss’ expectations! 

Here’s your ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie for the week, on what I made of the alleged “drawdown” in Minneapolis -- briefly, that MPLS people power has made the goon squad sweat, but don’t trust them to actually start acting like legitimate law enforcement now. For one thing, they lie like they breathe; for another, being (I will say it again) fascists, they are committed to breaking their enemies, which is how they perceive those who oppose their vicious and undemocratic policies, and will not stop until someone stops them. Fortunately, there are a whole lot more of us than there are of them, and unlike McArdle we’re not even pretending to be deceived about what they’re doing. 

One last note: Most of you know what evil brain poison Scientology is. Sometimes the story of one victim can tell that tale better than anything else, and my old boss Tony Ortega has done a great job with the sad story of Romey Beliles. Read it here. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: TAKE IT EASY BUT TAKE IT EDITION.

You got to spread a warnin' when the army they come in.

All honor and best of luck to the comrades in Minneapolis on general strike today. The ICE goons are feeling the added chill, and have sent their prevaricators and propagandists into overdrive:

Walz “is courting more ugly incidents,” the Wall Street Journal editorial page scolds. “The President has the legal authority to unleash ICE, and the agents are doing what they are told to do. The way to defeat the Trump policy is at the ballot box, not by obstructing agents in violation of the law.” National Review’s Noah Rothman argues, “What Walz is advising his citizens to do is likely to result in more violence and, potentially, more death.” Zachary Faria writes in the Washington Examiner, “What you have with ICE agents in Minneapolis is people exercising the lawful authority to detain illegal immigrants and, on the other end of that, anyone interfering with federal law enforcement actions.”

The premise underpinning this argument is that ICE is acting legally and in the service of legitimate immigration-enforcement goals. That assumption is difficult to square with on-the-ground reporting.

And that’s from Mr. On The Other Hand himself, Jon Chait! Even he smells what the Prestige Press is cooking. Meanwhile lower-end lie diffusers are trying to tell us the monstrous child abductors are actually just twyinh to hewp the widdle babies:

No one believes that -- they don’t, you don’t, even the few rage-goblins still sporting MAGA red believe that. What they do believe in is the power of the big lie. It got them this far, they reason (for want of a better word), and besides, what else have they got? So they push their flunkies in the press to uncritically repurpose their press releases and send their “influencers” to cities targeted by Trump to generate up new bullshit. They’ve even sent a few goons to Baltimore, probably inspired by Tubby’s tweeted footage of a few dirty alleys that he claimed as proof that the city was a “rodent-infested mess” in 2019. Maybe Nick Shirley will take video of the Old Town Mall and tell his rubes it’s City Hall and Brandon Scott is from Somalia. 

Like I said, it’s all they know: Hatred of cities and hatred of foreigners have worked for them in the past, and to truth and good governance they are strangers. But as both Tubby and the economy deteriorate before their eyes voters are less inclined to go for it again. 

It was another great week at ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN -- here’s a freebie for non-subscribers, about the considerable downsides to being a Trump toady, the generous pay packet notwithstanding. Speaking of money, subscriptions are cheap, treat yourself. 

Update. That the rightwing press keeps peddling claims that ICE is actually helping these children by kidnapping them -- even as they continue to kidnap children -- is merely the most outraging of all these outrages.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: FRAUDS ON PARADE EDITION.

24 years? Really?

I was grateful, in this grim and gloomy week, for the laughs afforded by Evan Mandery’s story in Politico, “They Wanted a University Without Cancel Culture. Then Dissenters Were Ousted.” Yes, he’s talking about Bari Weiss’ University of Austin, TX scam -- which those of us who were paying attention knew was a rightwing boondoggle from the start, but Mandery and number of his interview subjects (mostly founders or early adopters who have skulked away) claim never to have seen it coming: 

Because so many of its leaders lean conservative, UATX has been portrayed in some quarters as having been a right-wing project from the start. However, the truth is vastly more complex.

A land of contrasts, you might say! Mandry admits that the founders "leaned right," but says this was mitigated by the presence of Larry fucking Summers ("had served in Bill Clinton’s Cabinet and as Barack Obama’s chief economic advisor") and "unconventional, independent thinkers" like Jonathan Haidt. This was clearly not designed to recreate the School of Athens, yet Mandery professes surprise that sugar daddy Joe Lonsdale and several hardcore rightwing creeps have stripped away the Free & Fair Inquiry veneer of the thing and left it exposed as MAGA University.:

The ultimate irony is that UATX fell prey to the very impulses that its founders and supporters so detested. “It’s easy to see when other people lack these things,” [Ilana] Redstone said. “It’s harder to see in themselves.” Redstone hastens to add this isn’t just a failure at UATX. It’s fair to ask whether any university lives up to these ideas.

Any university! Not too many institutes of higher learning, from Harvard to Fritters Community College, devolve as quickly and as utterly as UATX has. Well, Florida’s New College did, once Ron DeSantis forcibly removed all the “woke” influences and made it into a conservative consent machine as well -- one that readily agreed to the Teach MAGA or Die demand that Trump has placed on all the big schools. 

The allegedly “anti-woke but not rightwing” has in every instance turned out to be rightwing. It’s the institutional equivalent of Just The Tip Trumpers -- whether they were lying to con the rubes or to con themselves.

