Wednesday, May 31, 2017

day ONE HUNDRED and THIRTY TWO

the worst

i wake up expecting the worst
i check the new york times
the washington post, cnn
and fox new (for balance)
before the sleep is even out of my eyes
as if it were par for the course
we live in heavy times
we live with madmen waving flags
and running freedoms into the dirt
we’ve made their brutality
as common as a cup of coffee
a little headline to flip past on your phone
so maybe you shouldn’t expect
to take your kids to see some pop star sing
and make it home alive
watch out for the flying shrapnel
as the keyboard ends and the pink balloons fly
maybe an evening filled with security
is simply too much to ask for these days
at least twenty-two dead in manchester
add that to the twenty dead in sandy hook
add it to the hundreds of thousands in syria
in iraq, in afghanistan, in africa, take it all the way
back to those planes slamming into our collective ego
go back as far as you can
start counting the bodies
in a mathematical quagmire of carnage
that would drive einstein mad
try and figure out what kind of animal you are
look at the monster on the other side of the mirror
that allows this circus of blood to move on
suck down the capitulation like a latte
flip over to the sports page for some solace
binge watch it all away
but brace yourself for the next big hit
because it’s coming whether you want it or not
like the bridge to a top 40 hit
that’s stuck in your head
and won’t leave…no matter what you do.

--John Grochalski


                                    

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

day ONE HUNDRED and THIRTY ONE

Farmyard Chicken

My mother was once chased, screaming,
by a headless chicken on the family farm.
And now, like a farmyard chicken,
my country has lost its head
and is running amok. As bewildered children,
we laughed and chased it, but when
it didn't stop and refused to die
we became frightened, brought in the experts
who were too polite to end the horror
but said instead,
"Give the chicken a chance."

--Jak Rogers

Monday, May 29, 2017

day ONE HUNDRED and THIRTY

joey america

joey america
loves budweiser
he keeps telling everyone on the circle line
american beer for america
the evening of a ninety degree day
and we’re packed like cattle on this thing
my parent’s idea but i aim to please
although i’ve been battling a fever
and the shits for three days
being packed on anything feeling that way
is akin to death
i can’t even get a budweiser down
i’ve been sober for two days now
and want to commit murder
but instead i sit there and hope
that i don’t have to shit on the boat
as joey america and everyone around him
get up to take pictures of gleaming manhattan
you gotta wave, he says
gotta wave, joey tells everyone
then he shouts and hoots
at every boat we pass on the hudson
screams and chants USA! USA! as fighter jets pass overhead
i wonder where they manufacture guys like joey america
is it the water or the breeding?
some factory out in the heartland?
red white and blue cargo shorts and dipshit sandals
in fact, most of the people around me
are wearing something american
one guy has a t-shirt that says, pride
with an image of a soldier busting out of an american flag
he and joey america should go bowling
that is if i don’t rip the budweiser out of his hands
and push him into the river
never forget! joey shouts when we get to the world trade center
never effin forget! he says, looking around the boat
before he holds his can of beer up to the mammoth building
like a lighter at a rock concert during an anthem
another iconic moment for an iconic city
or maybe it’s just a beer commercial he’s ripping off
because sometimes you can’t tell the difference
between the two in this country.

-- John Grochalski

                                                                       

Sunday, May 28, 2017

day ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY NINE

corner of 19th avenue
and 78th street (brooklyn)

american flags
hang like cheap propaganda
from the big homes of champion philistines

as construction workers
tell tit jokes to the honking cars
in rush hour traffic

under the threat of rain
the spring sky smells like
smog and a vegetal death

as an obese pigeon shits
impressively on my shoulder and chin

all for good luck
i’ll later be told.

--John Grochalski

                                    


Saturday, May 27, 2017

day ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY EIGHT

                                    Can't Build a Wall....Hands too Small
                                                    --photo by Ally Malinenko

WineDrunk SideWalk: Shipwrecked in Trumpland week EIGHTEEN weekly wrap up

DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER is officially an idiot abroad and I don’t know about you, but the air feels fresher with him gone, the food tastier, the grass greener…the sky a blue I’ve never seen before. Let’s enjoy this while we have it.

But that’s right…DOUCHE and his trophy wife, trophy daughter and Russian-election colluding son-in-law landed in Saudi Arabia to fanfare and gold medals, and the kind of fun that only a repressive SUNNI government can lavish. Contrary to DOUCHE’s complaints about Michelle Obama not wearing a headscarf, Trophy Wife and Trophy Daughter too did not wear the customary female headgear…but hypocrisy being DOUCHE’s forte no one was surprised. No one should also have been surprised about the big payoff for the war machines.  That’s right, the jetlag not even dusted away on his platinum blonde wig, DOUCHE and the Saudis signed a $110 billion dollars arms deal…that oughta keep the war machine moving along until we find the next nation to invade! Apparently there was a lavish party and dancing and Rexy got to hold a sword, and even Toby “courtesy of the red,white and blue” Keith performed for a, of course, male only audience….sounds like they had some fun….DOUCHE even gave a big boy speech. Curious what all the inbred nazis who attend his rallies think about all of that DOUCHE lovin goin' on in the Middle East

On Sunday a large group of Notre Dame students walked out on their graduation commencement speech given by none other than HUGELY popular ex-governor and president-in-waiting (god help us all) Mike Pence. That’s right many students felt it would be better to leave the ceremony rather than stay and listen to Pence’s hollow speech about duty and love, and listen to him bitch about safe spaces and trigger warnings and whether or not he was seated next to a single woman who might mesmerize him with her unclaimed vagina….i mean who wouldn’t want to sit through a speech like that? Afterwards Pence admitted to being disappointed that he didn’t get the kind of response that Betsy DeVos got at Bethune-Cookman University, and that too cook up those old feelings he was thinking about hitting Broadway again for another showing of Hamilton. 

To nobody’s surprise (at least not mine) Michael Flynn plead the good ol’ 5th on Tuesday instead of turning over emails and other assorted papers on the investigation into the DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER’s campaign colluding with the Russian’s during the now infamous 2016 presidential election. According to the House Oversight Committee, Flynn mislead investigators about his income with Russian companies and his contacts with official….pleading the 5th could put Flynn in contempt of Congress, provided we didn’t have a congress run by domestic terrorists…so pretty much Flynn can just take his ball and go home.

