Vote Rude

Gotta keep up with the Rude Pundit. It's been too long. We voted early. Everyone I know voted early. 

Viktor Orban was voted out this past April. After Brazil and Serbia, optimism is in the air. Netanyahu might not win outright, but his main challenger sounds like Benjamin. Not much of a change there. The only way the GOP keeps control of the House and Senate will be if there was some cheating going on. As much as Trump always talks  rigged elections, he'll try it if he can.

Vote Because It's Your One Chance to Make Some Billionaires Sad

My father fucking hated rich people. I mean, he despised the hell out of them as a group for simply existing. Some of this was born of his hardscrabble upbringing on the streets of Brooklyn in the 1950s. He went from struggling working-class kid to lower middle-class family man by the time he died at age 46, with some stops along the way to solidly middle class and to food stamps-needing poverty. But it wasn't simple resentment. He didn't aspire to be rich. He aspired to not have to worry all the time about money, a far more humble dream. Rich people were pricks, see, because of their material indulgences and their seeming freedom from consequences for their actions. He took great joy whenever a rich person suffered some fall from grace. Seriously, few things made him happier than seeing a rich man sad. This midterm election would thrill him.

If you look at a list of the 10 biggest individual/family donors to political campaigns this year, it's pretty fucking clear who the billionaires, as a whole, support. There is exactly one, George Soros, who gives primarily (or exclusively) to Democrats. The other nine give primarily (or exclusively) to Republicans, including sad, ranting pestilence Elon Musk, movie villains the Winklevi, and legit nutzoid cockscab Paul Singer, along with assorted investors, shipping magnates, and other assmites. They all desperately want the GOP to keep the majority in at least the Senate because they can slap down the House's subpoenas and investigations. But if the entire Congress is Democratic, then some shit is more likely to go through the fan and actually land on these pampered and powdered pussies. It's easier to defund Starlink contracts if you have both houses.

Early voting has gotten and is getting and will be getting under way across the country, and if you need to motivate someone to fucking vote, for fuck's sake, and vote for Democrats, then tell them that this is a rare chance to make some billionaires sad. I mean, really, how many chances do you, average Joe or Jane or  Jordan (to include a nonbinary name), get in this life to do something that might cause Elon Musk to cry? They are precious few, and not buying a Tesla isn't really one of them. This is like walking onto a yacht and kicking Jeff Bezos in the nuts. "Yeah, even rich balls can feel pain," you might yell.

Musk is going to end up dumping around a half-billion dollars into this election, if his current donation rate holds, to try to buy his way out of congressional oversight. The sad part is that this amount of money doesn't affect his wealth at all. He'll have made it back by the end of November, probably more. The sadder part is that our post-Citizens United campaign cash orgy has gotten so out of hand that the safe words have been abandoned and the billionaires are just fucking democracy to death with fistfuls of cash and laughing that no one is doing a goddamn thing to stop them. 

But what Musk can't buy is your ability to walk into a voting booth or a little voting cubby and click the machine or mark your ballot for Democrats. Even if he gave you a thousand bucks before you went to polls or filled in your mail-in ballot, you can still do what you want once it's you and a list of candidates. Musk can't stop what I hope is coming if Democrats get investigative power. Hell, Musk himself has even "joked" that if Democrats look into how he dicked over the world with his DOGE bullshit, including the mass murder of millions through his actions, he'd go to prison. 

It's not just Musk. All of those crypto dicks and AI douches, who are going in big for Republicans, would be looking at the potential (and, goddamn, they better not fuck it up) for genuine oversight from a Congress that actually acts like a co-equal branch of the fucking government and not Trump's ass wipe dispenser, cleaning him up after he shits all over himself and everyone else. All those clips of "Ruben Gallego Destroys Some Asshole at a Hearing" are functionally meaningless beyond making you feel good. However, if Gallego is part of a Democratic-led Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he has the power to genuinely fuck up the shit of, say, Open AI's Sam Altman, who simply declined to go to a recent hearing. 

