My father, a loyal Fox News viewer for years now, saw a newspaper headline while in the checkout lane at the local supermarket and was shocked to learn that the network has settled a defamation lawsuit for $780 million. Dad was furious that Fox News, once the only "Fair and Balanced" deliverer of newsworthy news, has fallen so low as to peddle lies to its viewers just like all the other Fake News stations. He has vowed to never watch the network again.

Now he's on the lookout for another news channel that will tell him the unvarnished truth, specifically how gays are ruining America and the only thing that can save us is another presidential term for political genius Donald Trump.

The more things change....

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: dad family

UGA football legend (and gameshow-host Donald Trump's best "see-I'm-not-racist-I-have-a-black-friend" friend) Herschel Walker won the Georgia Republican party primary for U.S. Senate with over 801,000 votes (68%). He literally won every single county in the state. He trounced his closest opponent, Gary Black (13%), who has been the state Agriculture Commissioner for the past 11 years! If I was writing headlines, this would read: Football Culture Trumps Agriculture.*

Now Walker will head into the general election to face sitting senator Raphael Warnock. So far Walker — who it should be noted has a net worth upwards of $29 million yet has sent me, a UGA football season ticket holder, at least 7 letters asking for campaign contributions — has refused to describe any specifics of his platform (other than "Teamwork good" and "Democrats evil") or debate any of his Republican rivals, instead relying purely on the goodwill garnered in college in the 1980s. And it's easy to see why he's so reluctant to speak up. When asked on friendly Fox News what he would do to prevent future mass murder of elementary school students like the 19 who died this week in Texas — Walker's home state for the past decade, right up until he decided to run for Senator of Georgia — he said this:

You know, Cain killed Abel and that's a problem that we have. And I said what we need to do is look into how we can stop those things. You know, you talked about doing a disinformation. What about getting a department that can look at young men/women that's looking at their social media. What about doing that? Looking into things like that? And we can stop that that way.

Yes, poor Abel would still be alive today if Adam had only kept his eyes on TikTok instead of Eve's fig leaf.

Besides, Cain killed Abel with a rock, the Daniel Defense DDM4® V7® AR15 with Improved Flash Suppressor rifle of its day. No one would ever try to ban rocks, so why would you want to ban 30-round magazine automatic rifles? (According to Christian dogma, the rock was given to Cain by The Devil, which I'm sure Walker would insist in no way reflects on for-profit gun manufacturers selling military-designed long guns to 18-year-old civilians.)

Sadly, I think there's every chance that bible-thumping, gun lobby-supporting, social media-spying Walker will win a seat in the U.S. Senate on nostalgic name recognition alone. And if that is the case, Georgians will be getting exactly the representation in government they deserve. That's democracy in action, folks!

* While Trump did indeed endorse Walker, it's not like Black wasn't trying his damnedest to earn his evil overlord's favor too, including refusing to admit that Biden is the lawfully elected president of the United States. Trump's endorsement in this race means far less than Walker's 82 touchdowns as a Georgia Bulldog.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: death football fuck you america herschel walker news politics religion

A poll earlier this week showed former UGA running back and current U.S. Senate candidate for the state of Georgia Herschel Walker leading all other Republican primary candidates with an estimated 75% support of voters surveyed. That's a lot, especially for a guy who has never held public office, hasn't made any public statements about what he plans to do if he held public office, and hasn't even lived in Georgia for the past decade.

Hershel is a legend in this state, and rightly so, for carrying the University of Georgia to its (most recent) national title in 1980. He was truly a great running back and deserves all possible accolades for his performance on the field. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I don't think that alone qualifies anyone for political office, at least not until Congress decides that the only way though its political gridlock is physical violence on the gridiron.

Seventy-five percent of one party is a lot, but I wonder if Hershel's support might not be even higher if he wasn't personal friends with Donald Trump. The two go way back to Hershel's time in the United States Football League. Hershel was the star player on the team that Trump bought then promptly ran out of business. What a way to earn a guy's eternal loyalty!

