we’re being governed by a bunch of dicks

don’t be afraid to say it

yesterday, in the House of Representatives, Congressman Robert Garcia held up a photo of a ginormous, throbbing dick.

“I find it ironic that Marjorie Taylor Greene is in charge of running this committee. in the last congress, she literally showed a dick pic in an oversight hearing so I thought I would bring one as well. now this, of course, we know is President Elon Musk.”

break out the smelling salts and ready the fainting couch, because oh lordy, I do declare, the pearl-clutchers at CNN are feeling mighty woozy over this heinous breach of decorum.

Brianna Keilar: “do you think that calling Elon Musk a dick is effective messaging?”

Congressman Robert Garcia: “well, he is a dick. and I also think he’s harming the American public in an enormous way, and what I think it really important, and what the American public wants, is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. this is a fight for democracy, for the future of this country, and it’s important to push back on the chairperson of this committee. I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene talks about having decorum, about having bipartisanship? this is the person that lies more than anybody else in the entire Congress. and so if she’s going to make a mockery of hearings, I want to make sure that us as Democrats are bringing that same level of energy.”

Congressman Garcia is exactly right. Democrats are in an existential battle to save democracy — and it’s time they start acting like it.

but he’s also right about the Space Nazi. he’s a dick. so is Donny Convict. so is every member of Donny’s Confederacy of Sewer Clowns. they’re all a bunch of dicks, strutting about, breaking shit, and generally acting like dicks.

what’s more dickish than turning your back on your allies?

reporter: “do you see any future in which Ukraine returns to its pre-2014 borders?”

Donny: “well I think Pete said today that it’s unlikely, right? it certainly would seem to be unlikely. [Russia] took a lot of land, they fought for that land, and they lost a lot of soldiers. but it would just seem to me, and I’m not making an opinion on it, but I’ve read a lot on it, and a lot of people think that’s unlikely.”

if I’m parsing Donny’s word salad correctly, he’s implying that because Russia has suffered casualties — in the war they started — they should get to keep the Ukrainian land they illegal annexed? what, like as a consolation prize? is that how we’re doing foreign policy now? Crimea is a participation trophy?

what about the Nazis? they fought hard and lost a lot of soldiers in World War II. should they have been allowed to keep Poland?

what about us? maybe Secretary of State Liddle Marco should phone up Vietnam and explain that because we fought hard and lost a lot of soldiers back in the 1960s, maybe we should get Saigon.

you know what else is dickish behavior? pretending you’re some kind of brainiac who knows everything about everything, when actually you’re a fucking imbecile who understands nothing about anything.

listen to Crappypants McGibberish put his delusional ignorance on full display.

“…and instead of using hydraulics, like on tractors that handle anything from hurricanes to lightning to anything. they use magnets. it’s a new theory — magnets. they’re gonna lift the planes up. and it doesn’t work. and they had billions and billions of dollars of cost overruns. I met the architect. I said, have you designed a ship before? this is one of the biggest ships in the world. it’s like landing at LaGuardia Airport. but you like at the kind of waste, fraud and abuse that this country’s going through, and we have to straighten it out.”

oh great, numb-nuts knows more about marine architecture than all the marine architects — including the one Donny claims to have met. where, on the patio at Motel-a-Lago? did he have the tears of gratitude coursing down his cheeks as he said sir! sir! no one has ever insulted my expertise as masterfully as you just did. sir!

and Donny, please tell us more about these tractors that ‘use hydraulics’ to ‘handle lightning.’ are they in the room with us right now?

what Donny is apparently whining about wasting money on are the magnetic elevators on the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford. it’s true, the project is years late and over budget. but that’s the way science works. you try shit. sometimes you fail, but a lot of times you succeed. once all the problems are worked out with the USS Gerald Ford’s magnetics, they’ll last longer and be cheaper to maintain than current carrier technology.

why are we wasting our money on magnets, moans the dumb-ass who actually believes that magnets stop working when they get wet.

here’s a thing these ‘cost-cutters’ like to do: they’ll pick some line item out of the budget, and mock it because of how ludicrous it sounds. for instance, why are we wasting money on studies about lizard venom?

and the public nods in approval. lizard venom? what the fuck? government spending is out of control!

spoiler alert: this is what happens when you ‘waste’ government money on grants to study lizard venom.

basically, we got a miracle weight-loss drug because some big-brain scientists had a theory.

In the 1980s John Pisano, a biochemist with a penchant for venoms, and a young gastroenterologist Jean-Pierre Raufman were working with poisonous lizard venom from the Gila monster, a slow-moving reptile native to the south of the United States and north of Mexico. By the 1990s, Pisano, Raufman and colleague John Eng identified a hormone-like molecule they called exendin-4. This stimulated insulin secretion via action at the same receptor as GLP-1.

Excitingly, exendin-4 was not quickly metabolized by the body, and so might be useful as a diabetic therapeutic.

I barely know what the fuck those words mean, but I do know it sounds sciency as shit. oh, and you’ll never guess where the money to do all this science came from.

In Eng’s case, the research was funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and some of the research he built on was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

wait, isn’t that the same National Institutes of Health that the Space Nazi is currently trying to completely defund? yes it is. what a dick.

here’s one for the Dickitude Hall of Fame. Elon is using his influence to funnel even more government money into his own pockets.

The State Department’s procurement forecast, revised as of late December 2024, lists Tesla as the recipient of the largest expected contract, with Marco Rubio’s department planning to buy $400,000,000 worth of “Armored Tesla.”

The award is targeted for Q4, and is forecast to last for five years.

The procurement forecast is listed as having been modified on December 13, 2024, a month after Donald Trump’s election.

wait, the State Deparment is going to drop four hundred mil on cars that randomly crash and burst into flames? we’re going to trust Elon to slap armor on cars you can literally pry apart with your bare hands?

this pie-in-the-sky fever dream is what it’s now ok to waste money on, but heaven help us if we try to complete the magnetic elevators on the USS Gerald R. Ford.

now check this out: after the story broke yesterday, and Rachel Maddow reported on it last night, Elon tried to memory-hole that shit.

Update: Feb. 13, 2025

The State Department has now revised its spreadsheet to remove Tesla’s name, with metadata showing it was altered after our article was published. After Rachel Maddow covered the revelation on MSNBC, Musk responded to her, “why the lie?” He did not specify the alleged lie, but Maddow neglected to mention that the procurement document was produced in December 2024, after Trump’s election but before he took office.

what a dick.

a dick that apparently comes with ‘harry bōlz.’

what a fucking idiot child.

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here’s your daily reminder that I can be found on BlueSky at this link.

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this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.