Maybe I'm just my father's son, but, goddamn, I wanna ruin the days of some rich fucks who think they're untouchable. Maybe they'll prove to be. Maybe Democrats are so corrupted by their billionaires' funds that they'll choke on taking a few down. But if you wanna at least try to put the ultra-wealthy on notice that their days of being above or beyond the law are over, you gotta be willing to make them cry. And with one simple action, you can can make that happen. Get out there and do it. You'll feel really good about yourself if we succeed.

Rude Pundit

Jason Mcphail

Jason Mcphail lets off a little steam here. Most every Democrat can likely sympathize.

One thing that breaks my heart every day is that nobody is dreaming of anything right now. Everyone is in constant fight or flight mode because the dumbest people in this fucking world have embraced a dying pedophile narcissist who demands loyalty regardless of weather he changes his views day to day.

These limp wristed, feckless, involuntarily celibate, woman beating pieces of shit have embraced violence and cannot even have a real conversation. They are literally afraid of everything. Trans people, gay people, Muslims, immigrants, socialists, communists, leftists, democrats, literally absolutely everything that isn’t straight, white, republican, & Christian nationalist. I’m so sick of these fucking people.

They are constantly the loudest ones in the room, and never say anything of any real substance. Their entire vocabulary is made of up phrases made up for them. “Fake news” “libtard” “demonrat” just the absolutely lowest vibrational motherfuckers on the planet.

If you are on the internet and try and have some semblance of a conversation about policy, they walk into the comment section, say something about a demonrat or libtard, spew some weird ass completely fabricated statistical lie, and then post a meme and leave. These people are the worst of society and I cannot wait for us to start acting like fucking human beings who can dream again.

I want to talk about how we can do better at taking care of our veterans, our homeless, our our sick, our uneducated, our impoverished, all the things that matter most in this world. I want to talk about how we can build desalinization plants, start drilling, refining, and selling our own oil to our own people. How we can better create wave, river current, wind, and solar technology that allows us to spread out and diversify our energy dependency.

I’m tired of seeing 900sqft homes meant as starter homes for young couples being marked up to $300,000. I’m tired of seeing gas and groceries up 30-40% and Diesel at an all-time high and hearing these ignorant fucks saying “it’s worth it because Iran was gonna kill us all!”

Fuck these people man.

Fuck their greed.

Fuck their need to be the loudest in the room.

Fuck their tiny little egos.

Fuck their lies.

Fuck their labels.

Fuck these people!!!!

I’m tired of you screaming abortion is murder acting like ectopic pregnancies and child rape victims should just resign to the fact that it’s gods will they are going to die or have to bear the child of a rapist at 12 years old and hearing people say “well…it must be gods will.”

Let me say this slowly and with my full chest, if your God allowed a 12 year old girl to get raped, and that was his will for her life, then your God is a giant piece of shit just like you.

I’m tired of the bullshit ass religious excuses.

I’m tired of having conversations with people who have zero desire to grow their understanding or knowledge base at all. I'm tired of them acting like they contribute so much to society and never give a god damn thing back to it. It’s asinine.

I’m tired boss. But fuck these people man. All day, every day, 24/7. Fuck their hatred, fear mongering, and lies.

and on another topic:

I’ve seen video after video of Texas republicans freaking out about mailers sent to their homes about Texas trans student resource guides. The problem is, you just got lied to, once again, by the party you support. The LLC is registered anonymous and is based out of WYOMING. The sad part is, when you tell republicans their own party just bold face lied to them, again, they don’t even care. They are so brainwashed they don’t care. It’s literally insane.

There are less than 10 trans athletes of out 500,000 ncaa athletes. There is no Islamic takeover, Muslims have been here since the American Revolutionary War and make up only 1% of the entire population. If you vote against a woman’s right to choose what is best for her body, just remember that ectopic pregnancies happen, rape and incest happen, and if you vote for people who support a full ban, your daughter or wife could be the one who dies from not having access. So remember YOU signed your own wife/daughter’s death warrant. That’s on you 100%.

