He could always Nixon his way out...

So I don't want to tell the President how to do his job, but maybe if he tried being less terrible at it, people wouldn't you know, march against him in the streets? I only mention it because apparently the fact that everyone hates him is kind of getting to him. At least according to Howard Stern.

You're probably doing something wrong when people have
invented a special kind of hat just to protest you. 

Above: Trump and Stern being rude
and dismissive towards women together. 

Wai-wah? Yeah, Howard Stern has been chiming in about Trump on his radio show. They're like BFF's despite staunch political differences which, on the one hand, well done. If there's one thing we could really use right now, it's people who can see past political differences and still be friends despite the toxic atmosphere. On the other hand, holy shit how can you be friends with a guy who, two-weeks in, is already drawing comparisons to one of the crazier Roman Emperors? Ok, comparisons made by me, right now, but still, comparisons. Apt ones.

Which one? Lets say Commodus. He was woeful unqualified, he got the job under shady circumstances and he was an unrepentant narcissist. He even used to compete in gladiatorial matches which was considered like, super low class for someone who ran the entire goddamn known world.

The modern equivalent would be getting
into Twitter fights with Rosie O'Donnell.

Pictured: The man who has the
ear of the President. Holy shit...

Anyway, here's what Stern said:

"I know something about Donald Trump, he really does want to be loved. He does want people to really love him. And that drives him a lot. I think that he has a very sensitive ego. And when you're President of the United States people are going to be very, very critical."

-Howard Stern,

aka Fartman

His ego is the psychological equivalent
of an unguarded thermal exhaust port.

Wow...um, ok. So I definitely buy the part about the sensitive ego, and not being able to tell the difference between good attention and bad attention would fit right in to our read of him as a short-tempered man-child. It also aligns with White House Press Secretary and petulant rage fountain Sean Spicer's assertion that the President is obsessed with the polls. Like any celebrity, he's worried about his ratings which, wait, is our seemingly impotent rage finally going to pay off? 

Ok, almost any disgrace.

If we keep this up, the marching and the constant Alec Baldwin SNL sketches, do you suppose maybe he'll quit? Because he can you know. Quit. Nixon did it and look how it worked out for him...ok, bad example, but Trump wouldn't even have to live out his remaining years being despised. This is the 21st century, and celebrities seem to be able to bounce back from any disgrace.

Trump could go from our most hated President to hosting a new TV show overnight. Overnight! Of course, we'd then be stuck with Mike Pence, so I admit, it's not a perfect solution, but it's a step in the right direction.

Think about it, no more pressure, no more people marching in
the streets by the millions to chant about how awful you are. Everyone
will love you again. Well, maybe not love you...but hate you less.

No please, continue to hold your breath...

...because an apology is totally forthcoming. This morning on a very special Fox and Friends segment which is certain not to draw widespread ridicule on the internet, the gang invited a psychotherapist named Tom Kersting on to explain the importance of apologizing.

Although surprisingly he didn't ask the hosts
of Fox and Friends to apologize for being responsible
for the death of journalism in America. 

Apologizing for what? Why, for how people are so mean to one another on social media. The psychotherapist/wellness expert/noted website haver Tom Kersting, tisk tisk'ed with the titular friends for a moment and then went on to psychoanalyze everyone on the internet.

He also has a reality show where you can
watch him break up fights between in-laws.

(source: America's rapid decline)

"I see stuff on social media, the comments that come out, especially the divisiveness right now with all the politics and stuff. The comments from one person to the next. And it's really an indication of that person's lack of emotional intelligence, emotional regulation and the ability to empathize with other people and so forth."

-Tom Kersting, psychotherapist 

who coincidentally has a new 

book out, so how 'bout that?

So this, but for your Grandpa.
Huh? Well, sure, I guess he
could be into both...

