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(Full title: “Proposed Iran War Memorial Wall With Off-Ramp Bouquet”)

There’s something stiffening out there right now, but it sure as hell isn’t Pete’s “resolve”, if you know what I’m sayin’.

Along with this particular concept, I’m thinking of something a bit broader in scope, perhaps with the Wall as the centerpiece of a Donald J. Trump Iran War Memorial Park, with the Wall as a centerpiece overlooking a large Reflecting Pool in the shape of the Strait Of Hormuz and, in the Pool – in the spirit of JFK’s Eternal Flame – an Eternal Algae Bloom in loving memory of the 18 (at the moment) brave troops who laid down their lives for Democracy™ or affordability or some shit.

Then, maybe, on the other side of the Reflecting Pool, a small marble amphitheater with a UFC cage for celebratory matches on Veterans’ Day, Fourth Of July, Memorial Day…?

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Dear Liberal Amerika: SHUT the HELL UP about the 2024 election. Just shut the goddamn hell up RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. Your party supported fascism and genocide even though it meant defeat, and now they’re collaborating with fascists every chance they get. Hell, they just nominated a goddamn Nazi-tattooed ex-Blackwater merc and Abu Ghraib prison guard to the Senate.

So, don’t talk to me about the 2024 election, about my refusal to vote since 2004, about my utter lack of respect or faith in Democracy™ or any other American institution. Just SHUT THE HELL UP, Liberal Amerika.

More Peak Liberalism here (Feb 2017), here (May 2017), and here (Apr 2019).

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Just the other night, I learned of the passing of my friend and comrade, photographer Laura Sullivan – a.k.a. “Isis” – earlier this month.

I first became friends with Isis and her husband-to-be Michael Sullivan (a.k.a. “the Cubster”) in the late summer of 2007, when Isis and I were on the editorial board of the DC Independent Media Center and working together in the DC IMC’s foto/video workgroup.

Along with our comrade Daryle Lamont Jenkins of One People’s Project, Isis was covering the neo-fascists before it was cool. Under the collective pseudonym “Town Hell Posse” she, Daryle, Michael and I covered Ron Paul rallies in Philadelphia and Tea Party batshittery at rallies on Capitol Hill, and at healthcare town halls in Reston, among other zaniness.

Isis showed me the impact – and fun – of not holding the camera straight up and down all the time; she was a staunch proponent of what they call the “Dutch Tilt” in the business – or what Isis used to call the “Batman Angle”.

She got me to loosen up on my newsreels, to let go of the “straight” approach – to editorialize, to use music, irony, cynicism and sarcasm more in my storytelling style.

In 2010, Isis and I had the honor of being asked to leave the DC IMC editorial board for being “too radical”. No, seriously. Too radical for the IMC.

Thanks so much, kiddo; it was too fucking grand.

“Great Caesar’s Ghost!”
–Perry White.

“Information Age of hysteria
is calling out to Idiot America!”
–Green Day.

(continue reading…)

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(That Melania doc sure was a massive W if ever there was one. 11 x 17 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.2mb)

Does having to close the Kennedy Center after shitting all over it count as a victory? How about making a laughingstock of yourselves by shitting your pants over a Super Bowl halftime show? Or, how about alienating most of America – and the Earth – by shitting on the remaining credibility of every major American institution? Honestly, I thought it was a parody when this stinkburger of a statement first hit Bluesky earlier this week, until I traced it down to “X” and started spotting it all over the papers about the same time. Dear god, does his staff just let the sonofabitch write his own goddamn press releases, just blurt out whatever he feels like on his tr00th.social accounts without taking him aside and giving him pointers on how not to write like a goddamn 1950s B-movie dictator? “Victories pour in”…? oh, man, you can almost imagine him mush-mouthing it out in that smarmy, 19th-hole happy-hour, three-martinis-into-it NYC real-estate hustler voice.

“Distract, depress, and divide”? Oh, christ, are they channeling Spiro Agnew now, too? And that “Don’t Be A Panican” headline – where the hell are they getting that shit? What’s the next communiqué going to open with – “Turn That Frown Upside Down”?

Sadly, the recent flurry of media rumors of El Presidente crapping his pants at a recent White House press event turned out to be false, as somehow pants-crapping seemed a perfect metaphor for the current state of American politics and society.

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