The hour was indecent again—the kind that makes the world sound hollow. Same lobby, same hum. I’d promised myself I’d never meet him twice, but ghosts don’t honor boundaries; they find a crack in your resolve and call it a doorway. Roy Cohn was already sitting there. No announcement, no chill, just presence. He looked freshly dead, which was impressive after forty years. “Don’t act surprised,” he said. “You people keep invoking me. Every time someone shouts down a fact or sneers at empathy, I get the call.” He smiled the way a courtroom smiles after a conviction. “I told you,” he said, “I don’t haunt places. I haunt behavior.” Cohn and Joseph McCarthy He began as a prodigy of menace. At twenty-three, Cohn helped prosecute Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage. Evidence was thin, but spectacle was thick, and he made sure the execution went forward. Two dead parents were résumé material in 1950s Washington. The Justice Department noticed his appetite for intimidation, and Senator Jose...

He still lingers here. You can smell him before you hear him — that ghostly musk of flop sweat, Old Spice, and moral rot baked into the wallpaper of the West Wing. Richard Milhous Nixon, spectral and swollen with grievance, still pacing the Oval Office at 3 a.m., muttering about “the press” and “the Jews” and the long con of American virtue. The lights flicker when he’s near. The portraits turn their faces toward the wall. Even Andrew Jackson won’t look at him. Every administration since has pretended they buried him, but Nixon never went underground — he went systemic. His ghost isn’t haunting Washington; he is Washington. He’s the unkillable architecture of paranoia that powers the republic now — the data-mining, the black budgets, the men who believe the law is just a suggestion until someone leaks it. The only thing that’s changed since Watergate is that now, the bugs are in our pockets and we pay monthly for the privilege. He materialized to me last night, just after midnight, whe...

Sophia, Sophia, Sophia, come sit with me, pretty lady, and let's reminisce over better times together.  *glasses clink to good times of the past, and to good times that we will make sure to have in the future*

Dearest Audrey, I know it may seem like all a bit too much, but at least you are not alone! We will get through this together! * hugs *

Oh dear, someone is Twigging out! Deep breaths, little lady, the chickens will come to roost in due time.

Josephine simply refuses  to endure any of the nonsense we've all been subjected to these past few months, and I can't say that I blame her one bit! Do your thang, J.

Like the rest of us, Dustin was beyond gutted to learn the rumor going 'round the world wasn't true. Don't lose hope yet, though, Dustin! It's all we've got!

I n case you were willfully ignoring the news this past Friday - and who can blame you? - the Trump administration popped a squat in the late afternoon and left us with quite the cow pie, or the transcripts of a recent interview with convicted pedophile pimp, Ghislaine Maxwell, helpfully conducted by Trump's loyal lawyer minions. Never mind that she wasn't under oath, and never mind that her statements - "He was a gentleman in all respects," she cooed about Trump's social engagements with dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein - are almost comically slavish. Or they would be if there weren't so many sickeningly abused girls and young women in the wake of this horror show. But qui pro quo , Maxwell likely intoned after the interview, since she was moved shortly after to a far cushier prison, which I'm sure is just a coincidence, n'est pas? Will MAGA take this on faith and move on from their obsession with Epstein? Maybe not, but they will be distracted, which...

Did you hear? For RepubliKKKans, making things up is the new "alternative facts." Wheeeeee! Don't like the chances of winning the midterms? Redraw and make up new districts which favor your candidates. Don't like that your heralded meeting with Putin was a big flop? No biggie. Just say it was a big hit. Such fun! But that's just the beginning. Everything can be fudged : job reports, health data, crime stats, even our nation's own history. Think the courts are going to help bring a stop to this? Think again, because the John Roberts Supreme Court is here to help. In fact, in my estimation, John Roberts is doing more to dismantle democracy than Mitch McConnell, Ronald Reagan and Trump combined. Think I exaggerate or give Roberts too much credit? Consider first his court's 2010 ruling, or "Corporations are people," and look further through his court's almost total destruction of The Voting Rights Act, along with allowing any illogical and des...

