A July 4 obituary edition: American democracy, dead at 249.

The lamps have gone out all over America.  

By Isaiah Thomas
Board of Editors

This publication was established 255 years ago to advocate for the independence of the then British colonies and the establishment of a democratic Constitutional republic that would rule according to laws enacted with the consent of the governed and dedicated to the proposition that government existed to protect the rights and advance the interests of the governed.

Six years later, on July 4, 1776, the Spy's efforts were crowned with success by the signature of the Declaration of Independence, which established the United States of America as a democratic republic.

At some point in the latter half of its 249th year, that government died.  

On this July 4, 2025, we pause to pronounce and mourn its passing.

How do we know it has died? Consider:

– Just last week, the six bent Republican Supreme Court Justices decided that Article III courts lacked the power to prevent the Executive Branch from repealing Constitutional amendments on its own say so.  In particular, the infant children of certain types of immigrants will now be denied citizenship in clear contravention of the Fourteenth Amendment unless they themselves crawl into court and sue on the own behalf. Trump v. CASA, No. 24A884 (June 27, 2025).

As Professor Kate Shaw explained in a rare worthwhile essay in New York Times Opinion:

In Trump v. CASA, the Supreme Court could have definitively decided that Mr. Trump’s executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship is flagrantly unconstitutional and may not be enforced. Instead, the court announced that it alone can decide such matters on a nationwide basis — and that it would not do so here. ...

Both the general tenor of the opinion and these instructions — to rapidly reconsider these cases in the context of an entirely new standard announced in an opinion that is far from clear — evinced a remarkable lack of respect for lower courts. And the decision comes at a time when district court judges have done more than any other constitutional players to maintain core constitutional protections. These are the same district judges who are facing unprecedented attacks online, threats to their safety and impeachment resolutions.

As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted in her dissent: “Perhaps the degradation of our rule-of-law regime would happen anyway. But this court’s complicity in the creation of a culture of disdain for lower courts, their rulings and the law (as they interpret it) will surely hasten the downfall of our governing institutions, enabling our collective demise.” 

– As part of its program to terrorize, torture, and eventually deport aliens with pending or no status (i.e. awaiting decisions on timely filed asylum petitions), the Executive Branch has arrogated to itself the right and power to:

• arrest and detain legal permanent residents of the United States for expressing opinions disagreeable to the President
• summarily deport in the unreviewable discretion of the Secretary of State any alien he determines to be an “enemy” and to not just deport them but deliver them variously to a foreign concentration camp or a third country war zone regardless of whether the alien will face torture in either hellhole
• concoct criminal prosecutions against sitting members of Congress for seeking to exercise their legal right to inspect immigration detention facilities
• tackle and beat U.S. Senators for attempting to ask a Cabinet Secretary a question as part of their Article I duty to oversee the U.S. Government
• beat and arrest not just persons suspected without probable cause for lacking immigration status satisfactory to them but also American citizens for attempting to protect those individuals and their and their own constitutional rights:

 

• and commence illegal denaturalization proceedings against US citizens for failing to agree with the President 

But the unconstitutional actions of an out-of-control Presidency go far beyond torturing immigrants and beating dissenters.  In the past six months, the Executive has unconstitutionally

• terminated federal agencies established by Congress and cut off their funding, resulting in the likely deaths of millions of starving children and families in famine-ravaged lands
• cut off legally appropriated and awarded funding to research universities to force them to submit to the political will and bigoted views of the current President
• imposed tariffs without the consent of the Congress as required by Article I 
• illegally deployed US military forces into American cities to harass and oppress the populace
• allied with the Russian aggressor in Ukraine in defiance of Congressional action
• threatened to conquer by military force all or part of nations allied with the United States
• pardoned 1,500 convicted insurrectionists and then hired some of them to work in, wait for it, the Justice Department
• purged the Justice Department of career prosecutors who acted in accordance with the law but not the whim of the Executive; and
• demanded bribes from media corporations to punish them for speaking truth and from others to line his own pockets in multiple scams  

None of these actions can be reconciled with the American Constitution, the rule of law, or the separation of powers. 

What happened?

The causes of the collapse of the American Republic are many and deep rooted, although they can all be traced to the contradictions of its founding: the tension between establishing the dignity and equality of all human beings and the reality of granting excessive power to white slavers and racists to perpetuate their cruel oligarchy.

In the 21st century, several different strands of white power were woven together into a rope strong enough to pull down the structure of American government.  A Republican-dominated Supreme Court first overturned the voters' verdict in the 2000 election, preserving Republican domination of the Court for a generation.  Later it lawlessly voided a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, paving the way for suppression of minority and Democratic votes. 

That same Republican-packed Supreme Court in turn cemented the domination of Republicans by sanctioning unlimited plutocratic dark money in politics under the guise of “free speech.”  It furthered Republican gerrymandering of Congressional seats for blatant political advantage, thereby permitting partisan politicians to stifle the popular will.

As a result of these decisions, the Republican Party in the Congress became increasingly dominated by corrupt reactionaries dependent on the favor of a depraved President to remain in office.  Both these developments destroyed the separation of powers and key checks against Executive Branch tyranny. 

Today for example the House approved a cruel unpopular bill to starve and sicken the poor and grant huge tax cuts to billionaires.  The margin was 218 to 214.  That's two votes.  The Republican gerrymander of swing-state North Carolina in 2024 gave the Republican three new seats, or more than the margin of victory the Republicans enjoyed today. 

Devoted Fox News watcher

Soon the Republican Texas legislature is planning to redistrict Texas Congressional seats in the absence of any new Census data to unseat Democrats they don't like, like Jasmine Crockett.  A similar effort in 2003 generated five more seats for Texas Republicans.  

A second factor has been the transformation of the media into emasculated irrelevance (like the networks and major newspapers) or nonstop disinformation volcanoes whose lies have sunk into and eaten the brains of millions of white Americans:

...there are many, many Americans who blame Fox News for changes in their loved ones, and many people out there who feel as though their friends and family members have been lost to a 24/7 stream of right-wing propaganda.