Remember that 97% of gender affirming care is for teenage boys who have gynoclymastia. So when your son has female breasts (gyno) and he takes his shirt off in the locker room and the other kids say the most hurtful shit ever to him, and you can’t get him a necessary medical procedure because they told you to hate trans people, remember it was your stupid fucking choice to remove his ability to get help. That’s on you.

You people aren’t even trying. You aren’t trying! You live in an echo chamber and they tell you who to fear, and you do. You vote away your own best interests to protect pedophiles and billionaires. This whole “make America great again” movement came from the ideology of the 1950’s. When the corporate federal income tax rate was 52%. Today it’s 21% and the top 88 corporations didn’t pay a single dime in corporate federal income tax.

Remember, universal health care would save 100,000 lives and 1.3 trillion annually. Ending middle eastern wars saves troops lives and trillions in spending. We don’t have to raise taxes to have great things, we gotta stop allowing our taxes to go to places out of fear.

Jason Mcphail

Michael Jochum

An avalanche of lies is burying this country in the putrid filth spewing out of the mouths and minds of Donald Trump and the Guardians of Pedophiles (GOP).

A Rapid Decline

Donald Trump is in visibly failing health, and the most obscene part of it is not the decline, it’s the lie. He presents himself as the healthiest 80-year-old in human history while his body tells a different, unavoidable story: the drooping face, the forward-leaning gait, the bruised hands that keep migrating from one limb to the other, the vacant stares, the disorientation, the public lapses into unconsciousness. Over the past year, he has fallen asleep, literally, during Cabinet meetings, military parades, high-level diplomatic encounters, even at the Pope’s funeral. Trump drifted in and out of a state of somnambulistic slumber during his own Big, Beautiful Board of Peace cosplay, during the “fertility” summit. It’s almost as if we have grown so accustomed to Trump nodding off at meetings, we pay little attention.

Meanwhile, the White House insists everything is “perfect.” His MRI scans are “perfect.” His cognition is “perfect.” His doctors are “amazed.” He claims they ask him how he knows so much about congestive heart failure. He says maybe he should have been a doctor instead of president. This is the same man who spent years branding Joe Biden as “Sleepy Joe,” turning aging and fatigue into a political cudgel, a chant, a slur. Now the emperor himself cannot remain conscious during his own press conferences. The hypocrisy is volcanic.

The MAGA machine demanded cognitive tests for Biden while their own rotting golden calf drifts off in daylight like a late-stage dementia patient in a nursing-home recliner. They worship him as an “alpha” while he cannot keep his eyes open long enough to hear a physician describe dementia. This is not leadership. This is not stability. This is not strength. This is a nation being steered by a man who cannot stay awake in the Oval Office.

His advisers admit there is nothing that angers him more than calls for the release of his medical records. He rages when anyone questions the obvious, because he knows what the cameras show, and so do we. The tragic comedy of this moment should not distract from the danger. A president who cannot remain alert during a briefing on healthcare is not merely embarrassing; he is unfit. A man who collapses onstage while his cult screams about strength is not a leader; he is a warning.

We don’t deserve an autocrat. We don’t deserve a king. And we sure as hell don’t deserve a president who can’t even hold his own head up. The republic is being crushed beneath the weight of a man who is physically, cognitively, and morally collapsing in public, and of the sycophants who would rather burn the country down than admit the truth.

Vote as if Donald Trump was on the ballot.

Michael Jochum — Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Music, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition.

protests

Things are getting pretty dicey in Europe. Issues of affordability, rising prices, neglected public schools are bringing over half a million people out into the streets in France alone. Meanwhile, Trump continues to gaslight Americans by saying the US economy is great. The strongest ever! Under Biden, America was DEAD! (That is just so stupid) It's another Golden Age in America, he says. Maybe it's a Golden Age for billionaires and grifters like him and his family, but certainly not for the vast majority of Americans. I suppose multi-millionaires are probably doing OK too. 

I've seen so many posts lately saying, "Vote red or we'll end up like Europe" or "Europe is burning because of Muslims and socialism."

But have you actually looked into WHY people across Europe are protesting?