For those of you who thought DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER’s nefarious and downright EVIL budget would be the biggest horror to contend with on Tuesday….THIS happened. What is there to say when you and your kids can’t even attend a concert by some shitty popstar? What can I really write about this living in a country that in December of 2012 some nutter shot and killed 20 kids between the ages of six and seven, and the GOP led house and senate basically shrugged? I will say this…something like this happening here in America under the DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER regime is one of the biggest fears that I have going. As a collective Americans are ignorant of the past, ill-bred, and vengeful….should this happen here we’d all but trade whatever freedoms we had left to let plastic tough guys like DOUCHE talk their bullshit…that said…if you’re a prayer person….we’ve seen this so much in this world…you know the deal…and let’s hope DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER is long gone should this ever happen here…again.

of course our own great orator DID add his two cents

And it didn't even take a day for ISIS to claim responsibility and for a 23 year old man to be arrested
in connection. As a facebook friends of mine, Kelly Stradeja stated,  The Manchester killer didn't just target the young, he targeted young girls. It's important to have a conversation about terror and how men are being recruited but it is equally important to talk about the role that misogyny plays in the minds of the overwhelmingly male attackers. Look at their histories. Look at how the majority of them have domestic violence in their pasts. It is important to not bury the targeting of women and girls as just a random terror attack. It was not random. He picked this specific concert on purpose.”

This is something to think long and hard about as ISIS and DOUCHE throw back 3 grade
insults at each other. For more food for thought here's an article from the GUARDIAN.

And what about DOUCHE’s 2018 budget….well, I’ve sure never seen anything like it. Among the highlights:  gutting Medicaid by over $800 billion over the next 10 years cutting benefits for nearly 10 million people; $193 billion in cuts to food stamps; an increase in military spending by 10% added to an already inflated budget; $2.6 billion for border security with some of that money going to DOUCHE’s bullshit wall; $272 billion overall for welfare programs; $72 billion in cuts to disability benefits; an elimination to student loan programs for the poor…and that’s just the shit I can get my hands on as I write this…of course it is predicted that this budget is DOA…but the sheer and evil audacity of its very existence is startling in and of itself….although having a mentally unstable racist, sexist, philistine in the WH…again, no one should be surprised....the GOP...saving money for
the rich and for war at the expense of you and me

On Wednesday DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER met Pope Francis at the Vatican.  One is a man of peace, the other is a plastic tough guy. One runs a fantasy organization based on an Imaginary character, and the other lives in his own fantasyland and most people WISH he was an imaginary character…also, back during the campaign days DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER insulted the pope…so this oughta be a fun and exciting meeting. Maybe they should just watch a movie. You know, I was at the Vatican once…for a bunch of uptight patriarchs they have a lot of nice art...and that's
all I have to say about the place.

Friday, May 26, 2017

day ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY SEVEN

keystone or frieze -

Aorta, fist of flesh,
furious instrument of this

most enigmatic life,
little Hamlet, do you swear

to tell the truth? Your
Honor, Monday, Cosmic

Mother, Yahweh-God, let
their pain be held in

abeyance as I catch
my beating breath.

Thin ice, frozen lake
of empathy and internet,

Psyche drips. Cupid burns.
The Pieta just stood up

and walked out of the room.
St. Timothy is leading the

zombie apocalypse
petrified and unaware

how to make a truck
into a fertilizer bomb.

Monday, Monday,
the people are lost.

Monday, all the clocks
are wrong and the

gravity of furniture
holds me like a lover

on the floor. Source code,
instantaneous dissemination

of information, world wide
web, actual versus factual,

help me on Earth as it
is in the imaginarium

of tools. I see my
face in the faces

of every evil deed
done by every evil man.

Are we keystone or frieze?
Acceptance and inclusion

like two arms open and outstretched,
Darkness, Monday, Lord, God,

show me who saves the terrible places. I'll only die tonight

for the right words, the right
words and the terrible places.

--Paul Konieki

Thursday, May 25, 2017

day ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY SIX

Unite

Nothing can stop us but us
people, we are time divine
with words and wisdom
to right the wrongs. Unite!

People we are time divine
no effort is beyond us
to right the wrongs, unite!
Organized and energized

no effort is beyond us.
Everything can be our bridge
organized and energized
the walls are coming down.

Everything can be our bridge
All it takes is love and trust
the walls are coming down
Everyone is getting on the bus

All it takes is love and trust
America, home of the brave
Everyone is getting on the bus
crossing the land of the free

America, home of the brave
Nothing can stop us but us
Crossing the land of the free
To right the wrongs, Unite!

--Matt Sradeja

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

day ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY FIVE



After Midnight Melancholia XIII

Do they still sit in Chicago
the way they did in Detroit?
Heads slung like loose pails
over boilermakers and a bowl of chips,
their pockets weighted with punch
card receipts and lottery ticket steam,
fingers, swollen and numb,
curled against the ache
to dam rivers running down the glass.

Are they still praying for rain in San Ysidro,
            the way they did Juarez?
Huddled in hull of moving truck trailers,
sweat and muscle packed on top of sweat and muscle,
the long haul over borders,
carrying the weight of the disappeared in their pockets,
fingering the empty space
as they climb into Coyote’s mouth,
shed their skin for his and take
on the shape of car seat cushions,
spare tires, the spaces between the frame.

Are the clubs still closed in Miami,
the way they were on the Tenderloin?
The long line of mourners
in step with sound of gunshots,
the deafening thud of bullets on the dancefloor,
grim faces in the stobe
caught in the anguish of metal meeting flesh.
The clipped sprigs, culled from the varietals of love,
laid at the feet of another soft figure
bound to a fence post and wrapped
in the thorny arms of barbed wire.

Are the waters still muddied
        in Memphis,
the they were in Lafayette?
Hammered by hurricanes
named for their mothers and runaway sisters,
the future ghosts of milk carton babies
break bottles against vacancy
and wrong way traffic signs.
Sirens bleed red and blue,
shattering the fragile seal of the night.

Are they still pulling bodies from the lake?
Skin bloated and bruised.
Nests for black scaled snakes and leeches.
Eyes long eaten away.
The sockets full with foul-smelling mud.
Generations below the surface
Now strung up like prize catches
Live on my facebook stream.

Are we pulling people off of planes now?

Are we making lists?

Yes.
The answer is yes.
The answer is always yes.