Seriously Fox and Friends. Like, I know that they're not so much a news outlet as they are a news-flavored entertainment dispenser for disengaged conservatives who need their worldview reaffirmed the same way a heroin addict needs a fix, but c'mon. I mean, c'mon. The Raw Story article I saw this on says that Fox and Friends had Kersting on because they feel that we should all be apologizing to Trump voters but that's not specified in the clip, so in fairness, I can't say if that was the hosts' intent (even thought it probably was. I mean, c'mon).

Yes, I said in fairness to Fox news. Because I'm magnanimous. Anyway, what's weird about Kersting's comments is that they're not entirely off-base.

Well, I think we have come together. In common outrage
at the shitshow that is week 2 of the Trump Administration.

"So it's agreed, only what's worst
for everyone from here on out."

I (and probably you too) have said some fairly mean things about people who voted for the technical winner of the electoral college. A man who rode a wave of racism, misogyny and Russian interference into an electoral college win and then used that mandate-less victory as carte blanch for every divisive, undemocratic, Islamophobic, racist (I know, I said it twice) item on the GOP's wish list. I'll own that. But what do they expect? We're feeling a little, you know, screwed over.

Why not give the power to her, you
know, the one most of us voted for?

The election was questionable at best, outright stolen at worse. The first thing we hear out of our new President, like in the first paragraph of his inauguration speech is a promise to return power us, to the people. And then he signed a bunch of ridiculous executive orders that sidestepped any semblance of debate or cooperation. And today, the Supreme Court nomination. You remember, the one Mitch McConnell refused to even consider until after the election so that the people can have a say? And then we did, but we got Trump anyway?

So to people who voted for the technical winner of the election and who are now all butt hurt that we resent them for it, I'm sorry. Sorry you're bad at making decisions about who can best represent your interests. I'm sorry you conflate bluster with ability and I'm sorry that you equate nuance with weakness. I'm sorry you like his rude Tweets and laugh with him as he mocks the disabled. And I'm sorry that the rest of us are stuck with the repercussions.

Even though some of us won't be stuck with the repercussions
for as long as others...sorry, that actually was kinda mean.

Let's hear it for dystopian idleness!

In great news for people who can't even be bothered to slip on a pair of pajama bottoms and leave the house in order to attend to the basic tasks common to adulthood, there will soon be robots to bring you things. A company called Starship Technologies (which, disappointingly doesn't build starships) is testing a new robot here in the States that may finally defeat the foe that has plagued us since the dawn of time.

What? No, not bears.

Above: Secretary of State and reckless
firearms enthusiast Sir Ted Nugent.

(photo credit: someone ducking)

I'm referring of course to having to get up and do stuff. The new robot is a type of (mostly) autonomous courier that can zip around on sidewalks and run errands for you. Well, errands that involve carrying about three shopping bags-worth of stuff that someone on the other end loads into the thing's camping cooler sized cargo space. It can deliver packages and maybe pick-up take-out. It can't like, take the kids to school or spend time with grandma. Really it's more like Amazon's delivery drone, but with without the risk of being shot out of the sky by Ted Nugent.

"You don't know the things I've seen..."

-The human operator who helped

bring you your GrubHub order

Although I guess some asshole could still kick it over, or crowbar it open and steal your PF Chang's or whatever. And it's not totally able to deal with unexpected obstacles. It if runs into a detour or one of the near-daily protest marches that's not in its GPS, it'll have to call a human operator for help. On the upside, these robots will create new opportunities for people with experience piloting drones for the military. Unless of course putting ex-drone pilots in front of a consoles similar to the ones they used to carry out remote-missile strikes is a terrible idea for some reason.

Which, ok, cool, right? Yes. I'm clearly being a jerk when I suggest that this technology will revolutionize laziness. Sure, there are plenty of people with mobility issues for whom these will be a big help. But still, there are many more people for whom Netflix is more appealing than human interaction.

"Thanks robot, you're a life-saver! I mean, that literally. 
I don't leave my home. Ever. I mean, six seasons of Teen Wolf and
twelve of Supernatural aren't going to watch themselves, am I right?

