Lotsa Luck, America!

America’s CEO/Dictator, twice impeached convicted felon and pathological lying man child Donald Trump is preparing his cabinet o’ clowns for his coronation as dictator in just a couple of days. We’re just a small time satire site. The thought of four more years of this doofus making stupid statements on an hourly basis is mind numbing to us here at the Bucket and we just can’t take four more years of this crap. They say stupidity is doing the same thing twice and expecting different results. We’ve done the Trump thing before and he was a catastrophe for our country and yet here we are again, just like in 2017 with the GOP controlling everything. There are many who are saying that Trump and the Republicans broke satire. Unfortunately, we think that’s a fairly accurate assessment. Ever since Dubya’s administration we’ve been joking about how far the GOP has drifted into fascist oligarchy territory and the conservatives have taken it as a hold my beer challenge. This is what they’ve always wanted; unquestioned authoritarian hegemony of the United States. But they couldn’t have done it without the help of corporate America, the plutocrats and the evangelical christians, an unholy alliance we’ve called the Holy Corporate Empire. Think about it, folks. Who doesn’t have to pay taxes in this country? The top 1%ers, top corporations and the church. They have all the money and power and no accountability or responsibility, which is what paying taxes is all about when you get down to brass tacks. Under Trump, the oligarchs will continue to get richer and the sanctimonious, anti-science evangelical christians will get to shove their repressive archaic agendas and dogmas down everyone’s throat with the power of the government behind them. Think of these bullies as the American Taliban, because that’s exactly what they are.

We’d like to take a little bit of time to praise the efforts of current President Joe Biden. The conservative news media and propagandists have already kneecapped his accomplishments and Trump is already taking credit for his infrastructure bill. We have no doubt that Trump and the Republicans will trash Biden’s legacy, trying to do to him what Reagan and the GOP did to Jimmy Carter in the ’80s. We’ve talked about the historic legislative session from January 2021 to January 2023. Not since Lyndon Johnson’s first term has there been such a productive session. Compare that to the current GOP lead House, under self-proclaimed ‘Moses’ Mike Johnson, which has led the league in incompetence and yet somehow they’ve maintained control this past election – which was definitely not rigged (wink, wink). But Biden’s done some amazing things as President, certainly more than we thought he could when his presidency started. He deserves to be thanked. Most historians rank James K. Polk as the best one term President. We think the factually educated, objective historians will rank Biden right up there with Polk.

Which brings us back to the election and how the Democrats once again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. We’ve consistently criticized the Dems for never attacking the Republicans and rolling over like submissive puppies every time the GOP conservatives raised their voices. This happened many times during Dubya’s administration. But they didn’t do that the past two elections and we think they were absolutely right to attack the Republicans. In our opinion, the Dems finally did everything right. So what went wrong? Forty years of Republican brainwashing propaganda in the corporate media is what went wrong. Reagan’s deregulation in the 1980’s and the continuation in Clinton’s and both Bushes demolished fair play in the media. The right wing propaganda machine rose in the late ’80s with radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh at the forefront spreading propaganda that the media was ‘liberal’ and demonizing any one on the left. This after the news media fawned over the Gipper during the ’80s, especially after his assassination attempt in 1981. The right wing targeted the die hard religious conservatives in the Midwest and the South repeating the same mantra ‘the liberal media’ is evil. The Moral Majority under the leadership of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell repeated the diatribe with laser focus on Reagan’s old stomping grounds in Hollywood as proof positive that liberals controlled the media. Now there are different branches of the media, folks. There’s the sports media which isn’t political but definitely has a coastal bias. Sports pundits love to crow about the LA, Frisco, New York, Boston or Philadelphia teams, while midwestern teams (other than the current Chiefs) are usually ignored. The film and TV branch (especially late night talk shows) does have a liberal bias but there are many prominent Republicans in the movie making biz – Stallone, Willis, Norris, Woods, Voight, etc. If you think of all the shoot-em-ups and blood-fests over the last forty years, you’ll find gun loving conservative Republicans behind them. Then there’s the news media. We’ve commented repeatedly over the years about how the news media has a very conservative bias. If the news media had a liberal bias why did we only sparingly see Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders or any Democrat giving their opinion during the last four years. They were virtually non-existent. But we saw an overwhelming coverage of Trump, Cruz, Graham and the host of other dipstick Republicans like MTG(MTHead), Lauren Boobert and Matt Gaetz. Republicans complain about George Soros, but he’s outnumbered by tons of conservative tycoons like Rupert Murdoch, Sheldon Adelson, Leonard Leo, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Timothy Mellon, Linda McMahon, etc. With the establishment of Fox News, a.k.a. the Republican Propaganda Network, in 1996, the conservatives could regularly spread their biased opinion masquerading as news to the masses. And now there’s been a proliferation of other prominent outlets like Newsmax and OAN that are vilifying anyone who leans even slightly to the left. Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton(who was a Goldwater girl) were not socialists; they were corporatists and all in for capitalistic endeavors – but that didn’t stop the right from labeling them as such. Of course they ignore the fact that Jesus taught socialism to his followers (you mean Jesus was a socialist? – shocking!).