Because the reality is much more complicated, and frankly, a lot more familiar to Americans than some people seem willing to acknowledge.

Across France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Greece, and Albania, people are taking to the streets over issues like:

- Skyrocketing housing costs and unaffordable rent.

- Wages that aren't keeping up with the cost of living.

- Rising food, fuel, and utility expenses.

- Underfunded schools, teacher shortages, and declining public services.

- Economic inequality, government corruption, and political leaders who seem increasingly disconnected from the people they represent.

These demonstrations are not one coordinated movement, and each country has its own circumstances. But many share the same underlying frustration: Ordinary people are struggling to afford basic necessities while losing confidence that their governments are actually working for them.

Yes, there have been violent clashes, destruction, and confrontations with law enforcement. Those incidents shouldn't be dismissed. But neither should the legitimate grievances of the people participating peacefully.

And blaming Muslims, immigrants, or "socialism" for all of it ignores the actual causes being documented. These protests are occurring under governments across the political spectrum, including conservative governments.

**But here's what really gets me: Look at what's happening in the United States.**

We're experiencing many of these EXACT same problems.

Housing is increasingly unaffordable. Grocery bills are ridiculous. Healthcare costs are burdensome. Families are struggling to get ahead despite working full-time. People are watching their purchasing power shrink while economic prosperity is celebrated through stock market records that don't necessarily reflect what's happening in their bank accounts.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues portraying America as being in some kind of unprecedented golden age.

But whose golden age?

Because there's a pretty significant difference between an economy performing well on paper and an economy actually working for the average person.

And we're not just talking about economics anymore.

We're watching aggressive immigration enforcement operations unfold across the country. American citizens have been detained by immigration agents. Multiple citizens have been shot by ICE officers in Minneapolis. A young man is blind after receiving a non-lethal round to his eye. Hundreds of citizens have reportedly been detained during immigration enforcement operations.

People have died in ICE custody, and independent human rights investigations have raised serious concerns about medical neglect, oversight, and transparency.

ICE has even eliminated the requirement to report deaths occurring within 30 days after someone is released from custody.

And there are ongoing legal challenges involving detention practices, constitutional protections, and due process.

These aren't hypothetical concerns about what *might* happen if America becomes like some other country. These are documented events happening HERE.

You can believe immigration laws should be enforced and still demand that federal agents respect constitutional rights.

You can support law enforcement and still expect accountability when someone is unlawfully detained, injured, or killed.

You can condemn violent protests and still understand why ordinary people are angry.

**None of those positions should be controversial.**

What's troubling is the contradiction.

We're being warned that Europe is collapsing because its governments have failed their people, while being told that America has never been better, even as Americans struggle with many of the same economic pressures and face serious questions about government accountability.

We're encouraged to look at burning buildings overseas as evidence of societal failure, but discouraged from examining the circumstances that brought those people into the streets.

We're told to fear losing our freedoms while constitutional protections and due process are being challenged right here at home.

And somehow, the conversation keeps getting redirected toward immigrants, religion, or whatever convenient scapegoat happens to fit the political narrative.

The real question isn't whether America is becoming like Europe. It's why so many ordinary people, across different countries and political systems, are experiencing similar struggles while being told that everything is going wonderfully.**

We should be capable of recognizing the problems in other countries without ignoring our own.

And we should certainly be capable of questioning the people in power without needing an entire population to blame.

Pay attention to what's actually happening, not just the version of events someone wants you to believe.

Ally B Sinnister

updated jobs report

Well, well, well. Looks like Trump's jobs figures for 2025 were pretty far off. Instead of 584,000 new jobs in 2025, there were only 181,000. This is a measly 15,000 jobs per month. The original estimates of 584,000 for the 2025 year would have been only 48,000/month. But, but, Trump said the US was the "hottest" country now. Oh yeah, he lies, about EVERYTHING. I wonder how he will explain this away, or if he will even mention it at all? I'll bet he tries to fire anyone and everyone at the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics).

