C'mon guys, you can take'em...

"You shall have my sword."

"And you shall have my axe."

Goddamn right Sanders over Trump or Cruz. What the hell am I talking about? Hillary Clinton in a sort of 'let's all get along' moment said on Thursday that she'll "...take Bernie Sanders over Donald Trump and Ted Cruz anytime." which, big deal, of course she will and Bernie Sanders should say the same thing. In fact, if their next debate opens with anything other than the two Democratic candidates pledging each other their undying loyalty regardless of who gets the nomination, we'll all be in trouble.

Yes, I get that these are two very different candidates, with very different followings but I swear to god if we lose this one because supporters of whichever one doesn't get the nomination stay home and sulk, we should we just give up on democracy entirely and bring back the monarchy.

"Well, well, well. Come crawling back have we?"

-Queen Elizabeth II, being too

classy to say we told you so

"It's cool, I'm just checking. You can
prove you were born with that, right?"

I mean holy shit, we're functionally down to one political party. The Republican party as a whole is off the rails. They come up with voter ID requirements to combat virtually nonexistent voter-fraud which are actually and openly designed to keep Democrats from voting. They pass laws under the pretense of protecting religious liberty, but are really about keeping transgender people from using the correct bathroom because they're afraid that straight men will pretend to be transgender so they can watch women pee.

They're misogynistic, anti-Muslim, anti-choice, anti-immigration, anti-gay, anti-poor, anti-science, am I missing anything?

"We're not anti-science, we just believe that dinosaurs led
sinful lives and were therefore not allowed on Noah's ark."

-Ken Ham, scien...scieeentii....

sorry, I can't even type it. 

Remember this bullshit when you
go to the polls in November. 

Oh, and then this today. Don't feel like clicking? Fine, I'll sum up. Republicans in the Senate killed a bill today that would have required airlines to stop reducing the size of seats on their planes. Yeah, it turns out that you're not getting fatter and/or taller. Instead, airlines have been making the seats smaller and then charging extra to arrive at your destination with circulation in your legs. Because they're assholes, that's why. The bill to reign this practice in today was defeated along party lines with one, count'em one Republican senator not voting against it. Basically, they're the worst.

Above: The Party of Lincoln,
I suppose. Like, technically.

Look, I'm not saying this because I'm totally going to vote for whichever Democrat gets the nomination-which I am-but I'm saying this because I shouldn't have to. I like both the candidates but in my entire adult, voting life there's never been even a question as to which party to vote for and I guess what I'm saying is that I wish the GOP would just get their shit together. I mean, I like to think that most of them are rational, good people and that the party's just been hijacked by the looney fringe.

Remember that scene in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire when the Death Eaters show up at the Quidditch World Cup? Of course you do, because you're a big huge nerd. Anyway, like eight Death Eaters show up and terrorize like 80,000 wizards, each of whom has a wand and unbelievable, god-like magical powers and yet not one of them has the wherewithal to calculate the odds and shout 'Hey everybody, let's get'em!' That's the GOP right now.

Pictured: The predicament the Republican Party finds itself in.

(source: metaphor)

More like Ass Effect...

"Yeah, gross. We're not with that guy."

-EA's official statement

So in an hilarious move-huh? Yeah, I said 'an hilarious.' Wah? I don't know, because the hilarious starts with a soft 'h,' I'm pretty sure 'an' is correct here, but that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about how Donald Trump in an hilarious move, totally used the Mass Effect 2 trailer in a Tweet about how awesome he thinks he is and now EA, the company that publishes the Mass Effect series, is asking him to please be so kind as to take that shit down before anyone thinks they support him and his aggressive awfulness.

For the record, Martin Sheen's fictional
presidency would be the exact opposite
of Donald Trump's fictional presidency.