There’s one thing that works with propaganda; repetition. The Nazis knew it and the modern day Republicans know it, too. Like we mentioned earlier, Limbaugh repeated it on a daily basis. Remember Dubya repeating 9/11 and the war on terror over and over and over again. The conservative christian sheeple ate it up because they are prone to following the leader, you know, the lord is my shepherd and I am but a sheep. Trump repeated the fearmongering, this time with illegal immigrants as the scapegoats and it worked like gangbusters again. But why did it work so well? Because the corporate news media is bought and paid for by rich conservatives like Murdoch and the Sinclair Group. Thanks to the Citizens United decision by the conservative Supreme Court, rich right wing people with money can buy all the politicians they want and spread whatever misinformation they want and not pay any consequences. The average Joe and Jane don’t stand a chance.

This brings us to the current economic system in place not only in America but it many other countries around the world – capitalism. We’ve commented before about how unregulated capitalism is nothing more than indirect cannibalism. That’s what’s happening in America. We’re not only killing each other we’re killing the planet, too – all for fun and profit. And who’s in the driver seat when it comes to capitalism; syndicates. We remember syndicates being to the boogeymen in a lot of ’60s and ’70s TV dramas. But they are real and there are several of them. There’s the military industrial syndicate (Ike called it a complex), the financial syndicate (stock market and investors), the energy syndicate(only fossil fuels need apply-screw the environment), the media syndicate(all major networks owned by just six companies), the insurance syndicate(price collusion on a massive scale), the political syndicate(only Democrats and Republicans need apply), the religious syndicate(this means christians), the transportation syndicate(only gas guzzling automobiles and trucks need apply-screw mass transit), the healthcare and pharmaceutical syndicate(death panels are already here, folks), the gambling syndicate(we can’t believe sports gambling is legal everywhere now), the sports syndicate(the biggest grift in America), the real estate syndicate(trying to make all public lands private), the software and technology syndicate(tracking people, their data and their money like it’s 1984-Big Brother is watching you) and some other less powerful entities – it’s basically all the investment sectors of the stock market. The commonality amongst all of them: making as much money as possible. That’s why we see all sorts of wheeling and dealing between all of these syndicates – it’s called business, folks. The most obvious connections are the ones between politicians, lobbyists and, with recent revelations, Supreme Court justices. Laws aren’t made on Capital Hill, they are made on K Street where the lobbyists from these syndicates offer sweet deals to make everyone rich at the expense of us poor suckers in the middle and lower classes and to hell with the environment. It’s become painfully obvious over the past forty years (especially the last twenty) that the Republicans and Democrats (the political syndicate) have been playing good cop/ bad cop with the American people. Thanks to deregulation by both Republicans and Democrats, the gap between the rich and poor have widened so much, that many historians are saying we’ve entered another Gilded Age, when plutocrats are worshipped as gods and, like Napoleon once said, the sheeple are kept from murdering the rich because of religion. Like we’ve said before, because of cannibalistic capitalism, we’ve become a nation of SEGUMUCAs: Selfish, Egotistical, Greedy, Ultra-Materialistic, Ultra-Competitive Assholes. Thanks to our greedy capitalist leaders, we’ve become so desperate that we’ll do anything for a buck. Our greedy capitalist leaders have shamelessly pulled the Shock Doctrine on its own people. Instead of Americans helping other Americans, we’re screwing each other to the wall for fun and profit. And now even basic necessities are becoming too expensive. Yes, you could say that capitalism is the anti-christ. We think in the coming years we’ll be seeing a lot more people like Luigi Mangione trying to even the score with the uncaring, unsympathetic corporatists who are running the syndicates, this country and the world and turning everything into a cesspool. We the people have been had by the greedy corrupt capitalists. Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to get a lot uglier that it already is, folks.

