2+2=5 and other core beliefs of the MAGA crowd

Posted on December 15, 2025 by oddmanout215

[Trump] lied and said that prices are coming down. He lied when he said prices were at an all-time high under President Biden. They’re at an all-time high right now. He lied when he said that inflation was low inflation. 2.7%, that’s the number he used, is well above the Fed’s target.” — Economist Justin Wolfers on MS NOW

Wolfer’s quote could serve as a fitting response to Trump’s rant last week at the Mount Airy Casino Resort in Mount Pocono, PA, a curious choice of venues. Does Trump think most people are unaware of his colossal failures as a casino owner in Atlantic City? That they don’t know how many of his grand projects ended in bankruptcy, including Trump Taj Mahal, possibly the ugliest gambling palace in history?

Casinos aside, do they really agree with Trump that affordability is “a Democrat hoax”? Swamp Rabbit wanted to know.

“The MAGA crowd invested all their fear and hate in supporting that old fraud,” I told him. “They won’t switch gears this late in the game.”

My mangy neighbor was perplexed or pretending to be. “I was gonna buy a couple bell peppers at the Acme but they cost two-fifty each,” he said. “And a 22-ounce container of coffee costs 20 bucks. But them MAGAts ain’t up in arms about price increases. Trump must be doing something right.”

“Trump knows how important it is to convince people to believe him, not their lying eyes. You can’t install a proper dictatorship, or establish a viable cult, unless you get your hardcore followers to embrace magical thinking. Once it takes hold, the facts don’t matter. 2+2=5. If the orange buffoon says it, it must be so.”

“But that’s crazy, Odd Man. The peeps will know when they’re running out of money, running out of credit. If the money ain’t there, they can’t buy things. That’s reality.”

I told him that the normal notion of reality doesn’t register with the MAGA crowd any more than it did with the Make Germany Great Again crowd in the 1930s. You can’t tell Trump’s true believers that climate change is real, even as the polar ice caps melt. You can’t tell them tariffs are just another means of taxing the working class, or that their king only cares about self-enrichment. Or that getting rid of immigrants and “woke” Democrats won’t solve their problems.

“Okay, you’re mostly right,” he said. “But Trump sounds loonier every day. Nobody’s denying it, not even the mainstream media. The MAGAts are gonna have to change their tune soon.”

I shook my head. “You really think they’ll admit to being made fools of by the most corrupt and hateful guy ever to occupy the White House? Sounds like magical thinking, Swamp Rabbit.”

Footnote: Trump posted this on Truth Social in response to the killing of Rob Reiner and his wife:

Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace.

Swamp Rabbit says only a psycho would write something so self-delusional and vile. Trumpers will shrug and say: “That’s just Trump being Trump.”

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Giving thanks at the swamp

Posted on November 28, 2025 by oddmanout215

I couldn’t remember whose turn it was this year, so I went ahead and bought the turkey hoagies at Wawa while there was still time. When I got back my neighbor Swamp Rabbit was sitting on his porch, sipping whisky from his broken mug. He protested when I berated him for conveniently disappearing when it was time to buy Thanksgiving dinner.

“I figured you would take care of the food and I’d buy the booze,” he said.

“Very funny. You know I don’t drink, pilgrim.”

As is our custom on this holiday, we discussed the idea of giving thanks. Of gratitude, that is. Swamp Rabbit said he was grateful for the Jack Daniels company and for pro football, but he couldn’t think of any other reasons to give thanks. I told him he was an idiot. He should be grateful he isn’t in Ukraine, or dodging bombs in Gaza. Or running from Trump’s masked stormtroopers, otherwise known as ICE.

“What’s up, Odd Man? You ain’t normally a glass-half-full guy. Your dark clouds don’t have no silver linings.”

“Well, maybe I’ve seen the light. There’s only so much time we get to walk this Earth. Better to be grateful than hateful. There are no atheists in foxholes. No curmudgeons at the pearly gates. No point fretting over climate change and fascist morons. Nothing we can do about it.”

Swamp Rabbit held a mouthful of turkey hoagie. Too shocked to chew, I thought. After swallowing, he downed a full cup of Jack.

“Damn, Odd Man, I ain’t never heard such talk from you. You’re poking fun at me, ain’t you? You’re putting me on.”

He waited for me to confirm his suspicion, but I was having too much fun. I put down my hoagie and shook my head.

“How ’bout them Eagles, Rabbit?” I said. “You think we can beat the Bears this week?”

