Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Down a Jug of Baijiu

Look at that picture. It's lovely, isn't it? Look at that child holding forth a white rose, amid thousands of people in Taipei, Taiwan. Surely, this is a call for peace and understanding. Perhaps a plea to mainland China to calmly solve the dispute over the South China Sea. Oh, little one, we can only hope for your sake...wait...what's that? Oh. Shit.

Yeah, that's a fucking pro-death penalty rally there. The rose-sporting people want the Taiwanese government to stone cold murder motherfuckers because of a nationwide bloodlust stirred up over the admittedly horrific murder of a child. They are supporting capital punishment because of some talk of abolishing it, to which that little boy is saying, "Oh, fuck, no. You gotta kill some bitches."

In case you were wondering whether other countries could be as barbaric as we are in the United States, here's one parent: "Taiwan is not safe, so death sentences are needed to deter crimes and they should be carried out. I hope this will make our society safer for all children." Over 83% of Taiwan's citizens oppose getting rid of the death penalty. Amnesty International has said that the government there has carried out multiple executions in order to quell the people's thirst for vengeance.

Hey, it's good to know that other countries not only support state-sponsored killing of citizens, but get their children involved, too. They can learn, like the United States has, that you can execute innocent people and no one will give a shit because the illusion of safety is more important than the reality of brutality. A nation that says violence can solve its problems is a nation damned to endless violence. Enjoy the party, kids.

What You Don't Know About Hillary Clinton Can Hurt You, Part 1:

Yesterday, the Rude Pundit was talking to a millennial dude who will be voting in his first presidential election this year. He sure hates Donald Trump, but he doesn't like Hillary Clinton because "she's so shady." That's one of those things that trigger a gut-level reaction in the Rude Pundit because it's a belief that's based on a heaping mountain of horseshit. So he went off on the millennial.

"No," the Rude Pundit snapped, "that's completely fucking wrong. The only reason you think Clinton is shady is because 25 years of conservative media shoved it down your throat. She's been accused and accused and investigated and investigated and guess what? Not a goddamn thing has ever come of it. It's all shit made up to damage her. If you keep saying over and over that someone did something wrong, did something wrong, did something wrong, but you never prove it, then you're just an asshole."

As Henry Louis Gates more politely put it in the New Yorker, "[F]or all we know, Hillary Clinton may be guilty of everything she’s accused of and more. You might say the point is that we don’t know. And it’s in those dark gaps in our knowledge that the political unconscious makes itself felt: you can’t tell a gun from a cigarette by the smoke alone. Which inference you prefer depends on which story you prefer—assuming you’ve been given one."

By the way, Gates wrote that twenty fucking years ago. The article is titled "Hating Hillary," and it's fascinating to reread it now in the context of an election in the middle of our third decade of thinking that Clinton must be dirty from some scandal and worthy of hate.

And this is not about her donors or her paid speeches or whatever, although the way we think about those things are colored by one of the most successful right-wing smear campaigns ever. No, this is the Hillary Scandal Industrial Complex, the nexus of Filegate-Whitewater-Travelgate-Benghazi-EmailServerGate and more, all fantasies conjured by conservatives in order to punish her for the sin of being a First Lady who tried to get health care reform passed and didn't shut the fuck up and order drapes for the president's bedroom.

You think that's oversimplifying it? Then you didn't fucking live through it in the 1990s. You didn't watch as men in both parties tore themselves to pieces over what they viewed as Clinton's lack of decorum, her failure to merely be an adornment for her husband (see the reaction to Eleanor Roosevelt for this level of intense hatred). The scorn that Michelle Obama gets for just saying that American fat fucks should exercise a little and stop eating piles of shit is horrible, and its racist elements are disgusting, but, to be sure, it doesn't come near the level of Hillary Clinton because no one could write an article titled "Hating Michelle" and have it be about anything more than a bunch of cranky yahoos.

This was universal. "Hillary-hating has become one of those national pastimes which unite the élite and the lumpen. Serious accusations have, of course, been leveled against the President’s wife, but it’s usually what people think of her that determines the credence and the weight they give to the accusations, rather than the reverse," Gates wrote.

Clinton herself in 1996 offered a prescient explanation of the why she was a target for such animosity: "I believe that we’re going through a significant transition—economically, politically, culturally, socially, in gender relations, all kinds of ways—and so someone as visible as I am is going to get a lot of attention. I think if the spotlight were turned on many of my friends in their own private lives somebody could make out of it what they would: ‘My goodness, she didn’t take her husband’s name,’ or ‘She’s the one who travels while her husband stays home and takes care of the children,’ or ‘She has a very traditional role—does that mean that she’s sold out her education?’ There could be questions like that raised about nearly every American woman I know."

