I assume you’ve seen it, and yes it is completely unprecedented. Some of you are foreign, or confused, and so you might think that this sort of bullshit had happened before. At no point did any of Lincoln’s Team of Rivals send an unsigned letter to the Washington Gazette claiming that Abe had lost his mind. No, this is new; we stand before unsailed shores like Balboa.
And we could, all-serious and beetle-browed like David Frum, humpher and burble about “Consitutional crisis” this and “25th Amendment” that, but far more fun is to ignore the end of the world and wager heavily, while drinking.
(Seriously: if you haven’t started drinking – why not? You’ll never find a finer excuse than 2018’s fuckery.)
Who wrote the note? Offtrack Betting on the Dead (OtBotD) hereby presents the current odds.
John Kelly 1,000-1 Why was the op-ed written, Enthusiasts? Are we to believe the author that it was conceived from sheer patriotism, spurred on by the example of the late John McCain? Maybe. Could it have been intended as a spark in a paint factory a way to hasten the inevitable ugly end? Also maybe. Was it a highly-cyncial (and effective) distraction from the Kavanaugh hearings? No; that would be like putting your Queen in danger to take a rook. How about someone trying to get someone else fired? Could be, definitely could be.
What all of those explanations require are the author to give a fuck, and John Kelly does not, not any longer. The man’s at least a year past his last fuck, and he spends most of his days in a small graveyard four or five blocks from the White House taking pulls off a pint of banana schnapps and talking to the gravestone for a guy named Chippy Barbuster, who died in 1841. Sometimes, John Kelly takes a nap right on top of Chippy. The groundskeeper tried to chase him off the first time he came by, so John Kelly broke that groundskeeper’s jaw. The two men have reconciled, and John Kelly will on occasion share his banana schnapps.
John Kelly doesn’t give a fuck about his job, his country, himself, anything. The old soldier has faded away. The last thing he wrote was his signature on the credit card machine at the liquor store. He is not the author.
Kellyanne Conway 12-1 Self-serving, deeply cynical, and codependent, the op-ed does fit Kellyanne to a tee; she’s also a prodigious leaker. BUT if she had written the piece, her loudmouth husband would’ve tweeted out some cryptic bullshit already.
Ace Frehley 200-1 Almost certainly not the Spaceman. Don’t even know why he’s on the list, quite frankly.
Jeff Sessions 7-2 PRO: Hates Basketball Head with a fury he had previously reserved for minorities, homosexuals, and dopers. CON: The words y’all, swee’tea, and octaroon appear nowhere in the document.
Steve Mnuchin 10-1 Not Jewy enough.
Betsy Devos 10-1 Too Jewy.
Paul Stanley 200-1 I don’t know who keeps adding members of KISS to this list, but I’m simply positive none of them are involved.
Mike Pence 3-1 Imagine a rat. Now stop imagining. That’s Mike Pence. A scrabbling, unboned shit-eater. But smart and possessed of a great nose. It takes a certain skill to fail upwards as heroically as Mike Pence is and, while he’s dumb as a squirrel’s dick, he’s not stupid. Pence has been reading the polls, and he sees a romperstomper coming up in November. Maybe Mike even believes (as I do) that the GOP will lose the Senate. This will be the moment the emperor’s dong reveals itself to the assembled crowd: they will turn on him like methed-up hyenas.
And Mikey is trying to get out in front of that.
Alternately, it could not be Pence because of this “lodestar” bullshit. The op-ed contains the word towards its end, and it struck most readers as a shiny button on a dull coat. The rest of the writing was boilerplate governmentese, indicating a speechwriter or staffer that was responsible for press releases, but there was that fancy word: lodestar. Just lying there like a killer in the sun.
It turns out that the only person to use that particularly attention-seeking word in the entire administration was Mike Pence, in several speeches over the years. Fuckface certainly doesn’t go dropping “lodestar” into his spiels when he goes out yelling at yokels, and Sloppy Eyes Huckabee doesn’t, either. Stephen Miller said it once, but he thought it was a slur for Guatemalans.
So it’s Pence–or, more correctly, one of his staffers/writers operating at his command–right?
OR did the true author throw in that “lodestar” to incriminate Pence, having done a Lexis/Nexis search for oddball phrasing in the Veep’s speeches? The creator must have known that the word choice and syntax would be analyzed for precedent and pattern, so why include such an obvious tell? Therefore, we can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.
James Mattis 8-1 There would have been a story about the battle of Salamis or something. That guy’s, like, obsessed with the military.
Peter Criss 300-1 Whoever keeps suggesting KISS members needs to stop it.
Topo Gigio 100-1 This is a mouse puppet from a million years ago. Maybe ten people remember who Top Gigio is. Who is in charge of adding names to this list?
The Babadook 20-1 IT IS NOT THE FUCKING BABDOOK! And definitely not at 20-1!
Boudica of the Iseni 150-1 Okay, I’m outta here.
A rather cunning bluejay 80-3
Hello?
Where’d you go?
You can just leave?
The most depressing thing about this is that the “insiders” criticizing Trump are just as evil as he is. Trump’s only sin, in their eyes, is not speaking in code.
Trump’s only sin, in their eyes, is not speaking in code.
This x 1000. And then x 1000 more.
The only difference between “Trumpism” and the modern GOP “philosophy” is that DT has eschewed the dog whistle for the bullhorn.
Also, I’d put Ace at 150-1 max. There are few absolute truths in this world, but one that has stood the test of time is this: You rule out the Spaceman at your own peril.
We used to have an expression for a hearty agreement, particularly on anti authoritarian issues.
Right On! ✊
This anonymous op-ed is the epitome of Trump administration assholishness. Here’s hoping we’re at peak obnoxiousness. My current hope is a Trump tape comes out where he completely torches his ignorant, hateful base of voters. These people love that he’s a racist misogynist. Those tapes don’t do anything but rave up the morons. What they need to hear is that he really thinks they are all idiotic, drooling tools whom he so easily convinced he was the answer to get them back to the days of segregated lunch counters. Fuck all of them. Shit, where’s the Tylenol?
Also, I quit drinking a couple weeks before Trump’s inauguration. I’m glad I did – this shit is surreal enough already and I don’t need any additional reality warping.
Picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.
I am going with Mike Pence’s speechwriter or someone who wanted to throw suspicion towards Mike Pence by using phrases & words specific to his speeches & public writings. In my opinion, Pence isn’t stealth enough to do this plus he is more of a follower than a leader. This writer I would imagine to a be a long term Federal Government employee and not a member of David Dennison’s inner circle. If one wanted to remain anonymous, they would try to adopt someone else’s voice. I am sure someone in the FBI is going to a Unabomber level of textual analysis to find out the culprit. A part of me hopes it is Pence for the Et tu Brute? moment betrayal that would be soul crushing to the supporters of Agent Orange.
Unabomber’s brother turned him in as I recall, perhaps incorrectly.
That said I think the unabomber wrote the op-ed.
going with the Bluejay, a close relative of the Dene trickster, the Wisakedjak or “Whiskey Jack”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDmdGg27ZuY
im in the midst of a depressive anxiety attack.
this monster has been in charge for about 21 months.
everyday it gets worse.
how much more of this shit is bearable?
Where’s Gene Simmons?