-Some shut in

One Nation, Somewhat Divisible...

Good news for fans of awkward portmanteaus! Organizers for Calexit (the objectively ridiculous combination of the words 'California' and 'exit') have gotten the go ahead to start collecting signatures to put it on the ballot for 2019. So, um, hurray?

Anyone caught on the wrong side of the border after this goes down can find their nearest
California Pizza Kitchen and request asylum. While the restaurant chain will be considered
Californian soil, do not under any circumstances eat the food. California is not great at pizza.

Also, the Bay Area is already
out-pretensioning France by
a factor of deux point cinq. 

Calexit is the proposed secession of California from the United States and I don't know how I feel about this. I mean, I get the why. The Organizer's website www.yescalifornia.org lists the reasons for leaving and they're all pretty reasonable.

"As the sixth largest economy in the world, California is more economically powerful than France and has a population larger then Poland. Point by point, California compares and competes with countries, not just the 49 other states."

Their case is mostly economic and boils down to the idea that if it wasn't for the enormous drag factor of the 49 other states, California would be even awesomer.

Above: a typical Tuesday in San Francisco.
Now, explain to me how Trump's supposed
to be everyones President? Huh? Thought so.

But there's also a cultural argument made even more pointed by this last election. The whole country watched as a short-tempered gameshow host won an electoral, but not popular victory and then immediately started executive signing away all the progress of the last administration despite having the opposite of a mandate, which I guess would be called a grudging, technical win. And a win that doesn't sit so well with the country's most populous, most pot-smoking-est and gayest state. So maybe we'd both be better off?

Admittedly we've been living off the memory
like a middle-aged CPA clinging to the time
his high school football team went to state.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I'm ready to stop being an American. Sure, we have a troubled history and an even more troubled present (because we should know better), but we also cured polio and landed on the moon. And the internet was us, right? Oh, and didn't we single-handedly win World War II? Let's say yes. My point is that as screwed up as everything is right now, and promises to be for the foreseeable, it will-ok, might? Get better. Someday. Somehow. And that we really need to think long and hard before throwing our American-ness up for a show of hands. Like, remember Prop 8?

Maybe instead of voting on whether or not California should leave the Union, why not hold a national referendum on which red states should be kicked out? After all, they're the ones that fucked everything up for the rest of us.

What? They made their choice and it was terrible,
why should we let them anywhere near our next election?

Today in late night twitter proclamations...

Above: The Twitter bird, rapidly eclipsing
the raven as the bird of grim portents.

Well that's a relief. It looks like we're going to look into November's questionable to outright fraudulent election results. Technical winner Donald Trump made the announcement on Twitter-yes, Twitter, from here on out I guess he'll be making all his chilling proclamations on social media. In fact, in the last 24 hours he declared that he'll be going forward with the Keystone Pipeline, praised Fox News for being more accurate than CNN, threatened Chicago with the National Guard, and announced plans for the border wall and his intention to pick a Supreme Court nominee.

But back to the thing about looking into the election results:

At 4:10 a.m? For real?

Finally, an investigation into...wait, did he say VOTER FRAUD? He did, which, he knows that that doesn't need to be in all caps right? Also, was voter fraud really the problem? Here's his follow-up tweet:

I wonder if the three minute gap between tweets is so his handlers
 can read it first and make sure he's not starting a war with China...

"It is, how you say, perfect crime, da?"

-The guy who picked

our President for us

Huh...voter fraud? Really? Not the rampant interference from the Russians that all of our intelligence agencies agree boosted Trump's campaign, damaged Hillary Clinton's and undermined our faith in our own democracy, no we're going to look into the universally debunked right-wing rumors of voter fraud. Based on what? A couple of studies one of which is straight up bullshit and the other is written by a guy called David Becker who says that no fraud actually resulted and in fact tweeted to that effect just yesterday in response to Sean Spicer's-huh? Oh yes, him again.