....Any salesperson or con artist will tell you that you can’t incept a thought in a mark’s mind out of nowhere. You have to find the hook that’s already there — fear, or desire — and exploit it. When it comes to exacerbating and honing the anxieties of aging Americans you can’t do much better (or worse) than race and immigration.

Because the truth is, Fox News didn’t invent racism, and many of our family members would’ve believed in it on their own. This may have been the hardest thing I learned from the stories I heard: Fox didn’t necessarily change anyone’s mind, so much as it seems to have supercharged and weaponized a politics that was otherwise easy for white Americans to overlook in their loved ones. 

Which leads us to the overarching cause of the death of the American republic: perpetuation of white plutocratic power by whatever means necessary. This has been a battle since the founding of our Republic, according to Prof. Heather Cox Richardson:   

In the United States today, a political minority has used the mechanics of government to take power and is now using that power to impose its will on the majority. The pattern is exactly that of the elite southern enslavers who in the 1850s first took over the Democratic Party and then, through it, captured the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the White House and tried to take over the country.

The story of the 1850s centered around the determination of southern planters to preserve the institution of human enslavement underpinning the economy that had made them rich and powerful, and today we tend to focus on the racial dominance at the heart of that system.  

It took the French five tries to get it right

Even as we face the reality that the American First Republic (or Second if you regard Reconstruction as the establishment of a new and better regime) has passed, the response cannot be either despair or acquiescence.  

France after all is now on its Fifth Republic and when we were there two weeks ago, it seemed pretty jolly.  If the French can re-establish a stable democratic Republic and still have time to hang out in cafés, we can do the same.

While the forces that destroyed the American Republic remain powerful, they are by no means invulnerable.  In any event, the future has a funny way of surprising us.  In this century alone we have endured a mass terror attack, an economic meltdown, a pandemic, and puppy killer Kristi Noem.  We are likely to be confronted by similarly consequential evens in the future: another pandemic, another economic collapse, war, perhaps involving nuclear weapons, and another animal murderer.  Each crisis creates an opportunity.

But that may or may not happen in the lifetimes of anyone writing or reading these words.

In the meantime it is for us the living to record the demise of a promising experiment in democratic government and to assign blame for its death where it is due: on white people. 

Dispatches from the War Fronts: The Hot Air Force Flies High!

Dispatches from the War Fronts

Editors' Note: For decades the Spy brought you the thrilling adventures of the Hot Air Force, that doughy [Surely, doughty? – Ed.] band of neocons bravely promoting one or more wars that they cover from the comfort of their wife's Hamptons retreat or their Chevy Chase colonials.  They were instrumental in fomenting the Iraq War while evading any responsibility for the carnage caused in part by their relentless fact-free cheerleading for that bloody debacle.

In recent years, their ranks have thinned possibly because there was no longer any money or fame available for pimping for war.  In 2021, they rallied to attack poor old Joe Biden for deciding to end their 21-year-long war in Afghanistan when victory was, according to them, just around the corner, a decision that has proven to be entirely correct.

But the grizzled veterans of the Hot Air Force recently got the band of bullsh***ers back to together to assault their long-time enemy: Iran.  

Their target?  The truth that there is no way in hell to “win” a war against Iran.  

The Hot Air Force's damage assessment:

By War Correspondent Douglas MacArthur with Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling
 
After threatening wars against Canada, Greenland, Panama, and Mexico. wily ol' Commander Bone Spurs outsmarted them all by starting one with Iran.

And the Generals of the Hot Air Force, while too old and clumsy to actually fly the 37-hour bombing mission themselves, provided invaluable reinforcements of hot air to support our brave troops and their cowardly Commander-in-Chief.

Commandant of the Woman's Auxiliary Hot Air Corps Bari Weiss took time off from her brave struggles against 16-year-old trans girls trying to play field hockey with their friends to provide a meme so preposterous it left the rest of the Hot Air Corps sucking wind:

 

Yes, we certainly remember Churchill being dragged into the war between France and Germany because he got sick of listening to BBC coverage about the great success of the French Army.  Churchill, who, unlike Pol Potbelly, knew damn well from his service on the Western Front what a horrible bloody business war was, urged the world to deter German aggression by aiding European allies like France and Czechoslovakia after years of careful analysis of available intelligence about German bellicosity, not three hours of watching blow-dried gasbags preening over Israeli propaganda videos.

The comparison between Churchill, a courageous leader facing the most dreadful of consequences should Britain lose the war who venerated his precious military forces, and Trump, a demented coward with nothing to lose except his tee time and who called fallen soldiers “suckers” and “losers” was so louche and ludicrous that it won Bari her first coveted Cheney for relentless shoveling in the service of burying Republican incompetence.

Grizzled Hot Air Force Generalissimo Bretbug was in top form, sending our boys into harm's way against those nasty Iranians while he himself bravely fought in the front line of the smoked fish counter at Zabar's for the special dill-cured lox:

His argument, or perhaps more accurately Bibi Netanyahu's argument as faithfully channeled by Bretbug, is that Iran, unlike Russia, China, Pakistan, and North Korea, cannot be allowed to have a bomb because Iran is bad, bad, bad.

According to Generalissimo Bretbug, Iran is uniquely bad because it kills thousands of innocent civilians with a depraved indifference to human life, it oppresses with lethal violence minorities in areas it controls, it seeks to expand its influence over the entire Middle East by force of arms, and it is inherently an expansionist state, trying to impose its extremist religion on those of other faiths.

Can you imagine letting a country like that have nuclear weapons?  Actually, Bretbug can imagine it because we're describing Israel, which he has relentlessly supported.

Now no one is defending Iran as a model of good behavior.  Keeping its nuclear ambitions in check is an important national objective, which was accomplished by President Obama in 2015 with an internationally-backed verifiable agreement to stop Iran's nuclear enrichment program.  It worked, until it was dumped by Pol Potbelly with the avid support of the Hot Air Force, as former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken explained in a manner that should be legible to even the meanest intelligence:

So why was the strike a mistake?