If only Trump’s own buffoonery were less consequential, we could enjoy that too. I’ve thought about exactly what's so annoying about his acceptance of Machado’s Nobel as if he had won it himself, and concluded that it's because this so perfectly reflects a signal aspect of Trumpism -- in a word, fraud, and by that I mean more than criminal fraud: I mean the impulse that leads Tubby to wreak havoc, for instance, among the armed forces with fraudulent tough-guy “warfighter” yak, and leads his incel creep followers to yammer about the values of Western Civilization when they’ve clearly only read the Classics Illustrated versions of the canon and don’t even understand those. That is, they are experts at nothing but fakery; so they must be wholly devoted to fraud and double down every time they’re challenged, as with their continued bullshit excuses for the murder of Renee Good in Minneapolis. No wonder Tubby treats the pass-along of the Nobel as the same thing as earning it by his own actions -- why sweat it, he’s got people for that. 

Speaking of Minneapolis, the ongoing rule by goon squad in the Twin Cities is the subject of this week’s ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie -- it’s great that polls show the voters are catching on to the truth, but the Prestige Press is very slow about acknowledging that the administration’s lies have grown so threadbare that not even the most vapid institutionalist could possibly believe they must be respected in the court of public opinion (though not a few careerists may). The way to do it is the way Willamette Week does: By saying that ICE “asserted” something and “did not offer evidence to substantiate that account,” for example, rather than just doing steno for them. 

Oh, you were expecting more free stuff? Subscribe -- it’s almost free!  

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: YOUR LYIN' EYES EDITION.

Some trippy shit right here.

Just a week after we all hoped for better days in the new year, an ICE officer murdered a young woman in Minneapolis and, despite widely-disseminated video showing the murder, the rightwing hate machine flooded the zone with mendacious misinterpretations of what everyone with eyes could clearly see. Erick Erickson, for example, lied his fat ass off about that video and, when a fresh one taken from the murderer’s perspective surfaced, lied about that (‘the car lurches forward, hitting the officer” -- that is not on the video). Erickson also left off that the killer called Good a “fuckin’ bitch” after he shot her. What a way to make a living.

A bunch of other rightwingers like Rod Dreher are also lying about it ("this clip shows Renee Good was coming straight for the ICE agent" no it doesn't you twat). Who'd have guessed that worshippers of Donald Trump would have no respect for the truth?

Maybe even worse, in my view, are the sneakier conservatives who pretend to see the murder from BOTHSIDES. Bari Weiss’ CBS News installee Tony Dokoupil professed sympathy for the victim but also for alleged authors of “passionate notes in my inbox from people who want to see our immigration laws enforced.” By “passionate” I assume he meant filled with racial slurs.

Weiss’ own Free Press tsk-tskd over “two sharply different narratives” that “were actively pushed by politicians on both sides of the aisle,” that is, murder is bad vs. “Fuckin’ Bitch.” 

Also, The Free Press says, “the videos leave room for reasonable debate about the nature of the incident and who was at fault,” which, no. These people are professional propagandists whose whole career is about telling you it’s raining when their funders piss down your leg. There is no percentage in being drawn into a bullshit Charlie Kirk “debate” in which they counter your plain facts with handwaving nonsense. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had it right when some Fox News chucklefuck told her to come on Jesse Watters’ show and she told him Watters had made gross sexist remarks about her so why should she. 

Anyway I said my say about this in the first of this week’s Roy Edroso Breaks It Down editions released to the general public. If you want something a little less grim, here’s one from earlier in the week about the Fracas in Caracas -- Tubby’s way of showing everybody what a big tuff guy he is. The best you can say for the Maduro escapade is, it shows that whether the rightwing foreign adventure is headed by an allegedly intellectual think tank or a self-evidently brain-damaged old clown, the result is pretty much the same: a brief boo-yah and then years of disaster and waste. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: THROW THAT YEAR IN THE GARBAGE CAN EDITION.

[no caption]

This Friday I’m not going long (nor early, neither!) with ‘Round-the-Horn, because I’m on vacation. Yes, both this and Roy Edroso Breaks It Down will be in abeyance till the week of Jan. 5 while I lie in a stupor. 

This week, I mostly eschewed the new and did a four-installment Week in Re-Phew! As my final magnanimous gesture for 2025, I have opened all parts to the punting public! You may find them here:

Part 1: Musk and the Feral Rich; RFK those germs away!; and  Vice-President Fuckface goes full fash.

Part 2: Democrats: Wussys vs. Winners; AI vs. humanity; No Kings, or Mild in the Streets; and Bari-atric Surgery.

Part 3: ICE Follies; and Charlie (Kirk) and the Chaos Factory.

Part 4: Tumblin’ Tubby.

Enjoy, absorb, show ‘em around at parties. Also subscribe! And have a great time on New Year’s, because we’ve got our work cut out for us in 2026.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: XENOPHOBOMANIA EDITION.

My new music cicerone Gabbie hooked me up.

Another rocky week, America! Lots to be bummed about, like Judge Dugan being found guilty for protecting a defendant in her charge from ICE goons. Keep hope alive for her appeal and the preservation of this wrecker administration’s poor record in court. It’s annoying that we have to assume every prosecution out of that cesspool, like every detention proceeding from it, is designed not to do justice but to mock it. 

Also, when the FUBAR FBI finally found the (alleged, dead) perp in the Brown University shooting, he turned out to be from Portugal, so Tubby’s retaliating against all foreigners by killing another visa program, as if the shootings prove that immigrants are more likely to do murder than native-born Americans. It’s a preposterous supposition but one familiar to students of previous rightwing immigrant panics, like the Kate Steinle shooting, which led to much xenophobic screaming in 2017. The overreaction then was not so outrageous, probably because the actual killing took place before Trump came to power; now any headline provides cover for his racial-purity campaign. Maybe next he’ll tell us his bombing spree in the Caribbean is actually retaliation for immigrant murders going back to Sacco and Vanzetti. 

