So we should arm golfers?

So the President, thrilled I suppose to find someone in America more hated than himself, announced that unlike armed deputy Scot Peterson, he would have charged into Stoneman Douglas during the shooting earlier this month and personally wrestled the gunman to the ground and saved the day. Because he's a goddamn hero.

Pictured: A septuagenarian with no crisis training whatsoever, bloviating

about how awesome he'd be in a situation he will never have to face.

He also really believes he won the popular
vote, but that illegal immigrants secretly
snuck in and voted for Clinton so here we are.

Ok, I made some of that up, but here's what he said:

"I really believe I'd run in there, even if I didn't have a weapon..."

-The President, on how

he's basically Batman

Well, technically he just said he believes he would have gone in...but he believes a lot of things that are bullshit.

The only hero I see here is a leather belt.

But for real, no he wouldn't. No he wouldn't have. Like bullshit. I'm not saying I blame anyone for doing whatever they could to get out of going to Vietnam, but he got five deferments. Five. Anyway, he went on to compare the terrifying prospect of entering the scene of an active shooter in a school to golf. Fucking golf, which he claims requires both a similar skill set, and a comparable level of training and resolve. Yup, driving from hole to hole while someone else carries his bag made Donald Trump the American hero he is today.

Look, I'm not sticking up for Deputy Peterson. It was his job to put himself between the gunman and the kids and for whatever reason he didn't. But whatever, we weren't there, we don't know the situation. What I do know is that it was nothing like goddamn golf, and it's kind of a dick move to boast about how you totally would have done something different when you've got the Secret Service watching your back.

Above: nine or ten highly trained, armed bodyguards
each of whom is sworn to take a bullet for the Presdient,
but won't have to because he's like super brave you guys.

Today in not politicising tragedy:

Well that didn't take long-huh, you know what, that actually did take a week, so I guess I have to give the NRA some credit here. Wayne LaPierre, head of the NRA gave it a full week before opening his big idiot mouth about the Parkland shooting.

Pictured: Wayne LaPierre, sporting his signature haircut: the Adolf.

Solutions like more fucking guns?

Here's some of what he had to say:

"We at the NRA are Americans who continue to mourn and care and work every day at contributing real solutions to this very real problem. Real, practical action to truly protect our children."

-Wayne LaPierre, speaking
from the void in his chest where
humans traditionally have a heart

Background checks? Pfft...that's a little
excessive, I mean, they don't let just anyone
into a gun show, you have to buy a ticket...

Strangely he went on from there to explain that jewellery stores and NBA games feature armed security but not America's schools. I say strangely because just a moment earlier he said the NRA was all about 'real, practical action to truly protect our children.' I guess he was talking about actions that in no way impinge on anyone's constitutional right to buy assault rifles anonymously, and without any training whatsoever, as long as it's off a folding table at a gun show. You know, like the founding fathers intended. 

"So fucking awesome! Wooo! Guns!"

-Ted Nugent, summing it up

Anyway, he continued talking, calling out the un-American monsters who are cynically exploiting last week's school shooting for political reasons. Those un-American monsters I suppose would be the survivors of that school shooting who've been going in front of the media to ask legislators to maybe do something before more children are murdered, but what they're clearly forgetting is how awesome gun ownership is. Instead all they seem to care about is human life. Like selfish jerks.

"In many ways the real victims here are

gun owners, the NRA and me personally."

-Wayne LaPierre, basically

But that's millennials for you, only care about themselves, right Wayne?

"Opportunists wasted not one second to exploit tragedy for political gain."

-Wayne LaPierre, speaking,
without a hint of irony or shame, from the
Conservative Political Action Conference

Yes. To be clear, the head of the NRA, America's favorite gun lobby whose entire purpose at this point is to fund candidates who will support relaxing restrictions on their favorite military grade hobby, is accusing the left of exploiting tragedy.

He went on: "They hate the NRA, they hate the second amendment, they hate individual freedom." Guess he's got us there. We really do hate freedom.

Democrats cackling manically. As is their want.

The important thing is that he isn't

exploiting fear for political purposes.