Hegseth: We have closed the mine shaft gap!

First, it never should have come to this.  In 2015, the Obama administration, together with Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union, reached agreement with Tehran on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or J.C.P.O.A. The nuclear deal effectively put Iran’s program to make fissile material, the fuel for a nuclear weapon, in a lockbox, with stringent procedures for monitoring the program. The deal pushed “breakout” — the amount of time it would take Iran to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a single nuclear weapon — to at least one year. If Iran reneged on the agreement or refused to extend it when certain provisions expired after 15 years, we would know it and have plenty of time to respond, including, if necessary, militarily.

In 2018, President Trump tore up the agreement and replaced it with … nothing. In response, Iran accelerated its enrichment, quite likely reducing its breakout time to a matter of days or weeks. Mr. Trump, in essence, is now trying to put out a fire on which he poured gasoline.

Of course, dropping bombs is much more fun than actually solving security crises with careful, shrewd diplomacy, which is why Pol Potbelly isn't interested in that sort of thing. Also real non-demented honest President Obama did it so by the rules of white racists from Queens, it must have been bad.

Now the Pol Potbelly regime is engaged in a bitter disinformation battle to con us into believing that the attack on Iran did something to reduce the chance that Iran would be able to build a nuclear weapon.

The attack of lies is pursued on several fronts:  First, a frontal assault on the patriotism of anyone who dares to suggest that the attack may not have achieved its strategic objective by quoting stuff like intelligence reports or even asking uncomfortable questions, like the location and availability of Iran's over 270 kilograms  of 60%-enriched uranium, which it stockpiled after the U.S. breach of the JCPOA.

Second, a flanking maneuver by obfuscating the question.  Pol Potbelly and his cadres insist that because of their big strong attacks Iran's nuclear facilities have gone boom-boom.  But the issue isn't entirely or even mostly whether the targets attacked were damaged or destroyed; it's whether the nuclear program has been permanently destroyed or simply delayed for a matter of months or years.

The maneuver is complex because PP in the same incoherent remarks will make contradictory statements, stating that it is too soon to know and also that he knows that everything has been “obliterated.”  

Finally, the Trump Regime has called upon its staunch ally, Bibi Netanyahu, to weigh in with his own assessment, which is that his criminal trial [Surely, Iran's nuclear program? – Ed.] has been crippled for years. 

This three pronged attack on the truth was deployed on June 28 by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who concluded by awarding himself with the Order of the Jaeger Bomber with Budweiser Clusters.

So far to its credit the media has not uncritically agreed with Happy Hour Pete:

This is a better performance than during the Iraq War, when the media faithfully transmitted the lies and subterfuges of Hegseth's predecessor Donald Rumsfeld, who got away with whoppers for years before the press caught on that, despite his illusion of competence and gravitas, he was a bats*** crazy unrepentant lying war criminal in the Henry Kissinger tradition.  

But whatever their effect, if any, on Iran's nuclear capabilities, the Hot Air Force has achieved one huge victory: one of their own has graduated from writing about bombing to flacking for it as the senior civilian in charge of the Defense Department.

Back in 2018, Happy Hour Pete was a mere Hot Air Force Captain, like his comrades Johnny Walker and Jim Beam, inveighing against Iran on Saturday mornings when most folks are watching “Boomtown” [No one will get this reference – Ed.] :

He told the Israelis that he opposed the JCPOA on the entirely reasonable and well-thought-grounds that Iran would wipe out both Israel and the United States if it could.

Then those remarks were covered only by local Israeli media. 

Now he is in action, no longer from his Fox “News” hole, but from the Pentagon, striking fear into the hearts of our nation's enemies, namely the press and Democrats:

The ascension to the apex of bellicose bulls*** achieved by one of their own must gratify each of the keyboard and podcast warriors of the Hot Air Force.  And when Hegseth finally collapses in a pool of alcoholic stupor and hair gel, you can be sure that the surviving members of the Hot Air Force will all, all declare themselves eligible to succeed him.

In the meantime, the Hot Air Force has a stern warning for Greenland: You're next!

Good and Dead: Corrupt rutting entitled white male Giuliani scrotum bather and heroic Republican at 69

The obituary page of The Massachusetts Spy

By Luke Reschuss
Obituary Editor

It’s not every convicted and disgraced felon whose death is covered on Page A1 of the normally staid New York Times, but they did make an exception for bent cop, defiler of the memory of 9/11, and Rudy Giuliani Chianti-carrier Bernard Kerik, who died not a minute too soon at the age of 69.

Kerik and his assistants cavorting at his Ground Zero love shack

Or as the Times had to admit about a goombah who enjoyed years of softball coverage from that same newspaper, he “ f[e]ll from grace after he pleaded guilty to federal corruption and tax crimes.”

The lede reminded us that he was supposedly some sort of hero for being New York Police Commissioner on September 11, 2001, although what he did to achieve such veneration was not immediately apparent. Actually, he royally — we’ll get back to that.

But will the Times really begin Harvey Weinstein’s obit, to which we look forward with immense pleasure, with “Weinstein had a brilliant career as a gifted film producer and studio chief, but fell from grace after he was accused of raping and molesting dozens of women and finally convicted of a select handful of his crimes?” Maybe we shouldn’t give the Obituary team at the Times any ideas, but we are confident their Weinstein piece has been in the can for years.

At least the Times traced his meteoric rise to fame to his lamprey-like attachment to the taint of then New York Mayor and now disgraced liar and Borat cameo actor Rudy Giuliani, another revolting crooked white man whose death notice we look forward to every day:

A cocksure high school dropout with a black belt in karate, shaved head and bulging biceps, Mr. Kerik vaulted to senior public posts as a disciple of Rudolph W. Giuliani after serving as Mr. Giuliani’s bodyguard during his successful 1993 mayoral campaign.

Translating from the Times-speak, he was an unqualified bully who rose to fame and power in the years when meritocracy ruled, at least if you were a stupid uneducated white men with biceps that would impress fascist dweebs like Giuliani. As Archie Bunker sang, “Those were the days.”