Speaking of which, I was surprised Tubby didn’t use his Wednesday night address to announce Operation Fracas in Caracas -- guess we’ll have to wait for the release of some creepier Epstein Files to goad him into declaring war. As it was, the speech turned out to be a bizarre tantrum. As I’ve observed before, even when touting his (largely fictitious) achievements, Trump seems totally uninterested in persuading anyone who isn’t already prone to believe anything he says; like his other wacky displays -- the giant ballroom, the triumphal arch, sticking his name on the Kennedy Center and dumb insults on Presidential portraits -- it’s all just an endless ego rampage by a dangerous lunatic who should be nowhere near the levers of power.

Speaking of which, there is one (1) free Roy Edroso Breaks It Down issue this week, about what Tubby’s Rob Reiner rant says about his approach to governance.  If you guys want more of this stuff -- and what sophisticated connoisseur of Substackery wouldn’t? -- you should subscribe, especially at our HOLIDAY SALE price that makes the already  absurdly low annual price genuinely unbeatable at $56/year. Click here for savings MAKES A GREAT GIFT! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: KICKING THE PRICK EDITION.

Ignorance of your culture is not considered cool.

It’s not like I’m gonna get very optimistic about the State of the Nation but there have been some good tidings lately. For instance, the long, vicious persecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia by the Trump goons in ICE, the Border Patrol, and DOJ seems to have reached a temporary lull at least as, after months of judicial findings adverse to his detention and extraction, Judge Xinis ruled he must go free pending further hearings. The assholes are still snarling and slashing at him, hoping to cheat justice for their mob boss, but for the moment they are thwarted.

They’re thwarted in Indiana, too, where the Republican legislature Trump attempted to threaten into passing a new gerrymander said, you know what, fuck you, Tubby.

This is good for a few reasons, not the least of which is that it punctures the puffed-up image people have of Tubby as an unstoppable force.  I remember when the Prestige Press used to call him the “Teflon Don,” a homage to John Gotti and that other piece of shit Ronald Reagan, as if their ability to escape the consequences of their actions were a gift from God rather than the result of cold political calculations by cowards too scared to stand up to them (aided, of course, by the greasy obsequity of the press itself).

This has put those of us who opposed the fucker from jump in a bind: We have to make clear how massive a threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness Trump is -- but being clear about it also helps make him look unstoppable, because he keeps performing outrages and, thanks to the cowards (and to the weaknesses of a system not designed to withstand the consequences of rule by mobsters), getting away with them.

Well, now he’s not getting away with them as much, and that’s something that needs to get around: Despite having control of all three branches of government, this bum can be beaten. That’s the theme of the first of this week’s ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebies for non-subscribers, “The End of Invincible Trump.”

And for our second freebie, I’m gonna change it up a little and let you in on the latest Fun Friday -- our weekly invitation for readers (who always make good use of the comments feature) to respond to prompts like “what’s a book that lit you up as a kid,” “what’s a piece of furniture you loved,” and, in this case, what’s the first movie you remember seeing.  

Subscribers get Fun Friday every week -- and semi-regular features like the ellipses-intensive Caen Spree; episodes of political news show Received Opinion with Bolt Upright, Peoni Doyenne, and Chafe Dramaturgy; scenes from the Mar-a-Lago Throne Room; film reviews and other arty-farty stuff and oh so much more. 

AND IT’S ON SALE! Order an annual subscription between now and December 25 (that’s Xmas, heathens!) and get 20% off. Yes, that’s 52 weeks of my five-day-a-week brilliance -- 260 editions, if you’re counting -- that usually goes for the absurdly low price $70, marked down to the GTFOOH rate of $56! That’s like a nickel a newsletter, you’re insane if you don’t CLICK HERE FOR THE DISCOUNT! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: CHEESY SCENES OF WINTER EDITION.

RAWK.

In the not-too-distant future, I hope and pray, we will look back on the Age of Tubby II and think, “Holy shit, I know I complain about President AOC’s mandatory composting and land acknowledgements but have we forgotten how FUCKED UP AND FASH things used to be?” 

Things are pretty crazy for yet another week. For one thing, if you thought Republicans’ Iraq War-era love of extraordinary renditions and black sites was as disgusting as it could get, now we have Trump, Drunken Peter Hegseth, and assorted GOP flunkies like Tom Cotton endorsing the murder of some guys clinging for dear life to the wreckage of a boat WE BLEW UP from a country WITH WHICH WE ARE NOT AT WAR. (Makes sense Cotton would go for it, as during Trump I he endorsed sending U.S. troops to shoot U.S. citizens.) 

The Prestige Press is acting like the big takeaway here is that Hegseth might get in trouble, but if we were anything like the country we pretend to be, we’d be worried that an angry God might just blow us all up. 

Also the Supreme Court, the conservative majority of which just endorsed a gerrymander obviously created to suppress the minority vote in Texas because that favors the party that gives them bribes, has agreed to hear a case that hinges on whether, when the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment said “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” they didn’t mean “except if it makes bigots mad.” 