For those unfamiliar with Mass Effect, it's a video game where in the player fights to save the galaxy from various space threats and not, as Trump's usage of the clip implies, to save evangelical white men from the threat of Obamacare and not getting their way all the time. Hence EA's beef with all this. The clip he stole features Martin Sheen-yes, goddamn Martin 'President Bartlet' Sheen, as the Illusive Man, an evil, xenophobic billionaire who uses his wealth and influence to shape events which, yeah, ok, kind of like Trump, so it's not that far off.

But he is the greatest threat of our
 brief existence...how can he also be
the-nevermind, that's just confusing.

Here's the bit he used and again, remember that Sheen's character is actually talking about a space hero from the future:

"We're at war. No one wants to admit it, but u-manity is under attack. One very specific man, might be all that stands between u-manity and the greatest threat of our brief existence."

-Martin Sheen as the Illusive Man,

taking the 'soft H' to a higher level

So whatever, Donald Trump sent out a ridiculous self-aggrandizing tweet about how he's exactly like a tough-as-nails space hero from the future and EA was all 'screw that.' Fine. What I don't get is how he thought no one would notice. On the internet. Where no subject is too insignificant or meaningless to scrutinize. Here's a link to an entire page about the debate over which Transformer is Frenzy and which is Rumble. Enjoy.

Above: Donald Trump apparently, ready to save u-manity. 

Quick, eveyone act surprised!

"What? It's only unethical if it 
happens on non-islands."

-The Cayman Islands

Well I don't know about you, but I am shocked. Shocked! Over the weekend, the International Consortium of Investigative Reporters released eleven and a half million (yes, million with an 'm,' but still, million) records obtained from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm and-huh? Who cares? Well if you'd let me finish the set up you'd see that lots of people care because these papers document the shady offshore shenanigans of the planet's wealthy and powerful. It's a veritable who's who of the ethically compromised.

Wait, corruption? At the highest echelons of power? Can you believe it? Huh? You have no trouble whatsoever believing it? Yeah, me neither.

"You're not gonna believe it chief, money and power leading to corruption! Why, it's
enough to make a guy lift his fedora and scratch his forehead in wonderment. What a scoop!"

If Sigmunder David Gunnlaugson can't be

trusted, then I don't know what to believe in.

Implicated so far are a bunch of current and former heads of state including Iceland's Prime Minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugson who, when asked about how corrupt he was stormed out of an interview on Sunday. Because if there's one thing that makes you look innocent, it's angry storming. Another sixty people with close ties to world leaders are also involved including some linked to Vladimir Putin.

Putin's spokesgoon (what? they're goons) said that the Kremlin had been getting 'a series of questions in a rude manner' lately and that reporters were trying to discredit the homophobic Russian strongman. 

"These reporters have been very, very rude to me and to my puppy, Ivan the Adorable."

-Ex-KGB operative and Current President of Russia

"How dare you besmirch our good names
by pointing out our widespread corruption."

-The Rich and Powerful

Wait, for real? Annexing Crimea is rude. Asking legitimate questions about his connections to financial malfeasance and corruption isn't rude, it's being an investigative journalist. Like, are we supposed to believe that Vladimir Putin spent Saturday night sobbing into his vodka because some reporters were mean to him? Between him and Iceland's PM, I guess what bothers me almost more than the asset hiding and tax evasion is the suggestion that questioning them is out of line. It's as though money and power go hand in hand with a sense of entitled untouchability.

Which yeah, I suppose it does. Shockingly, none of the papers implicate anyone in the U.S, which I can only assume is an oversight. That or America's wealthy elite are completely above-board and untainted by the corrupting allure of unchecked power and wealth.

"Pwaaah ha ha ha ha!"

-America's Wealthy Elite

Irony Deficit Disorder (IDD) is no joke.

Hey, remember when the Georgia legislature tried to pass that religious liberty bill? And then Governor Deal vetoed it? You don't? It was like, earlier this week. Well they did and he did and he said it because the bill was bullshit, not because Disney threatened to stop filming movies in the peach state.