If you look up “disciple” in the New York Times Dictionary you see:

Butt-boy
Bag carrier
Shill
Scrotal tongue-bather

There are in fact another 55 definitions, but you get the drift.

Despite his lack of qualifications, Giuliani, who needed to surround himself with compliant toadies (remind you of anyone?), appointed Kerik Police Commissioner.

As part of his failure to do his job, Kerik did nothing to prepare the city for the World Trade Center attack.  In particular he failed to provide a backup command center should the one Giuliani idiotically ordered built in the WTC be destroyed. Then as now there was a giant building on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn stuffed with communication links that would have served admirably, but Bernie was otherwise engaged. 

Nor did he do anything to improve communications among the various first responders, including FDNY and the Port Authority police. The price of his failure was paid in blood on 9/11.  

He did accompany Giuliani to ground zero that day, which was widely regarded as a tonic to the city’s morale but did nothing to make the city safer. After cashing in on his undeserved fame, he pocketed big bucks as a supposed private security expert for international dirtbags.

In the United States, this is known as “meritocracy.”

Speaking of unqualified white men taking care of their own, in 2004, in the midst of his hideous Iraq War debacle, President George W. Bush decided to accomplish another mission by naming Kerik to the Department of Homeland Security, a then-new Cabinet agency which at the time was devoted to protecting the homeland before it evolved to its current role as the agent of sadistic terror aimed at non-citizens.

Then the wheels came off the Kerikmobile:

In 2004, he was named by the president to head the Department of Homeland Security. But he withdrew one week later because, he said, he had employed an undocumented immigrant as a babysitter and neglected to pay payroll taxes.

That admission triggered several investigations.

It was revealed that while he was married with two children and living in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, he had rented an apartment in Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan to conduct an extramarital affair with Judith Regan, who had published his best-selling memoir. The apartment had originally been donated by a developer for use by rescue workers at the World Trade Center site.

It’s hard to decide the most appalling detail in this sordid tale. Was it that he was cheating on his wife with a bats**t crazy celebrity book editor too f***king incompetent to hold down a once-a-week gig on Fox “News?” Was it the parade of doxies he was banging?

Our vote goes to the fact that he was doing all of his tomcatting in an apartment overlooking the mass grave of Ground Zero donated for the purpose of overseeing recovery efforts there. But Kerik turned it into his personal Love Shack.

But that’s not what ended his career. The white goombahs from Staten Island probably loved that he was getting his rocks off with a parade of bimbos while gazing out at menials toiling in the hot sun to rebuild the pit of death. 

With white men from the boroughs, the impunity is the point.

Reaming Judith Regan in an apartment intended to aid 9/11 recovery wasn’t a felony. But:

In 2009, he pleaded guilty to two counts of tax fraud, one count of making a false statement on a loan application and five counts of making false statements to the federal government while being vetted for senior positions. He was sentenced to four years in prison and served three.

It probably should be mentioned that white men able to afford good lawyers don’t plead guilty to multiple felonies unless they are, to use the technical legal term, guilty as s***. 

And that’s where the story ends: a mediocre white man is undone by his own greed and arrogance, right?

You know the answer. 

 Like so many bent mediocre white men, he hitched his wagon to their ego-ideal and overload, the insanely arrogant crooked grifter now engaged in destroying what is left of our democracy. For his efforts Kerik was pardoned by his fellow New York area felon and repaid President Tiny Toadstool by supporting his effort to overthrow the government of the United States on January 6, 2021.

Bernie was reported to have said he was proud of his career with the exception of his “mistakes” and “lapses of judgment.”

White men always grade themselves on a curve. It’s called affirmative action.

Just imitating his role model, the king of corrupt white slugs

Kerik’s sordid but ultimately inconsequential career might be scarcely worth of notice, except that it serves as a tidy example of the rot that has destroyed our country.

The toxic mix of arrogance, stupidity, entitlement and unearned white grievance that propelled Kerik his whole life is now strangling our lives and liberties.

Kerik’s belief that he was entitled to use a donated Ground Zero apartment as his own Playboy Mansion to trade on his notoriety for nookie is no different than the President’s belief that he is entitled to rape women, rob us blind, and destroy every democratic institution in America.

Every single Republican, even the supposedly female ones, now goes along with this campaign of sadism in the aid of white male entitlement.

And the same media who built up louses and drunks like Kerik and Giuliani as heroes for doing jack s*** are now doing the same for infinitely more dangerous lunatics like the current President and his ex, Ketamine Leon.

The price for the failure to stand up to these bent evil men is already being paid by children in Sudan starving to death and sickened by preventable disease thanks to the illegal dismantling of USAID, by noncitizens illegally asported to a foreign concentration camp, and by future generations, if any, who will live in a less safe, habitable, and healthy world.

We have all become accustomed to living now in Bernie Kerik’s world of incompetence, depravity, corruption, and white male entitlement.  If you can call this living.

Op-Ed from Zontar: when will party leaders atone?

Editors’ Note: With American democracy in the process of being demolished by a corrupt demented Russian-owned stooge and his angry sadistic Republican cadres, our media has focused on the real issue facing our polity, which is why Democrats need to atone for the 2024 campaign.  More particularly, they first were too slow to force into retirement a qualified honest leader with an impressive record of accomplishment, and then they had the nerve to nominate another qualified accomplished high-achieving candidate who happened to be a woman of color.  That's a lot to apologize for.

Just  a few examples of the pigpile:

That was the New York Times Editorial Page last week.  Auch Das Politico marschiert ein:

Here's Slate's take:

For Democrats, every day is Yom Kippur.