Smart people are saying SCOTUS would never, but I’m not so sure. All Democrats to the left of Schumer and Jeffries (that is, most of them) are saying pack the court for fuck’s sake, these guys are crooked as Satan’s pecker, and even the normally indifferent public has grown sick of their janky jurisprudence. The Roberts gang know it’s curtains for them if the Democrats ever get back into power, so I wouldn’t be shocked if they did outright fuckery and sprinkled some Latin over it in hopes that Tubby and his mob will appreciate it let them keep their jobs when they go full Franco and I don’t mean Zeffirelli.   

I could go on, but it’s Friday, let’s not make ourselves miserable -- in fact, the two (2) ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebies I’m linking are comic sketches, which is to say laffs if you don’t mind a darker blend of fun: First, a meeting of Top Centrists on how the Democratic Party can best hem and haw and bothsides its way into irrelevance so sellout dipshits can make big bucks; second, a look at Tubby backstage in these deep days of his dotage -- the old bastard's looking plenty rough and his minders have taken to giving him fake Peace Prizes to keep his fading mind occupied, so who knows -- maybe someday soon we’ll open the news and get a more pleasant sort of surprise than usual.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: POST-THANKSGIVING INGRATITUDE EDITION.

Drive that pile.

Hope your Thanksgiving was good! Mine was fine and now that I’ve had my gratitude I’m ready to move back into my usual ingratitude mode. (But not into ungraciousness -- no, I think we can fail to appreciate the bullshit we’re being handed by our leaders and bosses and assholigarchs without losing the grace to appreciate our fellow man. In fact that’s what my Thanksgiving edition of Roy Edroso Breaks It Down is about -- have a FREE look thanks to my Friday ‘Round-the-Horn policy!)

Mostly I'm ungrateful that Tubby remains in what’s left of the White House. He keeps snarling and raving in press conferences barely challenged by Prestige Press reporters -- not even to chide him when he lashes out at their colleagues. And he keeps giving deranged commands, like cancelling Biden’s orders because they were signed with an autopen (which Trump has used himself). The Prestige Pressies report these as if they're legitimate differences of opinion instead of the ravings of a tertiary syphilis case. 

(It's like the world's stupidest hostage situation -- this guy is ruining institutions and lives, yet reporters and administrators and other people with public platforms keep their mouths shut about it because they're a-scared of losing their phony-baloney jobs. C'mon, fellas, everybody dies!)

His most despicable recent action (most recent despicable action may be a better way to put it) is the order to send 500 Guardsmen to DC because two of the Guard stationed there were shot. Yeah, that'll help. "People hate living under military occupation -- let's make it worse! They're bound to calm down."

This is of a piece with Tubby's original order to send the Guard to DC because DOGE asshole Edward “Big Balls” Coristine allegedly got beat up there: If anything happens anywhere that makes him mad -- shootings, protests, a fake ass-kicking -- he sends troops and talks tough. He’s not trying to protect anybody or anything except his own hyperinflated self-regard. 

I’m glad more people are catching on -- though a 36% approval rate still seems high to me -- but I wish someone would tell the Democratic leadership and kick them in the ass while they’re at it. We can’t count on clogged arteries to do it all for us, and JD Vance ought to be given advance word by the opposition that we’re not gonna take any shit from him either.

As for the allegedly fun media story about Robert Fucking Kennedy Junior and the scumbag journalists who covered for him until it was too late, I see the humor but my enjoyment is limited by the wreckage Garglin’ Bob is making of our public health. Thanks to the alt-med garbage he peddles and the idiot parents who believe it, children are dying of once-dormant children diseases and I have a hunch his regimen of raw milk and pull-ups isn’t going to stop it. I begin to think Kennedy is a more dangerous lunatic than Trump, and may do even more damage to the country in the long run. We can roll back most of Trump’s idiotic orders but when the U.S. is ravaged by once-rare diseases spread by right wing hippie dipshits who’ll blame it all on bad chi or feng shui or some shit, the counter-counter-enlightenment could take generations.

Whew, harsh, huh? Let’s go out on a light note with a REBID freebie about one of Tubby’s less damaging idiocies: Notes for his desired Rush Hour sequel! Contrary to Garglin' Bob, laughter really is the best medicine. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: TRUMP EMBRACES SOCIALISM EDITION.

Where they spend their se-molians / Just to watch those cre-olians /
Skippin', hippin′, doin' the uptown lowdown. (Chick Webb!)

The week was strange; full as it was of horrible Trump shit -- with Tubby selling out Ukraine, defending his Saudi murderer buddy, calling a female journo “piggy,” threatening to execute members of Congress for reminding the troops not to do war crimes and getting his fans to send them death threats (and boy, how that list would have looked to a time traveler from, oh, last year, huh?) -- it ended with Trump playing pattycake with the man he once portrayed as a “communist” menace, Zohran Mamdani, like he was his long-lost son, one he was relieved to have around instead of Don Jr. and Eric. 

The most obvious reason for the Mamdani coochy-coo was… the rest of the week, which had made Trump look like an unhinged monster to everyone -- not just us wise guys but independents and squish Republicans too, appealing only to his small, rabid base. Oh, and there was Epstein -- nobody buys his bullshit about welcoming the release of the files, and nobody expects them to be delivered intact, either. It was not only lose-lose, it was lose-lose-lose-loseloselose whooo whooo like a runaway train of loserdom. 

