alexanderckane

(Hi! I wrote a short story that is ehhhh let’s call it an alt-universe AV 2.5 which takes place in a world very similar to ours right now. Enjoy!) 

“You can’t go out in the field if you have a temperature over one hundred,” Andrea repeated.

Señora Fuego stared back through the screen forcing herself to remain calm, taking an exaggeratedly deep breath to convey this more clearly. “I’m fire, Andrea. I have never had a temperature below one hundred because I am a walking fire.” On the other third of the screen Permafrost formed an icicle in his hand and used it to scratch his back. “I froze thermometer,” he said. “No clue what degree it is. Need new thermometer. Can expense?”

Andrea looked around her apartment as though her couch or bookshelf might help her. No, it was jut an apartment. “I did not make the policy,” she assured them. “These are extreme times-” Andrea cut off as she heard a knock at her door. “Just one moment.” She stood and walked over to her door, opened it to find Head Start, dressed in jeans and tight fitting CUP t-shirt and a CUP mask over his face.

“Hello,” she said. “This is my apartment.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “But it’s also your office. You seen all the people out there not wearing masks? You gonna invite me in?”

Andrea weighed her options. “After you tell me why you’re here when you’re supposed to be at City Hall.”

“City Hall? I just came here for snacks.”

“The mayor’s been…” Andrea paused. “You are superhero, you can buy your own snacks.”

“Nah, Andrea. You have to wait in line, and you know I experience time differently. I know you have good snacks.”

Andrea paused to dispute this, but she really did have good snacks and it was nice to see someone appreciate this about her.

“You can eat on the balcony, but then you’re going to City Hall. I sent you an alert.”

“Haven’t checked my phone in weeks,” said Head Start entering and then speeding over to her cabinet where he flipped through her food options, his hands a blur. “Works been pretty dead. Not Pretty Dead the Zombie Prom Queen supervillain, I mean like nothing’s happening.”

“Winter Shadow, the groundhog supervillain is at City Hall. He’s trying to eat the mayor.”

And then Head Start was gone in a blank, quickly followed by her snacks. Her window opened and shut and he was outside munching on the peanut butter pretzels she waited in a socially-distanced line outside of Trader Joe’s for two hours.

Andrea turned back to her computer only to see the screen split into quarters and Ms.Oh appear, her sweaty, muscular husband Bob Koo doing pull-ups behind her. “Andrea,” she said, “this is worse than a fire at the doily factory. We are going to lose our contract if that marmot eats our mayor.”

Before Andrea could reply, her attention was diverted by the dark cloud forming above her apartment as a booming, deep voice announced, “Attention, disgusting, powerless peons!”

“Yo, Andrea,” said Head Start from the fire escape. “You hear that?”

“Of course I heard it, the whole city heard it.” She grabbed her computer and walked her video meetings outside.

“Mask,” said Head Start, and Andrea jogged back to grab her CUP mask. As she reached the window and looked out, she saw that the cloud had a humanoid form at its head. The mouth moved as it spoke, “The Council of Evil Black Magic has the following announcement for the weaklings who exist only in this physical realm: Due to recent events we are changing our name from the Council of Evil Black Magic to the Council of Evil Magic. We regret the insensitivity of our previous name. REGRET! Also, we will be renaming the council’s headquarters where we grind the bones of the undeserving into paste we use to create our unholy potions. Instead of the Murder Plantation it will be the Murder Farm.”

Andrea opened the window and shouted, “That’s nice! You could just stop all the evil and murdering, too!”

The cloud’s face turned down to face her directly. “We are looking at reform policies, such as recycling the unused bones of the undeserving, relying more on green energy, doing more community outreach when we create our torture vortexes.”

“No,” said Andrea. “Just stop hurting people.”

“We hear you,” said the voice. “You are heard.”

The cloud began lift, but into it shot a human, lifted from the street. As the person approached, the cloud formed monstrous teeth and smiled menacingly.

Andrea looked back at her screen to see it shift again as King Tiger joined the chat. “Is there evildoing to thwart? Please say yes. I need to get out of this house.”

“Daddddddd!” called a tiny voice from another room.

“I am still searching for you!” King Tiger called back. “You are very good at hiding!”

Turning, he whispered into his computer. “My son only hides right behind the door to his bedroom. It is the same hiding spot every time, but we must play this game over and over and each time I must be surprised that this was where he had been the whole time.”

“Maybe you could ask your wife to take over,” Andrea suggested.

King Tiger took an exhausted breath and said, “Brilliant, Andrea. Here, let me try that. Ryan, go ask your mother to find you.”

“No, daddy! Daddy find me!” shouted back the little voice.

“Alas, it seems your cunning plan has failed. Now, tell me I can leave and go fight evil.”

“You need to take your temperature,” said Andrea. “And then yes.”

“It’s ninety-nine point five,” said King Tiger.

“Odd you just know that,” said Andrea.

“I’m a superhuman,” said King Tiger. “I have claws stronger than steel, can jump the length of a football field, and I know my own body temperature to a tenth of a degree. Where’s the evil?”

“Fine,” said Andrea. “You need to fill out the online form stating that and then you can go to City Hall to save the mayor from Winter Shadow.”

“My temperature is also ninety-nine point five,” said Señora Fuego.

“Yes, definite same,” said Permafrost.

With that, they disappeared from the screen leaving just Ms. Oh and Andrea. “I can’t find Teresa,” said Ms. Oh. “I keep calling her but she just vanished like my mama’s macaroni salad at a picnic.”

“Someone has to organize the supes,” said Andrea.

The screen spit again and Teresa DeMarco, head of Traffic and Logistics, appeared in a very pixelated view. “I’m going to be honest,” she said. “I’m in space.”

“Dammit, T,” said Ms. Oh. “You said you were staying in the city.”

“I did,” admitted Teresa. “But everyone I knew was leaving the city and I just thought I would mostly be doing paperwork, so...a friend of mine picked me up and I’m in space.”

Ms. Oh cocked an eyebrow and began, “T, is this the same outer space friend who-”

“It sounds like you’re about to accuse me of cheating on my husband and I resent that. But, yes, fine, maybe I’m cheating on my husband with an alien. It’s a pandemic, there are no rules. Don’t judge me. Listen, I’ll use my vacation days. Anyway, I gotta go, we’re about go through a meteor parade or whatever they’re called.”

Teresa disappeared.

“Andrea,” began Ms. Oh. “I’m very sorry to ask this, but can you put on a mask and go down to City Hall to help keep an eye on our supes.”

“Yes,” said Andrea.

The window lifted and Head Start poked his head in. “Listen, I can get you there fast.”

“Good,” said Andrea.

“Okay, but there’s no easy way of putting this. I’m super-fast, but not super strong, so I can’t carry you.”

“You meant to say no offense at the end of that sentence, but continue.”

“But, like, if you could sit in a wheelbarrow or something, I could push you all the way to City Hall in a minute or two.”

“I’ll ask the neighbors.”

Andrea ignored the nausea as the wheelbarrow tore across the Queensborough Bridge, sparks flying as Head Start struggled to keep it level. “Whoops!” he said.

“I think the Triborough would have been quicker,” said Andrea.

“Tolls,” replied Head Start.

“It’s a wheelbarrow.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but they take pictures of you when you pass through the gate and they know me now.”

Andrea reached for her tablet and dialed Slammer. He appeared with a background showing a sandy beach and a palm tree.

“Andrea, I figured out how to put in a background for Zoom.”

“Sure,” she said. “We need you. Mayor’s about to be eaten.”

“Wow,” said Slammer. “Wow. Okay. I don’t know where I put my pants.”

“Find your pants,” Andrea ordered.

“I haven’t worn pants in months. Do I have special superhero pants or do I wear khakis or something? I can’t even remember.”

“Any pants,” said Andrea. “Just put them on.”

She hung up the call and rang up Hejira, whose screen displayed what Andrea assumed was the surface of an alien planet.”

“It looks bad, yes?” said Hejira. “It’s my fifth attempt at baking bread.”

“I’m sure it tastes fine,” said Andrea. “Mayor’s about to be eaten by a woodchuck.”

Head Start looked down and said, “You told me it was a groundhog.”

“Same thing,” said Andrea.

“Doesn’t seem right,” noted Head Start. “Doesn’t seem right.”