What pissed people off about Clinton is something that still pisses them off. Sometimes, she just sickens of all the bullshit and she lets you know. In the early 1990s, when it was still unusual to see a male candidate's wife as anything other than supportive arm candy, Clinton wasn't afraid to step in it, like with her famous remark about working instead of staying home and baking chocolate chip cookies (which led to the degrading act of publishing her cookie recipe to show sexist traditionalists that they needn't be scared of the big, bad lawyer lady).

The Rude Pundit has one other theory for why conservatives have kept up their hatred of Clinton. See, when Bill's affairs started to be known beyond Arkansas, during the 1992 campaign, she famously stuck by him. That enraged the right because they hoped the feminist governor's wife would dump him and do in Clinton's pursuit of the White House. The fact that she never threw Bill under the bus when, really, who could have blamed her, undid damage to Bill every time a new sex scandal erupted. So it exacerbated their hatred because the right could never bring Hillary Clinton to heel, even when they thought her own beliefs would make her do what they wanted.

You have to understand that history in order to understand Clinton. Read the Gates article. It's all there, twenty years ago: her hatred of the press, the small circle of confidantes, the warmth that people say she has on a personal level, all the accusations of Machiavellian manipulation, and, especially, the so-called scandals that never became scandals.

"So," the Rude Pundit said to the millennial, "it's just being dumb and ill-informed to not vote for Hillary because of fake scandals. However, there are lots of reasons not to vote for her that have nothing to do with that."

And that is where we will pick up in part 2.

You Are a Soldier in a "Sexual War Against Christianity"

As a member of the Super-Duper Prayer Team of the nutzoid evangelical Family Research Council (motto: "Praying the gays stay so we can get paid"), the Rude Pundit is regularly informed of events occurring right under his nose that he had no idea about. For instance, did you know that a bunch of fucknut legislators in subhuman states like Mississippi and North Carolina aren't just passing hate-filled anti-LGBT discrimination disguised as laws? Oh, no. They are soldiers, motherfuckers, those fucknuts, soldiers in a "sexual war against Christianity." It's on, people, and you better pick a side.

The Rude Pundit joined the Super-Duper Prayer Team ages ago under a nom de rude, and, every week, he receives his praynalingus orders on what for and why to implore the Lord Jeeezus for guidance and grace in these sinful times. Mostly it's just about whores having abortions and queers doing queer shit. But Jeeezus is there for all of us when we're on our knees, placing his strong hand on the back of our heads to make sure we pray hard enough so we can receive every drop of his blessings. Don't you even try to stop your supplications until he's ready for you to stop.

This week, the SDPT got word that we had a victory in the sexy war down in Mississippi, which, unlike those pussies in Indiana and their weak-ass "Religious Freedom Reformation Act," didn't cave to the LGBT soldiers of Satan and passed the "Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act." Listen: "The rage focused against state RFRA’s and Government Non-Discrimination Acts (GNDAs) coupled with aggressive efforts to implement pro-LGBT 'Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity' laws (SOGI’s – also called bathroom bills) has reached new heights of insanity. The entry of big business in support of the LGBT activist crowd has multiplied the pressure and intimidation that our elected officials face."

Don't you get it? It's a fuckin' war, fuckos, the shit, the big muddy. You gotta fight for your right not to let people potty. Up is down, down is up, the gays are discriminating against the godly folk: "Many of the intolerant 'tolerance' crowd of moneyed activists behind this movement are the true discriminators who want nothing less than to replace the moral foundation of our nation. Theirs is an assault against Christianity and Christians in particular" by saying that people should be allowed to shit in the public restroom where they feel their gender identity belongs. Surely, Jeeezus wouldn't allow that. Surely, Christ-man hisself would tell transgender people that whoever is without sin shall drop the first turd.

So we gotta pray because we are the Prayer Team: "May pastors teach their flocks about the realities of the war being waged upon them. May they enlist Christian citizens to do their part to protect their children and grandchildren from becoming victims of SOGI laws. May every state legislature and Congress pass effective laws, replacing ineffective laws with ones that truly protect the religious liberty for all Americans." Man, sometimes these prayers get damned specific. But it's for all of us because aren't we, each and every one of us, children and grandchildren? Do we not want to piss without worrying that a fake transgender person is going to rape us in the Hardee's ladies room, despite the fact that that's never happened? Well, it fuckin' might.

