70 Comments

I particularly like Snyder's "Mumps." Because that disease in post pubertal males can LITERALLY shrink their balls. Explains a lot about the GOP side of the aisle, doesn't it.

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Calling them mumps is appropriate since these antivax loons seem to want to make vaccine preventable contagious diseases great again. It doesn’t take rocket science to predict that we will face an H1N1 flu pandemic again under Trump, and Trump as well as the excerebrose (brainless) RFK Jr. will go all out to prevent vaccinations and millions could die unnecessarily. They would utterly fail to undertake necessary public health measures to stem the spread of the flu, and since Dr. Fauci has retired

There has been at least one person diagnosed with H1N1 bird flu in Louisiana. In response to this, the Louisiana Department of Health has been ordered not to recommend vaccination against COVID, the flu or Mpox. This is a positive danger to public health and they must be out to kill as many people as they can. How did we manage to get so many anti-science fools into public offices? Trump admitted to Bob Woodward that he knew how serious COVID was likely to be, but despite Trump’s urging to create successful vaccines, Trump refused to level with the public and urged using bizarre and ineffective remedies.

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I keep suggesting billboards but that would really be a good one!

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BREAKING BILLBOARD: CBS News has a final Copy of the Matt Gaetz' Rap Sheet:

Lurid, crazed & fueled by something.

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Claude Taylor does billboards, used to donate to his MadDog pac. On bsky @realclaudetaylor.bsky.social

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Ouch!

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Can’t think of names that invite more mockery. I chose muskrat, but mumps is a keeper. Greg Olear and txinla have also skewered the pair with memorable humor and disgust

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Greg and I are competing with each other.

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And saving me a modicum of sanity

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Yes, indeed!

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I remember quite well having the mumps. I don’t have balls but I do have parotid glands. My lovely Irish grandma suspected I had the mumps based on my fever, malaise and pain in my neck and cheeks back in the 50s/60s? So she made me suck on a dill pickle. When I screamed out in pain from the dill pickle sucking she confirmed my mumps diagnosis. I have never been that sick again in my 70 years of life. I had such a high fever I was hallucinating. I lost several days of my life. May not have been important but you never know. And there is now a protective vaccine against this miserable illness that can cause sterility and much bigger problems than dill pickle aversion. Believe me the vaccine is worth it.

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My brother and I were kids before the vaccine. I never got mumps, but my brother did--pre pubertal, so no effect in the nether reasons. But my DAD had never had them either. And my family went into lockdown--my brother in isolation, no relatives over, and my Dad went on one of his frequent business trips, though whether there was business at this point, I have no idea. Which is how I found out, in a way suitable for a twelve year old, what happened to men who got it. I think it was "can make it hard to be daddies."

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I had chickenpox, mumps, and measles on successive Christmases when I was 5, 6, and 7. I got through all of them without incident, but I still remember mumps as the biggest deal because several of my uncles hadn't had it and I couldn't come downstairs when they were around.

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I caught mumps just before puberty. I caught measles while my mother was pregnant with my sister and got sent to be with my grandmother - spent three months in a dark room, an experience that leaves a lasting memory on a 3-year old.

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A friend of mine (who passed recently) got measles as a 6-year-old and despite the dark room went blind as a result and was blind all her life. She will forever be one of the most amazing women I ever met. Until I met her (I must have been at least 35), I had no idea how catastrophic measles could be.

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More cross pollination… Love it. Actually saves a step for some sharing I already had in mind for several friends. And in case anyone mistakes this for preaching to the choir, I honestly believe the field of exposure is growing and spreading, and truth seeps in until it cannot be ignored and is indeed acknowledged! And then acted upon! Again, grateful.

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Funny, Elon Musk doesn't LOOK like Edith Wilson ... or Nancy Reagan.

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See? That's how you do it.

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Mel Brooks has said that he couldn't do much to Adolf Hitler, but he COULD make him a laughingstock. As I think about it, once he turned him into a stoned surfer and the other time a gay director. Not bad.

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Even Pope Francis said he wants priests to laugh more!

This could catch on

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Yes he does. Nancy had an unusually large head and tiny boobs.

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Hey MaryB, I would love to go back to the days when I had tiny boobs. So much easier and comfortable.

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So much this!!!

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Great new Lincoln Project ad trolling VP Prez-elect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07KHdLsofbY

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Yowza! Gonna leave the “good boy” yowling!

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What an ad!

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Good one!

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First thing I thought of when Felon34 posted that canal nonesense was to ask myself which oligarch put this idea into his empty head. I was thinking Musk in anticipation of shipping his Chinese-made cars to the East Coast.

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That too, yeah.

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You're almost certainly right about the source of the canal silliness because there is no way in this world that the Jr. President wrote that.

I have a vague memory for which I don't remember a source that our current generation of fleet carriers won't fit through the canal even when there is plenty of water. If true, that's one more instance of Mump not knowing what he's talking about.

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The Forrestal super carriers have never fit the locks. The last carriers that could go through were the Essex class and they had to be "shoehorned" into each lock.

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That's what I thought. So all the business about national security and the Canal is just cover story.

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Actually, it's Mumpers' MO modus operandi

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We went to Panama last year. Of course we went to see the canal. There was ONE vessel a day during that period. Not enough water. These morons ignore climate change at their own peril. Elmo wrote that piece or rather the VP did not write it because there are complete sentences and these sentences did not have any arbitrary capital letters.

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Thank you, Tom. Very good points. I read Dr. Snyder's column this morning and also like the term 'mump regime' As Dr. Snyder points out, it can hardly be called an administration, since neither of the two headed monster has a clue of how to administer.