He then spooled off into a paranoid rant about socialism: "If these so-called European socialists take over the House and the Senate and God forbid the White House again, our American freedoms will be lost forever, and the first to go will be the Second Amendment to the US Constitution." Which, holy shit right? Socialism? Freedoms? Goddamn dude. You know, he kind of sounds like the kind of raving lunatic who shouldn't be allowed to have a gun.

Evidently not...

Look, not to be reductive here, but obviously Wayne LaPierre is a two-dimensional villain so blinded by his love of assault rifles that he can't see the harm his lobbying is causing. But that doesn't mean everyone in the NRA is. I mean, there has to be a compromise somewhere between no guns for everybody and limitless military hardware for all, no questions asked right?

In Rubio's defense, the NRA

does give him like, a ton of money.

I guess what I'm asking is could people like LaPierre please shut up and let the grownups talk about this? Grownups like Cameron Kasky, a student who survived last week's shooting, and at at last night's town hall meeting made a polite and not at all unreasonable request that Senator Rubio stop taking money from the NRA. It was great. This kid is a national hero. Sure, Rubio has no intention of turning down hundreds of thousands of dollars from LaPierre's totally not political political group.

But at least he had to look this kid in the eye in front of millions of people including other victims and their families and explain that he still plans on taking money from the lobbying group that stands between us and an effective assault rifle ban. It's not the same thing as action, but it's a start I suppose.

"Obviously I...uh...mumble, mumble cough, hey, look over there!"

-Senator Rubio, tap dancing

He knows you can't dig up, right?

In a move that's somehow both gob-smackingly shocking and in no way surprising, President Trump today repeated the NRA's favorite solution to the epidemic of mass shootings in America. Can you guess what it was? Reasonable gun control measures? Stronger background checks? Nope. It was, and say it with me if you've heard this one before:

More. Fucking. Guns.

Above: America's favorite rifle...no, really,
that's from the NRA's own blog. Strangely they
didn't mention all the murders...weird, right?

I know, right? Here, let me set the scene: The White House held a 'listening session' today where survivors of America's most recent school shooting got to tell their stories and make their pleas for someone, anyone in a position to do something to, you know, fucking do something. After listening patiently to the first hand accounts of high school students who just days earlier were hiding from a fellow teen roaming their school with the same rifle that's been the weapon of choice in 11 mass shootings since 2012, the President responded with a pitch for concealed carry in schools:

Pictured: The Presidents notes for the
session. Enlarge it and check out the fifth
one reminding him to say 'I hear you'
which he clearly didn't. Like, at all.

"It only works when you have people very adept at using firearms, of which you have many, and it would be teachers and coaches. If the coach had a firearm in his locker when he ran at this guy-that coach was very brave, uh, saved a lot of lives I suspect. But if he had a firearm, he wouldn’t have had to run, he would have shot'em, and that would have been the end of it....And it would be, it’s called concealed carry, where a teacher would have a concealed gun on them."

-The President outlining his plan to introduce 

the risk of crossfire to our next school shooting

Anyway, after laying out his brilliant plan to arm every teacher in America rather than support some reasonable gun control, the President asked for a show of hands, you know, because suddenly the Trump administration gives a shit about the democratic process. No really. Unsurprisingly more people fell into the 'feel strongly against it' camp.

The administration later stood behind the assertion than many of the 'feel strongly against'
people were actually immigrants voting illegally and everyone loves conceal carry, shut up.

The Constitution doesn't say you can't
own a nuclear sub, so where's the line?

Look, I know I'm coming into this with my mind made up. If it were up to me I'd say no guns for anyone. But I realize that's wishful thinking, and that there are plenty of smart, responsible gun owners out there who can make a valid argument about the Second Amendment and that's fine. But I don't think limits are out of the question. The Bill of Rights was drawn up during the age of muskets, and the AR-15 is a goddamn phaser by comparison, so let's not pretend these are what James Madison was talking about.

While all this was going on, students all over the country were walking out of class and in some cases marching to state legislatures to demand action. Some got to be heard, but some were turned away because they didn't make an appointment which, seriously?