Winter Shadow, a fifteen-foot tall groundhog wearing a mask that read “6 MORE WEEKS OF EVIL” stood on two legs dangling New York City’s mayor from one leg. “Do not fear,” said the mayor. “The situation is under control. I have complete faith in this groundhog to handle this situation without escalation or violence.”

Head Start eased the wheelbarrow to a slow stop in front of a police barricade, and Andrea stumbled trying to extricate herself from it. She wobbled on two legs after the long journey.“

Okay, supes…” She paused to see if she was going to vomit. Feeling confident she would not. “Go...do your thing.”

“Yes, very helpful, Andrea,” said King Tiger as he approached with Permafrost and Señora Fuego. “The first thing we attempt to do is talk down the supervillain, see if we can capture them without incident.”

King Tiger walked cautiously forward. “Good day, Winter Shadow!” he called out. “I need you to put down the mayor, please.”

Winter Shadow turned to face King Tiger, about fifty feet away. “I would like to eat the mayor first!” it yelled back in a malicious shriek.

“No! Put him down or we will take you down!”

“Okay, see this is Cancel Culture!” moaned Winter Shadow.

Señora Fuego caught up to King Tiger and asked, “Cancel Culture the villainous bacteria that erases the memories of its victims or Cancel Culture the thing people complain about on Twitter?”

“See,” said Winter Shadow. “I just want to eat one mayor and all of a sudden I’m the bad guy.”

“You’ve eaten seven mayors before,” Andrea shouted.

“And because that offends you, I’m deplatformed!” screamed Winter Shadow.

“You just had an op-ed published in the Times about how eating more mayors is the only way to get through our current crises,” Andrea called back.

“Andrea,” said King Tiger. “We have a rule that you can’t taunt the villain if you are not going to fight the villain.”

“Fair,” said Andrea.

“People can’t stand opposing points of view anymore!” Winter Shadow raged. “We should be able to disagree. Some people are pro-eating mayors and some people are against it. That’s what makes this country great. You know they just tore down my statue in Central Park?”

“You put that statue up yourself this morning!” Andrea shouted before adding. “Sorry, sorry, I’ll let everyone do their job.”

“I’m fine,” said the mayor.

The ground began to shake, jarring Andrea who had not yet recovered from her wheelbarrow ride. The supes began to retreat from their spot in front of City Hall as the ground cracked and then burst open. A giant syringe-shaped vehicle shot out and floated above them. Its door opened and a wild-eyed mustachioed man in a lab coat shouted down at them. “The time has come!”

“That’s Diseased Mind,” said Andrea. “Missing for the last fifteen years.”

“Stop bragging that you do your homework,” Señora Fuego snapped.

“I have toiled for years!” barked Diseased Mind. “I have it! I have created a disease so powerful it will shut down this nation’s economy!”

“Let Andrea tell him,” suggested Señora Fuego.

“Much agree,” said Permafrost.

“All will bow before me!” Diseased Mind said with a cackle.

“We already got one!” shouted Andrea.

“What?” said Diseased Mind. “Already got one what?”

“I’m going to eat the mayor!” Winter Shadow reminded everyone. “I’m a giant groundhog holding the mayor of America’s largest city near his hungry, hungry mouth and no one is paying attention to me.”

“We’ll get back to you,” said Andrea before turning back to Diseased Mind. “There already is a contagious disease. It’s awful. It’s a living nightmare.”

“Who beat me to it?!” Diseased Mind demanded. “Was it Germaphile? Mucus Brain?”

“It just happened,” said Andrea.

“I worked for years on this!” shouted Diseased Mind. “Years! I had this whole plan where everyone would work to stop the virus and then I would reveal I had done it to unite the people of this country. Did everyone unite to fight the disease? Did that happen?”

“No,” said Andrea. “That definitely did not happen. We’re arguing more than ever before and it doesn’t feel like anything is getting better soon.  It’s an airborne diesease, but people won’t even wear masks.”

“Which supervillains won’t wear masks? That seems foolish. Wait, more importantly, just for future reference, what is the government doing right now? I’d like to account for their strategy for the next time I attempt this.”

“Uhhhh,” said Andrea. “I think we’re banning something called...TokTik.”

“Tiktok!” yelled Permafrost breaking into some bizarre dance. “You sound like old person with calling it wrong name.”

“Yes,” said Andrea. “We are banning Tiktok. It’s-”

“I’m going to cut you off,” said Diseased Mind. “It was a mistake to come above ground.”

His syringe ship lowered and disappeared back beneath the earth.

“Hello!” hollered Winter Shadow before catching a ice bolt to his midsection and a fire blast at his right knee. The villain dropped the mayor, but Head Start rushed in to catch his fall. King Tiger leapt on top of Winter Shadow, pinning him to the ground. Hejira, next to Andrea, levitated a set of oversized manacles and used them to restrain the groundhog.

“Alright, that’s done.”

Hello!

Today is the release day for my novel, Andrea Vernon and the Corporation for UltraHuman Protection. I would be eternally grateful to anyone who could share this link on social media. If you do download it, listen to it, and enjoy it, please rate and review it. Both the ratings and the reviews make a big difference in the possible future success of the book. This book is a story told very much in a sketch comedy style in a fantasy world with aliens, mutants, robots, and a mostly functioning NYC subway system. There were two pieces of writing advice that echoed in my head throughout the writing process: 1) Michael Delaney, my sketch 201 teacher: "There are so many sketches about people who are bad at their jobs, bad cops, bad doctors. There are is something far more interesting about people who are very good at their jobs."

Hello, Tumblr. It’s been a while.

Listen, I wrote a book.

The short version of the story: I sold the book to Audible as an audio exclusive. There will be a print and ebook once that exclusive ends. 

A few of my writer friends have asked for the longer version of the process I went through to get my book published. I am sharing my experience here in case it is helpful to anyone with the same goal. I warn you that luck played a big role. This was something that drove me nuts when I read articles by people who have been published; invariably some random event would lead to their success. “I had been trying to find an agent for months, and then I saved one from drowning at sea.” “I thought I’d never find an agent, and then I held a magical skull at the same time as one and we Freaky Friday’d into each other’s bodies. As her, I signed up myself as her client and by the time we switched back it was too late. Thanks, magic skull!” 

Anyway, my story starts with:

1) I wrote the damn book.

This might seem like a stupid thing to mention, but starting to write was the most intimidating part of the process. I had the idea for this book for a very long time, but I continually invented reasons that I was not good enough to write it. I took lots of notes, created story webs exactly in the manner I was taught in third grade (Thanks, Ms. Ulseth!), but I could not bring myself to start typing. I stopped making excuses when my wife was five months pregnant and I realized I was running out of time before I would be sleep-deprived and unable to focus.

During the writing process, I continually hit blocks where I felt like the story wasn’t going anywhere, that I wasn’t good enough to do the characters justice, and couldn’t I use this time to learn how to swaddle or properly change a diaper?

If you’re thinking about writing a book, here are my only two pieces of advice: a) Just started writing it b) Write the story you are passionate about instead of what you think the market will want. You are going to have to put a lot of work into this, you’re likely to suffer a massive heap of rejection, and if you don’t love your book, I don’t get why you’d put yourself through that.

2) I edited and edited and edited the book.

I showed it to people, I listened to their critiques. A really smart thing my friend Phaea said to me was “when your friend comes back with no notes, you know you have a lot of work to do.” People telling you your book is great is genuinely useless at this point.

Have people rip the book apart and tell you everything wrong with it. I am lucky to have wonderful people in my life who enjoy criticizing me. A smart thing I should have done was join a writers’ group. I also should eat better and spend less time reading articles on college football recruiting, but that is neither here nor there. 

Don’t send out the book until you think it is as good as it can possibly be. 

3) I wrote a bad query letter and then I made it better.

Anyone who has started the process of trying to get published likely knows what a query letter is, but if you are just starting to think about writing, the query letter is what you send to agents to sell yourself and your book. 

Here is a good website for learning how to avoid common query letter mistakes: Query Shark

I cannot emphasize enough how important a query letter is. Having a bad query letter when you’re trying to get your book published is like having a face covered in poop emoji tattoos when you’re looking for the love of your life. You might be a patient listener, a caring lover, and talented chef. It doesn’t matter, no one will ever know because of the poop emoji tattoos on your face. You need to make agents fall in love with you and your book with the query letter and if that happens, you have a chance with your book. 

