Campaign song:

Make the world go away
Get it off of my shoulders
Bolton, Kelly, what the hey?
Just make the world go away.
Do you remember when you served me
Before your conscience won the day?
Well if you do, then show some pity
And make the world go away. Make the world go away
Get it off of my shoulders
Say the things you used to say
And make the world go away.

And with that, Ireland’s justice system sentenced two do-it-yourself infant genital mutilators to several years in prison.

They practically bled their one-year-old to death until they thought better of it and took her to the hospital, where they lied and lied about just how her clitoris and chunks of her vagina had fallen bloodily off.

UD‘s heart goes out to the defense lawyer who had to argue for clemency because after mortally injuring their baby her clients compassionately checked her into an emergency room.

[The Trump Hotel in Washington DC] has still struggled to fill its rooms. In November, the Washington Post reported that the Trump International had only filled roughly half of its rooms throughout the year and lagged behind competing hotels in its occupancy rate…

It has been put up for sale.

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Wow. That was quick. New name: Bernie Bros’ Vegan Takeout.

From a portrait of attorney Hanno Berger, one of the masterminds of the $60 billion cum-ex heist, by someone who worked at his firm:

Sensitive types, Dr. Berger told his underlings [one] day, should find other jobs.

“Whoever has a problem with the fact that because of our work there are fewer kindergartens being built,” Dr. Berger reportedly said, “here’s the door.”

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A description of the world of cum-ex, German branch:

It was a realm beyond morality, [an insider] said: all male, supremely arrogant, and guided by the conviction that the German state is an enemy and German taxpayers are suckers.

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And wouldn’t you just know it’d be a fuckin fraulein that fucked it all up!

But in 2011, a clerk in the Bonn Federal Central Tax Office, who was interviewed by the German media team and has remained anonymous, came across tax refund applications that looked dubious. They were from a single American pension fund that had bought, then quickly sold, $7 billion in German stock. Now it wanted a tax refund of $60 million. The fund had just one beneficiary.

Instead of paying the refund, the clerk made inquiries. She soon received a peppery letter from a German law firm that threatened to hold her “PERSONALLY” accountable “under criminal, disciplinary and liability law.” The clerk reported all of this to prosecutors, which ultimately led to the trial in Bonn.

… Hell.

… the drug-sniffing dogs. Or are they like I love the smell of cocaine, THC, methamphetamine and MDMA in the morning!

As the president’s current lawyers line up for inspection, UD floods with nostalgia for erstwhile Trump attorney Marc Kasowitz who you have already forgotten existed, damn you, but UD will never forget this man, and she insists you go to this page to recall a time… and what a time…

… exploding.

I’ve disproved it more than anyone’s ever disproved an allegation… Nobody in history has ever disproved a case as convincingly as I have.

Sports are games, but like virtually everything else in this culture, they’ve been transformed by capital into something deeply unfun. [Aaron] Hernandez left high school early to attend the University of Florida, where football is both religion and an industry… [A]n autopsy showed … that he was suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative neurological condition the NFL doesn’t want you to think is the logical consequence of playing football… For his crimes, Hernandez went to prison, where he lost his life. The billionaires who pay men millions to damage their brains for television audiences? They’re the ones getting away with murder.

The darkness that engulfed the region … was described by the Egyptian film director Youssef Chahine as a black wave that had come from the Gulf and swept the region, shrouding women in black as the use of the Saudi-style abaya and niqab, previously unknown in countries like Egypt, began to spread. Dozens of Egypt’s beloved and famed actresses gave up low-cut dresses and big hairdos to don the niqab, with encouragement and alleged payment from rich Saudis. In 1985, a small minority of books published in Egypt were of a religious nature. By 1995, 85 percent of books on show at the Cairo book fair were religious.

In Lebanon, the black wave came from Tehran, as Iran began to export its revolution. The chador, the all-enveloping black cloth, spread in Shia villages and in the southern suburbs of Beirut. It had been previously worn only by deeply conservative women, mostly wives of clerics. Liquor shops were closed, music disappeared, the black flags of mourning for Imam Hussein, one of the most revered religious figures in Shia Islam, fluttered from lampposts, and the slogan “We are all Khomeini” was scribbled on the walls of posh Beirut shopping streets. The flags, the chador, the niqab, the sectarian hatred, and the threats of apostasy all shaped a new collective consciousness that is only now being challenged by the younger generation.

*****************

Burqa/niqab bans in Western countries are a crucial form of support for this challenge.

Eventually the forces of fanaticism will recede. The swaddled masses yearning to breathe free will breathe.

It makes for GREAT viewing. And this is only the teaser!!!!

Background here.

… the Sackler Family’s Back and I’m Feelin’ So Sad…

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The original.

A top of the line $50,000+ SUV! Once again, mes petites, you must admit that there’s something pretty great about a country where even our serial public shitters can afford to drive the biggest and the best.

Samantha Bee reviews the president’s defense team.