Just curious, the legislators who turned the kids away
know they're going to vote someday, right?

I suppose kids have to learn about
officious douchebags sometime...

Impossibly, some are even facing punishment from their schools for missing class. No, for real, a school district in Texas threatened to suspend any students who walk out:

"Life is all about choices and every choice has a consequence whether it be positive or negative. We will discipline no matter if it is one, fifty, or five hundred students involved. All will be suspended for three says and parent notes will not alleviate the discipline..."

-Needville Independent School District

Superintendent Chris Rhodes on the

importants of following the rules

But back to the President. It takes a special kind of-what am I looking for here? Toolishness? Is that the right word? A special kind of toolishness to look at America's out of control and irrational entitlement when it comes to military-grade weapons and say that the only way out of this hole is to dig up. 

Also it takes a special kind of asshole to look at a room full of grieving and traumatized
kids and their families and parrot the NRA's bullshit talking points, but here we are.

He, Claudius

Um, just to be clear, the President knows that there's more than like, eight people working at the FBI, right? I ask because of this:

I...I'm not sure I have words here...

The White House staff is something like 
377 people and they can't go a day without
some colossal fuck up. Not one day.

Holy shit, right? Director Christopher Wray was quick to admit that the FBI failed to act on information and promised a swift investigation, but it takes a special kind of...I don't know, unmitigated gall? Raging narcissism? Is there a word that means both of those things? Huh? No, dickweedery is too kind. Anyway, whatever it is, it takes a special kind of it for Trump to suggest that he's the real victim here. The FBI employs something like 34,000 people and any organization that large is bound to suffer breakdowns in communication, negligence and just dumb human error, right?

I mean look at all those desks, they can
investigate two, maybe three crimes at a time. 

I'm not defending them, like, there's going to be a lot of difficult questions in the coming months about their failure to follow up on a tip that might have prevented last week's massacre, but this wasn't because they were too busy looking into Russian election meddling. Again, 34,000 people. They can do two things at once. Trump's ragingly unmitigated, narcissistically galling tweet was part of a full weekend of twitter about how not collude-y he is and how this is all Obama's fault. Somehow.

"Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong-no collusion!"

-The President drawing an unsupported 

conclusion and using 'impact' as a verb

"Oh! Did he say no collusion? Well that's good enough for us.
Scrutiny: over. It's a good thing that journalism is alive and well."

-The White House Press Corps

Really though, the college bookstore
sweatshirts should have tipped you off.

Uh...does he not spot the fact that Russia's efforts to meddle with the election started before he announced his candidacy doesn't actually clear him of suspicion? In fact, I think it kind of supports the idea that his preposterous bid for the White House that somehow worked against all odds and reason wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for Russian interference. It's like when you find yourself doing really well at Jeopardy only to realize at the commercial break that it was College Jeopardy all along and you're not actually a genius.

Anyway, unsatisfied with politicizing grief, the President continued with his rapid-fire tweeting. Apparently he wasn't busy doing anything else this weekend.

So like is he biologically incapable of sensing the irony here,
or does he just really think we're all that stupid? I'm genuinely asking.

"I would characterize my approach going
forward as 'making it rain indictments.'"

-Special Counsel Mueller after

visiting Urbandictionary.com

Well, he's kind of right there, they are almost certainly laughing their cynical autocratic asses off over all this, but not for the exact reason he suspects. What we do know is that Russia embarked on a two-year campaign of screwing with our democratic process and now we have an out-of-control gameshow host destabilizing our system checks and balances, undermining our intelligence agencies and using a school shooting to try and deflect some pretty valid questions about how he got the job in the first place. But we won't know how deep this goes until Robert Mueller is done handing out indictments.

So I guess what I want to know is how detached from reality is the President that this doesn't bother him? Like, even Claudius, Hamlet's dick of an uncle, soliloquizes about how he can't enjoy being king since he came by it via ear-poison-y regicide. I'm not comparing the two of course, I mean, Trump didn't kill anybody for the job and I am fully willing to accept that he's just the patsy here, but you'd think it'd get under his skin, you know?

