Trump trashed their city. One brewery is making it a badge of honor

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

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Tuesday June 18, 2024 · 8:20 AM PDT

2024/06/18 · 08:20

no image description available — Smooth move, Donald.

Well, that didn’t take long. Less than a week after Donald Trump called Milwaukee, Wisconsin—the site of July’s Republican National Convention—a “horrible city,” one local brewery is showing its civic pride while taking full financial advantage of the Yellin’ Felon’s logorrheic lamentations.

Trump may have created less than zero jobs over the course of his presidential tenure, but he is providing a boost to the fortunes of MobCraft Beer, which has debuted (Not So) Horrible City IPA in direct response to Trump’s witless diss.

"We were just putzing around this morning, talking through our production schedule and kind of heard the news of our city being called horrible and didn't really like that. Milwaukee is so cool," MobCraft owner Henry Schwartz told Milwaukee’s WISN-TV.

But while some insults are easier to leverage than others—“Marxist, Fascist, Radical Left Thugs Living Like Vermin” barely even fits on a onesie, for instance—MobCraft’s new brew is part of a long tradition of reclaiming put-downs and using them to rally, and raise up, one’s own people, whether through the power of civic pride or tribal identity.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

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Sunday June 16, 2024 · 9:50 AM PDT

2024/06/16 · 09:50

We all know Donald Trump is currently hemorrhaging money faster than a Trump-branded casino, but when he starts spending more on legal fees than McDonald’s, hair spray, and face makeup combined, you know things are getting serious.

According to a new CNBC report, the Yellin’ Felon has spent gaudy—one might even say eye-popping—sums on legal expenses each and every day over the past few years, and his adoring throngs have been footing much of that bill.

CNBC reports that since leaving the White House in 2020, Trump has used an obscure campaign finance law loophole to cover his growing legal costs. Those costs amount to an eye-popping $90,000 per day for the past three years, according to Federal Elections Commission filings.

Ninety-thousand dollars? Every day?! That’s a lot of McNuggets, man. Fortunately for Trump, Republican donors are paying for most of his criminal and civil shenanigans. And whether they know that or not is largely beside the point—because it’s all perfectly legal.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

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Friday June 14, 2024 · 2:30 PM PDT

2024/06/14 · 14:30

If you want to be happy in your relationship, find someone who looks at you the way Sen. J.D. Vance looks at Donald Trump after 34 felony convictions, a monthslong coup plot, a deadly insurrection, multiple stolen top secret documents, and a $354 million business fraud judgment. And let’s not forget an $83 million sexual abuse/defamation judgment and endless games of “would you rather?” involving shark attacks and Joe Biden’s woke, America-destroying flotilla of Evil pleasure boats.

As we now know, Vance is among the hopefuls vying to serve as Trump’s next mewling toady/vice president/volcano sacrifice, and so he’s sticking to the Trump bandwagon like white on Mike Pence. But he wasn’t always a squealing MAGA-phone.

Of course, Vance is currently one of Trump’s staunchest defenders. He pretended to be outraged by Trump’s recent criminal conviction and is so hopelessly debauched he’s even trying to claim Donald Trump Jr. is a real boy. (He recently xweeted that Don Jr. is “one of the best people I’ve met in politics.” Which is a little like saying convicted murderer Ed Gein was a widely respected giant in the textile industry.)

But as with many Republicans, Vance’s Trump-focused sycophancy represents a stark departure from the way he used to describe America’s Hitler. For instance, he once worried that Trump, if elected, could turn out to be “America’s Hitler.”

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

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Wednesday June 12, 2024 · 6:50 AM PDT

2024/06/12 · 06:50

The far-right Heritage Foundation is expressing its outrage over the money Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was forced to spend to protect his Trump election interference case from … other far-right conservatives.

According to a laughably dubbed “exclusive” from Fox News, the Oversight Project, which Fox describes as a “good-government transparency arm of the Heritage Foundation,” discovered through a Freedom of Information Act request that Bragg announced a $1 million appropriation in April 2023 for outside counsel “to respond to congressional oversight of his prosecution.”

