Just End the Year Already

We have definitive proof, as if any were needed, that our president is a depraved sociopath.

The most chilling aspect of this homunculus of hatred’s response to a beloved director and his wife getting murdered is not the gloating, the mocking, or the praising of himself. It is the implication that if the murderer turned out to be a right-wing goon, that was fine, because the couple had it coming. Even MAGA fans (well, some of them, at least) were disgusted at this rejection of basic decency and the grotesque wallowing in violence.

Don’t conservatives ever get tired of defending this repulsive behavior? At what point are they no longer owning the libs and instead cackling over pure evil? Do they even know anymore?

In any case, I will wrap up this final post of 2025 by celebrating the great Rob Reiner, who was responsible for one of my favorite films of all time, the insanely underrated road-trip comedy The Sure Thing.

I saw this movie when I was 16, and to this day, I have never related to any onscreen character more than Gib. Maybe it’s because Gib was a funny guy who was awkward with women. Perhaps it is because Gib tried to go with the flow but still got moody and morose. Or maybe it is because to this day, there are very few Midwestern-raised Latino characters in movies, so I don’t have a lot of options.

In any case, The Sure Thing is hilarious, which is a big reason I love it. But another reason for my admiration developed only later, when I rewatched the movie as an adult. 

It’s clear that Alison takes life too seriously, and she learns to lighten up through her relationship with Gib. But as Reiner himself pointed out, Gib takes life too frivolously, and he learns much from Alison. That nuance took me a while to figure out.

Yes, this director was so good, even his 1980s teen comedies were deep.

See you in 2026.

Trusted Sources

I recently created my first AI agent.

Don’t be impressed. It took ten minutes and no technical skill at all. The AI basically synthesizes my news feed.

But maybe I should look into developing an AI chatbot that can convert hardcore right-wingers into progressive activists, because that would be one hell of a cultural improvement from a tool that, so far, has been most effective at writing poorly phrased emails for lazy people and creating bizarro images.

You see, a recent study has found that AI chatbots “can sway voters better than political advertisements.” The researchers found that “a conversation with a chatbot can shift people's political views” more effectively than talking to a human can. But since we’re talking about AI here, and there is always a dark side, you will be unsurprised to know that “the most persuasive models also spread the most misinformation.”

Basically, your Tia Ana will remain steadfast in her political views no matter how many facts you throw at her or regardless of how much you plead. But her principles may waver if an AI bot lies to her enough. 

No, that’s not reassuring.

The researchers say that “the chatbots’ persuasive power could have profound consequences for the future of democracy.” For example, politicians who “use AI chatbots could shape public opinion in ways that compromise voters’ ability to make independent political judgments.”

As we know, many Americans believe Jewish space lasers control the weather and vaccines cause babies to explode. And those beliefs have a head start even before AI does it thing. 

Research shows that the affinity to believe total nonsense is more of a trait for conservatives. This tendency apparently extends to AI, as the study revealed that “chatbots advocating for right-leaning candidates made a larger number of inaccurate claims than those advocating for left-leaning candidates.” 

You see, if AI is parroting right-wing nonsense, it quickly runs out of objective truths. So the chatbots create “misleading or false information” to become more persuasive, and AI “essentially reaches to the bottom of the barrel of stuff they know, so the facts get worse quality.”

The researchers conclude that this study implies “a troubling world for democracy.” But they have a solution. All we need are “strong guardrails to keep the systems in check.”

If AI chatbots could laugh, they would bust out cackling at that statement. Because in the interest of making tech bros even more money, and to facilitate Silicon Valley’s continued right-wing drift, the Trump administration has made it difficult to create any guardrails — never mind strong ones.

Most likely, conservatives will swarm Americans with AI chatbots, deep fakes, and technological tricks designed to fool people into thinking progressives are diabolical and the GOP is competent, neither of which is true.

So in the future, perhaps robots won’t need to rise up, attack humans, and subjugate them. Maybe we will just meekly do whatever AI tells is to do.

Holiday Blues

I know. We had the audacity to celebrate Thanksgiving, treating ourselves to the briefest of respites from the nonstop clown-car shitshow that now makes up American government. And what happens?

Well, for starters, our possibly ailing, possible senile president openly admits to committing war crimes (but then tries to jettison the blame to someone else). 

Hey, remember that “controversial” video of Democratic leaders reminding military personnel that they should refuse to carry out illegal orders? Yeah, it looks like that was sound advice that has unfortunately gone unheeded. 

In other disturbing news, our nation’s centuries-long reputation as a beacon of freedom for oppressed people has been stomped into oblivion. We are kicking out refugees who helped us in a botched war because one of them is a homicidal lunatic. This is because we now judge whole groups of people based on their worst members, unless of course, they are white Americans who tried to overthrow the government, in which case we do not even judge the worst of them at all.

And while we’re at it, we’re expelling other immigrant groups because… well, there really is no good reason. Hell, even the most ardent Trump defender has to admit that referring to communities of black people as “garbage” and harassing them for a crime that they are not even remotely responsible for is not, as the kids say, a good look.

But don’t worry. Our government has made it clear that Afrikaners can get going on rebuilding their whites-only homeland right here. So we still love certain immigrants, and the reasons why are not glaring or obvious in the least. Nope.

Oh, one more thing. It is more than a little odd for a guy to threaten war (despite his boasting that he would never start a war) because he is so angry about the illegal drug trade, but then turn around and pardon a man who flooded America with those same illegal drugs.