We don’t want to say this is our last post ever. We reserve to right to post new material if we feel like it, so let’s call this a hiatus for an unspecified period of time. We’ve mostly had a blast making content these last twenty one years. If your check our archived posts, our satire and analysis has been mostly spot on. But our sanity just can’t take another four years of Trump and his troop of MAGAMorons. We’re already busting blood vessels with his inane Greenland and Canada drivel and he’s not even dictator yet. We’re old, retired Boomers. We don’t have much time left on this planet. We want to try and enjoy our final years without banging our heads on the wall every second and gulping down vials of antacid. After the Bush years, Trump and the pandemic we have zero faith in the this country’s institutions, zero faith in our corrupt judicial system, zero faith in our corrupt elected officials(Republicans or Democrats), zero faith in our corrupt financial system, zero faith in our corrupt healthcare, zero faith in our corrupt community leaders, zero faith in our corrupt education system, zero faith in our corrupt society, zero faith in our corrupt civilization and zero faith in humanity. We’re destroying each other and our home planet and our so called leaders won’t do anything to save it because it’s not cost effective. To all the people who voted Republican or didn’t vote at all (almost 90 million) and those who believe in putting profit over people and the environment – we’ll put this as politely as we can – SCREW YOU!!! To all our progressive and secular brethren, we wish you the best. Disconnect from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter(we refuse to call it by its new moniker), fact check everything the corporate media spews out of its vile mouth and don’t let the fascists gaslight you about Trump. As any educated historian will tell you, Trump is objectively awful. He’s a self-aggrandizing, petty, vindictive, greedy, egomaniacal, narcissistic, misogynistic, bigoted, bombastic, materialistic, callous, rude, deceitful, oppressive, pathological-lying, sociopathic bully. We all know it. Don’t let the greedy corporate media normalize him. Finally and most of all, take care of yourself. Feel free to check our archived posts if you want to get some chuckles from the stupidity of the first Trump term or the last twenty one years of GOP idiocy.

Lotsa luck, America – you’re going to need it!!!

Twice impeached convicted felon and megalomaniacal man child Donald Trump thanks his easily duped SEGUMUCA rubes for making him CEO/Dictator again as he prepares to ram Project 2025 down the throats of every American.
Twice impeached convicted felon and megalomaniacal man child Donald Trump thanks his easily duped SEGUMUCA rubes for making him CEO/Dictator again as he prepares to ram Project 2025 down the throats of every American.

StonkMarketStop

One of the more intriguing recent developments has been the whole GameStop story and how a bunch of neophyte traders on Reddit spanked the greedy hedge fund pirate plutocrats of Wall Street and beat them at their own game.

We won’t go into depth on explaining what happened. We’ll let this article explain the proceedings. Or you can let Tom Tomorrow at This Modern World explain it in cartoon format. But in a nutshell, a group of investors on Reddit, a group called WallStreetBets or WSB, decided they were going to teach the greedy hedge fund managers a lesson. One tactic hedge fund managers use is to short sell stocks. They look for stocks that are failing and basically bet that they’ll continue to die. So they borrow shares to sell and buy all the stock at a lower price before paying off their lender and usually make a fortune. GameStop is a brick-and-mortar video game retailer whose days are numbered because of online video gaming and the pandemic, so they were on the hedge funders lists of future profits. But WSB stepped in and bought stock so that the stock price rose precipitously, which means that the hedge fund managers, who were betting that the stock prices would fall, lost money, BIG TIME. We’re talking billions of dollars. The trend continued for other failing businesses like AMC, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Blockbuster, whose stock price rose 3,990% in a week.

If you say this sounds like rigging the system like that of a casino, you are absolutely right. The WSB people showed that the hedge fund managers have been using Wall Street as a casino for years to get filthy rich with absolutely no repercussions. Of course, now that WSB did the same thing, plutocrats are crying foul and proclaiming that there needs to be regulations in place. You see, only plutocrats are supposed to win money on the stock market, while the rest of us working stiffs just work our asses off making these avaricious assholes richer. So, the greedy corporatists are fine with no regulations until they’re beaten at their own game and then they cry like babies.

We’re looking forward to see what kind of regulations Senators like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have in store for the greedy fat cat capitalists in the next couple years. It could get interesting, folks.

A well heeled member of the plutocracy expresses his utter disdain that common peons are making money at the Wall Street casino.
A well heeled member of the plutocracy expresses his utter disdain that common peons are making money at the Wall Street casino.