Good thing no one's ever going to
fact check anything you say, right Sean?

Reporters asked Spicer about the President's evidence-free claims of rampant voter fraud and to his credit he was clear that Trump believed there was fraud and not that he, Spicer, did. His carefully crafted mantra was 'it's a belief that he's had for a while, a concern about voter fraud that's based on studies and evidence people have presented to him.' So the Press Secretary wasn't really lying or alternative fact-ing this time, but he did bring up Becker's study, confused it with a different study and then misrepresented the results, so he's just bad at his job.

So yes, we totally need a major investigation into November's election, but not because dead people voted Democrat as the administration is continuing to insist in defiance of like all the evidence ever, but into the fact that Vladimir Putin stuck his grubby, ex-KGB mitts into our election and saddled us with an insecure man-baby who can't accept that more people voted for Hillary Clinton than for him and who now tweets crazy at four in the morning.

You know, if I thought he was capable of feeling shame I'd say that's the haunted expression
of someone who knows they don't deserve to be sitting in that chair. Someone being crushed by
the certain knowledge that most of us voted for someone else and who knows that it's only a matter of
time before karma or the universe or whatever catches up with him. But then this is Donald Trump so...

Kellyanne Conway: Spin Wizard

"How dare the press question the Press
Secretary. And in the pressroom no less..."

-Kellyanne Conway

Is Kellyanne Conway even remotely for real? Because...because...let me start at the beginning. Remember yesterday when White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer lied to us and got all huffy and whined about how the media isn't doggedly repeating Trump talking points? Well Trump administration counselor (which is a job, I guess?) Kellyanne Conway decided to lean in to that particular shit show on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd when she suggested that if the press doesn't start being nicer to Trump then maybe they won't get access anymore.

Above: This, but with bullshit
instead of magic and whimsy.

Yikes. When pressed for an answer about why Trump was cool with having his staff lie to us she went all in. Like, full brazen bullshit spin wizard:

"...don't be so overly dramatic about it Chuck, what it-you're saying it's a falsehood, and they're giving, Sean Spicer our Press Secretary gave alternative facts to that."

-Kellyanne Conway, calling all of us,

like, everyone in America, idiots

Factuality is sort of a binary thing.
Either something is factual or
something is a box full of dead cat.

Just so we're all on the same page here, there's no such thing as alternative facts, right? Like, either something is accurate and backed by photographic evidence or it's horseshit spun by right wing shit merchants under the mistaken impression that we're all idiots. There's no 'the truth is probably somewhere in between' or both sides have a point. Turn out for the inauguration was weak, turn out for the Women's Marches was enormous and widespread and Sean Spicer is full of shit.

So is next Wednesday good
for Sean? Maybe we can all go
out for drinks afterward.

Like, does she not get they they work for us? I mean, like most Americans, I didn't vote for Trump, but he did technically 'win,' and is now sort of the President and in that capacity works for us, right? You know, we the people. The media is just that hunk of the people that we send in to ask questions and demand answers because we can't all fit in the press room. Although if she'd prefer I guess we could all just come down to D.C. and ask our questions in turn. This weekend showed that Americans don't mind traveling.

Look, nobody cares about the numbers at the inauguration. We do however care about being lied to. The administration doesn't allow us to ask questions, we require that they answer for their actions. The suggestion that the press needs to be nicer to Trump or they won't get access to the President is just...what's the phrase? Is it unmitigated gall? Yeah, unmitigated gall with some undertones of blind rage...

On our left Chuck Todd absolutely dumbfounded by the Olympic level
bullshit being hurled at him via satellite and on the right, Kellyanne Conway,
defiant, resolute, almost daring us to try and reason with the unreasonwithable. 

Behold, The Illusory Power of Tarps!

Holy shit. A tiny man in his dad's suit whom we're told is the new White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, went full denial at his press conference today red-faced-ly insisting that despite us being able to see the vast emptiness of the National Mall on Friday, there were actually more people at Trump's inauguration than at any other event in the history of humankind so shut up. Oh and do watch the video. It's a treat.