I guess what I'm saying is that Trump is Claudius, Clinton was
Hamlet and I guess the ear poison was Russian fake Facebook
posts? Goddamnit...fine, I'll admit it's not my best analogy.

Today in false equivelences:

Friendly advice: if someone offers you
food in hand-labeled mason jars and 
trust me, someone will, just don't eat it.

Hey, you know who can go fuck himself? Local landlord Gary Whitney. Sorry, that was probably a little harsh and also you almost certainly don't know whom I'm talking about, so I'll explain. Santa Cruz, where I live, is a little beach town on Monterrey Bay in California. It's a touristy place full of surfers, hippies and people who think you want to hear about their homemade all natural cleanse or sincerely believe that rubbing an amethyst under their arms is the same thing as using deodorant. Fun fact: it isn't. They're lovely people, but it isn't. Still though, I like it. It's a nice place to live.

Oh, you do insist on your own bathroom?
bathroom? Then I suppose you'll be needing 
 servants quarters as well, eh your lordship?

But as nice as it is, it isn't worth paying $2,000 for a one bedroom apartment. Of course you can pay less if you don't insist on extravagances like having your own bathroom. But assuming you can actually find a place within your budget, most management companies and landlords insist on doing what's called a hard check on your credit which actually lowers your credit score, even if they don't rent to you. And you also have to hand over a pay stub proving you make three times the rent which is weird, because you only need one the apartment. It's just their way of saying 'no poors.'

Oh, and if a year into your lease your landlord decides to jack your rent up by like twenty percent or something, chances are you have to move and start the process all over again. What I mean by all this is that renting in Santa Cruz is a humiliating shit show.

After passing the credit check and proving their income, potential tenants
must compete in the Thunderdome for the amusement of landlords.

I'm not a property owner, but a new coat
of paint and maybe a leaky faucet here and
there...what's that, eight? Nine grand?

But the good news is that the city council approved a temporary freeze on rent increases over two percent and a more permanent fix might be coming to a vote soon. Awesome, right? Probably, although the impending freeze is prompting some landlords to get crazy rent increases in under the wire, which for one guy at the meeting meant another $300 a month. That's another $3,600 a year on top of whatever he was already paying. So that's a kick in the teeth. But I suppose there are two sides to this, I mean, landlords do have to come up with money to pay for repairs and upkeep, right?

Pictured: Gary Whitney,* seen here lighting
an expensive cigar with a $100 bill as if to
emphasize his disregard for the common man.

Which brings us to local landlord, opponent of the proposed legislation and cartoonish symbol of America's wealth disparity, Gary Whitney who spoke at the council's meeting:

"You wouldn't go down to Dell Williams (a local jewelry store) and tell them how much to charge for a watch..."

-Gary Whitney, sticking

up for Big Watch

Tragically, Santa Cruz's watchless population
is more than four times likely to be late to things.

Well yes, he's got me there. The city council is probably not likely going to be instituting watch price controls anytime soon, but on the other hand Santa Cruz isn't suffering from out of control watch prices. Like, I can't believe that I have to point this out, but watches are not apartments. This town isn't ranked among the highest in the nation when it comes to per capita watchlessness. Having to pull out your iPhone instead of casually glancing at your wrist isn't the same thing as sleeping in the doorway of the Forever 21.

Again, I don't know Gary Whitney, and I'm sure his family thinks he's a great guy, but he just got up in a meeting and spouted off the same kind of 'the market will see to itself,' unfettered capitalism nonsense that can only end in pitchforks and torches.

Above: What we can look forward to.

*ok, not an actual photo, but you're not reading this because you want accuracy.

We have no one to blame but our selfies...

Well if you ever needed more proof that we're rapidly sliding towards annihilation at the hands, or cold metal gripping claws of the machines, then look no further. Because this:

I'm confused, does the drone fly into the wheels or something?

In many ways the best use of a time
machine might be to warn people in the
past about how disappointing the future is.