I took a class, How to Get Published, at the Gotham Writers Workshop which was taught by an actual agent. If you can do this, great. If you can’t, do everything you can to make your query letter FREAKING AMAZING. Also, follow agents on Twitter. Read their blogs. Even if you aren’t querying them, social media gives you open access to what agents are looking for, what they are tired of, and advice to aspiring writers. And a lot of animated gifs from BBC’s Sherlock. I swear every agent loves that show.

AT THIS POINT EVERYTHING BECOMES A LITTLE AWFUL

4) I began sending out my query letters

First, I did a lot of research. There are good websites for finding agents to query such as QueryTracker and Publishers Marketplace. QT requires sign-up and there is a premium membership, but I never paid for that. Publishers Marketplace charges you a membership fee. I signed up for it for one month, researched as much as I could and canceled it before the month was over.

I also went to book stores’ Sci-Fi and Fantasy sections, looked for books that seemed similar to mine, and then researched which agents represented those authors. I read through the Barnes and Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy blog and would do the same for the new authors I found there. 

Importantly, I read through the agents’ websites because there is important information in there. Make sure when you query an agent you are sending them exactly what they want. You also want to know if they are open to submissions, because sometimes they will go on a query hiatus for vacations or to catch up. The agent who taught my class at Gotham told me she gets 400 queries a month. Most months, she takes on zero new clients.

I also kept track of whom I had queried, what I had sent, and when their website said they usually get back to people using a Google Sheet. I did this in part because you want to make sure you do not query two agents at the same agency, at least until you get a rejection from the first. I also had a column to keep track of all the times I screwed up a query letter. Once, I copied and pasted and left off the first two sentences of the query. Another time, I queried an agent who asked that her name be included in the subject. I wrote “QUERY FOR ALISON” and then started the email with “Dear Jackie.” Come on, Alex.

5) I waited and I kept researching and I sent out more query letters

The waiting is the worst part. Going back to my analogy between looking for the love of your life and getting your book published: Trying to find an agent is like asking a bunch of people to marry you, and they’re probably going to say no and break your heart, but YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHEN. You could just open the door to your apartment and there is the person you thought you would marry saying “Thank you very much for asking for my love, but I was not drawn in by your query and am going to have to pass and marry YOUR MOST HATED ENEMY.” 

Some agents email back rejections in five minutes. Some take weeks. Some take months. Some will tell you on their website that they only respond if they’re interested. For the year and a half I was looking for an agent, I could never check my email without flinching. I thought there were times I would be safe. Then an agent emailed me on Thanksgiving Day. Another sent me a rejection at 3 AM on a Sunday morning. I have so many questions about that one.

You can get an idea of how long the agents you’ve queried take to respond by signing up at QueryTracker. People post when they’ve submitted and update with responses from agents. This was also an awful feature for me because it meant I had something I could check compulsively to see if an agent I was waiting on had sent responses back recently. 

What I have learned from following agents on Twitter: If their website says they respond in x number of days, it’s okay to nudge if they have exceeded that period of time. BUT! Never email them back after they reject you. Don’t ask for more info, don’t try to convince them, don’t even thank them for their consideration. It’s just another email in their inbox to click through. In general, don’t take any of it personally. 

I also tried #PitMad, which is an event on Twitter that happens every so often where people tweet their pitch for their book and agents read through and like the ones they want to receive queries on. People do actually find agents this way. 

Not me, I don’t have an agent. I should have mentioned that earlier.

6) I stopped looking for an agent

Of all the agents I queried, five requested the full manuscript or a partial to read. I received three rejections, and had been waiting on the other two for several months. I decided to take a bet on myself and self-publish. I emailed the two agents I was waiting on and told them my decision and let them know to please remove me from consideration. Like I said before, you have to love your book because you might find yourself where I was: a year and a half into looking for an agent and feeling like you’re not any closer. I had to decide if I loved the book enough to self-publish and hope that other people might love it as much as I do while admitting that I had failed to find representation. To be bluntly honest, I had to put the book before my ego.

I hired an editor (after researching online and finding one who had worked with similar novels). After the editing process was complete, she asked if she could send it over to a contact at Audible who might be interested. And oddly he was.

After everything moving at a glacial pace, I very quickly signed a deal to sell the audio rights to my book.

Yes, it came down to luck. I just happened to pick an editor who just happened to have worked with someone who likes a certain brand of humorous sci-fi. When I met with Audible, I was told how the timing of my book arriving there could not have been better.

But, I never would have hired an editor if I hadn’t written a good query letter that lead to more than one agent considering the book and giving me confidence that it might actually be something people would be interested in. I wouldn’t have started the process unless I had gotten the book into fighting shape. And obviously nothing would have happened if I hadn’t started writing it. I am not going to be so bold as to make blanket statements on when people should give up on projects or when they should keep going no matter how much failure, but I do believe that if you put the work in, you put yourself in a position to succeed. If you read the publisher’s description of my book on Amazon or Audible, you are reading a slightly edited version of my query letter. Congratulations, little query letter. You made it.

I would also like you to know that I misspelled “Perseverance” two different ways before giving up and checking the correct spelling in case you’re worried it requires a massive intellect to write a book that gets published. (I also will always use the word “suggest” instead of recommend because I’m never 100% confident I have the right number of c’s and m’s.)

I’ve been trying to avoid social media since Trump won the election. At first, it was because it was a little depressing to see constant reminders that we elected a KKK and Putin darling to lead the most powerful nation on Earth. But then when I came back I noticed that people keep posting about whose fault this is and what I should do now. 

Here are some things I’m not going to do:

1) Move to a swing state. 

You know, if you move to a swing state, you really will need to move back to a liberal state for the 2020 census because that will impact how many electoral votes that state will get. Do you know how much moving costs?

2) Get to know, I mean really get to know, a Trump voter.

I grew up in Florida. A relative just posted a quote by the founder of the American Nazi Party on Facebook. I know plenty of Trump voters. I have a family member that I email back and forth with about politics on a regular basis and he gets entirely different media. I get email forwards full of complete and utter falsehoods alleging that Obama has a Czar of Sharia Law, “Certain People” are getting rich on welfare, and Hillary did Benghazi. He appreciates my debunking but is unconvinced. 

It’s nice to think if you called your uncle or knocked on doors in rural Wisconsin you would have prevented this. But, it is not that simple. 

You can click here for a more complete takedown of this line of reasoning.

3) Regret voting for Hillary in the primary.

I have seen so many “BERNIE NEVER WOULD HAVE LOST WISCONSIN!” posts. I have no interest arguing with someone because we both probably share the conclusion that the Democratic Party should become more progressive.

But, can we stop acting like she was an awful candidate? There was a reason Republicans have been running smear campaigns and conducting witch hunts against her. Because they thought she could win. And for good reason. Despite multiple hacks by the Russian government and a curiously timed “Hey maybe there’s evidence of wrongdoing on Anthony Weiner’s penis computer...(wait a week) No nothing on the penis computer” and she still was the choice of hundreds of thousands more Americans than her opponent.

Could Bernie have won? Well, Hillary didn’t. With presidential elections, you either score 0 or 1, and she got 0. So, who knows? Anyone you can name now couldn’t do worse than 0. Bernie? Maybe? Lincoln Chafee? A possibility? Pauly Shore? Technically, he could not have done worse than 0 election wins.

There’s a real argument out there that Bernie would have done better with working class whites in the general election as he did in the primary. But it also assumes he would have retained the support of minority voters who voted overwhelmingly for Hillary. And you know what I don’t want to do? Assume African-Americans and Hispanics will vote for the Democratic candidate no matter what! Because enough people do that already.

She ran a good campaign on a genuinely progressive platform and trounced her opponent in the debate. The reality of Hillary Clinton doesn’t really matter, though, because everyone has invented their own. Some conservatives think she’s a cold blooded murderer who is part of a nefarious global conspiracy. Some liberals think she is a lying, greedy monster who only pretended to care about helping people. I think she is a human being who is imperfect, but would have been a great president. That is why I voted for her, and I don’t regret it.

Do the people who thought she would have at least been a far better president than Trump but did nothing to support her or actively worked against her regret their decision? 

Even that is a dumb question. Continuing to go back and forth about an argument we had for months gets us absolutely nowhere, but we’re all frustrated and we’re scared and it’s easier to take it out on fellow liberals because we’ll at least listen. Everything sucks. 

4) Give Trump a chance.

My first reaction was “To do what?” But then I realized, it’s really giving him a chance to reveal how much of what he campaigned on was bullshit. We are not a week out and it seems like he and his team have already given up on the major promises of his campaign.