You will notice below that the 2024 total, under Joe Biden, was 1.46 million jobs added. That's about 121,000 jobs per month. How horrible. Trump kept saying the country was "DEAD" before Trump took over.

Poor Trump. He has to always lie and make up shit about his "competitors" to try to make them look bad while he tries to look good. Reality sucks, eh Donnie?

(Remember you can click a pic to make it larger)

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics significantly revised down job growth figures for 2025, revealing that the U.S. economy added a total of 181,000 jobs for the entire year, down drastically from initial estimates of 584,000 jobs. 

Key Details of the 2025 Revisions

Annual Total: The final benchmark revision slashed the 2025 job count to 181,000—a nearly 70% downward adjustment from preliminary figures and a steep drop from the 1.46 million jobs added in 2024. 
State-Level Impact: According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis FRED Blog, positive job growth in 2025 was initially reported in 34 states, but after revisions, that number fell to just 22 states, with a median state job growth rate of -0.09%. 
Affected Sectors: Downward revisions were heavily concentrated in leisure and hospitality, retail trade, professional and business services, wholesale trade, manufacturing, and the information sector. Much of the remaining net positive growth was propped up by health care and social assistance. 
Why Revisions Occurred: The adjustments stem from the BLS incorporating comprehensive state unemployment tax records and updating its "birth-death" model (which tracks business openings and closures), correcting early monthly survey overestimations. 
Ongoing Trend: Downward monthly revisions have continued to impact reports through 2026, such as the September 2026 nonfarm payroll report showing only 29,000 jobs added alongside further downward adjustments to prior months. 

Starshield

It looks like Elon Musk has done it again: restricted Starlink/Starshield in Ukraine. When it happened this week, Musk bore the brunt of the blame, but Musk said only the White House can restrict the system. The White House claims that they didn't do it, and that Musk is the one. Both deny they did it. Both Musk and the entire White House are liars. Coincidentally, when it happened this week, Russia began bombarding Ukraine again, and without the satellite system, Ukraine could not see anything coming and could not send up drones or anything to counter Russia. Lots of people have died in Ukraine because of this.

Musk's body count is climbing. Thanks to Musk and DOGE's assault on the US government early in 2025, US-AID was terminated, potentially killing millions of poor people around the world that relied on the program. WTF is Musk doing inserting himself into the Russia-Ukraine war and our own government? Musk can just turn off the system at will? This guy is turning out to be a monster. 

This wasn’t the first time Elon Musk restricted Ukraine’s Starlink. And it wasn’t the second.

On October 20, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk personally ordered a slowdown of Starlink services used by Ukraine, disrupting military drone operations.

But this controversy has a history.

September 2022: During Ukraine’s Kherson counteroffensive, Musk reportedly ordered Starlink coverage cut in areas Ukrainian forces were trying to liberate. Reuters documented the disruption in a 2025 investigation.

2022–2023: Musk refused to activate Starlink coverage near Russian-occupied Crimea for a planned Ukrainian strike on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, citing fears of escalation. This was not a shutdown of existing service.

February 2023: SpaceX acknowledged restricting Starlink’s use for certain Ukrainian military drone operations.

October 2026: The WSJ reported another Musk-ordered slowdown. Ukrainian forces described lost connections and disrupted missions.

These were different decisions, not four identical shutdowns. But they expose the same vulnerability: a country defending itself against Russia’s invasion depends on communications that a private company can restrict.

Starlink has been vital to Ukraine’s defense. That makes the consequences of sudden restrictions even more serious.

Ukrainian soldiers need reliable communications to coordinate operations and protect lives. Civilians depend on those defenses, too.

A country fighting for survival should not have to wonder whether critical communications will suddenly disappear.

Ukraine is defending its people against Russia’s invasion. It needs reliable support, not more uncertainty. Stand with Ukraine.

Sources: WSJ (Oct. 20, 2026); Reuters (July 2025, Oct. 2026); AP (Sept. 2023).

Photo: White House, May 30, 2025 (photographer unverified).

#Ukraine #StandWithUkraine #Starlink#ElonMusk #RussiaUkraineWar 

Tatiana V Yanshina