In other words, because states’ rights-touting Republicans in Washington were inappropriately interfering in a state case, Bragg decided he needed to hire the Los Angeles-based Gibson Dunn law firm to keep his prosecution on track instead of caving to congressional pressure, and this has conservatives—who are certain Donald Trump can do no wrong because just look how innocent he acts all the time—incensed.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

Community

Monday June 10, 2024 · 4:20 PM PDT

2024/06/10 · 16:20

FILE - Members of the Supreme Court sit for a new group portrait following the addition of Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, at the Supreme Court building in Washington, Oct. 7, 2022. Bottom row, from left, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, Associate Justice Samuel Alito, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. Top row, from left, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) — Fox News' recent reporting on Supreme Court justices' financial disclosures missed the mark in a major way.

Finally! Fox News is calling out a Supreme Court justice who took “eye-popping” gifts from a wealthy benefactor, and it’s well past time the conservative media outlet brought this to light. In addition to making a mockery of good-government best practices and casting a pall of suspicion over the Supreme Court and its decisions, lavish gifts and perks—especially when undisclosed—represent an egregious conflict of interest that erodes Americans’ faith in our judicial system.

So step right up, Clarence Thomas, and take your medicine—oh, fuck. They’re talking about Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Yes, it looks like Jackson accepted four concert tickets, valued at $3,700, from pop star Beyoncé, and then disclosed the gift as soon as she was required to do so. (Which, given the recent behavior of some of the conservatives on the court, is sort of “eye-popping” when you think about it.)

Say, if Fox ever gets tired of “Ticketgate,” maybe they can do an exhaustive 12-part series on Justice Elena Kagan’s gifts—one for each bagel she turned down from her old high school friends. Because it’s only fair to treat the extracurricular activities of the liberals and slightly-less-liberals on the bench equally, without fear or favor.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

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Sunday June 09, 2024 · 9:50 AM PDT

2024/06/09 · 09:50

Notorious right-wing radio host Alex Jones is going through some things, and it’s not just because people suddenly found out that adjudicated sexual assaulter and convicted felon Donald Trump claimed he had an “amazing” reputation. The infamous “false flag” flapper, 9/11 truther, and amphibian homophobe is reportedly liquidating his assets to pay the hefty damages he owes to the Sandy Hook families he defamed in the wake of the horrific school shooting. And according to some media reports, this could finally be his Waterloo—if Waterloo is a place where a guy who believes in secret Obama weather machines was forced to cough up $1.5 billion for being an unrepentant asshole.

And hey, it’s about effing time.

To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward Alex Jones sitting in his grandma’s basement eating off-brand Funyuns and watching Spanish-dubbed “Saved by the Bell” reruns.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

Community

Saturday June 08, 2024 · 7:50 AM PDT

2024/06/08 · 07:50

If you’re unfamiliar with the right-wing conspiracy rag The Epoch Times—well, congratulations! But if you can imagine, for a moment, all your MAGA brother-in-law’s forwarded emails packaged together in one place among a smattering of ads touting horse paste and gently used House speakers’ lecterns, you’ve pretty much got the gist.

It’s essentially the Weekly World News, but with Donald Trump shrieking his guts out on the cover instead of the far less flappable Bat Boy (who is, as of this writing anyway, still a non-felon).

In a shocker of shockers, Bill Guan, the outlet’s chief financial officer, was recently charged with laundering millions in ill-gotten funds, becoming the latest MAGA luminary to lean into criminality—before falling in face-first.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

Community

Wednesday June 05, 2024 · 7:20 AM PDT

2024/06/05 · 07:20

US President Donald Trump holds up a "Trump Digs Coal" sign as he arrives to speak during a Make America Great Again Rally at Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington, West Virginia, August 3, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

Imagine you’re scheduled for delicate, lifesaving brain surgery, but the day before you’re rolled into pre-op the hospital administrator tells you that operating rooms don’t really need to be sterile environments, a sponge or two left in your skull will only make you smarter, and we use just 10% of our brains anyway, so your doctor might as well scoop the rest out to make room for a yogurt dispenser.

