Rewind: Slavery Was A Laugh Riot!

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.

Big news recently out of Ron DeSantis’ fascist Florida is that the education standards in the state are being warped to such a degree that teachers are now required to teach that slavery wasn’t such a bad thing for blacks. This reminds us of a post from August 2, 2016 where we highlighted former Fox News (a.k.a. Republican Propaganda Network) blowhard Bill O’Reilly’s book about how slavery wasn’t just fun, it was a laugh riot. But Republicans have been trying to change the narrative on slavery ever since racist bigots from the South took began seizing control of the party in the 1960s. In 2015, Texas began whitewashing slavery and racism in their schools. Even Ben Carson, who is an African-American, made an ass of himself in March 2017 when he suggested that slaves were just immigrants and not coerced laborers forcibly brought against their will from Africa to work for nothing on American plantations. Florida and Texas have seemingly embraced white nationalism and institutionalized it in their educational systems.

Anyway, here’s a re-post of our photo-toon of Bill O’Reilly’s latest killing-history tome which may become required reading from now on in Florida.

Fox News talk show host Bill O'Reilly, whose only goal in life is to look out for you, has released a new book that explains that slavery wasn't just fun, it was a laugh riot.
Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly, whose only goal in life is to look out for you, has released a new book that explains that slavery wasn’t just fun, it was a laugh riot.

GOP Putin On The Ritz

We’ve been appalled by antics of the Trump administration for the last three and a half years and guess what folks. . . the hits keep a comin’. Recently it was learned that Russia had placed bounties on the heads of American soldiers in Afghanistan. This shouldn’t be that surprising considering the United States did pretty much the same thing against the Soviet soldiers with the mujahideen freedom fighters (which included Osama Bin Laden) back during the Soviet Union’s military adventure in Afghanistan back in the 1980s. The U.S. has pretty much overstayed our welcome in the place where empires go to die so the bounties by the Taliban should not be a shock.

But what is disconcerting is that Trump has struggled to speak out against Putin on the matter and won’t even begin to talk about possible sanctions. We all know about Trump’s man crush on the Russian President but by not addressing this obviously disturbing piece of news, he’s adding fuel to the fire that he’s somehow being controlled by Russia’s leader. The Mueller report concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and is already at it in the 2020 election. Not only that, Russia is hacking COVID-19 vaccine data. And yet Trump and the Republican party stays silent on the matter. Moscow Mitch ‘Turtle Boy’ McConnell and the GOP Senate has even blocked any kind of bill for election security. Due to the malfeasance of the Trump administration in handling the coronavirus pandemic, the news of the bounties has already been relegated to the back burner. Even veterans have voiced their concerns, but in typical Trumpian fashion, our CEO/Dictator and petulant man child does nothing.

That’s because the Republican party has clearly become the party for white nationalists and lovers of authoritarianism and fascism, . . . you know . . . Putin-style ‘democracy’. We remember a photo back when Obama was President and he was giving Putin the evil eye, like he was saying, “Cut the bullshit, Vlad!” Pretty badass, right? Of course, the Republicans were rooting for the white guy in the photo because:

  • They’re the ones who are un-American
  • They’re racist as hell
  • They’re THE PROBLEM

Solve the problem on November 3rd and vote out every Republican sycophant from federal level all the way down to state level. When you let a foreign power like Russia have influence over our country, that’s unacceptable, untenable and un-American.

With their strange attraction to Russian President Vladimir Putin, modern day Republicans and supporters of Donald Trump seem to have misplaced their priorities, their common sense and their loyalty to America.
With their strange attraction to Russian President Vladimir Putin, modern day Republicans and supporters of Donald Trump seem to have misplaced their priorities, their common sense and their loyalty to America.

The Fox News Blinders


The big news this past week has been the shootings in Charleston, South Carolina. The killer, Dylann Roof’s racist manifesto has disturbed the nation and has brought many issues to the forefront. One is the removal of the confederate flag from the South Carolina state capital building in Charleston and the removal of any confederate flag items from store stocks. This isn’t sitting too well with some southerners. But then again, those confederate flag lovers been sore for the past 150 years.

More importantly, many dialogues have started about the prevalence of racism in America. But you won’t hear any such discussion from that bastion of conservatism, Fox News, a.k.a. The Republican Propaganda Network. Nope, the ‘journalists’ at Fox are way too busy spinning the Charleston shootings as an attack on christianity. They know their audience all too well; old, scared, white, racist christians. Of course, in order to keep their audience happy they have to pander to them and enable them, denying any inconvenient fact like the killer saying he was racist and he was killing the people because of the color of their skin.

Fox News' Steve Doocy spins the racist desires of a white supremacist into a war against white christians.
Fox ‘journalist’ Steve Doocy (pronounced douchey), who is a graduate of the Bozo Clown College, demonstrates his impressive journalism skills for his pliant audience of old, scared, racist, white christians.