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Timothy has it right: "The Mump Regime" because Mumpers cannot administer anything.

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You can see that trump did not write that tweet because there are big multi-syllable words in it and that he either copied it off something written for him or it was just signed off by him for distribution on Xitter. trump never had an original idea in his head except when it comes to schemes for grifting money or keeping Mr. Mushroom happy…he wouldn’t know where the Panama Canal is on a map or globe, or the Suez Canal or the Erie Canal…

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I returned to Dr. Snyder's substack and have copied the following section for readers. He has written 2 pieces about the Mump Regime...this excerpt comes from the second one.

PAY ATTENTION TO THIS 1ST SENTENCE

"As Musk once tweeted, "we will coup whoever we want." Whoever we want.

We also need a term like "the Mump regime" to classify Republicans. It offers a vocabulary that helps us to sort people out according to their involvement in and fealty towards Musk. The people who are active in the Mump regime are mumpers. The people who go along are mumpets.

But not all Republicans are mumpers, only a select few -- and, indeed, Musk and Trump and Vance lack a traditional Republican background. The mumpers are a select group, like a politburo: a few people, who can brought in and pushed out. Those beyond the small circle of mumpers who support the Mump regime are mumpets, a much broader group.

Plenty of Republicans follow Musk. But these are not the same people, exactly, who would follow Trump. And as we have seen from recent votes on the shutdown, there are Republican elected officials who are not mumpets. Not all Republicans actually want to see Congress rendered obsolete by one-man rule and the United States cease to exist as a republic.

With terms like "Mump regime," "mumpers," and "mumpets" we can parse the present reality and prepare for the future much better than we can with "presidential administration," "Republicans," or "MAGA."

"Mump regime" also gives us adjectives, like "mumpy," "mumpier," or "mumpified." Beyond domestic politics, it can help us towards understanding (topic for another post) the United States as "the sick man of the world" in foreign policy, as we will likely be.

Musk is right that he is bringing something new; what he is not bringing is a tyranny so great that we cannot think for ourselves and name things for ourselves. Indeed, holding tyranny back begins with just that."

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We certainly just witnessed a mumpy face plant.

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Should be whomever! But the musk-rat immigrant makes up his own language!

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It is considered an invasion to send the military into another country because we feel like it. Of course the US usually calls it something else.

I don't think he is even fully aware of what someone wrote for him. He is a useful idiot for Russia, just like his pals.

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As L’ll bush/cheney did in Iraq!

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Yeah, prez Cheney showed how it's done. Loved that "Shock and Awe" tagline.

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I like your “from the department of . . .”

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Two things: 1) Reading that lengthy Panama Canal "comment" was such a tell. Obviously "someone" wrote it who had access to Google and knew how to spell. (And we all know who DOESN'T have those skills.) So, does that mean Elmer Fudd has now taken over Mumper's TS account? And if so, where does that leave the plot to invoke the 25th? Who will lead that effort? And 2) Humor IS the key to surviving these next four years. It's not only our comic relief, it flies under the radar of the deadly serious always-crazy-mad guys - the ones who hate everyone and everything and couldn't get a joke if it smacked them on the nose. We can think of it as our private "code" - cloak everything in a joke and no one will get it except those who have a sense of humor.

And I have to add a third: while the rest of the world is celebrating in various ways this month, I'm thinking that whatever is cooking down at Mar a Lago is not only inedible but is probably unwholesome, in every meaning of the word.

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“The Panama Canal….”! Who writes that shit for ‘it’?

American politicians of any era budget money to aid corporate America! The canal shortened the time foreign goods could be brought to American ports!! Someone tell that to the convicted dumb ass fraud!

No one has taken in more $$$ in scams foisted on the maga cult than trump! His life is one continuous grift!

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Thank You! Shared!

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FB just removed my comment and your article.

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Why not? They removed me in 2020.

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And you were missed almost immediately. It just got too quiet over there.

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I find the "share" button does that on FB. I go to the actual Substack Article (not the one that shows up when I click on my inbox, but the one from the main page when you click on "That's Another Fine Mess" or whatever the title is. Copy paste the url, and paste THAT URL into FB. So far, none of my posts have been removed.

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I headline your column on FB with the bit on Stephen Miller's Mexican immigrantl dolls. I guess immigrant dolls are as illegal as immigrants.

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Go to bluer skies 🦋

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This is a good companion piece to go along with Tom's poking today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bDkQ_hO5nU

I do like the point "Belle" makes that the "anti-war President" apparently wants to wage war on Panama.

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I was slow to get the ‘grown up’ jokes and sometimes I still am.

I remember when I was a kid maybe 12 or 13, too old to be caught being so naive, another kid said something, but he really meant the opposite, but I believed that he meant what he said. I had never heard of sarcasm before and didn’t know such a thing existed. That kid and all his friends laughed at me for not getting the joke. So right away I went home and started practicing my sarcasm. At school the next day I found an opportunity to try it out and impress some classmates. I gave it my best shot with some exaggeration to make the point. They looked at me blankly. I realized I probably needed sarcasm lessons.

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Lenny Bruce used to give tutorial when he was alive & standing up ... ah, forgetta about it.

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I was intrigued by Lenny Bruce but didn’t understand him then. I wanted to though. I always felt as though I missed out.

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The American Constitution was not written to protect criminals; it was written to keep government from becoming criminals.

Lenny Bruce

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One my favorite Lenny routines is Lenny would just come on stage with a fresh copy of Life Magazine and just riff ... free associate.

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I would have loved that.

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