No, however, I’m not going to wait and hope that Donald Trump is a secret liberal agent who infiltrated the Republican Party. 

5) Compromise to find common ground with conservatives

This sounds great, right? We should all find middle ground. Sure. But, what does that mean? Think about the arguments we are up against.

Should I say, “Okay, compromise: We should let half the country buy military-grade assault weapons with half a background check, we should reform the discriminatory criminal justice and prison system but only on even numbered days, we should give government control over only the left half of a woman’s uterus, we should allow same-sex couples to get half married, let’s only take away health insurance from 10 million people instead of 20 million, and maybe Obama was born half in the United States and half in Kenya.”

I’m not going to compromise my values in the hopes that conservatives will see me and go “Wow! Look at that liberal cave! Let’s also cave!”

6) Stop saying Trump is like Hitler

I see your point. Trump is just an authoritarian leader who rose to power by exploiting xenophobia, has a large following of anti-Semites, plans to persecute a religious minority, warns of a global banking conspiracy by CERTAIN (jewish) PEOPLE, and has said that he wants to limit freedom of the press. Other than that I am hard pressed to find any similarities. Besides all the swastikas.

7) Wear a safety pin.

This seems very well-meaning. The idea is that people wear safety pins as a sign that they support the marginalized groups Trump has attacked. Do this is you want to do it, I honestly don’t see a lot of harm in it, but it feels to me like wearing a shirt that says “I AM VERY FUNNY AND A NICE PERSON.” If you really are, you don’t need to tell people. They’ll figure it out.

Same with the safety pin. I hope that I will be able to show my support through action. (If you live in NYC, for interest, you can volunteer to escort people of color, LGTBQ people, and Muslims on their commute.)

8) Calm down

Everyone who is telling people we all need to take a breath can blow themselves.

9) Be Quiet

Donald Trump has appointed a racist and anti-Semite as his chief of strategy, asked for his children (who are going to run his businesses) to have security clearance, callously declared that if Roe vs. Wade is overturned women can just drive to another state for care, and apparently plans to name Ben Carson to head the Department of Education. Carson has said he wants to use this power to monitor colleges for “political bias” and punish them for it. In case you were worried thought crime wasn’t a thing yet. VP-Elect Mike Pence is in court to keep his email hidden. The incoming administration is full of liars, bigots, and crooks and they are going to do nothing to benefit the people whom they conned into voting for them. Donald Trump is going to make his money and leave this country in ruins if only for his incompetence and laziness. Maybe Right Wing media will finally turn on him. Or maybe when the smoke clears he’ll blame the people he always blames and people will eat up his bullshit the way they did during the campaign. Either way, we need to call him out and call the media out for letting him get away with it.

10) Lose hope

When Donald Trump won the...just not even gonna finish the sentence. Hold on, I have to go stare at a wall for 20 minutes.

Okay, let’s try that again. Everything is bad. Your Facebook friends have been posting about things are not that bad. "Let’s all take a breath!” they say. “All that happened was we elected an incompetent xenophobe with no understanding of government and no interest in learning or even reading in general who earned his support by appealing to bigotry and white nationalism and got over the goal line with a little push from Russia’s dictator. What harm could he and two Republican-controlled houses of Congress possibly do besides dismantle all efforts to combat climate change, destroy our alliances, start petty trade wars that could devastate our economy, rob 20 million people of their insurance, give government control of women’s reproductive decisions, widen the income gap, destroy social welfare programs, oppress and harass LGBT people, tear apart immigrant families, discriminate against Muslims, rip up Wall Street regulations put in place to prevent another economic collapse, and start a nuclear war.  NO. BIG. WHOOP.” Hey, thanks, Facebook friend!

Yeah, it’s bad. And it’s time to get to work. Here are some things we can do:

1) Get excited for some good liberal politicians out there. We have mid terms two years away and another presidential election two years after that. Now is a pretty good time to get behind them, support them, and maybe push for them to run in 2020. Maybe you want Bernie Sanders to make another run, or maybe you think there’s a great redemption story waiting to unfold for Hillary Clinton. Could be, but they will be 79 and 73 respectively in November 2020. Bernie might want to enjoy retirement and it might be a hard sell to Hillary to say “Hey, do you want go through the humiliating experience of running as an experienced woman against a completely incompetent man while the press hounds you about the same email protocol issue for a year and a half while shrugging at the fact that he’s a fraud and a sex criminal? AND THEN YOU MIGHT LOSE AGAIN TO THAT SEX CRIMINAL BECAUSE THE WORLD IS DISGUSTING?”

Here’s some people to get pumped for:

A) Kamala Harris: One positive from Tuesday: Harris will be the first Indian American US Senator and only the second African-American female US Senator. She was California’s Attorney General. Here’s her Facebook page for you to like if you so choose.

B) Kirsten Gillibrand: I am personally a big fan of the US Senator here in my state of NY. She was appointed to fill Hillary Clinton’s seat when she became Secretary of State in 2009, won a special election in 2010 with 62% of the vote, won again in 2012 with 72%, and is up for reelection in 2018. She’s been great for New York, and I would love to see her run for president. And she has a Facebook page.

C) Elizabeth Warren: Would she have run for president if Clinton and Sanders had not? Who knows, but she is a brilliant defender of liberal values who loves to fight for what’s right. Do you not already like her Facebook page?

D) Keith Ellison: Bernie Sanders is pushing for Ellison to become the new DNC Chair. Sounds like a great idea! Go Keith Ellison! 

And yeah, these are all Democrats. I hate how we do elections in this country personally. I would love a better system and the reversal of Citizens United. The incoming government is going to be way too busy crafting laws to shame transgendered people for using public bathrooms, so I’m gonna say it’s unlikely any real election reform is coming. You might not like it, but the Democratic Party is going to be the hope in 2018 and 2020. 

2) Protest. Trump is thin-skinned, petty, and obsessed with his news coverage. Make it bad. Make him whine about it for the whole damn world to see. Let him embarrass himself and show who he is over and over again.

If your rep or senator supports one of Trump’s worst intentions, give them the same treatment. 

3) Get involved with local politics. Trump is going to inspire a lot of monsters in state, city, and county politics. Run for office or support someone locally you believe in. We can protect a lot of people in our communities, but we have to participate.

4) Choose your own narrative of why this happened and let that move you forward. Some people want to blame establishment Democrats for pushing Hillary when Bernie would have been a better option. Some want to blame Bernie supporters for dragging their feet and refusing to show enthusiasm in supporting Hillary. Some think Democrats didn’t tailor their message enough to the white working class.

Me? I think there are a lot of people in this country who were waiting for a presidential candidate that would treat white people like an oppressed minority group, and were willing to forgive everything else about a person who would do that. Donald Trump did that, and that got him enough voters in the right states.

There are a lot of ways to to look at how we got in this feces tornado. Whatever you believe, use that conviction and take action. Or you could post passive-aggressively on Facebook, I guess. It’s a very popular website.

5) Pay attention and stay informed. He is going to screw up domestically and internationally and he will try to blame all of his failures on others. He lied his way through the election and he’ll lie his way through what we need to make HIS ONE AND ONLY TERM. Don’t just call him a spray tanned turd. Don’t just say that his hair looks like an elderly golden retriever’s pubes. Know your facts because those still matter.

6) Donate. Here are some links to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Human Rights Campaign.  I will likely add more to this list. These organizations can use your help with what’s to come.

7) Stand up. Bigots have already become emboldened by Trump’s victory and are out to terrorize minorities. Get in their way. Protect each other. Don’t let these douchebag bullies have easy victories.

We’re back up at the PIT tonight!

Hello, fellow Hillary Clinton supporter.

It’s been a long election and you’re so close to the finish line. Really, all that needs to happen to assure Secretary Clinton a victory on November 8th is for your friends who supported Bernie Sanders to all finally jump on board the Hillary train with you. There is just one small problem: They hate you. In a deep, seething way they hate you. Not only did your side win, but before it was even over you were calling for them to abandon hope because it was time to team up against Trump. God, how they hated that. Remember all those 538 articles you shared trying to show how hopeless Bernie’s chances were? Remember when you posted on social media that Hillary had officially won the night before the last primaries? Because they remember. And they hate you.