Sean Spicer, seen here in an ill-fitting pinstripe suit that's doing him
no favors, explained that the media is a bunch of losers and that lots
of people showed up to the inauguration so shut up.

Picture: '09 on top, '17 on bottom.

(source: the entire internet)

False. Fucking false. I know that we're like a day into what promises to be simultaneously the most terrifying and hilarious administration ever, but we're already listening to the technical winner of the election's staff make up ridiculous bullshit about things we all saw live on TV. Do they not understand that we have access to the internet? Did Sean Spicer not think he'd get caught? He said that the reason it looks like a thin crowd is that protective tarps were put down on the lawn of the National Mall to protect the grass and that this created the illusion that Trump was sworn in before a light dusting of idiots gloating about how great America's going to be as soon as their health insurance is yanked. He then went on to claim that there were a bunch of magnetometers and security fences that kept hundreds of thousands from accessing the Mall.

Good thing Press Secretary isn't a high
pressure job, because he might pop a valve
if he ever has to talk about something real.

"Inaccurate numbers involving crowd size were also tweeted-NO ONE HAD NUMBERS! Because the National Park Service which controls the National Mall, does not put any out. By the way this applies to any attempt to count the number of protesters today in the same fashion."

-Press Security Sean Spicer,

already shouting at the
press and calling them liars

See if you can spot the tank in this picture.

So if NOBODY HAD NUMBERS (his caps, not mine), how does he know they're wrong? Anyway, to sum up Spicer's point, the white tarps made it look super-empty which it wasn't but if it looked like it was it's because hundreds of thousands of people were slowed down by security fences and whatever numbers you may have read are filthy lies spread by the media because NOBODY HAD NUMBERS. Wait a sec, does the army know about tarps? Because this could be a whole new frontier in stealth technology.

Oh, and those numbers of protesters we're not supposed to have an accurate count of? He's referring to the Women's March on DC, an event which has sister events across the country and all over the planet. Here, check out the Chicago Tribune's article and photo gallery. Keep in mind that angles and tarps can be seriously misleading so while it looks like millions turned out, it's probably just a few hundred malcontents...

Here's Washington's Women's March. Hardly anyone...

 New York's march...which I'd put at what? Twenty people? Twenty-five?

And L.A.'s. Ok, a few people in this shot, but they're
probably shooting a movie or something

I'm pretty sure San Francisco's just going
to be one big protest from here on out.

Look, I'm not great at estimating crowd sizes, but then no one in the Trump administration seems able to count either. Remember when he made up some horseshit about how if you take out all the illegal votes, he totally won the popular vote? Numbers are not his friend. Neither is photographic evidence. Nor is objective fact. But whatever, millions turned out today. Millions came out to register their disgust which is way the hell more than turned out to watch him put his leathery mitts on a copy of The Art of the Deal and get sworn in.

Here, lookit this comparison between January 20th and January 21st:

Inauguration Day

We're Pissed About Inauguration Day Day

"And then everyone had cake and it was
like, the best cake PERIOD, of all time.
It was way better than Obama's cake."

But who cares? Well obviously Donald Trump cares because he sent his petulant Press Secretary out there to embarrass himself by lying at us right out of his stupid lie-hole about how this is the

"...largest audience to ever witness an inauguration PERIOD, both in person and around the globe."

-Sean Spicer, the first of what I predict 

will be many Press Secretaries 

before this is all over with

Ok, so traditionally you put the PERIOD at the end of your sentence and you don't need to say it out loud, but other than that, congratulations Sean on your first day as the mouth piece for a ridiculous, short-tempered misogynyst who has now joined cancer, Monsanto and war on the list of things people march against.

Above: Hillary Clinton, who actually can count watching
the guy who got fewer votes get sworn in. We should be putting
her on the fifty dollar bill just for putting up with this bullshit...