What do you mean so what? I mean, look at it. Ok, fine admittedly the picture isn't really clear, but if you clicked the link, and I know you didn't, you'd know that that thing is an autonomous drone that can lock on to a particular person and follow them around, keeping them in the shot the whole time. Yeah, it's a $2,500 selfie drone developed by a start-up thus combining everything that sucks about the 21st century into one, obnoxious, USB-rechargeable package. It's called a Skydio R1 and it's apparently designed for the rich narcissist who has everything. Like, literally everything else.

Here, watch this video of a jogger trying in vein to escape this thing. Mind you this isn't a cautionary tale, this is the company's own promotional video. Yeah, someone from marketing thought a neat way to showcase their flying camera was by having it pursue a women through the woods.

I'm sorry, is there a non-creepy application for this technology
or is it just a flying, quad-rotor stalking device?

"Holy shit, so this Terminator is going to  
hunt me down and-wait, did you say 16 
minutes? And you used up 10 explaining 
all this so...we're good then, right?"

She bobs, she weaves, she ninja flips over fallen trees, but nothing she does can shake the drone. It's sort of a grim portent of things to come. Of course, it's not perfect. Sure, like it doesn't feel pity or remorse and it absolutely will not stop until you are dead, but it will definitely stop when if runs out of battery, which happens about 16 minutes in. Also, it doesn't have a ton of memory. Oh, and like a hoverboard, it can't work on water because the rippling, reflective surface screws with its navigation. But give them five years, I'm sure they'll be handing down the last members of the human resistance with no trouble at all.

That's great. You know, if we were to be honest, I think we all kind of new that San Francisco's start-up tech culture would one day be our civilization's downfall, but they're not alone in their guilt. The blame has to lay at least partly on us, the masses, whose insatiable need for easier ways of taking pictures of ourselves without having to ask a stranger to do it, will prove to be our undoing.

A stick with a phone on the end of it just wasn't enough for us.
We had to push the technology farther, never, in our arrogance imagining
 that maybe, just maybe, the technology would one day push back...

Today in not at all surprising revelations:

Wai-wai-wait, are you telling me that health insurance companies, the very same companies to whom we pay ever-spiraling premiums and thereby fuel innovation, are just in it for the money? It...it can't be true...

"I say, no shit Sherlock, no shit indeed."

Dr. Watson

"You are our #3 priority..."

-Actual slogan*

But that's what the State of California's insurance commissioner is looking into right this very minute. The investigation is in response to a deposition given by a former medical director for Aetna named Jay Ken Iinuma in which he admitted that he never looked at patient's medical records when making decisions about approving or denying coverage which, yeah, feel that? That's the uncomfortable reminder that decisions about our health are routinely made by people whom we've never met and who's first duty is to shareholders, then to lawyers, then to you. Maybe. If there's time.

Jones, seen here in his official
photo having not bothered to shave.

According to the commish:

"If the health insurer is making decisions to deny coverage without a physician actually ever reviewing medical records, that's of significant concern to me as insurance commissioner in California-and potentially a violation of law..."

-Dave Jones, California-wait,

what does he mean potentially?

Potentially? Doesn't he mean without a doubt a grievous, and prosecutable offense? Sorry, just kidding, but I do think it's adorable how shocked he sounds.

What? They're kind of nuts...

I mean, if he's the commissioner of insurance, isn't it his job to regulate the insurance markets in California? If so, shouldn't he know that insurance, as a thing, is kind of bullshit to begin with? And I don't mean that in a crazy libertarian sort of way, like, it probably started with reasonably good intentions, but the way health insurance in America in the twenty first century works is kind of a shit-show. Don't believe me? Check out how much Mark Bertolini, the CEO of Aetna made in 2016. To busy to click? Fine, spoiler, it was $41 million.

Yes, million with an 'M' which, while not a 'B' is still more than anyone should be making while at the same time denying benefits to anyone. I'm sure he's really good at health insurance company CEO-ing, but nobody deserves $41 million dollars a year for doing their job. 

"What's Aetna's secret? Look, any insurance company can approve a claim.
What we do that's really innovative is not approve it and keep the money."