And now you’ve been Trump-shaming them, constantly reminding them that if they don’t vote for Clinton, they will be ushering in the era of Incompetent Racist Fake Billionaire President. It will be their fault. They hate your analogies. “Being undecided in this election is like going to a pizzeria and they’re out of your favorite toppings so you can either have cheese or you can inhale a thick cloud of zebra farts, and you ask how much the zebra farts cost.” Yeah, that joke did not connect with them. Because they hate you.

They know Donald Trump is a rotting corpse sphincter of a human being, but that doesn’t mean they want a Clinton presidency. Bernie Sanders was their Eddard Stark. Hillary is Cersei and Trump is the Night King. Do they want the Night King and his army of ultra-white followers to win? No, they do not. But, THE NORTH REMEMBERS.

Stop Trump-shaming your friends. Some people would tell you to present them with facts of Clinton’s history and specific policy proposals that Bernie Sanders supports, but it’s too late for that. No one wants your video of Hillary hugging babies or talking about defeating TPP. It’s time to get serious.

Here are 3 simple and effective ways to convince your Bernie-supporter friends to back Hillary:

1) Halloween Surprise

You call up your friend and say “Hey, buddy. I know things have been a little tense between us with the election and all, but I thought maybe we could hang out on Halloween, do some trick or treating.”

“Um,” your friend says, “aren’t we a little old to go trick or treating?”

“That’s what the Establishment wants us to believe.”

They say yes and you go trick or treating. The two of you walk up to the first house and ring the bell. When the door opens and standing there right in front of you is Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“Holy crap!” yells your friend.

“Wow!” you say slyly. “What a coincidence!”

RBG hands you five whole candy bars and then turns empty-handed to your friend. “Where’s my treat?” your friend asks.

RBG grabs their hands tightly in her own and says “It’s right here in your hand. I’m giving you the power to elect the first female president of the United States.”

“But-”

RBG softly places her index finger on your friend’s lips and says, “Shhhhh. I believe in you.”

The two hug and your friend checks the right box on election day.

2) Tattoo Buddies

“Hey,” you say to your friend. “I’m sorry I called you a privileged Bernie Bro.”

Your friend nods. “I forgive you. And I’m sorry I called you a reactionary neo-liberal.”

“Hey, would you like to go get gelato?”

“I would ge-love-to.” You both laugh. How you’ve missed these moments.

At the gelateria, the two of you have one of the most dairy-based experiences of your life. Wow, this gelato is so amazing. If only you could remember this moment forever.

“I’ve got an idea,” you say. “Let’s go get knuckle tattoos. We’ll each pick what the other’s says.”

“No,” your friend replies. “That’s crazy.”

“You always say you want to be more spontaneous. Let’s do it.”

“Yeah” says your friend. “Let’s ride this dragon.”

At the tattoo parlor, your friend is shocked to see the finished product: “W I T H  H E R !” inked into their knuckles.

“Well, now I gotta vote for her! You got me!”

You look down at your knuckles. “S I N” on one hand and “B A D” on the other. “It’s like Naz from The Night Of.”

“Oh, how was that?” you ask.

“It was okay.”

3) Human Cloning

“I know Hillary will be a better president, but I just can’t bring myself to vote for her,” your friend tells you.

“I understand completely,” you say. “And that is why I created this...”

In walks an exact clone of your friend, imprinted with all of their memories excepted those of the contentious primary. “That is very thoughtful of you,” your friend says with a hint of surprise. “But a clone can’t cast my vote.”

“Au contraire,” you say. “It says in the Constitution that a clone can vote for the original.” It really does.

“Wow! This is perfect!” your friend and their clone say in unison. Everyone laughs.

The clone casts its ballot and everyone wins.

Now the hard part: You have to kill the clone. Shut up! You knew what you were getting into when you decided to play God! That clone is going to want the life it thinks belongs to it and that means your friend will never be safe as long as that abomination has a heartbeat. Whatever you do, don’t look in its eyes. It will convince you it has a soul.

Hello! It’s good to see you again, Irate Trump Fan yelling at the “sheeple” in the comments of your ex-coworker’s or second cousin’s post about how they actually like Hillary Clinton. You sure are showing everyone...something! I created this post because everyone is exhausted by your bullshit and no one has the time to write out long responses to your regurgitations from Breitbart and InfoWars, and if they did that would only mean talking to you more and that sounds awful. So, here are some answers to the garbage storm shooting out of your typing fingers.

Angry Trump Fan Claim #1: The Clinton Foundation is a sham, designed to enrich the Clintons.

The idea that the Clinton Foundation is an evil enterprise is 100% true if you are Malaria. Then you are correct, it is out to get you. Let’s start with the lie that only 6% of the Clinton Foundation’s budget goes to actual charities. Only 6% goes to other charities, while the Foundation does most of its own work. They have done great work across the world with health care, reforestation, education, and hope to one day MURDER JAMES BOND. Crap, I blew at the end, didn’t I?

Here is an article from FactCheck.org on that subject. You can also check CharityWatch, GuideStar, and Charity Navigator which all give the Clinton Foundation top ratings.

There is another myth that the Clintons have pocketed eleventy billion dollars from the Foundation because they spend all their own money on claw machines in arcades even though they’ve never once gotten a prize, but several times they really thought the claw had the stuffed bear in its grasp.

Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea make $0 from the Clinton Foundation. Here is Politifact’s analysis.

Then there are the charges of conflicts of interest. You’re probably yelling about uranium right now, so we should talk about uranium. The story is that Hillary Clinton took $145 million for the Foundation and in return allowed Russia to buy a company which has control over a significant amount of uranium. This story is bunk. One might say this story came straight out of uranus (DAD JOKE!).

You can read Politifact’s long breakdown, but the short version is a) 9 government agencies signed off on the deal and b) there’s no evidence that Clinton intervened at all in the deal. 

There are also allegations that the Clintons allowed donors special access to Clinton when she was Secretary of State, but the smoking guns here are basically that she met with a Nobel Prize winning economist and Elie Weisel. (Washington Post). 

Hillary Clinton has admitted they could have done a better job of keeping the Foundation better separated from her work. I personally have never run a charity that provide access to AIDS medications to 11.5 million people or lowered the cost of Malaria medication by 80-90% in several countries, but apparently it’s tricky. So, yes, we can criticize Hillary and Bill for not being diligent enough in eliminating any possible hint of impropriety while working to combat heroin addiction and providing healthier food to students in the United States. 

But no, they did not pocket money or sell uranium to Lex Luthor.

Did you know Donald Trump has a foundation? He has illegally used the money from it to settle legal disputes, bribe Florida’s attorney general, purchase a painting of himself, and buy a helmet signed by Tim Tebow.  He has not contributed any of his own money since 2008.

Angry Trump Fan Claim #2: HILLARY DID BENGHAZI!

No, Hillary Clinton did not refuse to send support to Benghazi and no one was told to stand down instead of defending the embassy (except in the Michael Bay movie). And no one slept through Benghazi (except in the Michael Bay movie).

Media Matters has a full breakdown of all the myths and facts about Benghzai.

Most likely the controversy over Benghazi comes from the fact that it was the first US embassy attack in the history of the United States in an alternate universe because there were 13 attacks that killed 60 people during the Bush administration alone. This Politifact article actually breaks that number down a bit and shows it goes up if you count attacks on embassy employees outside the compound.

Four people died in Benghazi and it would be thoughtless to say that nothing can be learned from the tragedy and everything was done exactly as it should have been. The same is true of 9/11 under George W Bush, the USS Cole bombing under Bill Clinton, the death of hundreds of marines in Lebanon under Reagan, back to the British torching Washington, D.C. My point is that we used to all hate the British and we all worked together against them and I want to go back to that uniting, Brit-hating spirit.

Angry Trump Fan Claim #3: Donald Trump gets attacked for what he says about women, but nobody calls out Bill Clinton.

Here is a handy link to the answer to that question.

After you click that, go look at yourself in the mirror. Yeah, that’s a scumbag who blames women for their husbands’ infidelities. Pretty disgusting, right? Like you wanna look away and go get ice cream, but you don’t deserve ice cream.

Angry Trump Fan Claim #4: Hillary wants open borders, but Trump is going to build a wall. A Wonder Wall that Oasis could only have dreamed of.

Hillary Clinton does not support open borders. 