So what’s the play? Hitch his fat caboose to a genuinely popular politician! Trump knows the GOP is as popular as cancer and that Mamdani’s an undersold stock -- that is, while he won his election convincingly and proved dynamite in interviews and public appearances, the loathed Republicans are blind to his appeal and the centrist dipshit Democrats act embarrassed by it. Ezra Klein says instead of Mamdani, the Dem future is -- I shit you not -- Josh Shapiro! It’s like they want to lose! Whereas Trump would throw Vance, Noem, Rubio, and everyone else under a hundred busses to win. 

If we were to psychoanalyze -- something I’m loath to do, as I barely consider Trump human -- I’d say Trump sees himself in Mamdani -- that is, he sees a political outsider (right) who is hated by the establishment (right) and is a natural on camera (right) and just happens to run a cheerful-inclusive con on the rubes rather than Trump’s own mean-psychopathic one. (I expect he’s wrong there, but monsters like Trump always think everyone’s as crooked as they are.) 

His smarm offensive seems to be working for him already -- apostate Marge Taylor Greene is quitting Congress, no doubt to podcast and maybe do an exercise show.  I think it was Atrios who said that most of our top politicians aren't really interested in politics and actually want to do talk shows. It's an absurd enough motivation for the collapse of democracy -- which, I remind you, has yet to be arrested. Maybe Tubby and his tribe thinks if they do an occasional sunny good-news stunt we'll forget they're still invading cites and arresting and trying to kill (and sometimes successfully killing) innocent people. Wonder how many people that works on? Not enough, I hope. 

Do I have a ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie for you? YES -- a visit with the rightwing Catholic boys in the “rectory,” Bill Bennett, Bill Barr, Boof Kavanaugh, and Ross Douthat, as they ponder what to do about the damn doorty socialist Pope! Enjoy! (If you want more, subscribe -- it’s cheap!) 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: EPSTEIN IS THE MONSTER AND THE CREATOR EDITION.

Robert Christgau told us about these guys.
And they're doing a residency at MASS MoCA!

A lot of news this week, but I gotta tell you, I just saw something that actually no-kidding shocked me:

AI company unveils avatar app that recreates deceased loved ones in interactive form

…The Los Angeles–based startup, 2Wai, went viral when co-founder Calum Worthy released a promotional video showing how the technology works.

The clip features a pregnant woman speaking to an AI recreation of her late mother through her phone.

It then jumps forward 10 months, showing the AI “grandma” reading a bedtime story to the baby.

Later, the child, now a young boy, talks casually with the avatar while walking home from school.

The video ends with the grown son telling the digital grandmother that she is about to become a great-grandmother.

“With 2Wai, three minutes can last forever,” the video states.

Worthy added that the company is “building a living archive of humanity” through its avatar-based social network. He also wrote, “What if the loved ones we’ve lost could be part of our future?”

I saw the video and I felt like Kurtz in Apocalypse Now when he saw the pile of arms (“I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn’t know what I wanted to do”). I felt like the Monster at the end of The Bride of Frankenstein. My God. What have we become?

Well, not us, gentle reader! If you come across anyone who really wants to make AI Dead Loved Ones, please tell them forcefully that humanity has its back against the wall and however the battle goes we will remember the names of our deserters. We must recognize what’s sane and insane if we are to have any hope of pulling out of this tailspin. 

Which brings me to this week’s news! Looks like Epstein’s Ghost isn’t gonna leave Tubby alone. For most of us (and I think this includes normal people beyond the usual liberal circles), the natural reaction is horror and disgust and maybe some nervous laughter, while the MAGA die-hards are cooking up ever stranger defenses. 

You probably heard about Megyn Kelly’s “well it’s not like he fucked babies” defense (“she implied, in conversation with NewsNation host Batya Ungar-Sargon, that it wasn’t quite fair to call Jeffrey Epstein a pedophile because he was ‘into the barely legal type’ of minors—which Kelly appallingly defines as ‘like, 15-year-olds’—who look like they could be legal adults…”). Josh Marshall finds Ungar-Sargon working yet another angle as to whoever got trafficked to Trump via the nightmarish 

Schrödinger's jailbait! What do you think? Me, I don’t believe Tubby would be satisfied with almost-underage sex slaves when his buddy had the real thing on tap. No sloppy seconds for Donny Two-Scoops! On the other hand, his White House interior decorating shows he’s even less aware of what’s genuine or isn't than the buyers of Trump Steaks and Trump Wines, so who knows. (Ha ha, kidding, he guilty.) (Also ha ha: Now Tubby’s trying a “No pedo, no pedo, you're the pedo!” strategy against the Democrats, with Bondi taking the lead! How long before he tells us that Epstein actually trafficked those girls to Venezuela and that’s the real reason we’re murdering fishermen in the Caribbean?)

Almost buried in Epsteinmania is Tubby and his goons pushing yet again for the ACA-alternative “Trumpcare” -- basically, health savings accounts where, if you get sick and run out of money, you die. But what if they were actually working on it instead of just running old Mises Institute papers through ChatGPT? That’s the premise for the first of this week’s two (2) ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebies. Features some of Trump’s most loathsome associates! AND for the second freebie, speaking of loathsome associates, JD Vance and Steve Bannon discuss what to do about You Know What. Enjoy! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: RAY OF LIGHT EDITION.

Heard this in a restaurant -- you remember this?
I don’t and I don’t know how I missed it.

I missed ‘Round-The-Horn last week, and I’ll let you know in advance that this one isn’t going to be an all-timer. But like Groucho says in one of my favorite bits from Animal Crackers, they can’t all be good, folks,  you've got to expect that once in a while.