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Charlie Brown tricked again by MAGA Lucy

Posted on November 12, 2025 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit snapped open a cold beer and groaned as he read aloud from a story on my laptop:

President Donald Trump has come under fire after he hosted a “Great Gatsby”-themed Halloween party just hours before millions of Americans lost their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

“You can’t make this shit up,” he said. “The truth is sicker than anything them satire writers can come up with.”

That’s because effective satire depends on exaggeration, I reminded him. It’s hard to exaggerate the depravity of people like Trump and his Mar-a-Lago revelers. You can’t satirize them, you can’t shame them.

Democratic party leaders — Chuck Schumer and his fellow dinosaurs — don’t grasp this simple fact. Exhibit A is their failure regarding the government shutdown, the purpose of which was to shame Trump and his toadies into extending the Obamacare (Affordable Care Act) subsidies. Without the subsidies, premiums will jump way up in January and many low- and middle-income people will no longer be able to afford health insurance.

In the end, the Dems settled for next to nothing: a little more funding for SNAP, the rehiring of some laid-off federal workers and — get this — the Republican promise to hold a vote on extending subsidies at some future date.

“That’s like Lucy promising Charlie Brown she ain’t gonna move the football the next time he tries to kick it,” Swamp Rabbit said, referring to the old Peanuts comic strip. “Them dumbass Democrats fall for it every time.”

I told him most Senate Democrats are too cowardly to risk taking a stand on any issue that might endanger their re-election chances. It’s no coincidence that the eight senators who caved to the Republicans — exactly enough to end the shutdown — are either retiring or are not up for re-election next year, and therefore won’t face a possible backlash from angry Democratic voters.

“They’re hoping we’ll do their jobs for them by voting to kick out the Republicans in the midterms,” I explained.

Swamp Rabbit threw his empty beer can off his porch and chuckled. “Too bad we can’t kick out most of them Dems, too, and start from scratch.”

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Why it’s so easy to vote against Republicans

Posted on November 7, 2025 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit’s parole officer, Victor Cortez, knocked on his door on Election Day, checking to make sure he’s still on the straight and narrow. After they conferred, Victor drove him to the polling place on Christian Street — “Gotta do my civic duty,” Swamp Rabbit said — and I went along for the ride.

“It’s been a long while since I done this,” he said when we got to the voting booths. “I ain’t sure which buttons to push.”

A cloud of dust was stirred up as I patted him on the back. “You’ll figure it out. Just don’t let anyone push the buttons for you.”

Voting this year was easy for me. In the distant past, I sometimes felt guilty for voting the straight Democratic ticket. Surely I’d overlooked some Republican candidate who wasn’t an apologist for bigots and corporate thieves and despoilers of the environment. But then Donald Trump’s era dawned, and it soon became clear that Republican officeholders, all of them, were in lockstep with him.

And they still are. Trump has proudly abused the powers of the presidency. He has usurped the powers of Congress. He was convicted on 34 counts of business fraud. He was convicted of sexual abuse. He said he was a victim of voter fraud, an obvious lie, and he helped incite a riot at the Capitol over this issue on January 6, 2021.

But Republican officeholders don’t care. They keep on goosestepping, either because they believe in Trump’s fascist agenda or because they’re afraid crossing him will end their political careers.

“Think about it,” I told my swampy friend after we voted. “Congressional Republicans tried to keep Trump in office after Biden won in 2020. During the certification process, more than 140 of them voted to overturn the election results. That makes them traitors. They don’t deserve to be in office, and neither do the other Republicans who condone what they did.”

“So what do we do, arrest them for bowing down to the Mango Mussolini? You don’t make no sense, Odd Man.”

“We vote them out of office next time around — if we still have a democracy, that is. We’ve got a long way to go, but this year’s elections might be a good start.”

Footnote: About the Randy Newman song — it was released in the Nixon era, but it could easily be about our current Republican president. I’d like to hear a song about why so many working people vote for pathological liars, knowing they’ll regret it later.

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A movie about conscience. (No wonder it wasn’t a hit.)

Posted on November 5, 2025 by oddmanout215

OK, I’m busted. Last week I implied that the movies shown on Netflix are invariably mediocre, but within days The Forgiven (2021) proved me wrong. It takes place at a luxury residence on the fringe of the Sahara Desert — the movie was shot on location — where a bunch of debauched Westerners are throwing a wild party. Fiennes plays David Henninger, a cynical alcoholic who accidentally hits and kills an impoverished Moroccan boy while driving drunk to the party with his long-suffering wife Jo, played by Jessica Chastain.

My neighbor Swamp Rabbit listened and said, “You shoulda wrote that the Netflix original movies are always mediocre. The Forgiven came out years ago in theaters. It wasn’t produced by the Netflix peeps. Where you been?”