The old projector rattles,
its ancient gears spinning in reverse
waking its horrible radiate eye.
News reel phantoms shudder across the drug store wall,
across the skeletal shape of tight packed trees at night,
goosesteping over cars in an empty railyard,
across the ceiling of your bedroom as your children sleep.
The faces on the television laugh
on high above the imperial pulpit.
They spit and sweat fear from their eyes.
With fingers, thick and fat,
they lick the other side of the screen clean,
wagging in disbelief at the fires in the street.
Boogeymen to claim a phantom in every bed,
reaching long hands from the closet
to steal the depth of color from your eyes.
           The sky isn’t blue,
            it’s falling.
It’s just locker room talk.
A cigar is a cigar.
Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
You’re the puppet,

and another bloodstain blisters
on a sidewalk in Englewood,
between her pretty little legs,
clenched in the fist of the first punch thrown.
The answer is yes.
The answer is always yes,

but do we rise?
Do we shake off the sluggish bonds of sleep
and rise?
Cross the cold, stark light of morning
and rise?
With the phantoms of our lesser selves still clinging to our hearts
do we rise?
And with uneasy steps and ragged breath
do we rise?
To reach into the stubborn darkness
and answer the hellish resonance
rebounding off every wall
until it seems to surround us,
until every step away becomes ever in, ever in…

Do we rise?

The answer is yes.

The answer is always yes.

--Larry Duncan

Bio: Larry Duncan currently lives in Redondo Beach, CA. His poetry has appeared in Juked, the Mas Tequila Review, Emerge Literary Journal and the Free State Review. He is the author of two chapbooks, Crossroads of Stars and White Lightning and Drunk on Ophelia. To learn more about Larry and his writing, visit at http://larrydunc.wix.com/larry-duncan.

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

day ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY FOUR

Poison Park

I can’t see the hill from here. This isn’t the place I remember
calling my home. But maybe I was just delusional before this.
It feels to me now that the world is half-mad half of the time
and more than half-mad the rest of the time. Cruel and selfish
people who opt to look the other way when it’s convenient for
them to do so are allowing some to take advantage, making it
harder on those who are struggling, adding strife to their lives.
And I'm doubtful I can convince him that life is not just some
kind of a business transaction. Or that it’s too small of a planet
for that kind of talk. That it could very easily get us all killed.

My friend Meghan says she doesn’t believe in God, but that
she puts her faith in people, and so when something like this
happens, it makes her question her faith. People are so awful.
Maybe Jimmy was right when he said that the world is ending.
Someone burnt out the old cork. Perhaps humanity has jumped
the shark. Our dignity slowly sliding away. It’s so painful see it.
I want to believe I can make a difference, but I’m discouraged.
I got nothing. At night, I try to sleep and all I that hear is a noise
that sounds like some music from the other side of the moon.
The last time was the last time. The dogs, they go with me

--Scott Silsbe

Monday, May 22, 2017

day ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY THREE

i followed a trump supporter

not like on facebook or twitter
but for real…on the street
i didn’t mean to but he came walking out of his house
right in front of me
i was on my way to work
and was in no way lurking around the neighborhood
just waiting for one of his inbred minions
or some teenagers to sell me pot
i knew he was a trump supporter
because i pass the house nearly every morning
and i pretty much have every house
that had a trump sign on its lawn memorized
not for any grand devious plan on my part
my mind just works like that
but i always believed that it was best to know my enemies
really, it wasn’t my fault that we were walking the same way
and that he was walking fast
well…not too fast but too fast for me to pass him
and i couldn’t cross the street because there’s that dog on the other side
who lunges at me like he wants to take a piece out of my ass
that dog could probably smell a pinko a mile away
if dogs could vote…that one would’ve voted for trump
but this trump supporter
this walking paper patriot
he looked the way i thought a real live trump supporter would look
he had his head shaved
with a lot of tattoos of eagles and flags on his arms
camouflage t-shirt and combat boots
g.i. joe with a million dollar home in brooklyn
he probably eats the american flag for lunch
and i didn’t mean to follow him to his car
it was simply parked along my route
and i put it down here…only for posterity, of course
that he drives a cherry red honda pilot
with a these colors don’t run bumper sticker
the license plate is from new york
but i didn’t get the numbers because, quite frankly,
my ipod died on me again
and by the time i was done cursing it and the ghost of steven jobs
and looked up again he was already gone
not that i wanted his license plate number mind you
for anything untoward
…an innocent guy like me wouldn’t even know
what to do with information like that.   

--John Grochalski                          

Sunday, May 21, 2017

day ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY TWO

The ICE Men Cometh
 
Men made of shit say bring it on
They target souls from Mexico
They lie to us, themselves they con
They go to places only killers go
 
Behind the fence, behind the wall
to places where the bones lie deep
They murder freedom, hope and all,
the promises this land would keep --
 
if it were built on liberty,
if it were called 'land of the free,'
if founders vowed their work to be
the cradle-home of liberty. 
 
The soulless call for more police
They beat their chests and wave a gun
The tallies of their sins increase
Beneath drear clouds and bloody sun
 
Their skeletons will walk the land
In endless night of poisoned dreams
To bloody work they lend their hand
to infants' cries and parents' screams
 
They feed their face on cries of fear
Their hearts are drained of human blood
The countdown of their days draws near
Their brains are ash, their bodies mud
 
No one will mourn their dying day.
The statue weeps for those they hurt
Their tyrant's sins in hell they pay
Her tears stir life; their flesh is dirt.
 
--Robert Knox

Saturday, May 20, 2017

day ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY ONE

The Bottom Line

Their only religion
is the bottom line
Moneytheistic principles
that fill their minds
with sugar plum fairies
bonuses and profits
taxes avoided
insider trading
(but just among their friends)
and jobs for their children
who look and think like them.

On bended knees
they pray to the lords
of bigger and bigger banks
and funds that are hedged
and jobs that are lost.

What a wonderful country
they live in
now that it’s theirs
(and the President, too)
with their futures invested
in offshore banks.

--Neil Ellman

WineDrunk SideWalk: Shipwrecked in TrumpLand week SEVENTEEN weekly wrap up

Welcome to week seventeen folks...where the "witch hunt" is in full bloom!

If we can, for a moment, we’re going to use the good ol’ WineDrunk SideWalk time machine and take us back to last week before I comment, rant about the new horrors shaping the decline of the United States Empire this week. In all of the James Comey hoopla I forgot to comment on the fact that Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, our Attorney General, is bringing back the WAR on Drugs. Yes, the DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER regime, having not yet selected a new country for the USA to go to war with, has decided to continue its assault on its own citizens by bringing back a tougher version of the archaic, demoralizing failure of an incarceration policy. Sessions has given a directive to federal prosecutors (who already have too much power and influence in the justice system) to simply do away with the Obama-era Smart on Crime initiative. What this means is a full on return to the failed drug policies of the 1970s and 1980s which saw prison populations spike astronomically and harsher, more long-term sentences handed down for drug offenses. Sessions chose to do this at a time when even congressional consensus is that draconian policies such as these simply DO NOT WORK…but Jefferson Beauregard Sessions being the racist prick that he is, is forging ahead with his plan that will mostly affect communities of people of color….but who knows? Maybe Jeffy will have the cops at college campuses and in the burbs arresting Toby and Brad for selling pot to their friends too…fucking doubt it. DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER is a moron but he’s a political neophyte….Jeffy has been in politics for decades…he know exactly what he’s doing and he knows exactly whom it is that he is setting out to hurt.