It's the Hollywood of the South! If Hollywood was
muggy, uncomfortably polite and like, super-homophobic.

Because if there's one thing a tense
situation in a packed stadium needs
it's the possibility of cross-fire... 

Deal made a statement about how discrimination is not the Georgian way and crazy laws like this make the entire south look bad. It was pretty good, and a surprisingly stand-up move for a Republican. Yup, I went there. Look, I'm not trying to be a dick, but can you think of anyone else in the GOP who isn't in the news right now for saying or doing something misogynistic, racist, gaycist, anti-muslim, anti-poor or just straight-up dangerous? Possibly about how we should all carry more guns into crowded convention centers? No? You can't? Ok then.

Anyway, the loons are popping up now and accusing Deal, Disney and the other companies who threatened to pull out of Georgia of waging war on Christianity. Holy shit, yes we're hearing about this again. 

Because everything is the goddamn Crusades with these people...

Welcome to Disneyland, please renounce
your God and have your ticket ready.

Jonathan Saenze, President of Texas Values had this ridiculous bullshit to say:

“It’s striking that the day after Easter, churches in Georgia are told their freedoms are not that important to protect. It’s clear that corporate giants like Apple, Disney, NCAA, Intel have finally come out of the closet and declared public war on the religious freedom of clergy and religious schools...Will Disney now ban you from wearing a cross outside your shirt at their parks..." 

"No, I can't hear the absurdly hypocritical
things I say. It's a serious medical condition."

Wait, he's afraid that Disney might use religion as a basis to refuse service? Does he not see the problem with saying something like that while in the same breath-wait, no, of course he doesn't. Anyway, he went on to say: 

"This is how extreme the attacks now are on religious freedom, it’s a zero tolerance policy for religious freedom.”

-Jonathan Saenze, noted

advocate for the irony-deaf

Pictured: the President of Texas values
in the broader, more abstract sense.

First of all, I should probably clarify that Jonathan Saenze is not the president of Texas values in the literal sense. Like, people in Texas are not legally required to ask his opinion before working on the sabbath or listening to the rock and roll. He's the president of Texas Values, a conservative website dedicated to complaining about how persecuted Evangelicals are what with them not getting their way all the time. Secondly, did you catch the part about corporations 'coming out of the closet'? God, what an asshole.

And lastly, how in the name of mighty fuck is vetoing a bill that gives Georgian bigots carte-blanc to treat gay people like shit the same thing as a 'zero tolerance policy for religious freedom'? Religion is not a 'get out of baking a gay weeding cake free' card.

"Faster damnit, faster! Before Jesus sees!"

Veto: It's latin for 'screw that'

Unfamiliar like Twitter, low-riding
dungarees and all that swearing on TV.

Hey, lookit, Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia is going to veto that anti-gay horseshit, House Bill 757. Good for him, and-huh? No, you're thinking of House Bill 2 in North Carolina, and we'll talk about that malarkey some other time. Georgia's HB 757 was a totally different-well not totally different, I mean they're both crazy knee-jerk responses by white conservatives afraid of the unfamiliar, but it was more about religious liberty than people's bathroom assignments.

The law would have given faith-based organizations legal cover to refuse service to LGBT people. You know, on the count of Jesus and all that stuff he said about the gays (source: nowhere in the Bible, like at all, so shut up).

"And yea, thou shalt not do any gay stuff, unless it's just a
 couple of bros helping each other out. Then it's cool."

-Jesus

Why can't politicians be more like
corporations and-oh, wait... 

Anyway, in an outwardly progressive move, Governor Deal announced that he intends to veto the bill. Cool, right? Yes and the move almost certainly has nothing to do with the massive outcry from both the public and corporations. Disney, Apple, the NFL and a bunch of others came out against the bill and some even suggested that they might take business out of the state should the bill pass. You know, because corporations make business decisions based on altruism and not because siding with the red state shit-merchants behind this bill would piss off their key 18-35 year old demographic.

