Vote ‘D’ For Democracy

It’s only a few more days until the election and to us the choice couldn’t be clearer. Of course, we’ve been saying that since 2016 and yet twice impeached, convicted felon and megalomaniacal man child Donald Trump is somehow running for President instead of being in a jail cell.

Nothing has changed since 2022, or 2020 or 2016 for that matter, so we’re going to just cut and paste text from our post on November 6, 2022. The Republicans are openly embracing white christian nationalism and authoritarian corporate fascism. They are attacking the fundamental principles and laws of our constitution. Under the TFG regime, the GOP dismantled our government giving enormous tax cuts to the plutocrats in our society, which basically gave complete and absolute power to a handful of corporations and the richest of the rich while saddling future generations with debilitating debt. Those greedy CEOs and corporate elite are now the leading cause of inflation in the U.S., grabbing record profits while the American people struggle to just buy food. They have used deceitful shenanigans to stack the Supreme Court with regressive, religious ideologues who have already taking away a woman’s right to make her own reproduction decisions despite saying under oath during their confirmation hearings that they wouldn’t. The extremist Court is setting its sights on voter rights and basic rights for the LGBTQ community. Many Republicans want to end Social Security and Medicare which they call ‘entitlement programs’ but have no problem with entitlement programs for the corporate fat cats who purchase legislation through slimy lobbyists with corrupt donations and other monetary influences. The Republicans have openly suggested civil war and locking up opponents if they don’t get their way. TFG even instigated his rabid MAGA moron followers to mount an insurrection attempt at a coup at the Capitol on January 6th, 2020 because TFG claimed the 2020 election was rigged and stolen despite no evidence of fraud. Now, insane MAGA and QAnon election deniers are poised to win seats in many states including our state of Arizona which would effectively guarantee that Republicans will win all future elections and the will of the people will be ignored thus ending democracy as we know it. As we have said before, under TFG, the Republicans are no longer a party; they are a crime syndicate. Not only that, the objectives of Project 2025 have come to light which for all intents and purposes guarantees the end of our democracy.

If you truly believe in a representative democracy, by the people, for the people, and where every vote counts, there is only one way to vote: vote ‘D’ for Democracy.

Since the Republicans have completely embraced white christian nationalism and authoritarian corporate fascism, the choice in the 2024 elections is clear: vote ‘D’ for Democracy.
Since the Republicans have completely embraced white christian nationalism and authoritarian corporate fascism, the choice in the 2024 elections is clear: vote ‘D’ for Democracy.

Hope, Thy Name Is Kamala Harris

A lot has happened since our last post a month ago. Honestly, folks, the way the election had been panning out was depressing the hell out of us. Joe Biden, despite having one of the best legislative terms in history, was being labeled as too old as compared to an equally old and more unstable and completely dishonest man, the twice impeached convicted felon TFG. The fix was in and it still may be in, we don’t know. But President Biden bowing out of the race and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris completely threw the Republicans for a loop. For once, the Democrats put the screws to the GOP and we’re feeling something we haven’t felt in a while – HOPE!

There are many positive signs for democracy loving citizens. The Democrats have coalesced and galvanized around Harris. The Vice President has raked in millions of dollars and gave a rally to a full house in Atlanta. Her reported nominees for Vice President are all solid candidates. We’re pushing for Arizona Senator Mark Kelly but then again we’re Arizonans and a bit biased. Not only that but Donald Trump gave one his worst interviews ever (and he’s given a zillion awful interviews in the last nine years) at the National Association of Black Journalists this past week. He completely screwed the pooch and probably lost the black vote completely. His flip-flopping VP pick J.D. Vance is not impressing anyone. So far the only things Republicans can complain about Harris is the lame comment that she’s always laughing. So there are plenty reasons to be hopeful.

But we’re sure the corrupt corporate media will do a hit job on Harris they way they did in 2016 against Hillary Clinton once they find something bad, no matter how picayune the issue is, in which to bash her and whoever her running mate ends up being. The media wants drama and Zeus damn it, drama makes lots of MONEY, which is what the greedy corporations and America are all about. So, get ready for a bumpy three months, folks. Things are looking much better for democracy loving Americans, but it ain’t over yet.