Anyway, the plot hinges on whether Henninger, a privileged character, will face consequences for killing the boy. and things begin to look bad for him when the boy’s father turns up at the party house seeking justice. What follows is Henninger passing through various stages of denial on his way to concluding he’s unworthy of forgiveness for the hit-and-run and, in general, for being a lifelong bad guy.

“I saw the movie,” Swamp Rabbit said. “Fiennes plays a selfish creep who’s sick of himself. He’s good at that. The other peeps at the party are creeps too but everybody’s funny in a snarky way, don’t you think?”

Nobody’s laughing when Henninger is pressured by the angry, grieving father to journey deep into the desert for the boy’s funeral. It’s clear early on that he’s a stand-in for rich people everywhere who exploit the poor and ignore their misery. But he becomes a vehicle for the film’s guilt/redemption theme. He grows a conscience.

Swamp Rabbit cackled. “Take a look at the scumbags who run this country. Ain’t no such thing as conscience. No wonder that movie wasn’t a hit.”

I told him that only psychopaths don’t have a conscience. That guilt/redemption is a universal, timeless theme. That The Forgiven is clunky in spots but substantial, a smart story about the mystery of human nature. The sort of story Graham Greene or Paul Bowles might write. Or Albert Camus, maybe.

“Yeah, but them guys are dead,” Swamp Rabbit said. “The only mystery is how a pale, beautiful redhead like Jessica Chastain could hang out in the desert sun for so long without getting burned to a crisp. She must have slathered on a gallon of sunblock.”

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I do believe in spooks!

Posted on October 31, 2025 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit was concerned about my mental health. He had decorated the front of his shack with jack-‘o-lanterns and plastic tombstones and so on, and he was wondering why my shack looked so dark and uninviting.

“You need some skeletons and bats and maybe a curbside Freddy Krueger,” he said. “Here, have some of these.”

We were standing on his sagging front porch. He reached into a plastic cauldron and tried to present me with a handful of candy corn.

“Get that shit away from me,” I said. “I’ve got my own way of celebrating holidays. You should check out my annual Halloween playlist. No repeats from last year.”

I showed him the list of songs on my phone and he scowled. “Halloween is supposed to be fun. These songs are too scary. Most of them ain’t even Halloween songs. The peeps will think you really believe in spooks and monsters.”

“I’m like the Cowardly Lion,” I said. “I do believe in spooks. Monsters, too. How can you live in this world and not believe in spooks?”

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Netflix stars upstaged by sexy ‘superyacht’

Posted on October 29, 2025 by oddmanout215

My neighbor Swamp Rabbit and I were discussing the steady stream of mediocre movies that Netflix cranks out for subscribers.

“I saw a new one last week called The Woman in Cabin 10,” I said. “It’s about an ace reporter who solves a murder mystery involving a bunch of billionaires sailing on a luxury yacht to some charity event.”

Swamp Rabbit brightened up. “A whodunit, right? Is it any good?”

I told him that Keira Knightley, as the annoying reporter, should have been thrown overboard. That the storyline, which depends on the old doppelganger gimmick, was too predictable.

Swamp Rabbit frowned when I said “predictable.” He told me there are only six or seven basic story categories and they all use formulas that writers created thousands of years ago. He asked why I kept watching the movie if I didn’t like it.

“It was late and I was too tired to write or read,” I explained. That’s what Netflix movies are for. They lull you to sleep when you don’t have the energy for anything else. The more predictable the story, the more likely you are to doze off.

“The peeps like predictable,” he said. “Human nature don’t change, so why should stories?”

“Let me put it this way,” I said. “The most interesting character in The Woman in Cabin 10 is the yacht.”

It’s true; the real star is the 274-foot-long Savannah, shiny and streamlined, with video walls, an underwater viewing area and cabins that look more like staterooms. This “superyacht” reportedly was built for about $150M and costs $1M a week to rent.

Big money, but well worth it if you know your viewers want to fantasize about the lifestyles of the rich and fatuous. As Swamp Rabbit noted, human nature doesn’t change. The Woman in Cabin 10 would have been popular in the Great Depression, when audiences preferred movies where the actors wore tuxedoes and evening gowns and drank martinis and flounced around in Art Deco penthouses that shimmered in heavenly light.

“Ain’t nothing wrong with fantasizing,” Swamp Rabbit said. “”Real life is way overrated, especially if you’re poor.”