(Immediately after buying the team, Trump tried to hire coach Don Shula, the only coach with a perfect NFL season, away from the Miami Dolphins. As a negotiating tactic, Trump made the mistake of trying to pressure Shula via the press. A resentful Shula stayed with the Dolphins to become the winningest coach in NFL history; America elected the bad negotiator to the presidency.)

As a Bulldogs fan, it bothers me to say that I would vote against Hershel. I think, aside from his misguided allegiance to a disgraced former president, he's probably a decent enough fellow. But I don't think "decent enough" qualifies anyone for political office either, even if you couple it with great athleticism.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: football fuck you america herschel walker politics

SAVANNAH GUTHERIE, NBC NEWS, Oct 15, 2010

Just this week, you retweeted to your 87 million followers, a conspiracy theory that Joe Biden orchestrated to have SEAL Team Six, the Navy SEAL Team Six, killed to cover up the fake death of Bin Laden. Now, why would you send a lie like that to your followers?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

I know nothing about it, can I-

GUTHERIE

You retweeted it.

TRUMP

That was a retweet. That was an opinion of somebody—

GUTHERIE

But—

TRUMP

—and that was a retweet. I'll put it out there. People can decide for themselves. I don't take a position.

GUTHERIE

I don't get that, you're the President. You're not like, someone's crazy uncle who can just—

TRUMP

No, no. No, no.

GUTHERIE

—retweet, whatever.

TRUMP

That was a retweet. And I do a lot of retweets. And frankly, because the media is so fake, and so corrupt, if I didn't have social media.... I don't call it Twitter, I call it social media. I wouldn't be able to get the word out. And the word is—

GUTHERIE

Well, the word is false.

TRUMP

—and you know what the word is? The word is very simple. We're building our country, stronger and better than it's ever been before.

GUTHERIE

Let's stop—

TRUMP

And that's what's happening. And everybody knows it.

...

There's no small irony in the fact that the party that openly promotes the philosophy of Constitutional Originalism has chosen as its leader a man the Founding Fathers could have never imagined.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: fuck you america news twitter.com

Actual conversation:

ME: If America was a corporation whose CEO had run it the way America has been run for the past 6 months, would you renew the contract of that CEO?

DAD: Yes. I think America is doing great right now.

ME: Right now? A year ago, maybe. But not right now. Right now, things are terrible. (Points at television.) For example, there are riots in Wisconsin right now.

DAD: Donald Trump sent the National Guard into Wisconsin.

ME: If the presence of the National Guard is an indicator of greatness, why weren't they in Wisconsin last year?

DAD (looking at me like I had two heads): They didn't need them last year. There were no riots then!

You can't argue with logic like that.

Comments (1) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: dad family fuck you america

It's election season, and the television is flooded with campaign ads.

I have repeatedly seen an advertisement for Kelley Loeffler's reelection campaign for her U.S. Senate seat in which a young black man extols her virtues not as an embarrassingly rich owner of a sports franchise and a stock exchange but as someone sympathetic to those less fortunate than her. Yet her supporter mispronounces her name throughout the whole commercial. (He says "loff-ler", yet she appears at the end of the commercial pronouncing her own name "leff-ler," almost like she is passive-aggressively correcting him after the fact.) Why would the Loeffler campaign air that? Could they not find a single person who could praise her who actually knew who she was?

Another advertisement for current president Donald Trump's reelection campaign claims that if former vice president Joe Biden wins the election, the United States will go to shit. What condition are we in now? Uncontrolled pandemic, record unemployment, race riots, oh, my! If this shit show is the current administration's idea of greatness, I'll take anyone else, please.

I suppose it's some small comfort that Marjorie Greene isn't adverting over the air in the Metro Atlanta market in her run for the state House of Representatives. Greene has become infamous as a candidate so openly racist that state Republicans have widely disavowed her, which takes some doing considering that the current Republican governor ran on a platform of successfully befouling state citizens' ability to vote. Even Facebook has said Greene has gone too far in her most recent gun-toting ads. When you're too far afield for Facebook, it's time to stop auditioning for a government seat and start looking into some professional mental help.