And Trump’s Wall? The worst idea to come out of Game of Thrones since your high school friend named her daughter Hodor? What is the goal here? More immigrants are going back to Mexico than coming in. More undocumented immigrants are entering the United States legally and then overstaying their visas than crossing the border. Why am I talking about a wall that is never going to be built? People get really emotional about this wall likes it’s their dad finally being proud of them. “OH, IT’S GONNA HAPPEN!”

Angry Trump Fan Claim #5: Hillary Clinton led us into war in Iraq and Donald Trump was against it.

It is now well known that Howard Stern asked Donald Trump in September 2002 if he was for invading Iraq and he said “Yeah, I guess so.” Now Fox News has released a clip of him talking to Neil Cavuto which they say proves he was against it. The quote that supposedly closes this case: “Well, he has either got to do something, or not do something.” Strong words for a leader. TRUMP 2016: HE’LL DO SOMETHING OR NOT DO SOMETHING! 

Clearly Trump was just talking out of his ass, something I’m sure he is almost finished doing. He didn’t know the answer, but that didn’t stop him from talking. I’m sure he remembers that he was right, because he only remembers being right. After the first debate with Clinton he denied saying something he had said just an hour before. An hour! It was like Sam from Quantum Leap entered his body and had to answer a question but had no idea what had happened immediately before.

Hillary Clinton voted to authorize President George W. Bush to use military force in Iraq. She has said he had given assurances he would use this authorization to pressure the Iraqis to allow weapons inspectors, and she believed him. There are certainly people who did not believe this. Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders both opposed the war, and so she cannot claim that no one saw the mess coming, but she certainly was not leading the charge to war.

Can I comment right here how hilarious it is what conservatives are willing to now believe since Donald Trump says it. The Iraq War was now bad! Paid family leave is good! That’s great! He also has conservatives talking about how awesome Vladimir Putin is and that is batshit insane. This strong leader garbage he has fellow Republicans spouting is ridiculous. Putin has to murder reporters and political enemies to stay in power while he is destroying Russia’s economy. It’s like if one of your friends started telling you that candy corn tastes delicious, so you started pretending to eat candy corn, but candy corn is fucking disgusting.

No, but really, Trump is indebted to Putin’s cronies and is more concerned with pleasing Putin than defending American interests. If that last statement is wrong, it could be disproven by the release of Trump’s tax return which he refuses to release. This is a man that over 40% of America is going to say “Yes, please lead us, Giant Lying Russian Stooge!” on election day.

Angry Trump Fan Claim #6: This article from InfoWars says th-

Counterpoint: Fuck you. InfoWars is not a news website. It’s a white paranoia bunker run by a nutjob who said no one died at Sandy Hook. He saw a tragedy with 26 dead, 20 of them little kids and he made it about his own ridiculous delusions. Seriously, fuck InfoWars and fuck you for giving them clicks.

And fuck Breitbart, too.

Angry Trump Fan Claim #7: Hillary should be in prison!

Nope, she was investigated by the FBI and its Republican director who found no cause to prosecute her and there is no analogous case where someone who had made a similar error was prosecuted. Please don’t try to connect it to General Petraeus who had knowingly gave out classified information. That would be embarrassing for you.   

The email server: Yes a bad move, which Secretary Clinton acknowledged. Was it illegal? Nope. Rules about private emails were instituted after she left. There is no evidence that any emails contained information considered classified at the time they were sent. If you read the articles linked here, you will see that there is definitely criticism of Secretary Clinton’s use of the server, which was, in technical political terms, a real boner. 

If you read down this far, Angry Trump Fan, you found somewhere I conceded she erred! Congrats! 

My personal guess is that she wanted to have some communications that wouldn’t be uncovered later and people would discover that she’d said Angela Merkel had shitty taste in music and Nicolas Sarkozy wore ugly hats. This is in a sense understandable, but not acceptable. Just like how the W. Bush administration lost 22 million emails. Y’all were equally pissed about that right?

Update: I received a message from someone who felt I had not accurately represented this issue, and that person was correct. This Politifact article finds that of the thousands of emails FBI Director Comey says110 contain classified information, but “Most of these emails, however, did not contain markings clearly delineating their status.” The article, in general, is very critical of Secretary Clinton and I’m linking to it because I do not want to be guilty of choosing my own reality that supports my candidate.

Angry Trump Fan Claim #8: Trump won the first debate! The polls say so!

Quick one: No they don’t. I’m not usually a believer in saying someone “won” a presidential debate, but when one is talking about policy and the other is farting out his mouth about how his son likes computers and maybe there are 400 pound hackers and Rosie O’Donnell and how it’s smart business to cheat people out of money and not pay taxes, then I’m willing to allow maybe Hillary Clinton won the first debate. And the real polls agree.

Angry Trump Fan Claim #9: Hillary invented Birtherism!

Nope. It’s possible that hard-core Hillary 2008ers were suggesting Obama was born in Kenya, but Clinton did not. In fact she fired an employee for sending out an email spreading that rumor.

But this is not about Hillary, this is about Trump who built himself up on racist bullshit and now is backing away from it because it’s politically expedient. It’s not just that he spread the lie and continued spreading it. He said he had investigators in Hawaii and “they cannot believe what they're finding.” I CAN’T BELIEVE IT EITHER! NO ONE BELIEVES IT!

This is another one that fills me with delight in that his supporters looooovvvve to say “He’s no bullshit. He calls them like he sees them.” And here he is making it incredibly clear that either a) he was utterly full of shit for years and is now abandoning that lie because it’s no longer politically useful or b) he totally believes it still even with no evidence, but he’s willing to pretend he doesn’t to win votes. This is your straight-shooter, 40% of America.

Angry Trump Fan Claim #10: Hillary called me deplorable!

Maybe. She said half of all Trump supporters were deplorable. I do not know the percentage of Trump supporters that are deplorable, but there are a sizable chunk that are anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-woman, and anti-anything-that’s-not-a-straight-white-Christian-male. In response to the comment, two of Trump’s advisors including his Fuckhead Son (official title) Donald, Jr. posted an image of The Deplorables, a photoshop of The Expendables poster with Trump allies’ faces placed over the stars’. Included in that are Alex Jones, Milo (a hateful race-baiting internet troll), and Pepe the Frog, a Neo-Nazi internet meme (UPDATE: More than one person has noted that Pepe the Frog was not created by neo-Nazis, but rather was coopted by them. If you’re interested, you can read here about the creator’s attempt to rescue his creation) . Junior claimed he had no idea what Pepe the Frog is, but we are well past the point where this over-privileged bag of leaking feces gets to claim ignorance of white supremacist jargon and symbols. 

I have no clue what is in the hearts of Donald Trump’s supporters. Paul Ryan just wants to eliminate the estate tax for people worth over $5.45 million dollars. Some people will take anyone who will at least claim they’ll appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe Vs. Wade. But a lot want to turn back the progress made by minorities, and that I find deplorable.

And listen, I’m not going to call Donald Trump a racist. At least not without a hundred pieces of evidence. Which you can find here. 

Angry Trump Fan Claim #11: Hillary is a bigger liar!

This is such a weird one and it’s what I see most often. “She’s a bigger liar than Trump!” Considering pretty much every human lies, it’s impossible to say anyone isn’t a liar. I’m even not sure how you would rank who is a bigger liar. Luckily PolitiFact does and they made this.

Angry Trump Fan Claim #12: She was wearing an earpiece!

I forgot this one when I originally posted, so I’m adding it in because people still want to believe it. “Listen, Trump totally won the debate. I mean there were problems with his microphone and Lester Holt was so mean to him and Hillary had an earpiece but we’re not mistaking excuses we’re just saying!”

No, she did not wear a secret microphone, or an anti-seizure device, or a mystical amulet to animate her corpse since she obviously died decades ago. CAN’T YOU SEE CTHULHU IS BEHIND THIS!

The Florida GOP even retweeted an InfoWars link on this subject (Hey, fuck you again InfoWars!). The Florida GOP would quote a Ouija Board at this point if it told them Hillary had consumption.

Update: Angry Trump Fan Claim #13: Trump may be inexperienced, but he’ll surround himself with good people.

I’m paraphrasing a comment under my original posting of this article on Facebook, and I kinda thought it was a joke. Apparently people believe this. Can I use this moment to point out how much work people put into liking Trump? Can you imagine if they put one tenth of one percent of that effort into giving Obama a chance? People have convinced themselves that Donald Trump, a thieving, philandering con artist, is a moral, religious everyman.