By amazing coincidence, the Spy Deep Space Desk just received a new transmission from the mysterious planet of Zontar, located in the Remulac galaxy millions of light years from Earth, where something vaguely similar seems to have happened millions of light years ago. As loyal readers will recall, Zontar is populated by a race of intelligent alien life forms whose communications may shed some light, however dim and distant, on the thought patterns of these bizarre creatures.  We present it to you translated from the Zontarian so that you can appreciate how strange and diverse are the beings who populate this universe and start contemplating how to bridge the cosmic divide between the way they think and the way we –  [OK, they get the setup – Ed.]

by Tess Harding
Zontarian Post Columnist

Every day brings new revelations of the Zemperor’s incompetence, criminality, and efforts to destroy the great Republic of Zontar. This torrent of disastrous news has led leading Zontarian commentators to predict that the Zenpublican Party will face an electoral catastrophe in the next election if Zenpublicans do not start apologizing for the catastrophic actions of their obviously deranged Zemperor Donald Z. Drumpf.

Zemperor Drumpf

Leading video deck personality Jake Zapper, continuing his 30-planet tour for his new book, has warned Zenpublicans that their continuing cover up of Drumpf’s obvious dementia will be a decisive issue in the 9f28 elections. “Zenpublicans are refusing to admit that Drumpf is in decline and unable to govern despite the evidence on display every day: his incoherent yo-yo’ing tariff policy, his illegal vendettas against law firms and universities he is mad at, his reliance on drug-addled billionaires, and his pardons of insurrectionists and garden-variety grifters,” Zapper said.

“For all these many omissions, Zenpublicans must atone and make amends if they have a hope of surviving the next election.”

Other leading commentators point out that Zenpublicans must confess the error of supporting Drumpf’s irrational actions which threaten hundreds of thousands of lives on Zontar and other planets.

Longtime Zenpublican consultant Zavid Azelrod said, “Zenpublicans have a lot of explaining to do to the American people. Why are they jeopardizing the health and safety of every family in the Zontar system by cutting medical research and replacing science with irrational nonsense spouted by a brainworm-demented drug addict like Bobby Zennedy?”

“Why are Zenpublicans trying to destroy the vibrant economy they inherited from Joe Ziden by imposing and lifting tariffs without any rational basis? Why are Zenpublicans on a crusade to kill American jobs by targeting America’s great universities with economic calamity? Why are Zenpublicans cutting food and health care for Zontarians to pay for tax cuts for the richest? Why are Zenpublicans trying to explode the deficit? Why are Zenpublicans undermining all efforts to prevent the calamity of galactic warming?” And I could go on,” Azelrod said.

Other Zenpublican pundits believe that their party must apologize for Drumpf’s assault on the Zontarian system of justice, once regarded as the pride of the galaxy. Longtime Zenpublican columnist Zennifer Zubin said, “Zenpublicans must take responsibility for Drumpf’s assault on the galactic rule of law. Pardoning the insurrectionists who tried to take over the Galactic Council chamber was unforgivable. Kidnapping immigrants and sending them on a one-way rocket to the Death Star with no hearing is contrary to all principles that Zenpublicans have long pretended to advocate.”

Even the normally staid New Zork Timez Editorial Board has called for Zenpublicans to apologize for failing to do anything about a multitude of Drumpf’s actions:

Galactic Council Zenpublicans must atone for their lack of oversight

Zenpublicans barely even pretend that Drumpf has the mental capacity to carry out the duties of Zemperor. From his bigoted dismissal of highly-qualified Fleet Commanders to appointing an incompetent alcoholic to lead the giant Department of Galactic Defense, Zemperor Drumpf has abandoned his duty to protect the security of our planetary system. His installation of obviously unqualified hacks, insurrectionists, and drunks to lead his Administration of Justice threatens the future of Zontar itself.

His irresponsible attacks on our vital allies in the Zurope system, and his tinny threats to conquer the ice planets of Zeenland and Zanada have only strengthened the Evil Empire and weakened Zontar.

His decision to allow a drug-demented billionaire to rampage through the Imperial Government and fire distinguished professionals in between snorts of Zadderall and Zetamine has subverted our beloved planets.

And every day brings new evidence of his unfitness, from his vidposts condemning judges who rule against his tyrannical acts, to his selling the wife of his Zombie Commander to the highest bidder like some modern-day Jabba the Hutt.  These indefensible acts deserve the condemnation of all thinking carbon-based Zenpublicans.

Sen. Zed Cruz sees nothing to worry about

Others in the media demand that Zenpublicans apologize for the rampant corruption of the Zemperor and his feckless children, Zonald and Zero. “The Zemperor’s family is making billions off of currency scams and straight up taking bribes from the families of convicted criminals and potentates from other planets who know that the Zemperor can be bought for nothing more than a tricked-out version of the Millenium Falcon,” said popular morning vidcast host Zo Zarborough. 

In a stirring editorial, the Journal of the Zontarian Medical Association told Zenpublicans “they must apologize for their relentless law on science and research that threatens to leave our galaxy vulnerable to future space-borne pandemics, not to mention zombie attacks.”  In response, Zemperor Trumpf issued an Imperial Order cutting off all contact with the Journal and giving all Journal subscribers cooties.

But some Zenpublican loyalists insist that the current furor is overblown and that most Zontarians have gotten used to their Zemperor’s forceful, rash, colorful, and outspoken ways. Said Galactic Communication Overload Zupert Zurdoch, “They’ll believe what I tell them to believe. Even though I’m 193 years old.”

So far Zenpublicans in the Galactic Council, whether from fear, stupidity, or avarice, have continued to stand by their Zemperor. Asked to respond to the calls for Zenpublicans to apologize for Drumpf’s conduct, Sen. Zed Cruz said from his beachside tiki hut on the Mezican Coast, “I see nothing. Nothing.”

Harvard to America: So long, it's been good to know you

By Yard Correspondent Larry Lowell with Canadian Correspondent Ramona Flowers

Next week as they have for the past 373 years, the President and Fellows of Harvard College, joined by the Sheriff of Middlesex County on his white charger, will celebrate Commencement.

The graduates and their families will celebrate their newfound status,  thousands of alumni will mill about trying to look like they belong, or at least remember where they are, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will address the assembled great and good.

It's usually a festive occasion but this year the joy of those involved may be tempered by the realization that unless things change, it may well be the University's last Commencement.

Not content to illegally cut off billions of federal grants to University researchers, the Trump Regime has announced that it has lawlessly terminated the ability of all of Harvard's constituent schools to enroll, and cash tuition checks from, students outside the United States.