-Mark Bertolini, wealthy person

Do you ever feel sad? Ask
your doctor about drugs. 

Anyway, I'm sure the question on your mind is what the actual fuck? And it's a good question, and one that deserves an answer, but I doubt we're going to get one. Like, of course it's a scam. The health insurance industry I mean. Are we even pretending that health care in America is little more than a thinly-veiled way of extracting money from people who just want a kidney or some of those wonderful pharmaceuticals we keep hearing about on TV? Like how do people like Iinuma or Bertolini even sleep at night? Well, metaphorically, because obviously they sleep soundly, on expensive sheets. In mansions.

Look, there's a better, more Canadian way to do this and everyone knows it because some of us have met actual Canadians and they absolutely refuse to shut up about how much better universal healthcare is.

Canada: "Where we won't let you die in the streets..."

-Canada's actual slogan and

yes, I make up slogans now

*ok, it's not their actual slogan, but it is a slogan.

Exactly nobody loves a parade...

Ok everybody, get ready to gasp in shock as the President makes an Omega-leval ass out of himself again, just a day after dismissing half the attendees of the State of the Union as traitors. Whadd'd he do now? He's ordered the Pentagon to make preparations for a massive military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue.

I mean why not? It looks so badass when autocratic rogue states do it...

"Oui, France! We're not all just one
dimensional stereotypes you know."

-Claude Jean-Paul D'Surrender

Well, ok, he did this last month and we're only hearing about it now, and if I was to be fair, while it's easy to compare such a thing to North Korea, he got the idea while visiting France last year. He watched that country's Bastille Day celebrations which included a military parade down the Champs Elysees. Which is a thing some countries do, show off their military gear as some kind of display of nationalism, but it's not really us, you know? Russia, China, sure, but not us. It's a little, what's the word? Chest-thumpingly militaristic?

I guess Trump, who we all know is like a 'big military guy,' was inspired by the show in Paris and decided that he wants to do something similar here.

Above: The President's hand being crushed by French
President Emmanuel Macron during his visit to...oh shit, this
whole thing is about who's is bigger, isn't it? What? I meant
whose military budget...why? What did you think I meant?

He may not have served in the military
but his TV show had good ratings,
so like, same, same, right?

Which, whatever. Oh, and I should probably mention that when he refers to himself as a 'big military guy,' he's not referring to actually serving in the military. He did, as was recently and hilariously pointed out by Senator Tammy Duckworth, receive five deferments during the draft, four for being in college and one for bonespurs. He just thinks the military is neat. You know, as long as he himself isn't in any physical danger. But since Trump is also a big money guy, a reasonable question might be how much is this going to cost us? My admittedly uneducated guess is a shit-ton.

Well, the Pentagon is still working on it, but since we don't keep all our impressive military equipment in a storage unit in Georgetown or something, we can safely guess it's at least in the millions of dollars to move vehicles and personnel to D.C. At least.

Plus you have to add in the cost of rose petals, vestal virgins
and elephants not to mention hiring a eunech to whisper 'remember thou
art mortal' into the President's ear as while the crowds cheer him on.

So other than satisfying the childish demands of someone who's watched Patton one to many times, what's like, in it for us? As Americans I mean? According to White House damage control shill Sarah Huckabee Sanders:

"Don't you want to thank the troops?
Do you hate America that much?"

"President Trump is incredibly supportive of America's great service members who risk their lives every day to keep our country safe. He has asked the Department of Defense to explore a celebration at which all Americans can show their appreciation." 

-Huckabee-Sanders on why we should

all feel pretty shitty about
having a problem with this

Oh...so this isn't about giving an insecure gameshow host with a Napoleon complex a big parade so he can feel just as cool as Emmanuel Macron, it's about the troops. That's cool. Hey, you know what else France has that's pretty cool? Universal healthcare. Anyway, I'm sure America's active service people and vets are super-thrilled about Trump's plans to thank them by throwing himself a parade that goes right by his house.

"A parade? Sure, sounds great. Way better than housing
and services for America's many, many homeless veterans..."

-Some guy