…and how about this for a segue:

                                          photo by Allison Wrabel/The Daily Progressive via Associated Press

heartwarming isn’t it? no, this isn’t a candlelight vigil being held…for whatever it is people hold candlelight vigils…no, those are torches…torches being held by a pack of sensitive little, white supremacy snowflakes lead by Richard Spencer (last seen getting his ass handed to him on inauguration day) last Saturday night under the statue of the venerable symbol of racism and hatred, Robert E. Lee, in Charlottesville, Virginia, of all places. These neo-KKK rallies and protests have been popping up in places in the South (primarily New Orleans) as city and town mayors have begun taking down statues of the likes of Lee as well as Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, and renaming parks previously given a moniker associated with someone from the confederacy. Seems that Mr. Spencer and his ill-bred cohorts have a problem with this washing away of history, and these torch-light rallies are a part of their last grasp attempt to hold onto elements of their sick and violent history of aggression….i say so long Robert E. Lee Park…howdy, John Lewis Playground. 

Another day…another step toward impeachment (I kid…I just wanted to make Mitch McConnell laugh…provided he’s reading). But apparently firing an FBI director wasn’t enough for DOUCHE….no reports have it that DOUCHE shared classified information in regards to ISIS last week with Russian foreign minister and ambassador, Sergey V. Lavrov. From what I’ve read the information was disclosed to the U.S. was so sensitive that it hadn’t even been much discussed in U.S. government circles let alone amongst our allies.... and of course said double-crossed ally had to be…wait for it…wait for it…Israel! The BFF of allies. The ace ally. The “my word is as solid as oak ally. The we’ll-look-the-other-way-while-you-keep-building-those-illegal-settlements ally. The let’s get together and do each other’s hair while we unnecessarily continue to vilify Iran to the world…ALLY.

Excuse me for a moment for this one indulgence over the course of these 121 horrid days but…HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!


The President, god help us all, can declassify information as he/she (one day…one day) sees fit, but, as with everything else in DOUCHE’S administration, this is highly irregular….personally I can’t tell if this was just general stupidity on DOUCHE’s part…or if this continues to be a part of the quid pro quo for helping to hand him the election…I guess we’ll see…I mean we will…the GOP will continue to keep playing a solid game of see no evil, hear no evil.

The DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER shitpile keeps getting thicker and stinkier folks on Tuesday evening word got out that DOUCHE personally asked former FBI director James Comey to end the inquiry into Michael Flynn’s involvement with Russia. Apparently Comey documented this in a memo in February….and not like a post-it note or chicken scratch grocery lists, around Washington they take FBI director memos pretty fucking seriously….this is shaping up to be obstruction of justice 101 here...and Comey is proving to be the wrong gal to jilt! All the same it's another hour/Another scandal and the democrats are outraged in that we-don’t-have-any-actual-power way and Republicans are shrugging and asking for more evidence because, let’s face it, those swine gave up governance long before DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER rolled into town in his golden, Russian subsidized limo, and, honestly, El DOUCHERINO could probably come flying onto Capitol Hill naked on a Putin’ Penis shaped missile with Kim Jong Un and Recep Erdogan taking turns sucking off the tip, and the GOP would still be hard pressed to find anything untoward and actually do their jobs….unless the Koch Brothers decide that it’s time to act like big boys and girls and govern.


Seemingly impervious, or simply clueless, to the shit-storm brewing around him, DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER has been making the commencement speech rounds in recent days, first visiting the next generation of promise keepers or keeper promises or whatever they call themselves at bullshit shit Liberty College, and more tellingly on Wednesday giving a commencement speech at the Coast Guard Academy. As with everything DOUCHE does the speech to the coast guard kids was more about himself than having anything to do with the graduates or, as in presidential commencement speeches of the past, anything to do with his agenda (does DOUCHE even have an agenda other than outright idiocy and incompetence at this point?). No, DOUCHE used the speech to bitch about his treatment by the media saying: “Look at the way I’ve been treated, especially by the media. No politician in history—and I say this with great surety—has been treated worse or more unfairly.” Former presidents Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy responded by turning over in their graves...or let's not even go that route....let's just ask President Obama how badly and how much
bullshit he put up with coming from Republican fucktards for the last eight years....go home DOUCHE...do yourself a favor and resign now.

and finally four months (and seemingly ten years) into this farce of an administration, the justice department on Wednesday FINALFUCKINGLY appointed former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III as special counsel into the investigation of ties between the DOUCHE campaign and Russian officials. The decision was made by soon-to-be former deputy attorney general Rod J. Rosenstein after a week in which anyone with half a brain (excluding Paul "keep it in the family" Ryan and Bitch McConnell) could see how much damage this administration was causing to the actual fiber of American life. Because I’m tired and hungover and this fucking dickwad's presidential term has basically taking over my writing mornings you can read for yourself about the duties of the special counsel right HERE.


fun fact?  Immigration arrests have risen 38% since DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER took office

Ding Dong the Ailes is dead! Wake up, you sleepy head, rub your eyes, get out of bed. Ding Dong, the wicked Ailes is dead!

that said....RIP Chris Cornell...I wasn't the biggest Soundgarden fan, but Superunknown got
me through some rough rides home after fighting with an old girlfriend all evening.

not to sound like out Millennial friends but I...Literally...Can't...EVEN...anymore
I've been back in the states for two weeks...and I need another vacation from America

On top of all these domestic messes…DOUCHE leaves Friday for a trip to play golf in not only Saudi Arabia, but also Israel (awkwaaaaard), Italy and Belgium…while I’m glad to see is flabby, orange ass out of the U.S. for a bit… to star in the American version of An Idiot Abroad, let’s hope he leaves behind Betty Ross’ award winning apple pie recipe….can’t let that get into Saudi hands…not for anything.... on a personal note, DOUCHE, I hope you have so much turbulence to and from that you puke up every blood red cheeseburger you manage to shove down your fat, orange throat.
 
you know it's all well and good that DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER could be impeached...or he could
resign...or he could resign while being impeached...or resign after...or spin himself into such a tizzy that he barrels through the earth and melts at its core....we just don't know....but should DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER be removed from office, while I'll feel that momentary sense of relief deep down I know that we'll be faced with this:
 
 
 
 
 
 
...or this asshole
 
 
 
 
 
 
...or this asshole
 
 
 
 
 
.....or even THIS asshole
 
 
 
...so.....
 