As Harvard Magazine reports:

There were 6,793 international students enrolled at Harvard during the 2024-2025 academic year, representing 27.3 percent of the student body. The tuition and other student charges they pay are an important source of income for the University. In fiscal year 2024, student-related income (such as tuition, room, and board fees, minus University-provided financial aid) was about $1.4 billion, representing approximately 21 percent of Harvard’s total operating revenue. International students typically pay closer to the full cost of a Harvard education than students from the United States. 

Halifax has a lovely harbor [That's not Halifax – R.F.]

The ostensible excuse for terminating with immediate effect the University's ability to enroll foreign students was a hysterical word salad of overblown threats, ranging from antisemitism to supposed collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party to taking puppies out behind Harvard Stadium and shooting them (oh wait, that was Kristi).

More particularly, Harvard had the nerve to resist unlawful demands to turn over virtually all records relating to international students in violation of federal privacy and other law.  The obvious point of the records request is to give DHS's body-snatchers a road map to seizing foreign students off the streets of Cambridge as they did with now-freed Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk.  Even Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman, who previously told us all to chill out because the courts will protect us, condemned the DHS special action.

Right now Harvard is fighting, filing a banger of a complaint to stop Kristi Noem from doing to the University what she did to her dog.  The lawsuit was immediately described by some juvenile Pol Potbelly cadre as “frivolous.” 

The Federal Court disagreed.   It took all of three hours to persuade Federal Judge Allison Burroughs to stop Kristi even before she could load her shotgun with arguments like this:

Yesterday, the government [revoked Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students] via a letter that makes plain that DHS is not even pretending to follow its own regulations, either as to process or as to substance. Instead, DHS all but announced that the revocation is blatantly in retaliation for Harvard’s exercise of its academic freedom. Revoking Harvard’s certification is unlawful many times over. It is a pillar of our constitutional system that the government cannot “invok[e] legal sanctions and other means of coercion” to police private speech, especially when the government’s treatment is animated by viewpoint discrimination....The government’s effort to punish the University for its refusal to surrender its academic independence and for its perceived viewpoint is a patent violation of the First Amendment.

Motion for TRO at 10, President and Fellows of Harvard College v. DHS (May 23, 2025, No. 25-cv-11472)

But even if honest judges stop the latest outrage cold (subject of course to the delicate sensibilities of the six bent Republican Supreme Court Justices), the onslaught against Harvard and other universities will continue without surcease. Pol Potbelly’s Congressional cadres have already passed a 21% endowment tax. If enacted, Harvard would face a $850 million tax bill every year until its financial condition reaches the level of a Trump casino.

We have a simple solution for Harvard’s plight: get the hell out of Dodge and move to a place where academic freedom is protected and the climate is as miserable as it is in Cambridge. The obvious location is Canada.

Our own suggestion is to follow the example of approximately 30,000 Americans unwilling to support our American Revolution and flee to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Halifax is reputed to be a nice place and, given its history, unsurprisingly reminiscent of the Boston area:

You will feel the dynamic energy in the air as you explore every corner of the city, from a diverse food scene and innovative hubs of technology and business to exciting sports events, beach days, and coastal hikes. Halifax continues to invest in innovation and growth and has a connected and thriving business community. We’re also home to diverse groups and cultures, welcoming people of all backgrounds who want to make this region home.

With a population of over 480,000 people, Halifax is the capital city of Nova Scotia and the educational, cultural, and economic hub of Atlantic Canada. Often referred to as Canada’s “best-kept secret,” Halifax boasts a youthful spirit, rich history, and scenic waterfront.

At least that’s what the website of Dalhousie University, which until Harvard’s arrival would be the leading academic institution there, says about its hometown. And colleges never lie about the charm of the city that houses their campus. Except Yale, that is.

Put Harvard here [That's our public garden, you idiot – R.F.]

It sounds nice and we’re sure somewhere in the greater Halifax metropolis they could shoehorn Harvard in. With what’s left of the endowment Harvard could build a new Georgian-style campus that would remind everyone of Cambridge, as long as they add some incomprehensible perpetually-jammed one way streets and belching diesel buses with their emissions control systems removed.

Given the relative values of real estate in Cambridge and Halifax, Harvard should be able to finance the move just by selling its original campus off as high priced condos and adopting longtime Cambridge City Councilor Al Vellucci’s plan to transform the deserted Yard into the John Harvard Car Wash.

But really anywhere in Canada would do the job of protecting Harvard from the depredations of crooked corrupt Russian-owned sex offenders and puppy killers. Winnipeg would be another possibility, as its sub-Arctic climate would remind all Harvardians of January in Cambridge. 

We have reason to believe that the new Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, would support Harvard's move north.  Canada's PM is better known to the President and Fellows of Harvard College as Mark Carney '87.

To those alleging that picking up and moving the university to a different country is unwarranted and unprecedented, consider the case of Central European University, an institution founded in 1989 intended to celebrate and foster free inquiry in Budapest, Hungry.

As Hungary fell under the sway of a Fascist corrupt power-mad Russian-stooge autocrat (sound familiar?) named Victor Orban, the Hungarian dictator systematically brought all independent institutions in Hungary under his control. When CEU declined his offer it couldn’t refuse, Orban enacted a series of laws intended to strangle the University.

To survive, CEU left its Budapest home and moved to Vienna, where it thrives today. If they can do it, Harvard certainly can.

Moving to Halifax with its cash hoard safely in the Bank of Nova Scotia would also protect Harvard’s endowment from further parasitic attacks demanded by intellectual giants like Gym Jordan and Marge “Threeway” Greene.

At the rate things are going, with a coup against America led by a corrupt depraved demented criminal Russian-owned President, backed by 100% of the craven Fascists of his party serving in Congress and majorities of white voters happy to sell their legacy of freedom for anger and bigotry, we may all end up in Halifax sooner rather than later.

It might be a good time to open Elsie’s of Halifax. A country that puts mayonnaise on hamburgers would certainly enjoy roast beef with Russian dressing.