Back to this idea that he’s going to surround himself with good people. Here are the people he has chosen so far:

a) Corey Lewandowski, his first campaign manager, was charged with battery for assaulting a female reporter. But, hey, the charge was dropped! That’s something!

b) Paul Manafort, Trump’s second campaign manager, was a former advisor for the Putin-backed Ukranian dictator and was paid in funds stolen from the state.

c) Steve Bannon: Trump’s current campaign chief changed Breitbart from a conservative news site to a home for white hate groups (Yes, I reused a link. You caught me). They have a section on the site called Black Crime.

d) Chris Christie: Not even Donald Trump believes Chris Christie, who is in charge of leading his transition team, told the truth about Bridgegate. While he’s avoided prosecution, both sides in the Bridgegate trial acknowledge he was aware, despite his constant declarations to the contrary.

e) Al Baldasaro: Oh you don’t know the co-chair of Trump’s veterans’ coalition? You might remember that he called for execution of Hillary Clinton. He continues to work for the Trump campaign.

f) Roger Fucking Ailes: Yes, Roger Ailes who harassed and extorted sex out of female employees for years, is an advisor to Donald Trump. Roger Ailes is a monstrous sexual predator and Donald Trump thinks he’s a cool guy who can hang.

No, Donald Trump is not going to surround himself with good people.

Update! Angry Trump Fan Claim #14: Hillary called all of Bernie Sanders supporters basement dwellers!

This is incorrect. She spoke empathetically of people who have been let down by the economy. That take might be biased because it comes from noted Bernie Sanders foe and longtime Clinton supporter Barney Fra...No, sorry that’s what Sanders himself said.

Update: Speed Round

Thanks to everyone who reblogged this. Since it keeps going, I thought I’d throw in a couple more that have come up since I first posted this. No, Secretary Clinton was not kicked off the Watergate Commision, No, she did not lose $6 billion as Secretary of State. No, bragging about grabbing a woman by the vagina without consent is not locker room talk, it is sexual assault. That last one is easy because I don’t need a link to a non-partisan website to prove it, I just need to not be a scumbag. I could spend years going through every fake controversy from John Podesta’s emails, but here are the top ten from PolitiFact. Yes, however, John Podesta’s risotto recipe does sound promising. No, the multiple women who have accused Donald Trump of sexual assault have not had their claims debunked. No, the polls aren’t rigged. No, voter fraud is not what’s going to keep Donald Trump from becoming president. Yes, there is a tape of Donald Trump discussing how great Hillary Clinton is from 2008. No, Al Gore did not contest the results of the election. He pushed for hand recounts during the legally mandated recount in Florida. George W. Bush sued to stop the recounts. Bush was the plaintiff, which is why it’s Bush v. Gore instead of Gore v. Bush. (Guys, Gorvy Bush sounds like a great name for a loony yokel on a sitcom). After the Supreme Court decision, Gore conceded and democracy kept chugging along.

And I think we’re done. I’m glad we took this ride together and you read all the way through this and now you don’t need to keep posting false garbage in everyone’s comments. Good-bye and you’re welcome.

"Do you have to be racist to support Donald Trump?”

I think of it this way: You hate your accountant. You don’t trust him, you think he’s ripping you off. A friend of yours tell you to check out this new guy. “He’s great,” says your friend. “Completely different from other accountants.”

So you go to his office with all of your paperwork and when you get there you see INTENSELY DISTURBING HARDCORE PORNOGRAPHY is being projected against in the lobby. Odd, you think, but you will wait it out.

The accountant comes out, sees you, and says “We’re going to do such an amazing tax return for you, just the best. Really great stuff.”

“Great,” you say. “Can you look at these forms?”

And then he shhhhhs you and changes to a different video of INTENSELY DISTURBING HARDCORE PORNOGRAPHY and walks away.

When he comes back, you say “About these taxes-”

He cuts you off and says “Absolutely. These other jokers have no idea how to do taxes. We are going to get these sent in to the DMV any minute now.”

“Taxes go to the IRS,” you say.

He shakes his head and says “Listen, I have very well-sized hands” and flips to another INTENSELY DISTURBING HARDCORE PORNOGRAPHY.

He comes out to the lobby again, but this time to meet someone serving him with a notice that he is being sued for fraud. When you notice, he says “This one has a horse in it” and changes to yet another INTENSELY DISTURBING HARDCORE PORNOGRAPHY.

So, you’re still in the lobby, and at this point you are surrounded with people who are self described INTENSELY DISTURBING HARDCORE PORNOGRAPHY fanatics. They are only here for the INTENSELY DISTURBING HARDCORE PORNOGRAPHY and are so happy there’s an accountant in town that shows INTENSELY DISTURBING HARDCORE PORNOGRAPHY because that’s what we all really want if we’re being honest.

So, you’re there still. Are you into INTENSELY DISTURBING HARDCORE PORNOGRAPHY? To me, the answer to that is another question: How long are you going to stay now that you can plainly see that is all that he’s got?

Donald Trump has made it clear that the only thing he has is bigotry. He’s gotten far by pushing the lie that he’s tough. He describes himself as tough pretty often. Toughness is what this country needs. He himself, is possibly the softest person to ever run for president.

He bans media from his events if they say mean things that hurt his feelings. He has already backed down from Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Un, saying Putin is a guy he can talk to and that he’d meet with Kim Jong-Un. To his credit, his appeasement of dictators has already earned him the official endorsement of North Korea.

He says he’s going to be tough with China, going so far as to say he would start a trade war. That is tough talk. Dumb, but tough talk. However, when a conservative radio host pressed him on it saying that would cost countless job in America, he said he wouldn’t actually do it, but you need to have the threat. So, he’s backed down from his threat, but is apparently hopeful the Chinese lack the surveillance capabilities to pick up radio interviews.

After my hometown, Orlando, Florida, was attacked, he said we need to be tougher. But how? Is he going to be tough and stand up to the gun lobby? Is he going to commit to sending ground troops to fight ISIS? I would support the former and oppose the latter, but they would at least be plans. No, he continued to argue for a ban on Muslims entering the country even though the killer was born in Queens, NY. 

A fact that he lied about. Because, while another common reason I have heard to support Trump is that he tells it like it is, that is not true. He tells it very differently than it is. He tells it how he would like it to be.

In the same speech he said the Orlando killer was from “Afghan,” he said that there is no screening process for refugees. There is. There is an intensive screening process. Perhaps he was thinking of how there is no screening process for buying an AR-15?

He has multiple times said he would donate money to charity and then avoided doing it until called out by the press. In a debate, he once said judges sign bills. Finally, a presidential candidate honest enough to tell us how government really works. “JUDGES SIGN BILLS: TRUMP 2016.”

He has suggested that President Obama is a secret ISIS supporter, Hillary Clinton murdered Vince Foster, and Ted Cruz’ dad took out JFK. And he likes to do this by saying “Some people are saying...” You know, because he’s tough. And we all know tough people do not want to stand behind their own words. Right?

He is in fact a literal fraud and his latest big dust-up over being a racist was calling the judge in fraud case unfit to judge him because he is a Mexican (and yes, the judge is an American born in Indiana). Did Trump just say something racist and untrue to deflect attention from the fact that he is a fraud being sued for fraud? Or did he just want to say something racist? Who knows?

When asked to release his taxes, he said he couldn’t because he is being audited. This is also a lie, and it brings us to another point people use to sing his praises: He is a successful business man. He knows business so well that he would be great turning around our economy. Seeing as how he loves singing his own praises, going so far as to thank everyone for the congratulations following the worst gun attack in US history, no doubt he would love to release his tax return and show how much money he’s making.

Except, he doesn’t make that much money. He was able to use a tax exemption available only to people making less than $500,000. That seems like a lot of money to me, but not for someone claiming to be a genius businessman. In fact, Bobby Bonilla made twice that much this year by not playing for the New York Mets and he’s been retired for 15 years (look up the story, it’s fascinating).

So, there you are. He’s not a great business man, he’s not a straight-shootin’ son of a gun (and now Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog is going to be stuck in my head all day), or a tough guy. He has only stayed consistent on one thing: Racism. 

If you are a Trump supporter, you are sitting in his lobby right now, but instead of INTENSELY DISTURBING HARDCORE PORNOGRAPHY, all you get is racism. You anti-immigrant rants, anti-Muslim propaganda, retweets with lies about violence committed by African-Americans. And instead of INTENSELY DISTURBING HARDCORE PORNOGRAPHY fanatics, you are surrounded by White Nationalists. The company you are keeping is people who wish slavery had never ended, who want to finish Hitler’s work with the Jews, and who want Muslim genocide. How long have you been there?