As always, the SDPT is provided with Bible verses to help us with our praying, like, in this case, Proverbs 29 Verse 2: "When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn" (King James version forever). Of course, two verses later, it says, "The king by judgment establisheth the land: but he that receiveth gifts overthroweth it," which is funny when you consider that a big fuckin' "Donate" button sits over the page.

And then, in Verse 7, "The righteous considereth the cause of the poor: but the wicked regardeth not to know it," which seems like maybe you should spend a little more fuckin' time worrying about the poor than whether your oversensitive God actually gives a shit where someone takes a dump.

What If the Democratic Candidates Were Republican and Other Unsafe Thoughts

There are a few things that have been bugging the Rude Pundit lately. The first is this feeling about the Democratic candidates. But wait a second...

Before we go any further here, since this is where our political discourse is right now, nothing said here means that the Rude Pundit won't vote for either Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton because to vote for the Republican is nation-destroying insanity and to not vote at all is a bullshit bourgeois indulgence that you can go fuck yourself with. Are we good? Fuck it if we're not...

This feeling. Frankly, the Rude Pundit doesn't like either Sanders or Clinton. He can't explain it. He thinks they'd both be perfectly fine company for a beer, so it's not personal. But maybe he just got used to elections where he felt passionately in favor of a candidate, even, yes, John Kerry. Oh, sure, it's easy to feel passionately opposed to Republicans. They make that shit easy. Start an unnecessary war. Choose a rank idiot as your running mate. Be Donald Trump. It's so easy to oppose and it's so much harder to support.

One test that's useful in any situation is the "What if it was a Republican that did this thing that a Democrat has done?" Oh, sure, we'd like to believe that if, say, a Republican president had gotten a blow job in the Oval Office from an intern and then lied under oath about it, we'd think that his impeachment was as much a bullshit exercise as it was for Bill Clinton. We hope that Democratic members of Congress wouldn't have lost their minds the same way that Republicans did then. (And, let's be honest, some Democrats jumped on the impeachment bandwagon gleefully.)

This ain't about policies as much as it's about ethics and competence. So he wonders shit like whether would he give a happy monkey fuck about Hillary Clinton's email server if she were a Republican. He's inclined to give himself the benefit of the doubt on this one because, really, you have to be pretty hard up to get shit on someone if that's where you make your stand. Perhaps. But what about Republican candidates who are financed by big corporate donors? This is one slippery motherfucker of a slope.

But sometimes it's an even more complicated call. Take, for instance, Bernie Sanders's interview with the editorial board of the New York Daily News, a paper that is openly hostile to Trump. The Rude Pundit has written about Trump's objectively stupid chat with the Washington Post's editors. Now we have Sanders being attacked for what some are calling a "disaster" showing that Clinton's opponent in the primaries is "out of his depth."

When you read the transcript or listen to the audio, sure, you can focus in on the "Shit Bernie Oughta Know Backwards and Forwards," like whether laws were broken by Wall Street executives that the Attorney General for a President Sanders might prosecute them for: "I suspect that there are. Yes...Do I have them in front of me, now, legal statutes? No, I don't. But if I would...yeah, that's what I believe, yes. When a company pays a $5 billion fine for doing something that's illegal, yeah, I think we can bring charges against the executives." Dude, this is your issue. If you don't know the laws that were broken, why the fuck are you saying they were broken? That's a slam-dunk question that shouldn't have even caused him to pause.

Or you can focus on his considerably naive answer about the use of drone murder to wage what we might colloquially call "war." Said Bernie, "What I do know is that drones are a modern weapon. When used effectively, when taking out ISIS or terrorist leaders, that's pretty impressive. When bombing wedding parties of innocent people and killing dozens of them, that is, needless to say, not effective and enormously counterproductive. So whatever the mechanism, whoever is in control of that policy, it has to be refined so that we are killing the people we want to kill and not innocent collateral damage." Dude, the people running the drone program have refined it and have decided that collateral damage (kids at a wedding, for instance) is the price of what we might colloquially call "security." How do you eliminate it? Say you'll only kill suspected terrorists when they're alone? Good luck.

It's true, really true, that if a Republican were handling questions like this, the Rude Pundit would say all kinds of shit about how incompetent or dumb or callous that Republican is. To be sure, Sanders is not trafficking in Trump-level nonsense. He doesn't, for example, bring up his hand size or how he's doing in the polls. But Sanders is vague and then dismissive and petulant when he's called on his vagueness. In a single word, he seems old. And that's something this voter has to wrestle with.