So just another politician bowing to corporate interests...or is it? No. Here comes the dramatic twist: in his remarks, Governor Deal says that while both proponents and opponents of the bill put pressure on him, he made the decision to veto the bill because the Government should back off when it comes to religion. 

Above: a unicorn?

"In light of our history, I find it ironic that today some in the religious community feel it necessary to ask the government to confer upon them certain rights and protections. If indeed our religious liberty is conferred by God and not by man-made government, we should heed the "hands-off" admonition of the First Amendment to our Constitution. When legislative bodies attempt to do otherwise, the inclusions and omissions in their statutes can lead to discrimination, even though it may be unintentional. That is too great a risk to take."

-Governor Nathan Deal, of Georgia,

and yes, he really is a Republican, but 

we're still waiting on the Cylon test

Wai-what? A Republican using the separation of Church and State argument to stick up for the LGBT community? Hey, how come if they have this guy they're running Donald Trump and Ted Cruz? Ok, don't get too excited, he did sign a crazy gun law and tried to ban Syrian refugees from Georgia, but at least the GOP has a few members left who can spot a shitty law for what it is. Unless this really was all about Disney shooting Avengers 3 somewhere else.

"Huh? No, no, no, this is about doing the right thing, swear to God. Incidentally, if Marvel 
is looking for someone to play Thanos...what? Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura did it..."

The moral of the story is guns!

NRA Family:
'...we'll fucking end you.'

(actual slogan)*

Hey, if someone re-wrote Little Red Riding Hood so that the little girl has a rifle and grandma's a shotgun-toting badass, you'd think it was kind of messed up, right? Like, it's the kind of thing you'd read to your child if you want them to grow up to be a serial killer. The NRA however, disagrees. Probably with almost everything you believe in, but specifically on the family-friendliness of awkwardly rewriting fairytales to teach kids important lessons about gun-ownership and publishing them on their website, NRAFamily.

"Ok Gretel, remember, if she gives us
any trouble, we smoke the bitch."

So far they've adapted Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel. Now, instead of being helpless children who get kidnapped by a cannibalistic symbol for medieval European anxieties about starvation and non-Christians, Hansel and Gretel are hunters who come across a house in the woods. Weirdly, for an NRA thing anyway, the two kids stage an armed home invasion and free some other random children the witch was saving for lunch. They then call the cops and have the witch arrested which is less violent than way the original story ends, but I think the moral here is that the witch should have had a gun too.

The Growing Patriots® series,
"Putting white males front and center..."

(another actual slogan)†

According to Amelia Hamilton, the conservative children's author who wrote the gun-ier versions:

"The stories are also really for adults to. And it's all about safety and it's for parents to start those conversations..."

-Amelia Hamilton, author of Growing Patriots 

a series of propa-uh, children's stories

Safety? Ok, Hansel and Gretel's parents did hand their children rifles and send them out into a witch-infested forest to hunt for food so call maybe CPS?

For once I think we can actually
be grateful for Disney-fication...

In the same interview, Hamilton also expressed surprise that many of her critics hadn't actually read the stories, which, I'm not sure is true, at least, how would she know? Anyway, I did, and yeah they totally read like transparent NRA propaganda about how much safer we'd all be if we all had guns. I guess her point is that the stories are much less violent than the way the traditional version ends, but that's kind of a low bar. I mean there's Gretel burning the witch alive, the wolf eats Riding Hood's Grandma and holy shit, the Little Mermaid sells her tongue to a witch who slices her fish-tail in half. 

Above: Gretel shoving an elderly
woman into an oven where she
dies screaming. Sleep tight kids.