The Republican Party is so broken and weird that they are criticizing Democratic candidate, current Vice President Kamala Harris for the unforgivable sin of laughing.
The Republican Party is so broken and weird that they are criticizing Democratic candidate, current Vice President Kamala Harris for the unforgivable sin of laughing.

AI Trump Grifts The Homeless

Artificial Intelligence or AI has become a huge buzzword in the past ten years and rightfully so. We’re old enough here at the Bucket to remember back in the ’80s when AI first came into the national consciousness and the media overreacted as they usually do and predicted the end of civilization. Stephen Hawking even warned about it, but then again he’s predicted a race of superhumans and possibly aliens taking over earth. Well, AI has finally arrived and it may very well be as dangerous as everyone predicted it would.

AI deepfake videos have become prevalent in the last five years and the results are astounding. Not only are they of good quality, they can actually fool people into believing what they are seeing is real and not fake. Jimmy Kimmel is well known for having deepfake videos on his show, especially featuring TFG, but he promotes them as such. There are other shows and websites that announce that the videos or images are faked and not to be taken seriously. Jabari Jones YouTube site is a good example. But it becomes incredibly dangerous especially when you consider all the malicious agents around the world, like Vladimir Putin, who would like nothing more than a video surfacing where Joe Biden, Barack Obama or other prominent Democrats say disparaging remarks about certain Americans or other countries.

There are also AI image generator sites like img2go where you can create realistic looking images for free. We tried it out and made our photo-toon for today with the prompt ‘homeless Donald Trump begging for money’. The result was surprisingly good. We’ve obviously photo-shopped some items, but the look on the homeless man’s face is authentic (authentic for a fake image, that is ). We couldn’t have come up with a better reaction to Trump’s grifting. We people who despise the orange, megalomaniac man child have had that ‘just shoot me’ look for the past nine years. We just may use AI more in our photo-toons in the future.

AI Donald Trump, who is also a twice impeached megalomaniac man child, runs his latest grift; hawking bibles and sob stories to the homeless because, you know, they're not suffering enough.
AI Donald Trump, who is also a twice impeached megalomaniac man child, runs his latest grift; hawking bibles and sob stories to the homeless because, you know, they’re not suffering enough.

Dark Brandon Delivers

Last week President Joe Biden delivered the State of the Union address in dramatic fashion. The entirety of the corporate media establishment in lock step with the Republican party had been painting Biden as a dim-witted, feeble old man incapable of anything but drooling. Instead, Biden slipped into Dark Brandon mode and delivered one of the best SOTU speeches in recent memory and dispelled any notion that he was too old for the job.

It’s not surprising that Biden nailed it. He’s still a strong, capable leader with fifty years of vital, important, EXPERIENCE in all phases of government. This week, special counsel Robert Hur’s damning statement in his investigation of Biden’s secret documentation case about the President having a poor memory was found to the be contradicted by his own testimony saying Biden had “photographic understanding and recall of the house”, a tidbit the Republican left out of his final statement. It just shows that Republicans are coordinated in their efforts to bring any kind of damage they can to Biden, despite the fact that he has done a great job in his first term as President. We’ll take Biden’s 81 years of EXPERIENCE to TFG’s 91 felony counts any day!

Dispelling notions of being too old, President Joe Biden slipped into Dark Brandon mode and delivered a forceful State of the Union address much to the chagrin of his many detractors in the GOP and corporate media.
Dispelling notions of being too old, President Joe Biden slipped into Dark Brandon mode and delivered a forceful State of the Union address much to the chagrin of his many detractors in the GOP and corporate media.

Forecast 2024: Goodbye Women’s Rights?