There are other moments in the interview when Sanders isn't so vague, like when he talks about grassroots activism and the minimum wage and the way the economy is "rigged" against the middle and working classes. These are his rallying points, the shit that gets the crowds behind him, the "he's talking about me" stuff. It's great and all, but where is the mastery of detail that backs up the rhetoric?

And that is where the divergence is between the expectations of Republicans and Democrats of their candidates. Republicans like Trump and Cruz, and going back to Romney, McCain, and Bush, are dismissive of the idea of explaining how things get done. They just will through pixie magic and forceful personality. Trump has given so few specifics that all his plans boil down to "Donald Trump gets deals done. Believe me." And many do, too many do.

So when Sanders says that he'll be able to get things through Congress because he'll lead people in rising up to demand shit of Congress, well, that's great and we'll see in 2018, but how the fuck does that work in 2017?

Maybe the question isn't then "What if we looked at Democrats like they were Republicans?" but the more frightening "What if we held Democratic candidates to the same low standards as Republicans hold their candidates?"

The Sanders interview isn't a disaster. He'll recover. He'll have huge rallies in the Northeast. But he needs to ready for tough questions, as does Clinton, because Democrats need to demand that those be answered.

Back in the US of Trump

After a long journey in England, the Rude Pundit has returned to the United States of Trump. He uses that turn of phrase because, really, the whole world pretty much believes it right now and will until the DT disappears into the miasma of reality TV and conning rich and poor rubes alike.

Regular bloggery to return tomorrow. Just one or two observations on the UK that don't involve their generally shitty coffee (didn't you guys conquer like half the countries that grow the fuckin' beans?):

1. Over on the east side of London, in the very Muslim area there, where the call to prayer rang out from several mosques and the only clothing stores all sold outfits we associate with Islamic people, the Rude Pundit did not find any "no-go zones" or whatever else conservatives like to say. He found friendly folks who were willing to direct him and chat about life in America. In a Pakistani restaurant, he did see the male waitstaff treat the women workers like children, either yelling at them where to go or explaining how to do things as if speaking to an idiot. He has never seen that type of shitty public treatment of women by Muslim men in the United States.

2. In Liverpool, taken on a Beatles tour (because, really, why the fuck not?), the guide paused in the middle of talking about the sights on Penny Lane to point out that the fire station mentioned in the song was now closed due to austerity measures by the conservative government. He criticized David Cameron and the Parliament for going too far, calling their decisions "stupid and short-sighted." Everyone on the Magical Mystery Tour bus applauded him. John Lennon may well have been proud.

3. The lack of dog shit on the sidewalks, in every neighborhood, in every town, was goddamned extraordinary.

Taking the Day Off, Boss

This is the Rude Pundit's last evening in England and that means he's probably already drunk and has misplaced his pants.

Back tomorrow with Virgin Airlines-induced rudeness.

Quickie: Desperate Dipshits Attempt to Deny Rights to Americans Because Fucking

Oh, sweet Mississippi dipshits, how loathsome and stereotypical you are, wallowing in your muddy ditches, shitting in your beds, pissing in your wells, breeding with your cousins, allowing people to claim religion as an excuse for bigotry against people who don't fuck the way you want them to fuck. It's all part of the package of being from Mississippi, a state the Rude Pundit fondly remembers as "that fuckin' place that smells like horseshit and vomit on the way to the beaches of Florida."

House Bill 1523, which passed the state's House and now the Senate and, after it's reconciled, will be signed by Mississippi's drawling dipshit governor, is one of several "religious freedom" bills that have been lied into existence in the south. The thing legalizes discrimination by any "religious organization" in hiring and housing, along with marrying, the gays. And it declares, no shit, that, goddamnit, if you don't want to bake a gay cake, you don't have to. Or provide lesbian flowers. Or bisexual photography. Or transgender disc jockey services. It gets pretty fuckin' specific.

When it comes to transgender people, you can pretty be as much of a dickhole as you like as long as you're claiming that God-Jeebus or Moses or Allah or Cthulu or who-the-fuck-ever told you it's icky and wrong. Actually, the whole bill is one long detour into repression and hatred. If you're a state employee and want to call someone a "fag" on your own time on Facebook, then you're protected now because obviously you have the religious freedom to say it. (Check out that part that starts on line 97.)

If your God has time to waste worrying about whether or not two lady-people are getting hitched, you have a God that needs to get off His Fat Ass and worry about real shit, like maybe the horrific poverty in Mississippi.