I will skip the intro of why I decided to join the screaming masses demanding that everyone listen to who they think should be the next president and just say that I’ve seen enough memes that boil down to “Bernie can beat Super Mario 3 in under 5 minutes, but Hillary’s favorite ska band is Nickelback.”

I like Hillary. She is a strong progressive voice who has become stronger and more progressive over the years. This week I heard former Obama speechwriter Jon “No, Not the Actor Who Played Gutter in PCU” Favreau talk about how during cabinet meetings the president would go around the table to discuss each person’s issues and would have Hillary comment on each one. Everything I have heard about how she works when the cameras aren’t on have made me like her more and more. She seems like a hard-working, dedicated public servant who is humble enough to know when to listen and when to change her mind.

She is a supporter of social justice, early childhood education, criminal justice reform, and gun control. Let’s jump to why everyone is telling me not to like her.

1. She used to be more conservative. She’s only taken on some of these causes to win the nomination.

First, I just don’t care that much about knowing what’s really going on in the heart of my candidates because I will never know. What I do know is that candidates try to keep their promises made during elections. Would I have liked Hillary to support marriage equality earlier? Yes, that would have been great. She supports it now.

The same is true of Bernie Sanders. I know it’s fun to say on the internet that he’s a “lifelong” supporter of marriage equality. As though the moment he was born, he saw that his parents were a man and a woman and he said “Ugh, how fucking heteronormative!” In reality, he did oppose the Defense of Marriage Act, but only because he believed it undermined states’ rights. As recently as 2006 he was against full marriage equality in Vermont and preferred civil unions. By 2009, however, totally on board. And you know what? Good on you for coming around, Bernie Sanders.

2. Hillary is a warmonger. She voted for the Iraq War, she advocated for intervention in Libya, she ordered the Code Red. SHE ORDERED THE CODE RED.

That last one was Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, but the other two I understand. I was against the Iraq War. I thought she made a political choice and hoped that George W. Bush was going to use the option to go to war as leverage. (Side note: Remember how awful W was? He would get booed off the stage at a Republican debate if he were running in 2016 and be dismissed as too thoughtful and not militaristic enough.) Some things have happened since then. I personally believe that we would have gone to war with Iran had it not been for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Hillary is credited as the force that brought together the sanctions against Iran that forced them to negotiate dismantling their nuclear program. (Wait, one more side note: At the most recent town hall she mentioned that “some countries” in the region wanted to bomb Iran. As though none of us now exactly who she’s talking about. “Some countries, You know, let’s just call them Schmisrael.”)

As to Libya, Bernie said publicly at the time he wanted...fuck there are ten different ways people spell this name so I’ll just go with...Qaddafi out of power. Hillary was the Secretary of State and she had to advise the president to actually make decisions and she did. Was it better to intervene and for everything to turn as it has? Would it have been better to mostly stay out of it like we did in Syria? I don’t know, but she has had to make those kind of decisions.

Hillary Clinton believes in the power of American intervention, that when we can do something positive in the world, we should. I believe having a president with her foreign policy experience and her standing among world leaders makes it less likely that we will have to go to war. 

3. Only Bernie can beat Trump

I hate this argument. “Look at these general election polls from January! I know they’re meaningless, but they support my argument!” Either Hillary or Bernie will crush Donald Trump like the bigoted cockroach that he is. They both get asked all the time about who is more electable and I wish one of them would say “It doesn’t matter. Whichever one of us wins, the other has their back and we will do everything we can to keep him from being president.”

I can dream.

I think Bernie’s great, but every time I read an article arguing that he is the only one who can save us from President Trump, I read something like “Hillary has many weaknesses Trump can exploit. Bernie can only be attacked for being too caring, too perfect, but Americans are ready to elect a being made of pure light.”

What will Republicans attack? Who knows? They used the fact that John Kerry earned a purple heart against him. Does Bernie have weaknesses besides the socialist label. Sure. He went on his honeymoon in the Soviet Union, he wrote a creepy essay on rape fantasies, he plans to annihilate the insurance industry which employees millions of Americans, and he wants to raise everyone’s taxes, Are these unfair? Most definitely, as are the attacks they’ll make on Hillary.

Both sides can point to which states they won as evidence that they are the better candidate, and I don’t buy into that either. They are two good candidates who are appealing to different groups. 

If there were a real electability argument, I would be happy to listen because the most important thing is to elect a president who will appoint liberal justices and veto whatever awful legislation the Republican-controlled Congress passes. Requiring a woman to pray to Jesus for nine months before she is allowed to talk to an OB-GYN? Replacing the EPA with a framed picture of Ronald Reagan? Any of these things could happen.

4. Universal Health Care

The Republicans gerrymandered congressional districts after their victories in 2010. They will control Congress until at least the end of the next presidential term. The game is rigged. When Obamacare passed Democrats held a majority in the House and a super-majority in the Senate. If you think Republicans have learned their lesson from fighting every single policy and nominee from President Obama, they will laugh as they grip the 70% of elected offices in this country.

I don’t want my next president to get mired in a fight over health care again. I would hope there is some possibility of improving Obamacare and lowering the costs, but that is the best that can happen. 

I have read the argument that it’s better to ask for more and that Hillary is settling before she’s even begun negotiating. This is ridiculous. “Why won’t Hillary make more promises she knows she can’t keep!”

While we’re on he subject of promises, Bernie promised in the last debate that by the end of his term America will no longer be the most incarcerated country in the world. Can someone tell me how he’s going to do that? There are 2.2 million prisoners in the US, but fewer than 200,000 of them are in federal prisons, sentenced under federal law. A president can’t change state laws and he can’t pardon state prisoners. If President Sanders wanted to lower the number of those incarcerated as much as humanly possible, he could pardon every single federal prisoner, and we’d still have two million. Also, a lot of people would go “Honey, why did the president let every murder in federal prison out? That’s weird.”

And while we’re here, can I ask why Bernie is comfortable effectively saying “We’re going to pass single payer health care and campaign finance reform regardless of Republican opposition because this is a revolution and if we believe in it we can make it happen!” But on gun control “It’s a complicated issue.” Dammit, why is anything possible for his pet issues, but for those of us who think it should be harder to murder children, shrug. Hillary said during the last town hall that she’s going after gun manufacturers that display no regard for human life and he doesn’t know what she can get done, but she’s doing it. Fuck yeah. That is both honest and inspiring to me. 

Okay, I snuck a bunch of sub-topics here, but Tumblr charges me by the talking point.

5. Bernie Doesn’t Take Money from Corporations

True. Admirable and true. The problem is that I don’t buy into the logic that I have to vote for a candidate who doesn’t take money from corporations because then my only options are Bernie or Donald Trump. It pains me as well to see their names side by side.

The day President Obama came out in support of marriage equality, I said “I will never have to vote for another president who believes gay people should not get married.” I hope a day comes when we get the money out of politics and not only do candidates not need to fundraise, but they don’t have to ask money from the rest of us. Bernie is the first person to ever do what he’s doing and that’s great. I hope he does change the system. I’m not sure how effective he would be as president in doing so since he called everyone who takes money from corporations (read: all of Congress) bought whores, effectively. 

Bernie is legitimately a great American. He has fought for what he believes in and he is inspiring a whole generation of voter, but I don’t think he would make the best president. I would at this point like to mention how completely insane it is to suggest he should be Hillary’s vice president. He is the most dynamic political force in this county right now s. He is pushing for a revolution in how we do politics and we want to stick him with VP? That like someone going to Steph Curry and saying “Instead of being the most exciting basketball player who is revolutionizing the sport, you should be Vice President of the NBA!”

I hope Hillary wins, but after the election Bernie starts his own political party and changes the whole game. I believe he’d be a lot more effective in changing the system that way then fighting ISIS, arguing over the debt ceiling, going to diplomatic receptions, etc. I hope ten years from now elections are two months long and federally financed and we can credit him.

(Side note: Just once when Hillary gets asked about how Bernie can finance his campaign without large donors, I want her to quote Eminem and say “Will Smith don’t gotta cuss in his raps to see records/Well I do/So fuck him and fuck you, too.”)

6. I have a nine month old baby and I’m going to sleep. I didn’t copy edit this, so I’m hoping for the best.