We’re not going to lie to you, folks. We’ve been thinking of hanging up the old bilge bucket over the last couple years. We don’t like what’s happening with TFG, the GOP or the corporate media. If this were a functioning socity of law and order, he should already be in jail serving a sentence for any of his 91 criminal counts, especially provoking the Jan. 6th insurrection. It’s obvious and if the Republicans were in any way honest, they’d admit their mistake, cut him loose and choose a new standard bearer for their party. But they’re not honest in the slightest despite claiming to be conservative christians. We honestly don’t think if Jesus somehow came back to Earth, he’d be hanging out with Trumpty Dumpty.

We think Biden is doing a great job – a lot better than we thought he would quite frankly. He’s been laser focused on restoring our relationships with our allies, helping spread democracy in Ukraine and improving the economy. His legislative victories (Infrastructure Act, Inflation Reduction Act, Chips Act, Pact Act, etc . . .) are reminiscent of LBJ’s first term. So we absolutely don’t trust polls that say Trump is leading Biden. Moreover, the media is doing an atrocious job of highlighting Biden’s accomplishments. Remember, Trump said the stock market would crash under Biden, but instead, it’s been approaching all-time highs. Not only that, he has hardly spent any time on the golf course unlike a certain orange tub o’ goo.

We’ve decided to go one more election cycle (or Con-a-thons as we like to call them) and then call it quits. We’ll be mostly posting old photo-toons relating to TFG since he’s the same a-hole that he’s been since forever. Plus, we’ll add some new ones on him and the new confederacy of dunces masquerading as GOP congressmen and senators. Plus, to keep our own sanity, we’ll post non-political schtuff to try and get back to our original quest of being a poor man’s Onion. Will it work? Who knows! But let’s see what happens anyway.

Republicans have already taken away reproductive rights from females and are aiming to regress the role of women in America to 19th century status of being just a non-voting baby factory.
Republicans have already taken away reproductive rights from females and are aiming to regress the role of women in America to 19th century status of being just a non-voting baby factory.

I’ll Have A Blue Festivus Without You

We’ll its that time of year where we trot out the Festivus Pole and air our grievances. The state of our country is similar to last year. Democracy is still alive but barely. TFG has been indicted and is up on 91 criminal counts spread over four trials and yet he is the leading GOP candidate for President. The Republicans have done absolutely nothing except fail at doing any kind of meaningful legislation which is pretty much the job of a legislator. Speaker Kevin McCarthy was dumped and the GOP finally came up with a christian nationalist named Mike Johnson to lead their circus of clowns. The economy is rumbling along and domestically things seem to be stabilizing. Infrastructure is slowly being built back up. Unemployment is down and inflation has been checked. Biden is doing a good job trying to do the impossible: juggle the Ukraine War and the never ending crises in the Middle East. But according to polls, somehow Biden is even or losing to the pathological lying crook TFG. Some MAGA Morons are even saying they want a dictatorship with the orange haired megalomaniac in charge. And yet the corporate media compliantly keeps the microphone in front of these idiots’ faces while completely ignoring sane, sensible people who think Biden and the Democrats are doing a good job of governing and want a functioning democracy and not a corporate/christian theocracy. Well, we think that we’ve filled our grievance quota for this year.

We’d like to wish everyone a Happy Festivus. And to all those Republican, MAGA Morons, TFG acolytes, QAnon nutbags and everyone who continue to support Trump and shamelessly promote a fascist takeover by christian nationalists . . . we think you know where you can stick the Festivus pole.

Happy Festivus aluminum pole

Rewind: GOP – The Party Of Moral Values?

2023 marks the 20th anniversary of the BilgeBucket Gazette. Our first issue was on May 19, 2003 and we’ve been shoveling it to the public, just like the corporate media, ever since. We changed our format to a WordPress blog in 2011 so all of our earlier material was archived. We’ve been reposting many of those archived articles, headlines, photo-toons, BilgeBucket Lists and other content over the past twelve years. In honor of our 20th, and because we’re sick of the current state of affairs in the world, we’ll be reposting more items from 2003 through 2009 throughout this year.