Ok, fine, menacing fairy tale villains with guns is somewhat softer than the whimsical tales of immolation and murder we're used to. Great. But are the only options here unrelenting horror or pro-gun indoctrination? I guess my issue with these, apart from the terrible writing and ham-fisted message, is the suggestion that we can only tell violent stories. Sure, in Hamilton's story Hansel and Gretel save two children and the witch is brought to justice-which in 19th century Bavaria is probably still hanging-but the lesson is that these kids were safe because they had guns, which is demonstrably untrue. 

I'm not sure kids, or a lot of the NRA's membership, get that the threats can be themselves a form of violence. Not to get all bumpersticker on you here, but I don't think it's such a long walk between waving a gun and using one. 

"What? I'm just standing here, pointing a gun in your general direction
and if you happen to place your wallet in my outstretched hand, I might
not shoot you. How is that violent? If anything, you should thank me."

*ok, no it's not.

†yeah, I made that one up too, but c'mon, it's not exactly subtle. 

First in flight, last in everything else...

Republicans (because of course they are) in North Carolina's State Assembly held a special session today in which they voted on a new bill which supersedes all locally passed anti-discrimination protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people and replaces them with the State's own anti-discrimination which completely forgets that there are LGBT people, especially T, but we'll get to that.

Above: Lawmakers in North Carolina making the
 rest of us regret letting them back into the Union.

Pictured: the entire North Carolina
State Legislature earlier today.

Why would they do such a thing? Probably because they weren't hugged enough as children but the stated reason is that this is in response to an ordinance passed in Charlotte which among all kinds of important protections for LGBT North Carolinians, including the right of transgender people to use the restroom appropriate to their gender. People lost their fucking minds, some of them wrote awkward raps, others threatened of legislative action. Here's what Governor Pat McCrory said to the Charlotte City Council:

I'm sorry, shouldn't his beef be with
the creepers looking over the stalls?

"This shift in policy could also create major public safety issues by putting citizens in possible danger from deviant actions by individuals taking improper advantage of a bad policy. Also, this action of allowing a person with male anatomy, for example, to use a female restroom or locker room will most likely cause immediate State legislative intervention which I would support as governor."

-Governor McCrory, probably shaking his fist 

menacingly while typing with the other hand

"You see, I think about these things.
That's why they made me the Governor."

-Governor McCrory 

To be clear, the Governor advised against an ordinance that prevents business from discriminating against gay people because imaginary male perverts could hypothetically pretend to be transgender so they can sneak into the ladies' room. If that sounds irrational and draconian to you, that's just because it is both irrational and draconian. It's like coming up with a bunch of discriminatory voter ID laws because there might have been like a tiny handful of suspected cases of voter fraud which, yeah, ok they totally did already.

Then how about this one: it's like banning left-handed scissors because a right handed person might use them to cut out a ransom note.

...but then it's a shitty bill passed by transphobic goons who do more to
reenforce negative southern stereotypes than anyone on People of Walmart.

This distinction between restroom usage
is apparently the only thing between
North Carolina and total societal collapse

So yeah, Charlotte passed their ordinance and true to the Governor's word, his redstate-shitmerchant word, the Assembly and State Senate passed House Bill 2 in a special emergency session. Yes, over who gets to use which bathroom. You know this is why nobody likes the GOP. Sure, a lot of people are members but I don't think anybody actually likes the party, or themselves for voting for them. How could they? They define themselves by entirely by what and whom they're against. Don't like immigrants? Don't like Planned Parenthood?  Don't like gay people walking into your bakery and buying a wedding cake? Well then the party of Lincoln is the one for you, although weirdly it's probably not the party for Lincoln.

Hey, speaking of guns (too soon?), what I don't get is how come there isn't wider support for tighter gun control in North Carolina. I mean, Governor McCrory should be all over new gun legislation. Like, don't guns create major public safety issues by putting citizens in possible danger from deviant actions by individuals taking improper advantage of bad policy? Sure, but I guess the North Carolina legislature has more important issues to deal with.

A person with male anatomy and a gun presenting less of a threat than
transgender people using the correct bathrooms. (source: North Carolina law)