Plutocrats Rule; All Others Drool

One of the big pieces of news recently outside the ever expanding vortex of the House impeachment inquiries is the announced candidacy of Michael Bloomberg running for President as a . . . wait for it . . . a Democrat. Yes, that colossal, egotistical billionaire plutocrat. former Democrat-Republican-Independent-Democrat mayor of New York City and corporate media mogul has decided in his infinite wisdom that only another plutocrat with a gargantuan ego can possibly defeat America’s CEO/Dictator and megalomaniac man child Donald Trump. He’s already bombarding the Internet, television stations and all other media outlets with salvos of ads touching all the Democrat’s talking points and, like Trump, has a bottomless pit of money to spend on the campaign.

But will Bloomberg really be a champion for the middle class, something Trump promised he’d be in 2016 and then gave massive tax cuts to the wealthy in 2017? We’re incredibly skeptical of Bloomberg. We’ve commented many times on how Bloomberg and the other plutocrats in America’s oligarchy or the 1% actually run this country. Now the plutocrats are scared that they might actually have to pay their fair share in taxes, something they’ve been avoiding thanks the generous tax cuts offered by every administration since Reagan. The tax cuts from the Republicans in 2017 have massively helped the 1%ers become richer. But as usual, it hasn’t trickled down to the rest of us. Farmers are in crisis mode right now thanks largely to Trump’s trade war. But the realistic possibility of social democrats Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders winning the Democratic nomination is scaring tycoons like Bloomberg witless. Even computer magnate and greedy dickhead Bill Gates (worth $107 billion) whined recently that if he has to pay one hundred billion in taxes, that would be too much. For the math impaired, he’d still have seven billion dollars even if he did have to pay one hundred billion. Awwwww — poor Bill! He’d have to live on just seven billion dollars. How can any person do that? We here in the middle class have no sympathy for the greedy assholes who proclaim that they can’t live on a few measly billion dollars while most Americans struggle to live paycheck to paycheck.

We agree with others who say that the best way Mr. Bloomberg can help out this country is by buying Fox News, a.k.a. the Republican Propaganda Network. That lie machine has been pumping out disinformation, deceptions and crackpot conspiracy theories for almost a quarter of a century and is the main reason we have a cult of evangelical Trump followers running our democracy and rule of law into the ground. Bloomberg and fellow Democratic plutocrats Tom Steyer and Andrew Yang could pool their resources and do it easily. This would be the best use of the plutocrats’ billions: ridding this nation of the real fake news once and for all.

Plutocrat Michael Bloomberg announces that only another billionaire with a colossal ego can defeat Trump much to the delight of other plutocrats, oligarchs and members of the 1%.
Plutocrat Michael Bloomberg announces that only another billionaire with a colossal ego can defeat Trump much to the delight of other plutocrats, oligarchs and members of the 1%.

Another Blameless, White Plutocrat

The big news last week was the rather weak sentence handed down to former Trump campaign chairman and ostrich suit aficionado, Paul Manafort. Federal guidelines recommend 19-24 years sentences for the kind of crimes Manafort committed.  But T.S. Ellis, a right wing conservative judge seated during the Reagan administration, took pity on Manafort and gave him an ostrich feather light 47 months or one month shy of 4 years. Only 4 years! Talk about your privilege for white plutocrats.

Needless to say, there is some uproar about the lenient sentence with many stating that people who’ve committed far less offensive crimes have gotten far stiffer sentences. But the bitter pill to swallow in all this is that other than his tax crimes, Ellis stated that Manafort lived an ‘otherwise blameless life’. Blameless! Are you freaking kidding!!! This man rubbed elbows with brutal dictators and deflected criticism of their regimes thus amassing millions of dollars. Even Manafort’s daughter said he has no moral compass. There is nothing blameless about him. He and Donald Trump are the epitome of the worst of American greed and the capitalistic lust for power, money and material possessions.

Manafort is up for sentencing this week for his other charges linked to conspiracy and illegal lobbying related to the Mueller investigation. Hopefully, the judge, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, will throw the book at this greedy piece of dung and let him rot the rest of his ‘blameless’ life in jail.

United States District Court Judge T.S. Ellis boldly mollycoddles blameless fraudster and ostrich suit aficionado Paul Manafort by finally giving a poor, white plutocrat some justice.
United States District Court Judge T.S. Ellis boldly mollycoddles blameless fraudster and ostrich suit aficionado Paul Manafort by finally giving a poor, white plutocrat some justice.

The New Flake In Town

The new members of the Senate and House have been sworn in and with it an old familiar face is back on the American scene. Utah’s ‘new’ Senator replacing useless, senile fossil, Orrin Hatch, is none other than Spiff Romney, 2012 GOP presidential candidate and used car salesman extraordinaire. The Spiffster dominated our Conathon 2012 coverage with his gleaming white Pepsodent smile and promises to serve the people, and by people we of course mean corporations.

