The Hillary/Horse'sAss debate was two years ago today

Facebook memories shows that I live-blogged my color commentary as I watched it. I didn't realize Snifflin' Don's "very good people" blather has been an established through line in the fiction of his presidency.

The highlights:

8:24 pm
Hillary's talking in paragraphs. Donald's just yelling the same interruptions over and over. #SniffingDonald #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

8:35 pm
"Trumped-Up Trickle Down" gets points for alliteration and conceptual clarity, but it's too rhythmically bumpy to catch on. My money's on "Deplorable Don." #SnifflingDonald #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

8:44 pm
When did #SnifflingDonald suddenly get interested in infrastructure? That's a four-syllable word. And it's nothing he can electroplate with gold and slap his name on in seven-foot letters. #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

8:48 pm
"Law and Order"! He finally said it. Now I can mark it off on my bingo card. Next up? My money's on "The Generals." #SnifflingDonald #SniffleGate

9:00 pm
UGH. Here we go again. The NRA is "very very good people and they're protecting the Second Amendment." Since when do "very very good people" insist that "a well-regulated militia" means "citizens with assault rifles"? That's bastardizing the Second Amendment, not protecting it. Only an anus-lipped sociopath would confuse "bastardizing" with "protecting."

9:06 pm
Birther bullshit? Still? It was--and continues to be--a meaningless distraction for people too stupid and lazy to understand NATO. But it does have the bonus benefit of being a convenient code for helping sentient people suss out racists. #SnifflingDonald #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

9:25 pm
OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG. #SnifflingDonald just spent 90 seconds yelling like a feral boob monkey about his temperament! And also his temperament! Plus his temperament! #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

9:36 pm
"She doesn't have the stamina," says the guy hemorrhaging snot like a man with end-stage syphilis. #SnifflingDonald #DeplorableDonald #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

9:46 pm
#SnifflingDonald postulates that the DNC could have been hacked by "someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds." What does it matter how much the bed weighs? #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

2018
Look! I made a calendar that says I didn't rape anybody for a whole month in college! (Oops. That was Kavanaugh. I get my rapists mixed up sometimes.)

Republican Mass-Shooting Emergency Checklist

1. Find out the color of the shooter: white = lone wolf/mentally unstable; dark = terrorist
2. If the shooter is a dark terrorist, make empty promises about travel bans and “extreme vetting”
3. If the shooter is a mentally unstable white lone wolf who couldn't possibly be described as a terrorist, well what can you do?
4. If an automatic machine gun was used for the mass murders, scream “Second Amendment!” every two minutes
5. If your name is trump, barely—if at all—acknowledge the shooting and hope that your next catastrophic moral, ethical or intellectual failure will make it disappear
6. Type “thoughts and prayers” on Twitter
7. Fire up the NRA we-need-more-guns spin propaganda machine that’s still warm from last week’s shooting
8. Create a distraction by committing treason
or: Declare that you’re fast-tracking never-discussed infrastructure legislation
or: Blame (in any order) Hillary, Obama, Democratic "obstruction" or the victims who didn't report the shooter's suspicious behavior
or: Bleat that this list is “inappropriate,” ignore that everything on it is documentable and scream that you are offended
or: Just wait for trump’s next batshit eruption, announcement or embarrassment to dominate the news cycle
9. Name all other possible weapons—especially knives!—that could have been used in a mass-shooting murder
10. If your name is trump, describe the murder victims as “beautiful”
11. Feign indignance and bleat “now is not the time” when anyone suggests the country needs to discuss and enact preventive gun control
12. Conspicuously do not declare the proper time to discuss or enact preventive gun control
13. Cite the above pre-packaged propaganda in interviews with news sources you otherwise scream are fake news
14. Type “thoughts and prayers” on Twitter
15. Do nothing meaningful, productive, rational, uncorrupt or humane

Keep this handy for next week

Modern-day presidential

You want "extreme vetting" of millions of immigrants but you can't even look up from your golf clubs long enough to figure out how to do cursory drive-by vetting of your top officials. Though you find plenty of time to whine on Twitter about how your professional, moral and personal catastrophic failures aren't your fault. You suck as a president, you suck as a leader, you suck as a judge of character, you suck as a thinker, you suck as a human, you suck as a husband and father, and you especially suck at sucking at everything. There is more value in my toilet than in the entirety of your existence. Gather up all your "best people" and stand in front of your "Second Amendment people" and finally bring your inevitable bloody end to all your sucking bullshit. You owe us.

Mr. Paul:

I don't even want to understand the vile psychopathy that caused you to think -- much less tweet to the world -- your Second Amendment justification to "shoot at the government" a year ago almost to this day. But you are the majority party of a president who just ten months ago called upon "Second Amendment people" to silence his political rivals ... the majority party of a president who blithely, recklessly bragged last year that "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters" ... a majority party who works resolutely to dismantle and obstruct gun-control legislation that might very well have prevented what happened to you and your colleagues today. Your words to "shoot at the government" are as appalling as the quite literal shooting at the government this morning that you now describe as "a killing field — it’s really sick and very sad."

Really sick. Very sad.

I lost a friend in a violent terrorist attack. I lost a friend in a violent assault. I am haunted by the violent mass murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School and Pulse nightclub and countless other terrifying, preventable massacres. I don't wish violence and murder even on people for whom I have a visceral loathing. And I have a visceral loathing for you. For repeatedly -- proudly -- placing more importance on your party's interpretation of the Second Amendment and on the gun lobby and on allowing increasingly unrestricted access to assault weapons than on the safety and the very lives of our citizens. For recklessly inciting people through your position of influence and privilege to "shoot at the government." For having the gall to be shocked and appalled when the time bomb you helped build all but literally exploded in your hands this morning when an obviously disturbed man with obviously easy access to an assault weapon followed your charge and shot at the government. At you. At all of us.

Really sick. Very sad.

Measurably preventable. Immeasurably infuriating.

Irreparably heartbreaking.