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No kings, no dictators, no bike pump

Posted on October 21, 2025 by oddmanout215

I had to work Sunday but figured there would be time to catch the tail end of the No Kings march. I finished work, drove home to South Philadelphia and jumped on my bicycle. But my back tire went flat as I was riding to Independence Mall, so I didn’t get to rub shoulders with the inflatable chicken woman and thousands of others who turned out to protest the ongoing misdeeds of the orange blob who would be king.

“I couldn’t find a gas station with a working air pump,” I told my neighbor Swamp Rabbit when he asked why I didn’t get the tire re-inflated.

“Don’t blame them gas stations,” he said. “It ain’t their fault you’re too dumb to carry an air pump.”

The Philly march was one of more than 2,700 No Kings demonstrations that took place on the same day all over the country to protest the Trump administration’s efforts to dispense with the norms — not to mention the laws — of America’s 249-year-old democracy. A bunch of local politicians were among the protesters, as well as ex-Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, who was in town to perform at Met Philadelphia and was happy to pose for selfies with some of the protestors who recognized him.

Byrne brought his bike (!) and marched with it. Swamp Rabbit was amused to learn this and said, “I bet he had plenty of air in his tires.”

It seems a good time was had by all, which drove home the main point of the marches. Sane people — especially sane city people — are fed up with the evil buffoon in the White House and his goons, who will end all protests, along with free and fair elections, if they can get away with it. But this isn’t Germany in the 1930s, right?

“We’ll see about that,” Swamp Rabbit said.

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Why Trump’s favorite mean girl loves SNL

Posted on October 16, 2025 by oddmanout215

Two weeks ago, I noted that most satirists don’t seem to be up to the task of effectively ridiculing our criminal president and his eager accomplices.

A case in point: the sketch on last week’s Saturday Night Live in which cast member Amy Poehler spoofs the corrosive Attorney General Pam Bondi’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the same sketch, Tina Fey plays Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security. Afterwards, instead of firing back at SNL for lampooning her, the real-life Bondi posted a photo of Poehler and Fey taken from the sketch and the message “Loving Any Poehler!”

Bondi felt flattered by the sketch.

SNL’s audience deserves better than a cute little skit that makes light of Bondi’s evasions and lies regarding Trump’s undermining of the Department of Justice’s prosecutorial independence. Cute doesn’t cut it if you’re supposedly in the business of satirizing public figures whose conduct is — no exaggeration — hastening the decline of democracy in America.

My neighbor Swamp Rabbit disagreed with me. “What you want SNL to do? Joke about where Bondi’s hiding Jeffrey Epstein’s client list? Re-enact Noem’s execution of her dog? If shit’s too nasty, it ain’t funny.”

“Ever read Swift’s A Modest Proposal?” I said. “Like I said last time, the best satire is nasty and funny. Stephen Colbert would have skewered those Republican bimbos.”

“Yeah, but look what’s happening to Colbert,” my mangy neighbor said. “SNL would rather be cute than get kicked off TV, don’t ya think?”

Footnote: Credit Poehler as Bondi with at least one funny line: “I’m not even going to dignify that question with a lie.”

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Jane Goodall, scientist and humanist

Posted on October 13, 2025 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit was asking if I’d listened to the year-old podcast featuring environmentalist Jane Goodall that was aired again on public radio not long after she died on Oct. 1 at age 91.

Of course I’d listened. Goodall helped overturn conventional wisdom regarding how humans should treat the rest of the animal kingdom and nature in general. Early on she conducted breakthrough field research about the behavior of chimpanzees. Throughout her career she used humor and empathy to spark support for animal and human rights, and for sustainability, a concept that was still fairly obscure when she first made a name for herself.

“Well, how about that,” Swamp Rabbit said. “It’s about time you wrote about a good person instead of Donald Trump and Pam Bondi and them other degenerates.”

In the podcast Goodall describes what happened after her mentor, anthropologist Louis Leakey, talked her into pursuing a PhD at Cambridge in the 1960s:

I was told [by instructors] I’d done everything wrong. You shouldn’t have given the chimpanzees names. They’re just animals. They should have numbers. And you can’t talk about their personality, their mind, or their emotion. Those are characteristics unique to us. Nor must you have empathy, because to be a good scientist, you must be coldly objective. So, fortunately, I had this wonderful teacher when I was a child, who taught me that in this respect, those professors were totally, completely different. Talking rubbish. And, um, that teacher was my dog, Rusty. You, you can’t have an animal and not know that of course we’re not the only beings on this planet with personalities, minds, and emotions.

Not your standard stuffy academic. She got her PhD in ethology and went on with her life’s work. People everywhere liked her because she was a down-to-earth believer in the power of good. A humanist, in other words.

“You sure you want to call her a humanist?” Swamp Rabbit said. “I ain’t heard that word in a long time.”

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