The Fortnightly Rant

The Grotty Old Perverts have dropped all pretense. Attempting to dodge an all-but-certain electoral catastrophe in the 2026 mid-term elections, Texas is stealing the House of Representatives before our very eyes. Meanwhile, Ol’ Grabby Grandpa is dancing—we use that term loosely—on the roof of the White House, demonstrating that there are no limits to what he’ll do to distract public attention from the Epstein files. In the past, from time to time, we have used hyperbole to make certain points. Let us—to paraphrase an earlier criminal Republican president from a more innocent era, whose unjustified rehabilitation helped set us on the dismal road to today’s …

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Is it possible? Has a decade of Trumpism been enough? Or is this just more wishful thinking? We won’t pretend to be neutral observers. In fact, we’d like to see Elon Mush-for-Brains herd the administration, nine out of ten Republicans in Congress, and two thirds of the Supreme Court into one of his big rockets—indulge us, Elon, and name it Steely Dan*—and send them all to Mars. Or towards Mars, anyway. Tomorrow… if today’s not good for you. Why such haste? Because the Republican Party, having fallen victim to the Trump brain virus, is shoving the last vestiges of the government which actually help ordinary …

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President Dwight D. Eisenhower is alleged to have said, “Things are more like they are now than they ever have been.” * That was probably true then. Sadly, it seems even more so now. This could lead one to conclude that our ancestors never knew how good they had it. That’s a risky line of thought, though. Not to suggest that these things are in any way equal, but back in Ike’s day, in certain parts of the country, drinking from the wrong water fountain could get a person killed, single women could not get a credit card, and sidewalks were minefields of dog waste. …

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It has been a tough fortnight for THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE WORLD. We say this not because we have any sympathy for the former reality television “personality” who now holds the fate of 8.2 billion people in his greedy little hands. No, just as anyone else would if they were so unfortunate as to find themselves in a confined space with a heavily-armed psychopath, we’re just trying to gauge our chances of survival. Since it has long been the privilege and the duty of the editor of a publication to offer perspective, we must say we are disappointed that, after 13.8 billion years, …

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Interesting times. Two dozen Abrams Main Battle Tanks rolled onto the streets of the U.S. Capital on Tuesday night. Ominous as that might sound, they were presumably not carrying any live ammunition. The tanks were accompanied by about two dozen Stryker armored fighting vehicles. Combined, this badassery weighs about as much as the U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship USS Manchester. It was all hauled up from the Fort Formerly Known as Hood, down in Killeen, Texas, for a grand military parade on Saturday. The purpose of the parade is to celebrate the 250th Birthday of the U.S. Army. At least, so sayeth the Army. As …

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His detractors will tell you that our 47th president is, to select just a few aspects of his unique persona, greedy, ignorant, tasteless, foul-mouthed, incontinent, a felon, a stranger to the truth, and an enemy of the law. We will not attempt to refute any of these charges; whatever skills we may have, they do not include writing fiction. Half the country disapproves of him, according to the polls.* It’s not hard to see why. One hundred and thirty days of unrelenting chaos can get on anyone’s nerves. Yet the other half approves.† The question of why appears to be the mystery of the age. …

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