Romney appears to be taking up the mantle of his departed fellow Mormon, Arizona’s own Jeff Flake, in that he immediately wrote a ‘scathing’ article critical of Donald Trump. Really???!!! Even Trump saw through that one, calling Spiff the new Flake in one of his temper tantrum tweets. It didn’t take long for Romney to show what a feckless adversary he would be by remaining mum on of the current border wall bullshit.

As if on cue, the corporate media announced that Romney and Nebraska’s Ben ‘Sassy Boy’ Sasse are the GOP’s new ‘mavericks’.  Really???!!! And people still think the corporate media is liberal in bias? Only conservative entities would brand these two stick in the muds as ‘mavericks’. So we’re wagering that in the next two years both Romney and Sasse will be promoted as ‘sane’ alternatives when the S.S. Trump eventually sinks and corporations are looking for new lackeys to promote the Republican, plutocrat and corporate media mantra of ‘tax cuts for the rich, screw all others’. Ahhhh! The capitalism con game continues!

Former GOP candidate and new feckless Senator, Spiff Romney, proclaims himself to be the new Jeff Flake who will bloviate against and then boldly cave in to every demand of America's CEO/Dictator Donald Trump.
Former GOP candidate and new feckless Senator, Spiff Romney, proclaims himself to be the new Jeff Flake who will bloviate against and then boldly cave in to every demand of America’s CEO/Dictator Donald Trump.

The Corporate Lackey

Spiff Romney made it official Saturday as he selected Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan to be his vice presidential running mate in the cruel joke that is…Con-a-thon 2012. Media pundits on both side of the aisles are ‘energized’ by the picks, which means that there’s going to be plenty of BS thrown around for the final three months of this election, that just won’t seem to end. The pick pretty much proves that the ol’ Spiffer doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the middle class or moderates and if he and Mr. ‘Starve the Guvment, Feed the Rich’ Ryan get into office, we can look forward to reliving those glorious years of the Middle Ages when feudalism held sway over humans everywhere. Remember… your corporate overlords know way more than you do. So just shut up and let them run the country.

America's corporate, elite, plutocrats approve the selection of jug eared, ultra conservative, Paul Ryan, as Spiff Romney's Vice Presidential GOP running mate.
America’s corporate, elite, plutocrats approve the selection of ultra conservative, Paul Ryan, as Spiff Romney’s Vice Presidential GOP running mate.

 

 

Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaires

Author John Steinbeck famously observed that “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” We think this insightful comment best explains why anybody in the United States would vote for putting Republicans back in charge of the country after eight disastrous years of Bushonomics (tax cuts for the rich, spend the country into bankruptcy and the middle class foots the bill). Oh, that’s right. Spiff Romney is rich and he’ll make us all rich, too. Ah, the trickle down myth lives on!

A couple of temporarily embarrassed millionaires contemplate their march to grandeur under a Spiff Romney presidency.

Corporations Are People, Too

Republican Presidential candidate Mitt(or Spiff, as we at the Bucket call him) Romney was heckled, jeered and hooted at in Iowa the other day when he said in a speech that ‘corporations are people’.  We applaud this fine gesture but we think, since there are many farms in the Hawkeye state, the people should have also heaved some manure at the ol’ Spiffster.

Speaking of heaving crap, in 2010, the Supreme Court said basically that ‘corporations are people, too’ when they ruled that corporations should not be limited in the amount of money they can contribute to political campaigns. So this means that corporate America can use their immense wealth to greatly influence elections so that lackeys(Teabaggers anyone?) who support their agenda(tax cuts anyone?) will get elected. This kind of government is called a plutarchy, which is a combination of plutocracy and an oligarchy. And a plutarchy pretty much means the average citizen is royally screwed.

Depending on your source, it’s estimated that 50-60% of corporations pay no income taxes. In 2009, companies like GE, Bank of America, Citigroup and Valero paid no income taxes whatsoever while making billions of dollars in profits.  Now that’s patriotism!  So much for that saying ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. Well, we say if ‘corporations are people, too’ then they can start paying more taxes. Teabaggers keep blathering about returning to the good ol’ days of the ’50s. How about the 90% tax rate that the top tier paid during the Eisenhower(Republican) administration for starters. That would surely jump start a lot of infrastructure projects. But then again our corporate overlords wouldn’t get their million dollar bonuses and we absolutely need our tycoons happy or else they won’t create jobs for us peons. The Corporate States of America: for the corporation by the corporation, with liberty and justice for plutocrats.

Supreme Court Justice John Roberts wears the new NASCAR inspired logo robes which will now be worn by all conservative justices.