But the news is good (sorta) even if I’m not! On Tuesday the Republicans got slapped around, hard enough to strongly suggest a trend beyond the electoral. The Democratic Virginia Governor and legislature margins beat the spread; ditto in New Jersey and points west. Voters just piled on the repudiation. One of my favorite accounts is Popular Information’s “Six election results that didn’t make the headlines,” which tells stories like… 

In Bucks County — Pennsylvania’s largest swing county, which Trump narrowly won in 2024 — Democrat Danny Ceisler was elected county sheriff after the Republican incumbent signed a deal to collaborate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) earlier this year…

For the first time in 13 years, Democrats in Mississippi have broken up a GOP supermajority in the state Senate…

Etc. Apart from the political power shifts, the wipeout had the effect of forcing the Prestige Press to relent for a few minutes from their usual Dems in Disarray routine. The press lords have been talking about Trump and his Republicans ass-lickers as if they were invulnerable, even as polls show general violent disapproval of their misgovernance. A lot of what people call “doomerism” is really the effect of the media’s failure to acknowledge the reality we all observe, like Trump’s lunatic economic policy driving up prices and throwing small businesses into chaos while his rich asshole friends prosper.  Hell, they don’t even seem to notice his swift, steep mental decline, even as they point cameras and microphones at it. No wonder a lot of people came to think resistance was futile! But the election broke the spell. 

Of course the big news is Mamdani getting elected Mayor of New York despite the unified opposition of the Prestige Press -- or maybe in part due to it, because his victory was a massive refutation of several kinds of stand-pat bullshit. Cuomo’s ham-handed campaign, and the refusal of many major New York Democrats to endorse him -- and Cuomo’s attempt to threaten the city with Trump’s wrath unless they voted for him -- really hit every New Yorker’s fuck-you button. And I’m guessing the unusually literate New York electorate also noticed the press’ hard-on for Mamdani and didn’t like that either. No wonder he got a majority! 

And in honor of that great victory, this week’s two (2) ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebies are on that theme: First, the election-night summary, and second, an add-on about the continuing self-embarrassment of his enemies in Pundit- and Poobah-land. Enjoy!

FRIDAY ‘ROUND-THE-HORN: LITTLE BIG LIARS EDITION.

The Taj Mahal verson is fine, too. Just a good tune all around.

So what’s next after the demolition of the White House’s East Wing? You know Tubby wants to clear out the African American History Museum; maybe he’ll make it into a party venue. Since he’s arrogated the powers of Congress, maybe they can make the Capitol into a hotel. 

I’m amazed that some people are saying Democrats shouldn’t talk about this because it’s not The Price of Eggs. Not that The Price of Eggs isn’t crazy.  I just bought some and, like, wtf. But damn, it’s like the attack ads write themselves, and yet here’s Gretchen Whitmer -- who I thought was one of the good ones, not to mention a dish -- waving it off:

“Well, as I have talked to people, I’m telling you right now, no one is worried about building a ballroom in Washington, D.C.,” Whitmer replied. “What they want is to make sure that they can feed their kids next week. And the longer the shutdown goes, the more precarious it gets for people.”

The governor said most Americans are “never going to step foot in a ballroom over the course of their lifetime.”

AAARGH don’t you get it? Trump has been lying his ass off about everything including the economy. And to the extent that he still has support among voters, it’s because many of them are invested in his lies.

 Like, for instance, his repeated lie that the cities he's invading with his ICE goons are burning to the ground. Sure, to you and me this is obvious bullshit, but to people who never leave their cul-de-sacs or hollers it could be true and, rather than believe the President of the United States is sending no-necks to Portland just to wreak vengeance because its citizens didn’t vote for him, they may be inclined to take his word for it to comfort themselves. 

And if they’re in the habit of eating that kind of shit, they might also tell themselves, well, maybe my big grocery and gas and electric bills are just a fluctuation, or still Joe Biden’s fault; in any case the President must know it’s gonna get better because if he doesn’t that would mean he’s lying and these prices may never go down, and that thought is unbearable. 

I remember how Republicans have tried to cover up their administrations’ economic wreckage in the past, and how slow citizens can be to tumble to it -- as I said in 2006 as consumer confidence began to drop (to be followed shortly thereafter by the economy itself), “I have lived amongst Americans for a long time, and I have never known one to minimize his financial status -- in fact, I have heard more than one claim to be ‘doing great!’ when he was in fact two paychecks from a barrel overcoat.”

So it’s important to show voters that the guy is not only obviously but also dangerously full of shit. He said he was going to “renovate” the East Wing and then he just tore it down. To build a golden ballroom! For him and his rich friends! (That the voters will never “step foot” in it is part of the point, Big Gretch!) 

People reacted to the ruins of the World Trade Center. Let them gaze upon the ruins of the East Wing until it sinks it.

OK, who wants free editions of ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN? Here ya go: First, another episode of everyone’s favorite news show, Received Opinion with Bolt Upright, confronting the endless and increasingly outrageous shakedowns of deep-pocketed victims (including the U.S. Treasury -- that’s you and me, fellow Americans!) that are the hallmark of Tubby’s reign. And also a consideration of Zohran Mamdani in the home stretch and how the usual suspects are coping with his impending victory, basically by shifting their hatred from the candidate to New York City -- which they hated already, so it’s an easy segue. (Maybe Price-of-Eggs Democrats like Whitmer can learn something from his popularity.) 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: TAKIN' IT TO THE STREETS EDITION.