None dare call it dementia

By Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling with Medical Editor Vincent Boom-Batz, M.D.

It was hard to pick out the most appalling moment at the recent Nerd Prom, formally known as the White House Correspondents Association annual dinner.  

The abrupt cancellation of Amber Ruffin, whom the WHCA leadership was shocked, shocked to learn would deliver jokes about the current President and his gang of drunken corrupt lackeys, was one.  The fact that having done a s*** job of covering the ongoing coup against America and the election that made it happen, they are now preening on the red carpet like the Real Housewives of Annandale, Va., or the chummy complicity evidenced between journalists and those whom they are supposed to cover without fear or favor were other candidates.

All the cool kids were at the WH Correspondents Dinner...

But for us the nadir was a self-congratulatory address by some hack named John Thompson who told the media they should be more like him in stating plainly that President Joe Biden was not fit to serve.  You all remember the crazy senseless decisions he made as President and the times he failed to respond quickly and appropriately to a national crisis, don't you?  We sure don't.

Thompson, plugging his book about Biden's supposed mental decline, castigated the media for failing to cover Biden's alleged incompetence.  He said nothing about his opponent's fitness for office. 

Jake Tapper has also pitched in by hyping his nothingburger exposé with tidbits like Biden's advisers fearing that he might someday in his second term use a wheelchair, like his utterly incompetent predecessor Franklin D. Roosevelt:

The media's supposed failure to attack Biden's fitness based on the facts that he was 82 and could get tired at the end of a day has now hardened into Conventional Wisdom, which is why that reliable geyser of such Wisdom, Jonathan Chait, passes it off in The Atlantic as it were a truth as firmly-established as Hussein's arsenal of nukes and biological weapons. That iron-clad tale was, you may recall, peddled by journalistic stalwarts like Jeffrey “Bombs Away” Goldberg, the former Iraq War shill who now runs, wait for it, The Atlantic! Spoiler alert: it was the basis for a gruesome war of choice that took 400,000 lives, and a brilliant career as a Washington savant, but it wasn't, um, true.

Chait even walks into the trap of berating supposed liberals who asked why the media wasn't reporting Trump's evident mental decline, as if asking reporters to cover an inescapable objective fact was nothing more than whiny what-aboutism.

But now that Chait has stepped on the mine, let's help him pursue his inquiry.

Wtf isn't the media covering the efflorescence of Trump's cognitive decline, on full display last year during his one tragic debate with Kamala Harris, his decision to turn a town hall into a karaoke party, or his outsourcing his great Madison Square Garden rally to neo-Nazis and bigots?  At the time, this was all reported as if it was just Trump being Trump.

But that was then.  Since the carnage and chaos of his Presidency began again on January 20, the evidence of cognitive collapse has been on display every time he opens his mouth or falls asleep at a Cabinet meeting or Papal funeral.

Here he is catching a snooze in the comfort of Mohammed bone Saw's palace: 

And here are some recent examples of nonsense, disinhibition, and other mental lapses all diagnostic of progressing dementia:

Is he President or the Roastmaster General? He hasn't a clue!

Now he's admitting he appoints randos to senior Government positions without knowing who the f*** they are:

It might be fair to argue that appointing a heroin-demented ignorant sadist to oversee Federal health policy is probative of dementia as well.

And here's one that needs no explanation:

We could go on, but here's just one more, evidencing his loss of productive vocabulary:

...but all agreed no one makes an entrance like Olivia Nuzzi

But we want to ask why the press (with the admirable exception of Aaron Rupar of Public Notice) hasn't taken any public notice of Pol Potbelly's dementia, when they could not stop rubbing out stories about Biden's supposed cognitive deficits.

A partial explanation, but not an excuse, is that unlike Biden, Pol Potbelly's cadres have steadfastly refused to leak their doubts about whether their boy is a few drumsticks short of a family bucket. 

Not a single Republican has dared to call out their Dear Leader's dementia, in part because they are don't want to undercut his program of government destruction and white supremacy, and in part because they know that he can retaliate by anointing some area stooge to crush them in the next Republican primary. 

What is harder to grasp is whey Democrats relentlessly refuse to point what would be a clear political winner for them.  If prominent Democrats like Amy “Hot Mess” Klobuchar or Chuck “Strong Questions” Schumer were to respond to the insane eructations of Pol Potbelly by citing them as evidence of mental incapacity, the press would have no choice but to report those charges, and the whiny Republican denials, thereby keeping the charge in the news.

Over time, even the professional cowards at The New York Times would have to admit that “some critics say” Trump is barking mad.  The conversation about his incompetence would pervade our political discussion, much as stupid talking points about “DEI” or “defending the border” do now.

Public opinion notices these discussions.  By the same token, the absence of any press or Democratic inquiry about the insanity of Pol Potbelly reassures the public that their Dear Leader is not in fact not strolling down Pennsylvania Avenue buck naked, his Yeti pubes sweating in the heat.

The media loves to lecture us on the vital necessity of full, if not fulsome, disclosure of any evidence of a President's cognitive decline.  But apparently that only applies if the President is Joe Biden.

Report From Washington: It's not a one-man coup

 

By Spy Washington Correspondent Nellie Bly with Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling

The Sunday New York Times was really bringing the fire last Sunday, marshaling almost all of its gasbags on an assault on the administration of Pol Potbelly.

From the left flank, Michelle Goldberg pounced:

This brutish hostility to foreigners has already changed the character of America, maybe irrevocably. And in this new America, even citizens shouldn’t count themselves safe. Trump is already talking about sending Americans to be locked up in El Salvador, far beyond the reach of our law. He’s laying siege to our universities for tolerating criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza by Americans as well as by foreign students and professors. There’s a reason Martin Niemöller’s poem is such a cliché. First they came for Khalil. They obviously weren’t going to stop there.

On the right, Weird Ross Douthat commented, unexceptionably, that tariffs were bad.

