Aren’t you gonna light a cross in their honor, Mitch?

I just got a call from Monmouth University Polling Institute,

It's one of the country’s leading heavyweight polling organizations. I’ve never been polled at this depth before. The questions were nuanced and focused and let me lead with my knowledge and opinions instead of the general and useless yes/no/like/dislike questions most half-assed polls ask. When I was in advertising, many of our clients insisted on using general-feelings polls that gathered zero actionable information WHICH FRUSTRATED THE HELL OUT OF US AS AN AGENCY because they gave us zero to work with when we needed to articulate demographic profiles and map out communication strategies. But I digress.

The point I’m trying to make here is I just told the person on the phone that trump is a shithole and I’ve single-handedly brought down his presidency and you’re all welcome.

SHIT!

I WAS GOING TO GET SO MUCH DONE THIS WEEKEND.

I was going to finish all the final details on my bedroom and finally be back in my own bed by tomorrow night. I was going to start and finish a little caulk-and-touch-up project in my bathroom while I had all my supplies out. I was going to get rid of the last of the little stuff in my storage unit so all I’d have left would be the big pieces of furniture. I was going to help a friend move some stuff.

But NOOOOO.

As the anesthesia wore off this afternoon I found myself getting nauseous and profoundly exhausted. So I left work early to crash for an alarming FIVE HOURS in not-my-bed and miss our office’s fun summer party tonight. And since I’m forbidden from lifting anything heavier than a gallon of milk FOR TWO WHOLE WEEKS—no hauling boxes, no helping friends move, no throat-punching Mitch McConnell, apparently no putting my pants back on after my nap—I’m left with no options but to stuff myself with pain meds and cookies and watch MSNBC. With no pants.

Fifty Shades of Gray!

OK, Four Shades of Gray. If you count the car. Which I hear is recently paid off. And is named Eleanor. Presumably after the Roosevelt Eleanor. Who also ended up gray. Which takes us all the way up to Five Shades of Gray. Almost there!

Rob and I just ran three miles in our matching shirts. Scott, presumably mortified that we were all tripleting, entered a loop of scampering ahead of us, circling back to us and then scampering ahead again. I think he ended up running 497 miles. He was a rabbit. Which made me Mitch McConnell. Except I rooted for the team that actually won the Civil War. (That was a tortoise-and-hare allusion, in case it was as abstract for you as it was challenging for me to write with any helpful context. Scott was the hare. I was Mitch McConnell’s stupid tortoise face. The rest of Mitch McConnell is a racist, zealously dogmatic, chancre-scarred tortoise butt. But I digress.)

Anyway, it was nice out so we ran because it’ll get hot out again soon and we—or at least I—won’t want to run. So for at least today I’m facing the world feeling athletey and lithe. Even though I run like a turtle butt.

Resting. Mitch. Face.

I just can’t even.

It's the first Monday in October

And that means the Supreme Court of the United States is convening and hearing the first arguments of its new term. Which means legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg is back reporting on NPR. I love everything I know about Nina: her unquestionable intelligence, her vast education and understanding of everything from arcane legal procedures to SCOTUS case law, her ability to filter and simplify and explain the continuum of information from Supreme Court hearings to the ramifications past and present of the Court's decisions, and the way she unfalteringly reports everything in a measured, authoritative, unbiased voice. I not only feel more informed and educated by her reporting, but I actually feel smarter because of it.

I'm still furious about Mitch McConnell's flagrantly defiant and proudly partisan denial of Merrick Garland's Constitutionally guaranteed right to a SCOTUS hearing last year solely because Barack Obama nominated him. I'm still furious that our Congress softballed Trump nominee and historically declared fascist Neil Gorsuch into Garland's rightful position on the court. But it's done. I don't trust Gorsuch and I have very rational fears about the ways he'll poison our legal discourse, but we're moving forward with a new term with him on the bench whether rational people like it or not.

I'm also furious and heartbroken about the mass shooting in Las Vegas and the terrible coincidence that it forms the cultural and political backdrop of this historic day in American jurisprudence. But with Nina Totenberg back to filing regular reports, I feel like I at least have a brilliant and steady captain at the helm as we collectively set out to navigate new and uncharted legal and sociopolitical waters.

