Operation Inadequate: Trump Demands Dictator Parade to Feel Big Where It Counts (Emotionally, Of Course)

'Cause one's got a weasel and the other's got a flag. One's on the pole, shove the other in a bag. With the rerun shows and the cocaine nose-job - Beck

In This Letter!

😁 David Shuster’s Great video

👊 My Column

🥃 NYT Pitchbot’s Hilarious Pitches

🤣 Trumper Hatemail!

• To give a taste of David’s great videos & NYT Pitchbot’s priceless pitches for our paid letter, we’re putting the video and a few of the pitches ahead of the paywall this week. I’m confident they make the case that Blue Amp paid letter—soon twice-weekly—is worth every penny of the only $1.25 it costs to read it each week!

If Jesus had focused more on kitchen table issues and less on
unpopular outcasts like lepers and prostitutes, he might have won more
support from white working-class Judeans.

Where did Pope Francis go wrong with America's right-wing Catholic
bloggers? For one thing, his celibacy was voluntary.

DAVID SHUSTER VIDEO, EXCLUSIVELY FOR YOU!

Watch the many mental hang-ups of MAGA, like their cult-like “denialism,” in this hilarious video by our very own Emmy-Award winning former MSNBC/CNN anchor.

Get Clicking, America!

Play It Again, Sam Alito and Thomas are teaming up like Bogie and
Bergman, and you’ll be shocked to hear that now they’re against the
resistance. Unless this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship
between Trump and the rest of the court, those migrants are getting on
that plane.

by Maureen Dowd

Vatican to announce its choice of a new Pope in a Signal group chat.

Nothing Says Strength Like Using Tanks to Forget the Limpness of Your Manhood—And Presidency

Trump’s dream of a little tank parade to feel manly

Donald Trump is once again fantasizing about tanks rumbling down the streets of D.C., not to stop a coup like the domestic-terror attack he helped instigate, but to feel like a boy. A real, real boy. I know he doesn’t get the concept of democracy—much like tariffs, multiplication, multi-syllabic words, vegetables, a fitting suit or running a business that doesn’t go arse-up, to name a few—so I’ll try to explain it to him.

Let’s learn a little history, Donny, you mega-jingoistic cod-piece. Our Founders feared standing armies, because they knew a permanent military was a military to be used. Often, just because it was there. And against its own citizens if/when the Scylla and Charybdes of Presidents came along. And here you are.

What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. …Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.

–Elbridge Gerry, Fifth Vice President of the United States

The National Guard wasn’t even created until 1903. Militias carried a lot of the load (ya know, those “well-regulated” ones for whom the Second Amendment was actually intended? As opposed to your next-door neighbor Billy Bob with a few cases of dismissed-domestic battery, fixin’ to get himself 47 AR-15s, just because).

Even between World Wars I & II, our military was badly underfunded because that fear remained in our DNA. Dwight Eisenhower, upon leaving the presidency in 1961, infamously warned about the “military industrial complex.” You know that thing from toxic treason toads like Erik Prince and Paul Manafort greatly, financially benefitted.