The whole purpose of our 20th anniversary retrospective is to show that the Republicans haven’t just shifted to the right with TFG. They’ve been trying to make America a christian theocracy ruled by corporate America since the Bush administration. The leaders of the GOP want people to be mindless sheeple who blindly obey their leaders, work without complaint no matter what the hours, and consume corporate America’s products like automatons until they drop dead, broke and drowning in debt. So bible thumper creationist Mike Johnson coming to the fore should not be a surprise. It’s business as usual for the Republican syndicate. But it’s business as usual for Democrats as well as they’re doing now what they did in 2006; standing by and watching the Republicans self-destruct and hoping that the electorate will notice.

This article is from our July 7, 2006 edition.

House GOP Ready To Shove Values Agenda Down America’s Throat

Republican members of the House of Representatives recently released a series of bills it is calling ‘The American Values Agenda’ in hopes of energizing it’s conservative base for the fall 2006 elections. Already the first item, protecting the word ‘under God’ in the pledge of allegiance, has already gone down to defeat.

Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert commented on the initiative. “We feel that this is a necessity as a signal to our conservative base that we’re ready to ram the ideology of a minority of wealthy, religious individuals down the throats of the rest of America. And since this minority has a lot of bucks, we’re going to basically push these items through and character assassinate anyone who stands in our way.”

Among the gritty, pressing issues tackled by House Republicans; a vital flag-burning amendment, a crucial anti-gay marriage amendment, and an urgent cracking down on Internet gambling. Other serious topics to be considered include: protecting insurance companies from frivolous claims from greedy hurricane victims; protecting frozen embryos from evil stem cell researchers; abolishing the completely unfair estate tax which affects a whopping one percent of the population; making sure that every citizen can own and properly use an AK-47; making sure the Arctic Wildlife Refuge is drilled for that precious nine month supply of oil; and making sure that the United States of America becomes a full fledged Christian theocracy.

Democratic congresswoman from California Nancy Pelosi said that this is nothing but pandering by House Republicans. “They are taking radical right wing values and touting them as America’s values. This is nothing more than their age old tactic of distract, distort and divide. Meanwhile, the Democrats have a clear message to the American people and that is . . .we’re just going to stand by and watch Republicans self destruct.”

Vice President Dick Cheney said, “All have to say is that if you don’t support these issues, then you’re not much of an American. I mean if you voted to take the words ‘under God’ out of the pledge of allegiance, you probably watch Al-Jezeera and root for Al-Qaeda. You probably even cried when Al-Zarqawi died.” When it was pointed out that the words ‘under God’ were added to the pledge in 1954, Cheney shook his head vigorously and responded, “See! This is just another example of the biased liberal media spreading misinformation to the good sheeple . . . I mean, people of America. Where’s my shotgun?”

People expressed mixed views about the series of bills. Joe Nelson of Brighton, Massachusetts, said, “I don’t think these bills really help anyone. We’ve got huge problems in Iraq, our deficit is skyrocketing, affordable healthcare is a joke and people in New Orleans still need assistance. I think we need to solve these problems first, although I agree that we should stop Internet gambling. You should only be able to blow your money at a regular casino like normal people.”

Gladys Clary of Dennison, Iowa said, “We need to reduce our dependency on foreign oil and the only way to do that is to drill the hell out of all the available land and coastlines that we have. I don’t care about the Earth’s future. I’m old and my hummer needs gas now!”

Tom Miles of Fetid Gulch, Texas, said, “If we don’t pass these bills now, illegal immigrants will pour over our borders, burn our flags, marry farm animals and use stem cells to cure Alzheimers.”

Karipatra: Queen Of Denial

If you’re a fan of democracy then the results for the 2022 midterm elections are encouraging. We’ve waited until after the Georgia runoff election, which was fortunately won by Rafael Warnock, to comment because mostly it’s given us time to relax from the non-stop electioneering and also to see how the Republicans would react to the results. But the Democrats managed to not only keep control of the Senate but expand its influence with a 51-49 majority. The Republicans control the House but by only a few seats. The red wave that the main stream corporate media bloviated about before the election never materialized much to the embarrassment of the propagandists at Fox News, a.k.a. the Republican Propaganda Network. It looks like Kevin McCarthy will have his hands full trying to control the House and most pundits are doubting the GOP will do anything except investigate the nothing burger that is Hunter Biden’s laptop.