Anyway...hang in there folks.  Only 1339 days to go.  And stick around. At 10:30 today
we have the poetry of Neill Ellmans and Tomorrow at 10:30 the poetry of Robert Knox

as always....SUBMIT2RESIST: winedrunksidewalk@gmail.com
 
 


Friday, May 19, 2017

day ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY

Zangara

I am a friend of nobody
I have the gun in my hand
I kill kings and presidents first
next all capitalists

this distress comes from no failure of substance
a great number toil with little return
rich people make them suffer
as they do stomach pain to me

I believe in the land, the sky, the moon
nature offers bounty
humans multiply it
plenty is at our door
but generous use languishes
because the rulers of exchange
have failed through stubborn incompetence
                  through unscrupulous practice
it’s the money changers that should
stand to be indicted in the court of public opinion

Now they claim to flee their high seats
stripped of the lure of profit
they only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers.

We should hope to restore our temple to ancient truths
that restoration founded
on social value
more noble than profit
and happiness not in money
but in achievement

So, give me the electric chair
I’m not afraid of that chair
you son of a bitch
you’re one of the capitalists
you’re a crook too
put me in the electric chair
I don’t care
goodbye to poor people’s everywhere
push the button
go ahead
push the button

--Jason Baldinger 

Thursday, May 18, 2017

day ONE HUNDRED and NINETEEN

Status Report 246

Scrub tub
fill with water too hot for skin
ease in
lean back to pain pleasure
of wet heat engulfing body
roomful of steam muffling sound
reality in-bound
when scritch scritch scritch
in litter box
four feet away
sneaks into mind
followed by foul stench
of cat's upset stomach defecation
filling room
ending perfect pleasure
and the medit of my ation
as I rise 
to deal with fresh shit
flashing on the dump Trump 
done on our Presidential election

--Steven B. Smith

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

day ONE HUNDRED and EIGHTEEN

I Felt the Bern

It’s just not time for your tsunami.
You rocked millennial faults,
shook the china off the old-guard, status-quo armoire.
Your aftershocks resurrected the Jesus lovers.
Like useless wasps, the pro-lifers woke up buzzing-mad.

You were the building wired
to reconfigure the whole block.
Someone hit the switch too soon,
a deconstruction hitch. Our future, and yours, deferred.
You were the one who started the temblor,
ignited the fire, preached reconstruction
You introduced us to what our world could be.

You were the comforting fire at which
we rubbed our hands together, sealing our
ballots after stormy hatred and chilly debates.
One future day the fire will comfort again.
Will it warm you and me?

Remember the hordes that gave you
rock-star cachet? They are the voting future.
Those who staffed the picketing chaos are the past.
We pull up the boots of hope, ignore the blisters,
and keep trudging forward.

Thank you for showing me politics isn’t
all dollars, prejudice and stolen freedoms.
I felt the Bern. I always will.


       Jeri Thompson©2016

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

day ONE HUNDRED and SEVENTEEN

A Message For President Trump #4

The first message has been published on the internet

I'm sure if you have a list, I'm on it

I told my father this, he said not to worry, you have a long list

You wouldn't be the first goons to go through my apartment

I could only hope you will treat it, like you treat all culture or intelligence

& you would just ignore it

--Michael Grover

Monday, May 15, 2017

day ONE HUNDRED and SIXTEEN

If any of you out there have read, or are actually a fan, of my two novels The Librarian and Wine Clerk…well…then I guess I have a treat for you. I’m currently working on a third installment of the Rand Wyndham saga (I’m kidding…it’s not called a saga…assholes call things sagas) entitled The Poet. The book takes place when DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER was still running for president and hadn’t yet brought his highchair antics to official government. What I’m posting today is what is currently Chapter Twenty Three in a rough draft version of the novel that I have going. For those of you who like Rand…enjoy…for the uninitiated…hope you enjoy. For those of you who hate Rand…na na na na……