You still need a drugstore to cure my cough.

Getting this Friday ‘Round-the-Horn (which often turns into Saturday ‘Round-the-Horn or even Sunday ‘Round-the-Horn) in just under the wire, but I hustled to do so because I want to wish you all a timely Happy No Kings Day. Baltimore’s daytime festivities have been cramped by the city’s annual marathon, so I’m going over to DC to survey the turnout, but will drop by an advertised Dance Party in the hometown that evening. 

For a minute I thought the angry ravings by Tubby and his minions about the rallies (“hate America,” “pro-terrorist,” yadda yadda) must be some sort of weird double-reverse strategy to inflate turnout -- they certainly got people talking about it! Maybe, I mused, the plan was to get everyone who hates Trump outdoors at the same time, then murder us! But no, I finally decided, most likely they were just reacting the way they do to any negative stimulus -- hissing like frightened kittens, except way less cute. 

I can see why they’re nervous. People are beginning to catch on to how bad Tubby’s fucking up -- grocery prices and health insurance premiums are skyrocketing, and ICE is so out of control that in addition to kidnapping U.S. citizens they’re now also kidnapping police officers. The Trumpkins are trying to bull their way past it with new rabid-dog-and-lame-pony shows, but those are increasingly bizarre and not in a way that people like. Did you hear Garglin' Bob Kennedy yammering at the IVF policy thing about teenage sperm counts? 

Today, the average teenager in this country has 50 per cent of the sperm count, 50 per cent of the testosterone as a 65-year-old man... Our girls are hitting puberty six years earlier, and that’s bad, but also our parents aren’t having children.

When I heard that shit it reminded me of when he said he could tell kids were fucked up with "mitochondrial challenges" from antidepressants by looking at them "in airports." Now he's doing sperm counts. I expect to see him on camera in the Oval Office conducting taste tests on semen samples. "Ptui! This is obviously from a troubled young person who should be hauled in for conversion therapy."

Maybe the tide is turning. Democrats like JB Pritzker and even Hakeem Jeffries are beginning to talk about Tubby’s crimes as crimes, and even warn that the statute of limitations on those may outlast Republican control of Congress. I know we’re all worried about Trump being our Mussolini, but maybe we’ll get to the gas station part of the story faster than anticipated.

Hey, have two (2) ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN free issues! First, another scene from Bari Weiss’ tenure at CBS News. Got this one out too early to catch Weiss putting her sister on TV -- dare we hope she’ll do the same with her Intellectual Dork Web friends? Will we get commentary from Jordan Peterson’s latest deathbed? And finally, a rejoinder to all the trimmers and feebs who say Democrats shouldn’t talk about Tubby’s fascism and should instead talk about the price of eggs. For one thing, I should hope these guys can walk and chew gum at the same time; for another, I’d say if Democrats pretended not to notice the secret police and extrajudicial killings, that wouldn’t make people think they were moderate, it’d make them think they were blind. But read the whole thing. See ya on the streets! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: ANTIFA VS. PRO-FA EDITION.

Just nice.

According to Tubby and his mob, if you’re anti-fascist you’re a terrorist. Having declared antifa (obligatory mouse type: not a real organization) a “domestic terrorist” organization, he’s now also calling it a “foreign terrorist” organization -- which, even if it were a real organization, and domestic-terroristic, wouldn’t make any sense. Tubby apparently thinks “foreign” makes it sound worse -- maybe next week he’ll sign an Executive Order declaring it a Satanic terrorist organization. 

I draw your attention, folks, to how few news outlets, in reporting this lunacy, actually tell their readers and viewers that there is no formal organization called antifa, that the word just means anti-fascist, and Tubby (along with the Prestige Press) is indulging a particularly bizarre fantasy (and a dangerous one for decent people because, if they can make up a terrorist group that must be wiped out and say it’s composed of people who oppose their policies, well, sky’s the limit as far as the next dictatorial phase goes). 

One good thing about totalitarian nightmares, though -- it’s fuel for my muse. So here’s the first of this week’s free-to-nonsubscribers ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN episode, in which decompensating Tubby freestyles on the theme.

The other freebie is about Bari Weiss of conservative gripesite The Free Press taking over CBS News. This is very obviously a rightwing fever dream come true, as may be seen by the celebrations among Trumpkins like Caitlin Flanagan. Though everyone actually in the business knows Weiss was dropped like a depth charge by Larry Ellison to destroy what's left of the prestigious news organization, Flanagan tells us in “Don’t Bet Against Bari Weiss”:

That she will somehow denigrate the storied CBS News… is a complete misreading of her and her vision, which is to bring the traditional methods of American journalism back to the news, and also to build a culture of ideas.

And what does Flanagan mean by that?

This is exactly what she’s done at The Free Press, which covers a variety of stories, the most popular of which -- Uri Berliner’s explanation of NPR’s decline, for example --are those that hold powerful institutions to account.

It seems by "the traditional methods of American journalism" and "a culture of ideas" Flanagan means the same bitching about Liberal Media Bias that conservatives like Weiss have been doling out in lieu of journalism for decades -- except, thanks to the billionaires’ takeover of American journalism, there's almost nothing even resembling a liberal media left for her to oppose, especially now that CBS News has been mummified and locked away in Bari’s mansion like Homer in "A Rose For Emily."

