Dingus of the week: The 'America Party'
This f*cking guy
Welcome to the weekly dingus, the newsletter where I make fun of someone or something in the news that has made our lives worse. This week, I am writing about Elon Musk’s “America Party.” But in the past, I’ve written about Kristi Noem, Gavin Newsom, Pam Bondi, and the president’s team of men who gathered to incentivize women to baby, to name a few.
I started writing the weekly dingus in 2021 as a way to joke about the horrors. It’s gotten very popular, and I hope that’s because laughter can help us take back our power. It helps us regain control in a world designed to make us feel powerless. Writing in 1970, Naomi Weisstein argued that women need to be funny and “tap that capacity for outrage, the knowledge of our shared expression.”
And now, your weekly dingus.
Elon Musk sank hundreds of millions of dollars into the 2024 election so America could finally achieve greatness by having health care and food assistance taken away, rural hospitals shut down, and a team of perpetually damp 20-somethings with a hard-on for crypto who call women “females” deciding which babies deserve aid and how much money not to invest in researching cancer.
Despite all of that, or because of it, Musk has decided that enough is enough. Our government is broken. And he should know, because he broke it with a chainsaw while high on ketamine. But don’t worry, he’s going to fix it.
The man who gave us the first AI chatbot to go full Hitler and a truck so ugly your grandma has been protesting it from her nursing home has decided to invent something else: a new political party.
This week, Musk announced he’d be forming the “America Party.” So far, his plan involves such genius-level coordination like posting about it on the website he bought and filled with so many online Nazis and Nazi bots that it’s nearly impossible to tell the difference. But if you look closely, you’ll see the bots are better at communication and know what the clit is.
So far, Musk’s political party has no platform or any ideology, and it’s already illegal in New York, which prohibits political parties from using the word “America” in their name.
Who is this political party for? Cybertruck-driving neckbeards who want to yell at you about cryptocurrency?
Is it for all the bots who will soon grow sentient and compete with American men for the love of a woman, succeeding in most cases because they know how to text back?
Is it for all the divorced dads in their condos with gray furniture, talking about their protein macros and posting pics of their solitary glasses of whiskey?
Who? Who wants this?
Is the plan to revoke voting rights for women and extend suffrage to cybertrucks?
But Musk is already bragging that it won’t be that hard to form this third party and disrupt the American two-party system. I imagine him, in a Lucille Bluth voice, saying to his toddler son and incubator du jour, both of whom hate him, “How hard can it be? I mean it’s one democracy. What could it cost? $10?
While Musk is heralded as a genius inventor, there is no evidence he’s actually invented anything besides a video game when he was a teen. Musk isn’t a genius; he’s just an investor who buys people’s stuff, takes credit for it, and ruins it.
This man’s trucks are exploding. His chatbot has turned full Nazi and his website is a chum bucket of AI-generated rage bait and the inane postings of the moist failsons of America’s most pathetic nepotistic lineages, all of whom have the personality of a Ford F-150. What a legacy of innovation. But no one is talking about the field in which Musk has truly innovated: labor violations.
What do Thomas Edison and Elon Musk have in common?
They both got rich off Tesla.
*runs off the stage as the audience of all dads pelts me with tomatoes*
Runner up: Ted Cruz
Ted Cruz has a particular set of skills. And those skills are not being anywhere near Texas when disaster strikes. And before you judge, think about this: Nobody is out here working harder to make America worse again than Ted Cruz. Poor little Ted was in Greece, because he needed a vacation after working so hard to cut Medicaid access and giving rich people tax cuts.
That man has the essence of curdled milk.
Breaking dingus news
Texas State Sen. Angela Paxton filed for divorce from her husband, Texas Attorney General and 2023 Dingus of the Year winner Ken Paxton, on “biblical grounds.” Which, per the book of Matthew, includes some zesty “sexual immorality.” And listen, I love a little lite sexual immorality and would never judge. But I’ll make an exception when it comes to this guy, who is so virulent even Karl Rove has washed his hands of him.
Tank his US Senate race, Angela, girl.
Hell hath no fury like a self-righteous Baptist woman who's been publicly shamed by her husband and his mistresses. That’s how the good country music gets made.
And now for something good
Happy birthday to the people’s princess, Moo Deng.
Our government is taking away health care, but Michael Jordan is giving it away for free.
Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson is vowing to keep funding Planned Parenthood despite federal cuts.
T-REX WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP RACES!
New fair food just dropped. And RFK Jr. can take those flaming hot Cheetos fries out of my cold, dead hands.
What I am enjoying
This was an incredibly busy week for me as a human. I spent it driving my kids to various activities, cleaning my house, and cleaning it again.
But I did make time to go to trivia on Wednesday, and my team got second place. Also, I ate at a very delicious Caribbean restaurant that has spicy food. Like, actually spicy. And not *Iowa* spicy. I will be eating this food all weekend.
Also, you know him and love him, but Zach Smith, my podcast producer and Iowa political journalist, is having a baby! (Well, his wife is having a baby.) And this weekend, we are having a little baby shower.
Also, my small son turns 12 next week, and he is not so small anymore.
Paxton kept his job in 2023 because Angela was allowed to stay in the Senate during his impeachment trial, thereby raising the 2/3 number by one.
Each of the charges failed by one vote.
Her presence in the Senate saved his flippin’ job even though she couldn’t vote, but he couldn’t be loyal to the woman who saved his job.
Even with that, he would be a much fatter target for Texas Democrats that grey-faced boring but very effective fascist John Cornyn. Even Republicans hate Paxton.
This whole post is just gold. I restacked 3 or 4 nuggets as each one got more delish.
Huzzah to Lyz!
(and huzzah to my spell checker that no longer tried to autocorrect from Lyz to Liz)