TWENTY THREE

The blizzard came. It was this record two-foot storm that blew in on a Friday evening, and killed everyone’s weekend. It was the biggest snowstorm in decades; the biggest snowstorm during the warmest winter on record. Even so the orange-faced billionaire and other republicans were using the blizzard to claim that climate change was a hoax. Airports were closed. Roads were blocked. Emergency vehicles only. We waited for the frogs to fall from the sky, and the political spin to make snow angels. All I knew was that it had been sixty degrees at the beginning of January, and three weeks later we were freezing our asses off and buried under two-feet of snow.
The goddamned boiler in my shithole building had burst the day of the storm. I woke up to no heat and no hot water, and the snow and wind duking it out for supremacy out my window. Larissa was staying with me because waiting out the blizzard at my place had initially seemed a better option than the two of us being stuck in all weekend with Millicent Xiao, her bat shit roommate. Then that boiler shit happened. And it had gotten so cold, so fast; we couldn’t even fuck it was so cold. We couldn’t shower lest we be submitting ourselves to some kind of ancient torture. At least we had food and strong drink, which I was taking medicinally during the course of our horror. Booze warmed me up. It fortified me. I wasn’t so sure I could say the same for Larissa.
            “How are you even out of bed?” she asked me from the warm tangle of sheets. I was sitting at the machine trying to get some writing done in the cold. Three pairs of socks and the hardwood floor was still numbing my feet. I could see my breath inside. I was still stuck on the line I had a sick feeling in my stomach.
            “I’m a sadist by nature,” I said. “Hence my fascination with your dildo collection.”
“Ow.” I looked back and Larissa was holding her head. She looked pale in the soft, yellow glow of the small bedside lamp. “I meant how are you even out of bed with what you drank last night.”
“Any morning I’m not leaning over the shitter I consider a victory and an opportunity not to be squandered.”
            “Why do you drink so much?”
            I shrugged. “Maybe I’m scared shitless of something. Or I can’t face the truth. Most likely I’m your run-of-the-mill weak degenerate who falls into any habit to pass the time, and I don’t like crossword puzzles or chess.”
            Her mouth made that familiar bubble. Larissa sprang from my bed and bolted for the door. She barely hit the bathroom light and flipped the toilet lid, before she was face in and expelling those demons into the ice cold water. “God,” she said, after a few rounds of vomit and a hearty flush. “Why don’t you ever flush!”
            I was a yellow let it mellow kind of guy in a world full of water wasters. Still I should’ve showed decorum. I got up from my chair. Fuck writing anyway. I went into the bathroom and Larissa was on the floor clutching the bowl, her jet black hair all in her face. She was dressed in black pajamas and that hooded hot pink sweatshirt with the skull and crossbones. I felt terrible for her.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
            “Does it look like it?” The she rose and hurled into the bowl, motioning for me to get the hell out of the bathroom. I stood in the hallway with the door half shut, feeling like a fucking creep. “So cold,” Larissa finally said. Then she flushed.
            “Can I come in?” I opened the door without her responding and found the poor girl fetal on my bathroom floor. I wished I’d had the foresight to mop it. But what people didn’t know about home décor didn’t hurt them. “Get you a glass of water?”
            “How much did we drink?” she asked.
            “The usual trapped in a freezing apartment during a blizzard amount.”
            “I can’t.” Larissa rolled on her back. “Rand, I seriously can’t keep doing this.”
            She held out her arms and I pulled her up from the bathroom floor. She was an intoxicating blend of morning breath, vomit, cheap Chilean wine, and whatever that vegan chili she’d made had been full of.  I walked her into the living room, which had become a cold, dark shell with that boiler being out. The coffee table was a landscape of remote controls, books, wine bottles, dirty wine glasses, and receipts I’d been too lazy to toss. All of our blankets were still on the couch. Larissa crawled in on her side, and I covered her up with everything. She still shivered.
She had strength enough to turn on the television to one of the 24/7 news networks that she was hooked on. The orange-faced billionaire was on the screen. He was bloviating about Mexicans or Muslims or The Blacks, as he called them. It was hard to tell. The hate permeated the cold room. America felt like it was ending outside and on the television. I didn’t like the country, but I didn’t want to see it go out like this. Good Christ, I thought. I might actually vote. That orange-faced fuckwad had made yours truly a patriot.
            “This monster is going to make me sick again,” Larissa said. “How can people follow this guy? He’s like listening to Hitler…and maybe that’s not even fair.”
            “I hate to tell you,” I said. I pointed at the television where the orange-faced baboon was mocking a crippled reporter. “That’s your next president.”
            “He can’t be.” Larissa lifted her head to glare at him then promptly put it back down. “He’s got no chance.”
            “That orange-faced ghoul is the perfect American.” I watched him shouting on the TV. “He’s boorish, he’s willfully ignorant, he’s sexist, racist and xenophobic, which is quite the hat trick by the way, and he’s wealthy. Americans love the wealthy. What was it that Steinbeck said…”
            “I’ll move to Canada,” Larissa said.
            “You ever been to Toronto? It’s like New York if you take all of the fun and excitement out of it.”
            “What will be left here?”
            “Riots,” I said. “Bloodshed. The Constitution in tatters. I sat down on the couch and Larissa put her legs on my lap. Intimacy was so easy for her sometimes. “He’s got as much of a chance as the rest of those GOP domestic terrorists. Plus they keep giving him all of this news coverage because of that reality show he was on. Americans are inherently stupid. And they like tough talkers. We’re just seeing the Republican end on this. Wait until the average voter decides. Democrats are just a dumb. They’re pouty. If they don’t get their candidate they’ll stay home…and this asshole will win.”
            “Independent voters will never buy this,” Larissa said.
            “I was an independent voter,” I said. “I used to think that meant independent of thought. A kind of liberated political spiritualism. But really it just means being a confused, thumb-sucking jack-off with no real moral fiber. We’re headed toward a cliff, kid. Best pack a parachute.”
            “Ow.” She held her head. On the TV the orange-face demagogue continued to rant about making America great again. He had no ideas. He had no solutions. He made no sense. He sounded like most of the poets that I knew. Yet his crowd hooted and hollered like he was the second coming. “I can’t watch this.” Larissa shut off the TV and we were mostly in the dark. I turned on a lamp. Outside that demon beast’s dog bark echoed through walls and windows. “And, again, I seriously, like literally, can’t keep drinking like this.”
            “Then stop doing it.”
            “You enable me,” Larissa said. “I swear when I think of you you’re always like pouring something.”
            “Life is hard,” I said.
            “You’re a librarian.”
            “Each person has their own hell. And I’m not forcing the poison down your throat. You see you’re young you don’t get it. It doesn’t matter the job. What wears you down is the repetition, the sameness; the act of doing the same thing day in and day out. You’ll see when you’re my age.”
            “Rand, I’m thirty-eight.”
            “What? I thought you were in your twenties.”
            “What made you think that?”
            “Um.” I had no good answer. “The hair dye?”
            Larissa kicked her legs off of me and got more fetal. Then she started crying. “I had things I wanted to do this morning. And I have to teach this afternoon…if the trains are running again.”
            “You’ll feel better by then.”
            She looked up at me. “That’s not the point, Rand? The point is, blizzard or no blizzard, all we do is spend the weekends drinking. We don’t go out. Not to movies. Or dinner. Mackenzie and Jackson and everyone went out to celebrate his book and what did we do? We went home to freeze.”
            “What sort of madmen go drinking when there’s a blizzard warning?” I asked. It was all well and good if Larissa didn’t want to drink. But this was starting to feel like a character assassination. It was too early in the morning for a character assassination. I always scheduled my character assassinations for the late afternoon, or when I knew I’d see Mackenzie and Jackson.
            “Friends do things for friends,” Larissa said.
            “Up until a few years ago I was a touch fuzzy on friend protocol,” I said.
            She gave me a sarcastic look. “You never had friends?”
            “I follow the golden rule. I do unto others as I want done to me.”
            “And that is?”
“I leave people the hell alone.” Larissa gave me a disgusted sigh. “So what’s your solution?”
            “Maybe dinner out?” she said. Larissa sat up on the couch. She didn’t seem so sick at that moment. “Maybe…” But then Def Leppard rained down on us from the apartment above. “Is that Pour Some Sugar on Me?”
            “I think so,” I said.
            I got up from the couch and headed back toward the bedroom. As expected Chico and Molly were performing the morning ritual upstairs and their next door neighbor, Gerhardt, had found his usual way to join in. At least they’d found some way to keep warm. Chico and Molly and Gerhardt were making America great again in their own way. Loud music and fucking. It was a typical morning for yours truly. But Larissa had never experienced it. By some grace of God the few times she’d stayed with me the heathens in the building had been quiet. At least the noise had tabled our conversation. I didn’t want to hear about what a bad boyfriend I was on top of being an incorrigible drunk. On cue that fucking dog barked from across the street. I had a sip on my cold coffee and toggled my computer mouse. I had a sick feeling in my stomach was still glaring back at me. I finally deleted it.
            When I got back to the living room Larissa was pacing, wobbling really, and holding her head. “How do you live like this?” she said.
            “Wall punching and ceiling smacking,” I said. “You see I got this Bobby Bonilla baseball that I like to…”
            “No wonder you don’t get anything done.” She continued pacing. Admittedly the music was loud and bad. The fucking in the bedroom equally an abomination. But they did stop. Life at casa de Rand wasn’t a noise-fest all the time. “I like can’t even deal with this.”
            “I hate Def Leppard too,” I said. “Back when all of those white kids were listening to hair metal I was a rap and R&B man myself.”
            “The noise, Rand,” Larissa said. She clutched her chest. “I have that one guy upstairs, and Millicent isn’t a mute…but it’s not like this.”
            “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll get you some tea,” I said.
            “Stop trying to ply me with beverages.”
            “Hey, I do what I’m best at.”
            Larissa sat on the couch. She looked like she was going to cry again, and I wanted to avoid that at all costs. I hated when women cried. I hated when they cried over me. I wouldn’t mind it so much if a woman cried over me because I was a grand lover departing, or because I was so benevolent and sweet in my gestures. But women usually cried around me because I was a fuck-up. I made them drink too much. Or I insulted their character. We didn’t go to movies or to parties. And I didn’t do these things on purpose. They just happened. Would if I could I’d take Larissa to more dinners and to parties. I’d take back every gratuitous drink Larissa had the other night and pour them down my gullet. I’d sacrifice myself to the porcelain God to save her the misery.
Larissa got up from the couch and started gathering her shit. Her shoes and coat anyway. The orange-face demagogue was still on TV pointing and shouting. He looked like he was going to blow a blood vessel. He might as well have been in my apartment for all his bluster. “Are you leaving?”
            “I’m going outside for a smoke,” she said. “And to kill that dog across the street.” She shook her head. “Did you know that last night was the first time you said you loved me?”
            “When?” I said.
            “Exactly.”
            Larissa went out the door. Well…shit, I thought. Our first fight. I sat on the couch. It smelled like a weekend held captive. I shut the television off and just kind of sat in the moody, amber lamp light. America was waking up. Voices were passing on the street, and people were shoveling the snow they hadn’t gotten to the previous days before. A car alarm sounded. Boats moaned from the estuary. That dog barked again. Obviously Larissa had spared its life.
I turned on the radio. The classical station was playing B’s Egmont Overture. It was too serious for the morning, but one never shut Beethoven off. The Beethoven ended, and the morning news came on. One hundred people murdered in Syria. There was death in Yemen. The blizzard had killed thirty people. Forty-five people, twenty of them kids, died in a capsized boat off the coast of Greece. Refugees were being attacked by right-wing groups all over Europe. The orange-faced billionaire running for president of the United States came on the air saying he could shoot someone on the street and not lose the nomination. He said authoritarianism was good. That was when I shut the radio off, and waited for Larissa to come back in absolute silence.
When she opened the door she just glared at me. A subtle hate was forming in her eyes. I couldn’t handle hate. Not Larissa’s, not anyone’s. I just wanted to feel warm. “I think we should think about moving in together,” I said.
“Oh Rand,” Larissa said. She shook her head. Then she walked down my hallway and shut the door to my bedroom.
So…I wasn’t an ideas man. Sue me.