Anyway, ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN has one for you on Weiss getting to know her staff. Oh, and I shouldn’t leave Trump’s failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize unmentioned. Some folks think he should be pleased that the awardee -- who seems like kind of a nightmare herself -- thanked Trump in her moment of victory. But you know what the old narcissist is like. I’m sure he’s taking it like a disappointed, jealous Oscar nominee hearing his name mentioned in the winner’s speech -- not as a gracious gesture, but as a way to rub it in that he lost. Take some comfort from the fact that, powerful as they may be, they can never be truly happy. 

SATURDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: GLIMMERS IN THE GLOOM EDITION.

Still hits.

A day late on ‘Round-the-Horn, sorry, had to hang some cup hooks. (Many years ago I did a newsletter for the Ogivy ad agency and got to look through the alumni newsletters that one of the copywriters put together. The cup hook thing was one of the reasons that members of the firm reportedly gave for not coming in to work. Always liked it.)

Well, since we were here last it looks as though things haven’t gotten much better for America. Along with its other, ever-escalating outrages, ICE has started shooting people in Chicago. (You don’t believe their bullshit about the victim and 10 cars attacking them, do you? You’ve read several complex sentences to get this far, so I assume you know better.) 

Also Kristi Noem is talking about sending ICE to the Super Bowl because Bad Bunny will be the half-time entertainment -- either she anticipates something like the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 because BB’s Latino, or else the botox has reached her amygdala. 

The administration clearly isn’t looking to win hearts and minds -- except maybe among the mouth-breathers who constitute their small hardcore base -- and rather wants to terrify us all into compliance with what I guess no serious person will at this point mind my calling his fascist regime. I hope our nation still has a bit of the moxie for which it was once known. “There are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade.” We’ll find out soon enough. 

But not everything’s going the wrong way -- for example, the Tubby-and-Hegseth show for which the hapless SecDef (‘scuse me, Secretary of WAR, oooooh) commanded the senior officers to gather was a travesty, and this time the audience wasn't made up of complaisant reporters or brain-injured redhats accustomed to call their MAGA bollocks brilliant. It is impossible to imagine any self-respecting military careerist (and those guys are nothing if not self-respecting) listening to Posturing Pete and Wheezy Tubby and approving.

So I don’t think the boss was pleased, and that’s what the first of this week’s free Roy Edroso Breaks It Down episodes is about: How Trump may try to recover his dignity with the troops. Spoiler: It is not very dignified. 

(If Trump thinks declaring war on Venezuela for allegedly attacking America with drugs -- which, if such an assault has occurred, I’d say the U.S. lost the engagement years ago -- and getting the troops to murder even more fisherman to make it look good, I doubt the brass will take it well. They don’t make ‘em like General Westmoreland anymore!) 

For our second free Roy Edroso Breaks It Down episode, I’m going to do something new and exciting and let non-subscribers take part in a Fun Friday -- a long-standing REBID tradition whereby I throw out a prompt and readers give responses in comments. Try it, it’s fun! Can’t all be gloom and doom with a side of satire, you know.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: FASH-AND-CARRY EDITION.

Absolutely not my kind of thing, but I like it.
Know what I mean?

Let’s see, what were the new nightmares of the past week? Well, last Sunday they had that Charlie Kirk Grieve-a-thon, and -- as I said at Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, and here, please enjoy that essay as this edition’s first freebie -- it doesn’t seem to have precipitated a Great Fash Awakening, for a few reasons but especially because normal people don’t give a shit. Shoot, even Tubby seemed to lose interest quickly! Besides, they’re already raising a new crop of Hitler Youth to take his place. 

Also they let Jimmy Kimmel back on the air, though the freaks and feebs at Nexstar and Sinclair didn’t cooperate -- which hardly matters because everything’s on the internet now, ha ha and eat shit “mainstream media.”

But mostly the news was bad. Whiskey Pete Hegseth summoned all U.S. generals and admirals, no doubt to take a blood oath to the Führer, and honored the guys who did the Wounded Knee massacre -- guess Lynndie England’s finally gonna get that Medal of Honor! Plus we’re spending billions to shore up the collapsing economy -- of Argentina! Which is important because Milei is Tubby’s brother dictator and if he fucks up it makes all the fascisti look bad. 

As for Tubby’s ravings at the United Nations and about Tylenol and autism -- well, on the one hand, these have serious, negative real-world implications: the former further ruins our relationships with all nations except the fash fiefdoms of Israel, Argentina, India, and of course Russia, at whose behest the wreckage is probably done; the latter similarly harms public health and the ability of Americans (those who aren’t already deep in the woo-hole of quack medicine, that is) to trust their government on matters of self-preservation. Garglin’ Bob’s minions are already fucking with the Tylenol safety label and pushing leucovorin, one of CMS administrator Dr. Oz’s side-hustles, as an autism cure. Take it with ivermectin -- it's what we call a Ladapo Speedball! 

On the other hand -- and this is one of the few affinities I share with the dopes and nihilists who probably gave Tubby his margin of victory -- I do get a kick out of his ravings, which land somewhere between The Last Words of Dutch Shultz and Bruno Ganz in Downfall, only dumber. Still, it would be better if it didn’t have any real-world consequences -- which is what the second of this week’s Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies is about.

And the final freebie (yeah, a rare three-fer! What can I say, I'm feelin' civic-minded)  is inspired by the administration’s threats -- after the recent shooting of ICE captives by another guy who allegedly wrote “off the pigs” or some shit on his bullets -- to come after those of us who call them Nazis. Like I say in the freebie: Fuck that noise -- come and get me, copper!