More importantly, many Trump humping, election denier candidates across the country got beat including the Big Three here in Arizona, Blake Masters, Mark Finchem and Kari Lake. Generally speaking, Democrats performed pretty well here in AZ. One notable exception is the U.S. House of Representatives. Arizona had five democratic Congressional representatives in the 2020 election but thanks to redrawn districts from the census favoring Republicans, the GOP now has six seats compared to three for Democrats. There were some very tight races which have gone into recount, but overall, the Dems held the line. Democracy has been saved . . . for now.

Of course, Ms. Lake, in true Trumpian fashion, has refused to concede and has commenced to whining, promising law suits of election fraud. We’re so sick of this former newsreader. She should just move into Mar-a-lago so she can be with her crush 24/7. We’re sure Melania won’t mind. We saw a funny meme online about the loony Ms. Lake and decided to duplicate it using our own graphics. From now on, Kari Lake will be known as Karipatra, the Queen of Denial.

In true Trumpian fashion, Arizona's failed governor candidate Kari Lake has claimed election fraud and has transformed herself into Karipatra - the Queen of Denial.
In true Trumpian fashion, Arizona’s failed governor candidate Kari Lake has claimed election fraud and has transformed herself into Karipatra – the Queen of Denial.

Save Democracy: Vote ‘D’

The 2022 elections are on Tuesday, November 8th and the choice couldn’t be clearer in our opinion. Of course, we’ve been thinking that for the last twenty years and somehow the Republicans are still not the permanent minority party which they should be.


The Republicans are openly embracing white christian nationalism and authoritarian corporate fascism. They are attacking the fundamental principles and laws of our constitution. Under the TFG regime, the GOP dismantled our government giving enormous tax cuts to the plutocrats in our society, which basically gave complete and absolute power to a handful of corporations and the richest of the rich while saddling future generations with debilitating debt. Those greedy CEOs and corporate elite are now the leading cause of inflation in the U.S., grabbing record profits while the American people struggle to just buy food. They have used deceitful shenanigans to stack the Supreme Court with regressive, religious ideologues who have already taking away a woman’s right to make her own reproduction decisions despite saying under oath during their confirmation hearings that they wouldn’t. The extremist Court is setting its sights on voter rights and basic rights for the LGBTQ community. Many Republicans want to end Social Security and Medicare which they call ‘entitlement programs’ but have no problem with entitlement programs for the corporate fat cats who purchase legislation through slimy lobbyists with corrupt donations and other monetary influences. The Republicans have openly suggested civil war and locking up opponents if they don’t get their way. TFG even instigated his rabid MAGA moron followers to mount an insurrection attempt at a coup at the Capitol on January 6th, 2020 because TFG claimed the 2020 election was rigged and stolen despite no evidence of fraud. Now, insane MAGA and QAnon election deniers are poised to win seats in many states including our state of Arizona which would effectively guarantee that Republicans will win all future elections and the will of the people will be ignored thus ending democracy as we know it. As we have said before, under TFG, the Republicans are no longer a party; they are a crime syndicate.

If you truly believe in a representative democracy, by the people, for the people, and where every vote counts, there is only one way to vote: vote ‘D’ for Democracy.

Since the Republicans have completely embraced white christian nationalism and authoritarian corporate fascism, the choice in the 2020 elections is clear: vote 'D' for Democracy.
Since the Republicans have completely embraced white christian nationalism and authoritarian corporate fascism, the choice in the 2022 elections is clear: vote ‘D’ for Democracy.

Finchem’s Fascist Farce

It’s time to get back to our final review of Arizona GOP whack-a-doodle candidates. We’ve already mentioned fluff-brained gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and plutocrat butt kisser senatorial candidate Blake Masters. We focus in this post on perhaps the most insidious and dangerous of the Trumphumpers, Mark Finchem, who is running for Secretary of State. In Arizona, the Secretary of State is second in command since there is no Lieutenant Governor. The Secretary of State is also in charge of certifying election results and keeping records of campaign finances. This is why Finchem is dangerous – he is an election denier and has openly stated that he would have overturned the 2020 election in favor of TFG despite there being absolutely no evidence of voter fraud. He’s also stated that if he loses the upcoming election he will not concede, just like Trump.