Sunday, May 14, 2017

day ONE HUNDRED and FIFTEEN

Consciousness Raising

Fresh from college
I landed the Big Job:
Conglomerate Electric—
expense account, car.
I dressed for success,
like a man, but with breasts
in a navy blazer, starched blouse,
scarf knotted like a tie
at the neck.

I drove the gray maze of freeway
crisscrossing the basin,
selling small electrics
to Savons, The Broadway.
The car was a Plymouth,
AM radio, no air.

Volume up, windows down
I sped the freeways to the Bee Gees
uh uh uh stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
to minimize downtime
I ate lunch while I drove,
foraging my briefcase
for Granola bars stashed
with other vital supplies—
spare pantyhose, tampons
and Valium tucked under brochures
for blow dryers.
Rushing to make a dozen calls a day:
to the drug store whose manager
threatened to kill me
if his order came late,
to the warehouse with rats nested
in returned toaster ovens,
to the five-and-dime
with armed guards
patrolling the aisles,

back to the office where Hustler
fold-outs plastered the phone bank,
where my boss drank gin
from a flask at his desk
and daily asked
for a quickie in the showroom.
None of my friends were happy
in their new careers.
Some went back to school,
took women’s studies
examining their vaginas
with speculum and mirror.
Some joined EST, got their shit together.
Others left their families,
were re-birthed or re-born.
Seventy-nine slouched into eighty,
Reagan elected, John Lennon dead.
No matter how fast I drove
I never got anywhere.
Staying alive
became the only job
I could handle.

--Donna Hilbert

from Transforming Matter PEARL Editions, 1994







Saturday, May 13, 2017

day ONE HUNDRED and FOURTEEN

Hardhat Splat

Enjoying the room?
What’s the echo, the boom?
Complimentary champagne?
Pink, the color of my brain.

Pay your bill, yes, but pay no heed
to those small shadows of hemoglobin
seeping from steel and concrete bones
while you sleep in this tower of gilt
I (and others) built.

Boss tells me to hurry up the ladder
hurry unsnap the safety harness get up there
time is money says Owner to Boss
time is money says Boss to me
as into a wooden form, concrete we pour.
As form collapses, 42nd floor.

Spatter and spray, that’s me.
Boss pays the fine for safety violation.
More than I got.
Owner pays nada. Nada for the fine,
nada to Boss, nada to workers, stiffs them
so just as well I vanished when I did
except as smudge taking shape
like clouds on the wall,
donkey one night, elephant the next.
Sometimes people enjoy like a game
naming my blotch, my brain.

Here comes Owner to spend the night,
Secret Service wraps him tight.
Through his wall
while he sleeps,
my stain creeps.

--Joe Cottonwood

First published in Rat’s Ass Review: Such an Ugly Time

WineDrunk SideWalk: Shipwrecked in Trumpland week SIXTEEN weekly wrap up

First of all….i’d like to thank the talented and thought provoking Jason Baldinger for handling the wrap up duties for Weeks FOURTEEN and FIFTEEN whilst I gallivanted around the U.K. getting fat on dry cider. Short of one bartender mocking my american accent, the trip wasn’t bad…and honestly where else can an american go overseas but the U.K., considering they most likely fucked up more than we did with this whole Brexit business.

Before I begin I just want to say….VIVE LA FRANCE!! I never thought I’d be this excited for the continuation of neoliberal policies but after 110+ days of living under an infantile tyrant with small penis syndrome, I jumped for joy at hearing the news of Emmanuel Macron’s victory over France’s leading Nazi party. SURE, nearly 34% of the population voted for a Nazi…but 46% of our population voted for a racist, sexist, misogynistic, illiterate, orange hued philistine (and he won) so why not?