Even if you trusted your doctor, you’d immediately reschedule your surgery at another hospital because nobody should treat your body that way. So why, with the fate of the entire planet at stake, is this country considering reelecting a clear and present danger to our environment—who also happens to be a convicted felon?

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

Community

Tuesday June 04, 2024 · 9:20 AM PDT

2024/06/04 · 09:20

WILDWOOD, NEW JERSEY - MAY 11: Republican presidential candidate former U.S. President Donald Trump arrives for his campaign rally in Wildwood Beach on May 11, 2024 in Wildwood, New Jersey. The former President and presumptive Republican nominee held a campaign rally as his hush money trial takes a weekend break. Michael Cohen, Trump's former attorney, is expected to be called to testify on Monday when the trial resumes. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Sure, the Republican Party is overwhelmingly backing a convicted felon, confirmed sexual assailant, business fraud, insurrectionist, and (alleged!) documents thief whose most endearing personality trait is his rascally inability to stop quoting Hitler, but have you seen what’s going on in Texas lately?

The Lone Star State, which has continually returned a criminally indicted attorney general to statewide office, is now looking to be a laboratory of new, exciting ideas, like “what if we shove all these unlabeled lab chemicals in a Hefty bag, light it on fire, and then stand around and see what happens?”

To read the Texas GOP’s recently passed, deeply un-American platform is to hate it—particularly if you’re a progressive ... or a moderate … or a moderate conservative who either has, knows someone with, or knows of someone with a womb.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

Community

Saturday June 01, 2024 · 9:50 AM PDT

2024/06/01 · 09:50

Donald Trump is an enigma inside a riddle wrapped in 34 felony convictions, so it’s difficult to work out exactly where he goes from here. Conventional wisdom tells us the presidential campaign of a traitorous Putin sympathizer with this much legal baggage should officially be over, but this is Trump we’re talking about. The dude makes no apologies, has no shame, and continually respawns like a Grand Theft Auto character on a 24-hour killing rampage.

And since the Republican Party is now basically the Jonestown Cult without the complimentary beverages, few GOP luminaries—including elected officials—will dare gainsay him.

Indeed, in the wake of his conviction, the party of law and order is queuing up to kiss his arse in perpetuity. And Trump himself is trying to divert attention from his own crimes by claiming that New York—and the nation as a whole—is hopelessly steeped in lawlessness because Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is only paying attention to this one case.

(Actually, the crime wave that started under Trump has now ebbed, and crime as a whole is close to a 50-year low—except among former U.S. presidents, of course. Among that admittedly narrow cohort, it’s up approximately 100%.)

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

Community

Friday May 31, 2024 · 10:20 AM PDT

2024/05/31 · 10:20

One of the biggest takeaways from former producer Bill Pruitt’s new tell-all about his experience working on “The Apprentice” is that Donald Trump, as we all suspected, really did use the N-word while filming the reality show that launched his yearslong campaign to make us all rue the day our parents met.

And, to be clear, that’s a damn big takeaway.

Pruitt’s nondisclosure agreement with the show expired this year, freeing him up to spill the tea on Trump in the digital pages of Slate. And as Pruitt recounts in his consistently eye-opening, occasionally eye-gouging essay, Trump had some very specific thoughts on race and how it pertained to one of the show's contestants.

Forced to decide between two finalists—Kwame Jackson, who is Black, and Bill Rancic, who’s white—Trump eventually asked the burning question no one but the blathering Fred Trump homunculus in his head was asking:

“Yeah, but, I mean, would America buy a n------ winning?”

As gobsmacking and disgusting as that is, it’s not actually the biggest takeaway from Pruitt’s essay.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

Community

Wednesday May 29, 2024 · 2:50 PM PDT

2024/05/29 · 14:50

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential candidacy is a stale meme that’s yet to go viral, unlike the more than 100 U.S. children who’ve contracted measles so far this year because some silver spoon loaf-brain told their parents vaccinations were for losers.