But first, who is Mark Finchem? The way he dresses and acts, you’d think he’s a native Arizonan. But he was born and Michigan and moved to AZ and adopted the garb and persona of a rough and ready, independent Arizonan. Basically, he’s a poser. But the conservative rubes eat it up which is why he was elected as a state representative for Legislative District 11 which represents about 225,000 Arizonans in Pinal and Pima counties which covers the northwestern parts of the Tucson metropolitan area up to Casa Grande and Maricopa. Finchem’s been married four times, so he’s got TFG beat there. Other Arizona Republicans have called Finchem a “political gadfly” and “one of the dumbest” members of the state legislature.

Why is Finchem so dangerous? Wow, where do we start? First of all, Finchem is a QAnon true believer and a 9/11 truther. He attended the Capitol riots on January 6th which should disqualify him completely from running for office. But he stated that he didn’t go inside and was just a witness which apparently makes everything square in his fevered mind. He is an Oath Keeper, which is a far right wing, anti-government, extremist militia group and has kept ‘treason watchlists’. He’s a supporter of TFG’s Big Lie and said fraud was rampant in Arizona despite several audits saying there was no voter fraud. We repeat: NO VOTER FRAUD!!! His opponent in the Sec. of State race Democrat and native Arizonan Adrian Fontes is a former Maricopa County Recorder and lost his re-election race in 2020. We would think if there was fraud Fontes would arranged for his own re-election but that didn’t happen. Even his Republican opponent in the Recorder race Stephen Richer said there was no fraud. But does that matter to these MAGA Morons? Not one bit. They’ve drank the Trump kool-aid and plan to use every one of his vile obstruction tactics including not conceding and contesting any results they don’t like.

Finchem debated Fontes this past week and according to most reviews, Fontes owned the Republican screwball. Finchem acted unhinged for most the thirty minutes doubling down on his debunked conspiracy theories while Fontes remained calm, cool and collected answering in even measured responses. Among his most egregious assertions, Finchem cited the discredited “2000 Mules” movie, which made unproven claims about widespread ballot harvesting in the 2020 election. The two sparred on many issues including mail-in ballots which Finchem wants to eliminate. Finchem is also in favor of letting the state legislature select the Senator instead of letting the people. Apparently, Finchem has conveniently forgotten the Seventeenth Amendment which guarantees the citizens the direct vote of Senators. Like with the mail-in ballots, Fontes pressed Finchem to admit he favors taking away the vote from the people, but the loony wingnut kept hemming and hawing and dodging the question because he knows that his position is colossally undemocratic and would expose him for the fascist he is.

The bottom line is this, folks: Mark Finchem is a bat shit insane, QAnon, Oath Keeper, fascist nutcase and is an absolute danger to Democracy. If he is elected Secretary of State, he will guarantee that only Republicans will win key offices in upcoming elections which is not only undemocratic but out and out fascism. We Arizonans need to make sure to vote him out this November 8th or we will never have fair elections in this state again and it might start an unfortunate trend that goes nationwide.

Update 9/26/22: Here are a couple more links to stories about Finchem.

Finchem Falsely Claims That Then-Vice President Mike Pence “seized power” from President Donald Trump and undertook “a coup” when he called on federal agencies to stop the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Finchem Embraces QAnon and 9/11 Truthers.

Oath Keeper, QAnon whackadoodle and supporter of Trumps Big Lie, Mark Finchem, guarantees that if elected he will ensure fair and balanced elections where no Democrats will ever hold elective office again but is in no way fascist.
Oath Keeper, QAnon whackadoodle and supporter of Trumps Big Lie, Mark Finchem, guarantees that if elected he will ensure fair and balanced elections where no Democrats will ever hold elective office again but is in no way fascist.