His colleague Bretbug, one of the last Republican neocon survivors of the once-mighty Hot Air Force which crashed and burned in Iraq, weighed in with a lethal strike on Pol Potbelly’s pro-Russian foreign policy:

Someone ought to tell Trump, Vance and other administration lemmings that nasty, dishonest and stupid is no way to conduct foreign policy. Since then, Russia has continued to press its barbaric attack while Ukraine fights on. All the meeting accomplished was to give America’s friends and foes a clearer sense of the dangerously self-infatuated fool in the White House.

Meanwhile in the center the heavy artillery of the anonymous Editorial Board thundered:

The first 100 days of President Trump’s second term have done more damage to American democracy than anything else since the demise of Reconstruction. Mr. Trump is attempting to create a presidency unconstrained by Congress or the courts, in which he and his appointees can override written law when they want to. It is precisely the autocratic approach that this nation’s founders sought to prevent when writing the Constitution.

Of course like good centrists they couldn’t avoid shelling their allies for being too “performative” and not reaching out to the very fine people who like it when Pol Potbelly’s campaign variety show features comics who compare Puerto Rico to a floating pile of garbage.

But let’s go back to that bit about creating a Presidency “unconstrained by Congress...”

We have a powerful Congress under the Constitution

There’s still a Congress sitting, last we looked, with both chambers dominated by slim but adequate Republican majorities. What are they doing to protect America from these outrages so eloquently set forth in the Newspaper of Record?

This week, the Senate is considering legislation to authorize a money-laundering crypto scam known as “stablecoin,” a fake crypto currency that’s supposed to maintain a stable $1 value because it’s backed by money. So why not use real money? Are there any reasons other than letting scam artists launder money without having to use a regulated banking system and bribe the President by investing in his latest, wait for it, stablecoin scheme, that is?

As usual, useless Democrats, their pockets bulging with real money from crypto finaglers, are trying to ram the legislation through while others are urging not fervent opposition, but caution.

Republicans, also smelling the real money from crypto promoters and afraid to get in the way of the Tangerine-Faced Grifter’s latest corrupt money-maker, are as usual backing the forces of greed and dishonesty.

Republican Senators are also trying to ram through the nomination of Ed Martin, an insurrectionist, election denier, and perverter of justice, to the job of US Attorney for Washington DC. Acting in that job, he has already brought the force of his office to threaten law schools, medical journals, and political activists for exercising their legal rights. This is a crime. 

This week Pol Potbelly is leaning on Republican Senators to approve this subversive nomination.

Republican tower of blubber Thom Tillis is supposedly against, but we’re waiting to hear which way performatively-moderate Susan Collins is going to jump, which is usually a function of whether her vote is needed for confirmation.

Meanwhile the Republican House, faced with the parade of horribles marshaled by The New York Times is focused on the supposed menace of anti-Semitism in colleges and universities that employ Democrats. According to The Guardian, the Republican inquisitors include a few whose Jew-loving credentials are, shall we say, open to question:

A number of Republican legislators set to grill university presidents in a congressional hearing on antisemitism this week are associated with calls for Jews to convert to Christianity, have quoted Adolf Hitler, or have reportedly threatened to burn a synagogue to the ground.

To borrow from Bobbie Fleckman, “And you don’t think that’s anti-Semitic?”

Republican funders expect to get the tax cuts they paid for

In fairness, the Republican Congressman who threatened to burn a synagogue to the ground was a Jewish Republican and it was his own synagogue. So that’s OK then and not at all a schondeh fir di Goyim.

Beyond installing corrupt insurrectionists as prosecutors and performing concern about those lovable Jews to destroy colleges they don’t like, Congressional Republicans have but one single overarching legislative goal this year: cutting rich people’s taxes permanently. The revenue loss would be made up by letting poor people starve, sicken, and die from Medicaid and food assistance cuts, and borrowing the rest.

With that vital legislative goal paramount, Republicans in Congress don’t have much time to worry about all of the terrible things so important to Times opinion columnists.

Which leads us to wonder why Republicans in Congress who have failed to thus far do even one tiny thing to protect the Constitution and the rule of law are getting a free pass from the massed gasbags at New York Times Opinion and to be fair pretty much everyplace else in the mainstream media, including the “pro-freedom” Washington Post.

There's no mystery about the motives of these soulless Republican Solons: they are craven and they are bad people.

They know that their political lives can be ended by Pol Potbelly's decision to back any nitwit in a Republican primary contest.  Never before in American history has a President been able to neuter Congressional majorities of his own party by threatening to primary them. But it’s working because they have nothing but their Trump Stamps. 

Many of them also agree with what is happening.  They never liked foreign aid, food stamps, health care for the poor, or anything that takes one dollar out of a rich white man's pocket for any purposes other than protecting the man's ill-gotten gains.  And many of them were elected only because 40 years of Republican pandering to white racists paid off across the American South, Midwest and prairie.

And yet the media, even the supposedly brave bits, can't bring themselves to state the obvious fact that all, all Republicans in Congress are either actively or by omission aiding and abetting the coup.  Here's The New Yorker on supine cowardly Republican Majority Leader John Thune:

Thune, a fourth-term senator from South Dakota, is an awkward leader for Trump’s ruthless Republican Party, in part because even Democrats invariably describe him as amiable and honest....Thune could pass for an actual movie star, with pale-blue eyes, a square jaw, and Mt. Rushmore cheekbones. Now sixty-four, he has salt-and-pepper hair that is still thick enough to part neatly on the side, and the broad shoulders, thick arms, and narrow waist of a basketball player. 

Yes, that's the important point: Unlike Ted Cruz, Thune's face doesn't make babies cry.

Actually, the important point is that our Constitutional system is being dismantled not just by Pol Potbelly and his raving cadres, but by every single elected Republican, including dreamboat John Thune. It’s almost like the entire Republican Party bears the blame for the chaos and carnage of the Pol Potbelly regime.

Despite their blistering fusillades last Sunday, we’d submit that the forces of The New York Times Sunday Opinion, The New Yorker, and anyone else who believes itself to be in the news business, have a long and grueling campaign ahead of them. They should saddle up.