Yes, it’s all very depressing, infuriating, and perplexing. So basically, it is another day in Trump’s America.

And we just can’t get a fucking break.

And I Quote

Americans celebrate Thanksgiving in different ways.

For me, the holiday is an opportunity to take a break from writing 1,000-word diatribes against the bumbling neo-fascists straining to turn America into a Christian nationalist white supremacist nation.

Instead, I will post a few of my favorite quotes about this current era of madness and delusion that we are white-knuckling through. Here they are:

Qualified people get fired or leave. Sycophants, stooges, frauds, charlatans, lackeys, lickspittles, bootlickers, and phonies take over. And this prescription is being filled across all of government, making the prognosis for the country's health, both now and into the future, increasingly bleak.

—Heather Cox Richardson

The blue states pay taxes to the federal government, which redirects them to the red states. Voters in red states take advantage of this redistribution, while claiming … that they are against such a redistribution and that they are being cheated because they do not get enough. Governors of red states … push the logic of the federal system to the limit, treating themselves (not the Constitution or the law and certainly not the taxpayers in blue states) as the final arbiter of what can be done with taxes. This arrangement, when looked at from the outside with a cold eye, can hardly be seen as natural and sustainable.

—Timothy Snyder

The true ideologues are the ones who are insisting there is only one way to be a man or a woman, and it’s their way, and we must all comply. They aren’t defending women, who are a vast and varied category unto ourselves. They’re trying desperately to enforce one narrow, particular vision of gender in a world that's bursting with variety.

—Ann Friedman

“Trump derangement syndrome” is real — but it's not what they say it is. In an epic case of projection, followers of an infamous deranged criminal accuse their foes of a mental disorder…. The MAGA masses will not be satiated without expansive displays of rage, cruelty, and sadism directed at hated out groups and designated enemies.

—MSNBC

There’s a big chunk of House Republicans who just want to break something. That’s just how some of these folks define governing. It’s how their constituents define success.

—Gordon Gray

Ronald Reagan moved the U.S. closer to the laissez-faire ideal than almost any other country. The conservatives who sold this vision promised it would lead to a new prosperity for all. They were wrong about that, of course. Since 1980, the U.S. has become a grim outlier on many indicators of human well-being.

—The New York Times

Most Republicans, along with many pundits, are pretending that Trump is a normal president. They are ignoring his mental lapses, calls for authoritarianism, grifting, lack of grasp on any sort of policy, and criminality, even as he has hollowed out the once grand Republican Party and threatens American democracy itself. It’s hard to look away from the reality that Republican senators could have stopped this catastrophe at many points in Trump’s term.

—Heather Cox Richardson

Be sure to employ some of these quotes at your holiday dinner with your conservative relatives. I guarantee a rollicking good time. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

The Little People

OK, so we’re not going to starve our citizens to death after all.

Yeah, America!

The richest nation in the history of the universe has deigned to feed its citizens. We will, however, be skyrocketing everyone’s insurance premiums, or forcing them to go without insurance at all, because… wait, why are we inflicting this suffering on so many people again?

Oh, that’s right. So the top 1% can get more money.

In Trump’s first term, his only legislative victory was a tax break for the rich. That was it for four years. So far in round two of nightmare land, his only legislative victory has been a tax break for the rich.

I sense a pattern.

While the administration has done nothing to lower the cost of living or make the life of an average American even remotely better, Republicans have succeeded in priming conditions for the world’s first trillionaire and throwing one hell of a Great Gatsby-themed party.

Yes, it’s an amazing time to be rich. Consider that Trump’s tax law has fueled a surge in the purchases of private jets.

I’m sure you snagged one, right?

Consider also that for many of our uber-wealthy, “one floating villa is not enough,” so they are buying massive yachts and then smaller, “shadow yachts [to carry] the jet skis, helicopter and submarine” as well as the “smaller boat that zips you into Monaco in time for lunch” in what is essentially a yacht for your yacht. 

Wow, if the economy continues at this pace, it’s just a matter of time before all that wealth trickles right down to you. Definitely. 

Except it doesn’t actually work that way. As we all know, decades of research has proven that cutting taxes for millionaires accomplishes exactly one thing: It makes rich people richer.

Supply-side economics does nothing for the general population, and it may be the single most destructive idea in modern American politics.

The truth is that with the wealth gap becoming an insurmountable chasm, we are creating a “vast American underclassincreasingly dependent on the top 1%.” 

And that’s precisely how the richest Americans want it to be. Republicans are fine with this.

Sure, many Americans continue to be whiny babies about some imaginary concept called “affordability.” But they don’t understand how crucial it is to our nation’s well-being for a trust-fund nepo baby to be happy about buying his fifth mansion.

Now, let me regale you with an anecdote that illustrates how topsy-turvy the country’s economic system has become.

A friend who works in corporate American told me that he was at a company event where the top partners in his firm, millionaires all, blew astronomical amounts of cash on food and drink. It was all on the company dime. 

The problem was that when the bill came, the bean counters at the company demanded answers on how a handful of dudes spent that much money on themselves. The excuse, which the company accepted, is that the waiters at the event were irresponsible in serving the partners when they were so clearly inebriated. Those working class bastards took advantage of the tipsy millionaires.

In essence, unbelievably wealthy guys doing $300 shots blamed the waiters for their over-indulgence. And this came across as perfectly valid.

Clearly, to prevent this horrible abuse from ever happening again, there is only one solution: We have to give those rich guys bigger tax cuts.