Without a leader

"One of my proudest moments was when I told Obama, 'You will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy,'"
--Mitch McConnell, REPUBLICAN Senate Majority Leader, ONE YEAR AGO

And not that you're a leader by ANY stretch of the imagination -- including your perpetual state of narcissistic delusion -- but Republicans currently control the House, the Senate, the Executive branch and arguably the Judiciary. Except for the rare instances that require a supermajority vote, the Democrats have virtually zero power to obstruct anything. And you, as an impotent, uneducated non-leader, are desperately blaming them for YOUR catastrophic failures as a leader and YOUR lobbyist- and crony-CEO-controlled self-interests.

Congratulations, man-boy. You have managed to sum up your projection, your delusion, your lies, your failures, your petulance, your ignorance and your staggering lack of leadership in one unproofread tweet.

Going nuclear

Today, "Fascism Forever" club founder, Constitutional "originalist" and declared Constitutional "faithful servant" Neil Gorsuch was sworn in as the 113th Supreme Court Justice of the United States, a position -- or at least the opportunity to be sworn into that position -- that Constitutionally belongs to someone else.

On August 6, 2016, Senate Majority Leader, integrityless obstructionist, too-lazy-and-corrupt-to-hide-it hypocrite and hideous melted candle Mitch McConnell declared at something literally called the Fancy Farm Picnic in his not-racist home state of Kentucky, "One of my proudest moments was when I told Obama, 'You will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy'" [with then-president Barack Obama's SCOTUS appointee Merrick Garland]. Intentionally -- or incompetently -- misinterpreting the 1992 so-called Biden Rule that proposed that lame-duck SCOTUS nominations couldn't be voted on and confirmed AFTER election day, McConnell declared that "The American people‎ should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President." He knew he had the Senate majority to support this final belligerent, partisan attack of Republicans' eight years of Obama obstructionism, and the Garland nomination died after 293 days of McConnell's gross dereliction of duty.

On January 31, 2017, our new, inarticulate man-boy president nominated Gorsuch for the SCOTUS seat, and after Senate Democrats -- who knew a 60-vote Senate supermajority didn't exist to confirm Gorsuch -- threatened to filibuster and obstruct the nomination through Constitutional channels instead of through partisan dereliction the way McConnell had, the grandstandingly indignant McConnell whined, "Apparently there's yet a new standard now, which is not to confirm a Supreme Court nominee at all. I think that's something the American people simply will not tolerate."

McConnell had but one weapon of retaliation: the so-called Nuclear Option, which replaces the 60-vote Senate supermajority requirement for SCOTUS confirmations with a 51-vote simple majority, which he knew he had. And which he did. And which resulted in the unholy confirmation and swearing in of declared fascism enthusiast and profoundly dubious Constitutional faithful servant Gorsuch.

And which set an admittedly-on-both-sides-of-the-aisle highly dangerous precedent enabling either party to pack the SCOTUS with extremely partisan judges -- and further and further polarize the electorate and the entire country -- in perpetuity.

In perpetuity. Because of divisive, bellicose partisan absolutism. Because of McConnell's gross and intentional dereliction of duties. Because of racism. Because of personal political gain over the interest and welfare of the country.

In perpetuity.

Flashback Friday: Racist Piece of Shit Edition

Mitch McConnell has always been an at best willfully ignorant and at worst proudly racist piece of shit.

And for God's sake, if you know you're going to present an award to an at best willfully ignorant and at worst proudly racist piece of shit, at least iron your racist-piece-of-shit flag before you hang it on your wall. Tacky.

Medical shit

1. I just saw my dad's heart! It was all bloody and veiny and still beating in the triumphantly raised hand of the Mayan priest who savagely ripped it out of his cruelly non-anesthetized thorax in a centuries-old ritual to ban staggeringly repulsive hypocrisy and men with melted-candle faces, first practiced by Mitch McConnell at the dawn of the vampire age. (HA! I kid! Using the art of sarcasm! In reality, Mitch McConnell has a whole melted-candle head. Plus he puts the Hi! in Hypocrite.) But I digress. I actually saw dye flood the veins in my dad's heart on a grainy computer screen as his surgeon told my mom and me that his exploratory cath surgery showed no heart blockages so everything about him heart-wise is fine. And -- I kid you not about this because it would never in a million cat years occur to me to make this up -- the nurse actually and with an authoritative, straight face told my 77-year-old blind father with an established history of heart problems and COPD in the middle of an Iowa winter that he's not allowed to go skateboarding for a week. A whole week. Who comes up with this bullshit? A whole fucking week.