Sailing into Tuesday evening, man, I thought that I was going to have an easy one this week. Mock Marie Le Pen? Check. Praise Sally Yates? Check. Dust off the Ted Cruz jokes? Check. Call the GOP a domestic terrorist organization and further deconstruct their horrible “health care” bill? Check. Throw in a few Michael Flynn references…and I was hoping to glide right on into Week SEVENTEEN in this crumbling empire…but NO….James Comey had to happen.

Gotta love the DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER administration…their ability to release startling political information at the end of the day has to be one of the few intelligent things that they do. Let’s take a press whose spent the day covering our insanity, let’s take a populace tired from their jobs, bludgeoned by our ineptitude, people who just want to go the fuck home and put this day to rest….and just drop a fucking bomb on them. Don’t believe me? Pay attention. Most of DOUCHE’s bombshell bullshit happen between 5 and 6 p.m. on an almost regular basis (I’m not counting the fucktard’s 3 a.m. tweets…those are for his European audience). I’m assuming that this is done in order to scramble the press into overdrive and to allude the average citizen whose going home to shop online, eat a microwaved dinner, stream some bullshit, play video games, social network while they ignore their children or watch something with a Kardashian in it. It’s almost masterful.

Is the firing of Comey unprecedented? Hmmm…almost. This is only the second time a sitting U.S. President has fired the director of the FBI, an appointment that is supposed to last ten years in order that the head be presumed to work independently of the White House…something James Comey himself sort of shit all over this election…but I digress…in 1993 Slick Willy Clinton fired William Sessions after he refused to step down over ethical concerns. And what were those concerns? Apparently Sessions (such a common name connected to villainy if ever I’ve heard one) was running a scam to avoid paying his taxes, amongst other things, including taking a limo to and from work and billing the government after he built a fence around his home. Seems reasonable….DOUCHE fired Comey because…wait for it…wait for it…Hillary Clinton’s emails.

That’s right folks…it’s time to play the PROPAGANDA game as only an inept and idiotic an administration such as DOUCHE’s can! emails. EMAILS! DOUCHE honestly wants to press, congress and the American public to think that he fired James Comey because of….emails. Of course he doesn’t. DOUCHE knows this is a lie as the press knows this is a lie as congress knows this is a lie as his wealthy supporters knows this is a lie as his inbred, dipshit supporters kno….never mind. Comey’s firing his nothing to do with Hillary Clinton’s emails and most likely everything to do with the ongoing FBI investigation into the DOUCHE administration’s collusion with Russians during the 2016 election. PLAIN AND SIMPLE….i even feel like a redundant asshole for having to write this but I live in America so…once again…not the emails folks

If anything DOUCHE’s firing of James Comey has parallels to Richard Nixon’s demanding the firing of Archibald Cox, and independent special prosecutor, who has subpoenaed the president asking for tapes of conversations in the White House in regards to the Watergate investigation. You can read more about all the fun that caused right here.

that said…DOUCHE did write to James Comey that the firing had nothing to do with Comey assuring DOUCHE three times that he was not under investigation, but more from the fact that after the third reassurance DOUCHE was upset that Beetlejuice did not appear.

also...calling Comey a showboat? pot calling the kettle, asshole

 

As if more bad news this week were possible…on Thursday DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER signed an executive order creating a commission to investigate voter fraud in an election that he WON. While he commission is to be run by Mike “POTUS 46 in waiting” Pence, the commission’s co-chair, Kris Kobach, is of bigger concern here….as if anything is worth being more concerned about these days. For the uninitiated: Kris Kobach is the Kansas Secretary of State. He’s an advocate of strict, beyond strict really, voter laws. Kobach was basically the driving force behind those strict voter laws in Kansas that required new voters to provide a passport, birth certificate or naturalization papers when voting as proof of citizenship…something that he’d LOVE to take to the federal level and make law. Kobach’s name was one of those floated about for the head of the Department of Homeland Security job…my guess is that DOUCHE was simply waiting to give him a much more nefarious role and finally found it in this taxpayer wasting, Russian scandal averting smoke and mirrors commission.

Turning back to France’s election…a little tidbit that you may already know. France had their lowest voter turnout at 74% of the population…that’s the lowest it’s been since 1969, a year after the tumultuous riots in Paris. If 74% of the people voted in the United States in 2016 it would’ve been the HIGHEST voter turnout since 1896 when William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan…on that note, if I haven’t enough, I’d like to once again thank those of you who voted for DOUCHE for this mess, especially you fucking assholes in Wisconsin, Michigan, and my home RED state of Pennsylvania. I’d like to thank you dipshit, ignorant, self-involved motherfuckers who looked at both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, said they were basically the same (really, fuckfaces?) and chose to vote for a third party shithead….but most importantly I’d like to extend a thank you to all of you lazy snowflakes who chose to shrug and stay home on election day…hope you’re enjoying the end of your democracy.

I’ve been reading tons of articles this week saying with DOUCHE firing Comey were are looking at a despot consolidation his authoritarian power, and tons of articles basically saying that this is the beginning of the end of the DOUCHE era….i tend to side with the former. DOUCHE is basically paint-by-the-numbers autocrat in the making with nobody in any position of power to stop him or call him on his threats. He’s proven his guilt beyond a doubt and has violated the constitution so many time I’m surprised there isn’t a harassment lawsuit filed against him…the point is…no one cares. The GOP?  Man, they’re too far gone…they’ve been beholden to corporate interests for so long that none of this matters. The democrats simply don’t have the power to do anything. People keep talking about mid-term elections in 2018…but how fucking far gone will this nation be by then? Can we really sustain another 20 months of this?

I’ll be honest…this week put me right back to the days after the election where I pretty much feel hopeless. I’m not shocked and surprised by anything that DOUCHE has done…I expected it. I suppose that I’m getting worn out already of living under this asshole…which isn’t fair. If you look at the history of the United States basically women and minorities having been living under “democratic” government such as this since 1776….so this is me in a moment of weakness here.

I gotta dust off folks…we all do…we knew this was going to be a motherfucker of a fight…so let’s fight…DOUCHE has the power but he doesn’t really own shit. Keep making art, keep protesting, keep ahold of yourself and that in which you value…We the People…we need to make that mean something….when it comes down to it….we need to make all of those milquetoasts in Washington piss their pants when they think of the general population….so keep pushing us DOUCHE…but remember…you’ve been warned, motherfucker.


Stick around because at 10:30 we got the poetry of Joe Cottonwood and Tomorrow at the same time we have the poetry of Donna Hilbert….and remember to SUBMIT2RESIST right here at winedrunksidewalk@gmail.com