who’s more brain-dead, Mitch McConnell or the press covering him?

further adventures in journalistic malpractice

“JOURNALISM 101 RULE: if someone says it’s raining, and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. your job is to look out of the fucking window and find out which is true — now more than ever.”
— attributed to many, made famous on not-twitter by Andrea Junker

now, here’s a corollary: if an ambulance shows up at Mitch McConnell’s house and takes him away to somewhere, followed by a two-month-long news blackout during which the only signs of life are two fake-looking photographs, and then out of the clear blue, it’s announced that Mitch is now back at home, doing fine and resting comfortably, your job isn’t to go ‘oh, okay’ — your job is to fucking well find out if it’s true.

it’s maddening how much the worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled press are failing us in their coverage of this story.

I’m looking straight at you, CNN.

“Sen. Mitch McConnell said that he has been discharged from the rehabilitation center where he had been recovering after a fall and will continue to recover at home.”

BZZZT! wrong answer.

Mitch McConnell — and I cannot put too fine a point on this — HASN’T SAID SHIT.

all we have is a written statement issued by Mitch’s handlers, wherein McConnell is alleged to have said ‘earlier today, I was discharged from the rehabilitation center to continue my recovery at home’ — but come on, let’s have a little critical thinking here. there’s no proof that he personally authored that. anyone could have written it.

it’s been two months since McConnell was — according to the 911 call — found unconscious and in cardiac arrest on the floor of his home, bundled into an ambulance and taken to a hospital. since then, we’ve had no sign that Mitch even has a functioning brain at this point. no audio, no video. just two dodgy photographs, and the assurances of a couple of skeevy Republicans that they pinky-swear that they had a 20-minute phone conversation with Mitch, no, honest, you can trust us.

and now we’re being told that McConnell has been released from rehab and brought home — and there’s not one single photo of it happening? in a world where everyone now has a camera in their pocket, no one went ‘oh look, it’s Mitch McConnell,’ and snapped a pic? come on, none of this bullshit adds up.

wouldn’t you imagine that if McConnell were in full control of his faculties, his handlers would have had a crew on hand to film a video of a smiling Mitch waving to all, as he left the rehab center?

why the secrecy?

wouldn’t it be nice if the press were even remotely interested in finding out what the hell is going on, and didn’t just print what they were told?

but wait — it gets worse. here comes CBS News to twist the ‘journalistic malpractice’ dial so far past 11 that it snaps off in their fucking hand.

“Mitch McConnell says he’s been discharged from rehab, nearly 2 months after hospitalization”

first, we have the same irresponsible ‘Mitch McConnell says’ in the headline — but on top of that, golly gee, it’s a photo of Mitch. anyone scrolling past this in their feed would go ‘oh, look, he’s being wheeled out of the hospital. huh, I guess he’s okay.’

sorry, no — wrong answer.

what CBS News has used is a file photo of McConnell being wheeled through the lobby of the Senate on May 19, 2026 — and CBS doesn’t even bother to say that anywhere in their reporting, giving a completely false impression of Mitch’s current state of health.

let’s face it — hardly anyone clicks on the news stories that show up in their socials. they just read the headline, look at the photo, and move on.

on and on it went. every single news outlet lined up to stick a misleading photo on their breathless coverage of what Mitch allegedly ‘said.’

look, right now we have no use for a compliant press that prints whatever it’s told.

I wish we lived in a world where Republicans never lie to us, and there was no need for the press to fact-check every fucking word they say — but we don’t. we live in the shittiest timeline. we are being lied to every day of our lives.

we need a press that will rip this shit apart like a meth-tweaked pit bull. we need a press that goes ‘the fuck he did — prove it,’ every time they’re told that Mitch McConnell ‘said’ something.

these are the same shit-kazoos who hounded Joe Biden every single day, and demanded he prove that he was still up to the task of presidenting. now, they’re handed on a silver platter the case of a Senator who is obviously hiding something about his own fitness for office, and the press can’t be roused from its slumber.

it’s fucking maddening.

listen, I don’t give one rancid shit about the Esteemed Senator Turtlehump, or the condition of his health. let his handlers play infantile games and keep him hidden away in his terrarium forever, if they want to. Senate Republicans are down one crucial vote while Mitch stays away, making it that much harder for them to inflict their fuckery on us. good.

but I do give a shit about having a robust press in this country — one that’s willing to do its job, and hold our elected leaders to account, because if we don’t have a functional press, we can’t have a functioning democracy.

do better, assholes.

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meanwhile, in the Oval Bordello, undead advisor Nosferatu McGoebbels announced the latest in a long line of Preznit Fuckwit’s unconstitutional executive orders, while Dear Leader — who seems to have ditched his piss-mop wig and is back to his normal nebulous tangle of the six remaining hairs on his head — struggled to stay awake.

perfectly normal stuff.

“the president is using his authority as commander-in-chief first to sign an executive order using the new ruling the Supreme Court issued to expand the definitions of people who are ineligible for birthright citizenship. that includes, for example, alien enemies of the United States, members of foreign terrorist organizations, and large categories of people who lobby and act on behalf of foreign governments. and so we’re taking this action, it ensures that large numbers of people who wrongly would be getting birthright citizenship, will no longer be eligible for those benefits.”

racist says what?

don’t you just love how the Supreme Court has ruled that Donny can’t pull this shit, and they’re all, ‘oh, he’s going to do it anyway.’

words, what do they even mean? Donny’s ‘authority as commander-in-chief’ extends only to the military, not to some farcical citizenship tribunal. tell me, who gets to decide who’s an ‘alien enemy’ or a ‘member of a terrorist organization’? who’s going to be making those decisions? Donny? Norferatu? Tom Homan? the Pocket Nazi?

what, I’m supposed to trust any of these hate-mongering shitweasels to make a fair ruling?

fuck all these fascist fucking fucks.

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everything totally fucking sucks right now, but least we can overdose on schadenfreude a little bit, and enjoy the sight of this ‘Trump Superstore’ in rural Tennessee going out of business.

oh man. look, even Joe Biden’s having himself a laugh over this.

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well, it’s Friday. we made through another week in one piece. let’s reward ourselves with some Daily Claudia and get out of here.

here’s Baby Kate and her mom, in the back yard of our old house in Hastings, early 1990s.

next up is Katie and her mom at the 150-year-old Flying Horse Merry-Go-Round in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, mid 1990s.

and here’s a selfie I pulled off of Ms Spouse’s phone, from October 21, 2021. I have no idea what hijinks she and Katie were up to that day.

have a great Friday, everyone. don’t put words in Mitch McConnell’s comatose mouth.

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here’s your daily reminder that I can be found on Blue Sky 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.