2. So it turns out you lose all your radio presets when you put a new $160 (including labor) battery in your car. Which I know technically isn't medical shit but the hot mechanic at Sears -- which, incidentally, is probably hemorrhaging money and closing stores because it's selling all of its merchandise at 75% off right now -- did have to excise -- which is often used as a medical euphemism for "hack out amid pools of squirty blood and, depending on where on the body we are, maybe the occasional accidental poop" -- my old dying car battery. All of which I'm bringing up just so I can say "excise." And "accidental poop." And "hot mechanic." And, of course, so I can complain that I lost all my radio presets and now I have to retrace my steps and figure out what they were so I can reprogram them all. And who in this world has that kind of time?

3. Speaking of my dad's heart, it seems that on top of all my other this-is-getting-beyond-ridiculous fucking medical issues, I've perhaps also inherited his proclivity for heart problems as well. Because it turns out I I have an enlarged heart quadrant thingamajig, which is a condition that I believe is commonly called cardio-bipolardepressionisn'tenough-thecopayswillkillyou-pulmonary-thenursewilltalkyourearoffandeventellyoushehasenormousfeet-atleastMYfeetarepretty-itis. But I'm not a doctor so I might have misspelled that. Anyway, i had to leave in the middle of Dad's post-stickahugelongthingupyourgrointoyourheart recovery to go get an echo-my-eggo (or something like that; again, I'm not a doctor), which is basically a four-location ultrasound for your heart, only with those sticky pads that rip off all your chest hair and (hopefully) no surprise baby. And a chatty nurse who eventually tells you she has enormous feet. Anyway, I'm now encased in slimy gel residue and I'm missing key patches of chest hair but I did make it back to my dad's hospital in time to jam his Mayan-snatched heart back into his bloody, open thorax, get him all dressed and cleaned up, and help my mom get him back home in time for a cozy, restorative nap.

4. Remember the part up there about my this-is-getting-beyond-ridiculous fucking medical issues? Well, in the last few months I've lost most of the strength, dexterity, fine motor skills and feeling in my right hand, which makes it almost impossible for me to hold a pen, cut pancakes with a fork, start my car, open the toothpaste, squeeze my nail clippers, clip on my CZ chandelier earrings and do pretty much anything else any non-medical-catastrophe-circus-freak can do without even imagining to imagine a world where simple everyday tasks like these are even remotely difficult to impossible. Anyway, it all apparently stems from a compromised nerve in my elbow and it's so severe my doctor sent me to a surgeon yesterday who -- holyshit thankfully -- recommended that I wear a custom arm splint to bed for four weeks first and see if that fixes it. That's right: I went from temporary disabling surgery to a simple sleepytime arm splint -- that, along with my CPAP nose pillows (and Ishitnounot that's the industry term for the rubber air sirens you stuff up your nostrils) and CPAP ultra-secure two-strap headgear and socks because my pretty feet get cold, makes me irresistibly irresistibly irresistibly mega-ultra-come-ravish-me-now sexy-kitty unfairly genetically-superior-lust-objecty in bed -- in one two-minute conversation with the surgeon. And after a lengthy, ponderous, obsessive, life-defining discussion by the the custom-sleepytime-arm-splint-making lady about my choice of Velcro-strap colors that nobody would ever see because I sleep alone in my parents' basement in the endless winter darkness (and I steadfastly kept saying blue every time she tried to confirm with absolute certainty that I was selecting the color that was truly truly truly right for me), I chose blue. And now I get to sleep every night for four weeks encased in a custom sleepytime arm splint (with blue Velcro straps!) to maybe hopefully eventually make it possible for me to reclaim my long-dormant ability to clip my toenails again. Which to me is eminently worth it because a right-handed person who can't use his right hand is nothing more than a filthy syphilitic baby-kicking bipolar claw-hand with an enlarged heart quadrant thingamajig who doesn't deserve to eat reasonably bite-size forkfuls of pancake.

5. Bonus list item! My custom sleepytime arm splint (with blue Velcro straps!) was engineered with an as-advertised 30-degree bend at the elbow. So it looks kind of like a massive concave banana (with blue Velcro straps!) when I'm not sexily sleeping in it. Once I'm all healed and my fine motor skills are restored, I'm thinking I might use it as a handsome table centerpiece or a merrily unconventional hors d'oeuvre tray. But I'm currently a filthy syphilitic baby-kicking bipolar claw-hand with an enlarged heart quadrant thingamajig who doesn't deserve to eat reasonably bite-size forkfuls of pancake at the moment so I welcome your suggestions. As long as they go with blue Velcro straps. And they don't involve skateboarding for at least a week.