#181 In which we take a really cheap shot

Skimming our notes from the last few days:

The Defense Department—newly renamed FAFO Central—now demands that Pentagon reporters only publish what press officers approve. We’re not talking classified information, just stuff Pete Megadeath & Co don’t want aired in public. Okay. Free press and all that? Who needs it?

In other MAGA news, Ted Cruz pleaded: “Let’s stop attacking pedophiles.” Although we know he didn’t mean it—words do not come easy to this graduate of Princeton and the Harvard Law School, as well as the author of four books—we are awfully glad he said it. Meanwhile, America's answer to Mother Teresa, JD Vance, said: “"There's a lot of emergency healthcare at hospitals that are provided to illegal aliens. That was funded by the federal government. We turned off that funding because of course we want American citizens to benefit from those hospital services, not to be taxed and then have those hospital services go to illegal aliens." In other words, not only are we not going to vaccinate anyone, but if they get sick without a green card, they can stay sick. 

And then there was Brendan Carr, our brilliant FCC chairman, who had this to say: “Giving kids unrestricted access to the Internet while riding the school bus is bad policy. Children are among the most impressionable members of our society. Parents have a right to decide when—and how—their kids access the Internet. Wi-Fi on school buses removes both the supervision that helps keep kids safe and the parental control that protects them from harmful or inappropriate content." What this means is that in rural areas not terribly well-served by internet providers, where kids might have an hour’s commute each way and no internet at home, who get their homework done on the bus, who use school-distributed Chromebooks that only work with internet access—all right, let’s just say it, kids who are more likely as not to come from economically deprived situations—will, as Pete Megadeath might put it, will Find Out what it’s like to get Fucked Around. 

And one last quick note: The Trump administration is cutting back fair housing civil rights protections because, well, of course they are. 

Oh, well. We here at ConstiToonies are breathing a sigh of relief that the government has shut down for a spell; maybe, aside from laying off every federal worker in the blue states, they’ll stop doing some of this stupid shit for a little while. Decades ago there was a television advertisement for Dial soap that showed a hot, sweaty situation and quoted the line: “Aren’t you glad you use Dial? Don’t you wish everybody did?” We’d like to adapt that for 2025: “Are you glad you didn’t vote for Donald Trump? Don’t you wish everybody didn’t?”