That said, there's nothing new to watch between those campaign commercials anyway, so maybe I should just leave my television off until December. Being too aware of who's making the decisions that impact my life is bad for my own mental health.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: advertising fuck you america politics rant television

Very much has been made recently of Stephen Ross' fundraiser for Donald Trump. Ross is the billionaire owner of several lifestyle brands catering to the young and, shall we say, Trump-resistant set. Little has been made of the fact that Ross is also the principal owner of the Miami Dolphins. Dolphins' fans know all too well that Ross doesn't actually care about the consumers of the products he's selling.

A brief reminder: in September 2016, when some guy named Colin Kaepernick decided to kneel during the national anthem, the world came unglued. Players on other teams soon followed. Some owners (and many fans) made villains of Kaepernick, but others supported his activism, including Ross.

"I think these guys are really making a conversation of something that's a very important topic in this country, and I'm 100 percent supportive of them."

Unfortunately 2016 was an election year, and The Great Divider used the protests as evidence that American needed to be Made Great Again. After you-know-who was sworn into office in early 2017, Ross shifted with the political wind.

"I think it's incumbent upon the players today, because of how the public is looking at it, to stand and salute the flag."

Translation: they shouldn't protest because people don't like protests and it makes it harder for him to sell tickets to his terrible football games. Ross went so far as planning to fine and suspend players who offended his sensibilities until the players association forced him to back off. Way to be 100% supportive, bud.

Anyway, to those of you who claim to be shocked to discover that a billionaire businessman's only concern is how he can exploit you to make more money, welcome to the America Dream.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: dolphins football fuck you america news stephen ross

At 5:15 PM yesterday, CNN was airing the news conference held by a deputy United States Attorney to explain the eight federal charges Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to, including Cohen's admission that heintentionally violated campaign finance laws "at the direction" of then-candidate Donald Trump.

At the exact same time on Fox News, Greg Gutfield was telling his audience that Cohen's guilty pleas were no big deal, since Cohen hadn't admitted to collusion with Russia.

I hate to admit it, but I can see where Gutfield is coming from.

Who would have thought that in 2018 a colleague of the United States President admitting to breaking the law to hide one of that President's many extra-marital affairs doesn't seem like front page news?

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: fuck you america news

Not so long ago, conservative columnist Kathleen Parker wrote an editorial for the Washington Post complaining that Donald Trump should not be called "Putin's Poodle." She did not write this because she is a fan of Trump — she very openly considers him an albatross around the neck of the Republican party — but because poodles deserve better than to be called "weak" or "submissive." I couldn't agree more.

In fact, I wrote a similar editorial myself about a decade ago.

If you don't recall, in the winter of 2003, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was called "America's Poodle" for blindly supporting George W. Bush's push to invade Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction. (Remember W? Remember when we thought he was the worst president in American history? Ah, the good old days!) That led to the University of Georgia student newspaper, The Red & Black, to run this editorial cartoon:

My response, which was more a reaction to an overreaction to the previous day's editorial cartoon than a reaction to this cartoon itself, read as follows:

I assure you, that was written with tongue firmly in cheek. Something tells me that Kathleen Parker was being a little more serious.

(You can see responses to my editorial in the blog post I wrote on Christmas Day 2006.)

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: dear diary fuck you america mack williams news poodles

"I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." Harry Truman, 1947.

"But this secret, swift, and extraordinary buildup of Communist missiles ... is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country, if our courage and our commitments are ever to be trusted again by either friend or foe." John Kennedy, 1962.

"We must stand by our democratic allies. And we must not break faith with those who are risking their lives — on every continent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua — to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth." Ronald Reagan, 1985.

"We will not accept Russia's occupation of Crimea or its violation of Ukraine's sovereignty. Our free nations will stand united so that further Russian provocations will only mean more isolation and costs for Russia. Because after investing so much blood and treasure to bring Europe together, how can we allow the dark tactics of the 20th century to define this new century?" Barack Obama, 2016.

"My people came to me, [United States Director of National Intelligence] Dan Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it's Russia. I have [Russia] President Putin. He just said it's not Russia. I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be." Donald Trump, 2018.

Comments (1) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: fuck you america history news