Can the U.S. ever return to normal? Even after The Orange One is defeated and MAGA loses power? After all, what President, Democrat or Republican, will want to relinquish all the power granted to them by the current Supreme Court and its creepy shadow docket? What is the court actually thinking? Has this ever happened before? "We have a precedent in Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt," notes Crooked Timber , "whose 1932 book, The Concept of the Political , offers some insight into the Supreme Court majority’s mindset. If that mindset is not literally fascist, it is fascist-adjacent...." In the meantime, here are some fascinating/horrifying articles you may have missed this past week: 1. They just can't quit him. No, for real. 2. This pleases me so much.  So does this. 3. Finally, genuine horror as American Evangelicals contribute in a big way to Amazon deforestation and the erasure of indigenous culture. It's a horrible situation and it's getting worse. Photo Cred...

The countdown begins! Only 3 years and 6 months are left in Dump's Presidential term. A mere 15 months and 6 days are left till the midterms, which can potentially kneecap the remainder Dump's Presidency going forward. But do you think this will actually happen? What with voter ennui, illegal redistricting and the failure of "youth" to even bother showing up at the polls (the kids are not alright )? I'm optimistic by nature, but even I'm doubtful. In the meantime, here are some horrifying and hilariously horrifying stories you might have missed this past week. 1. Disabled voters aren't known to be MAGA devotees, so MAGA is planning ahead. MORE HERE. 2. Geoffrey Hinton, an AI pioneer, says there's a 10-20% chance that AI technology "will end in human extinction." That's not good, right? MORE HERE. 3. Speaking of AI, why did AI break up with the sushi chef? It said he had too many raw emotions. Oh, hahahahahaha! Also, be afraid. Be very ...

The Reagan era — a time when the American Dream got a perm, Wall Street got high on its own supply, and compassion was drowned in a jacuzzi at Studio 54.

 This was the decade when *greed* wasn’t just good — it was federally endorsed. When your country told you that if you weren’t rich, healthy, or white with a good TV smile, you probably deserved whatever hell you were living through. AIDS? Ignore it. Crack epidemic? Criminalize it. Union workers? Fire ‘em. Trees? Cut ‘em. Poor people? Trickle something on them and call it economics.  Ronald Reagan sold optimism the way televangelists sell salvation: loud, rehearsed, and with a suspicious bank account offshore. “It’s morning in America,” he beamed, like some kind of demented cheerleader for a dying empire — while actual Americans were waking up to layoffs, homelessness, and lethal indifference.

 Don’t have healthcare? Bootstraps. Can’t afford college? Bootstraps. Your rent is half your income? Pull harder, baby.

 Meanwhile, Nanc...

  The Hollow Man: JD Vance’s America There are men in power who are dangerous because of what they believe. JD Vance is dangerous because he doesn’t seem to believe in anything at all. Once a bestselling memoirist with a confused sense of empathy and a media halo the size of Appalachia, Vance now floats through Washington like an animatronic specter: the kind of man who smiles while slicing the brake lines on the country, then waxes poetic about family values. He’s no longer selling books — now he’s selling us out. And the terrifying part is, I don’t think he even knows to whom.   This week, Vice President Vance appeared at a crypto conference in Las Vegas to deliver what can only be described as a sermon written by a libertarian ChatGPT clone on its third Monster Energy drink. Cryptocurrency, he said, isn’t just an asset — it’s a movement. A movement toward what, exactly, was unclear. Possibly toward a future where all financial transactions are untraceable, unregulated, and ...

The Epstein Files, The MAGA Circus & The DNC Mime Show   HEADLINE ACT: MAGA EATS ITSELF -The Epstein Files “Don’t Exist” — just like the tooth fairy, Pam Bondi’s conscience, and the orange menace's reading comprehension.
 -MAGA hardliners are fuming, accusing the orange menace of running cover for pedo-billionaires while tweeting about hamburgers.
 -Laura Loomer’s Eye Twitch now has its own spin-off podcast.
 -Alex Jones wants a revolution. Again. From his mansion. With supplements. -But they are still waving flags and pretending the orange menace never said he wanted to end the Constitution. -Plenty of them are shouting "deep state" when asked about their dentist appointment. -Quite a number are sobbing into Freedom Fries because a Starbucks cup had rainbows on it. “You said you’d drain the swamp — not flood it with bleach and Botox.” — A MAGA supporter, probably, screaming into a Chick-fil-A napkin. SECOND ACT: THE DEMOCRATS – THE PARTY OF TAP DANCE AND TEPIDNESS 
 ...