A former writer for The Onion regrets the gentleness of their satirizing of Uncle Joe. Isn’t just the fact that “Uncle Joe” has become one of his nicknames telling enough?

I can’t speak for my colleagues, but at the time, I didn’t take him seriously enough to think we were doing anything wrong. I thought of him as little more than a political necessity: the older, more conservative white guy who softened Barack Obama’s image in regions where the prospect of a black president was too radical. A deeper dive on Biden never felt necessary.

I’ve since changed my mind. Today, Biden is the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, despite women calling him out for touching them in ways that made them uncomfortable at public events, and despite objections from the left wing of the party. He has said he has “no empathy” for the problems millennials are experiencing and claimed that Republicans will embrace bipartisanship after Trump is defeated. As I watch him campaign as an old (-fashioned, -school, -old) centrist, I realize how badly we screwed up. Instead of viciously skewering a public figure who deserved scrutiny, we let him off easy. The joke was funny, but it didn’t hit hard enough.

A Biden nomination by the Democratic Party would be another out-of-touch catastrophe. He generates no enthusiasm, except by comfortable older white people who like the fact that he’s not going to change a goddamn thing — smug confidence in the status quo might make him the Democratic nominee, but I don’t see him winning when all he can instill is apathy, and he’s going to be an easy target. Trump is going to claim that Biden is in the pockets of the bankers (not that Trump isn’t), that we can all see that patronizing women is fine and nice, that he’s the Establishment that the populists want to bring down.

If he does win, all we get is a right-of-center centrist who will waltz before congress thinking his affability gives him an edge, and the Republicans will just say “NO” and eat him alive. He’s the lose-lose candidate.

I’m just hoping he’ll commit some terrible gaffe and go down in flames before he’s the nominee, and I expect he’ll oblige. He usually does. Right now, though, the media seems to be anointing him as the right and electable candidate, so he might get the kind of pass no other Democrat would receive.

When an Alabamian tells you to “Stop telling people that Alabama is better than this. It’s not,” you should listen. It’s a bitterly scathing op-ed.

In the past few years, when they weren’t being sent to prison for one felony or another, Alabama Republicans have attacked Hispanics, blacks, gays, blacks, transgender people, blacks, teachers, anyone who practices a religion other than Christianity and blacks.

And now, girls and women.

Their hateful bills have been ripped to shreds by federal courts and they have managed to drive away potential businesses looking to relocate to Alabama. Not to mention, the poor management of this state has deterred our best and brightest from sticking around and has driven a number of businesses out of the state.

All of that has not cost Republicans a single vote in this state. In fact, in those midterms I spoke about, the Republicans without a plan — running on nothing but hate and religion — gained seats in the Alabama Legislature.

Stop telling me we’re better than this.

We’re not.

That’s true of all of us, though. We’ve got a Trump in the presidency and corruption and unconstitutional destruction in the Senate; the Republican party is working hard to shut down democracy by suppressing the vote, and if that doesn’t work, they’re wrecking education so coming generations will be as ignorant as this one. This disaster isn’t the work of some distant nefarious evil-doer in Washington DC, it’s your neighbors and co-workers and those gomers down at the local reactionary church and your conservative uncle and your parents soaking in the warm glow of Fox News and your kids who are absorbing idiotic memes from their fellow players in video games. We’re not going to get out of this mess by electing the right figurehead. You’re going to have to pay attention to school board elections and speak up in uncomfortable social situations and canvas neighborhoods before elections and tell certain members of your family to go fuck themselves.

No more getting by, avoiding conflict, sitting quietly so you don’t make a scene. If you keep that up, it’s on you. You’re just as bad as an Alabama Republican senator, and you’re making the country worse.

To justify spending large sums of money on a “Space Force”, Ted Cruz argues that we need it to defend ourselves from Space Pirates.

During a hearing Tuesday of the Subcommittee on Aviation and Space U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) argued that a Space Force is necessary to ward off space pirates.

“Pirates threaten the open seas, and the same is possible in space,” he said during his opening statements. Since “the ancient Greeks first put to sea,” Cruz argued, we’ve recognized the “necessity to protect waterborne traffic and commerce from bad actors.”

And now, he says, it’s time for the Space Force to do the same in space.

<throws up hands in despair>

<throws plans for the day to the floor>

<sweeps arms across desk, throws everything to the floor>

<tears at hair>

<stares exasperatedly at ceiling>

<seethes & weeps>

There is no point to anything. Our Republican overlords are fucking idiots whose sole purpose is to distract and delay with nonsense while the looting proceeds behind the scenes. We are all so fucking fucked by these fucking clowns.

When is the People’s March on Washington? I’m going to go sharpen my kitchen knives while I wait for the main event to begin.

These are all the Republicans who voted for the Handmaid’s Tale bill:

What do they all have in common? (Hint: there are only 4 women in the state senate, and they’re all Democrats.)

(Although, to be fair, a lot of white women voted for those asshats.)

Perhaps also relevant is that Alabama ranks #49 in the list of ‘best states in the US’. They beat Louisiana, which is nice, but Mississippi beat them, which ought to be a serious embarrassment. For comparison, Washington state is #1, Minnesota is #3.

Also, they ranked 50th in education.

Alabamians, I think you’ve been totally screwed over by your leadership. You can do better.

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How stupid are these legislators?

When Senator Clyde Chambliss, a Republican, for example, was asked if the law would allow for incest victims to obtain abortions, he responded: “Yes, until she knows she’s pregnant.”

He did not elaborate on how someone would have an abortion before she knows she’s pregnant, outside of claiming, “It takes time for all the chromosomes to come together.”

Oh, yeah, 50th in education. It shows.