"Oh, the Facepalms..."

This picture pretty much sums up this past week quite nicely and while last Monday we had something of a mixed bag of not-quite-Facepalms to talk about, today, we're all Facepalms.

First up, Arsenal FC, who shat the bed in spectacular fashion against Crystal Palace. Palace fans serenaded manager Arsene Wenger thusly. Now anyone who's ever watched a soccer match will know that you can get a basic idea of what people are singing usually. Usually. In this case, you can understand each and every single fucking word. It's dispiriting when my team is having something of a dumpster fire of a season and that players like Alexis and Ozil will probably be running screaming at the earliest opportunity. Fans of other teams seem to be having a lot more fun that Arsenal is this season- and whether it's the dressing room culture or falling out of the Top 4, which seems inevitable now, change is coming. It's just a matter of when it comes, now, I think- and in what manner. I'd prefer Wenger to announce his retirement and let them get on with things, but who knows. All I know is that Saint Totteringham's Day will be bleak indeed this year and that sucks.

On balance, I'd give this a full five Facepalms. It's a tire fire. It makes me not miss having NBC Sports on my Direct TV. Come on you Gunners- get a new manager!

Second, we've got the news that Wal-Mart is planning to fly drones around in their stores to assist you with shopping. Sweet Baby Cheez-Its, why? WHY? Better idea: have more than two checkout lanes open at any one time.* Accomplish that and you can move onto bigger, better ideas like good wages for your employees and non-shit benefits for them as well- or maybe a company wide goal of not having any employees on food stamps. That'd be good for an obscenely large and wealthy corporation to do. JFC. Flying drones around to assist you in shopping... silliest damn thing I've ever heard. One Facepalm for this. It's a moronic idea and I don't want to give it more Facepalms because it just doesn't deserve more than one, damn it.

Third, we've got the whole United Airlines mess. Never mind the horror of the dude get the shit kicked out of him and forcibly dragged off of the plane. Never mind the scummy revelations about the dude's past that conveniently emerged in the wake of the incident in some truly disgusting attempts at damage control on the part of the company. And let me be clear: I don't give a damn if the dude was Buffalo Bill from Silence of The Lambs, complete with the human skin suit and the basket with the lotion in it. Unless there was a warrant for his arrest or some specific behavior that warranted his removal from the plane, nobody deserves to be treated like that- especially if they've paid for the fucking ticket. If you have a staffing issue, then guess what, you Gluttonous, Shit-Eating Excuse for an Airline, that's your problem. It shouldn't be your customers. (And it's like 300 miles between Chicago and Louisville. Stick your people in a damn car and have them drive, ffs.)

Glorious karma seems to be rained down on United as a result of this, though. Their stock tanked. Kimmel took them to the woodshed for fun. But you know what I keep thinking about it? Anti-trust laws. Let's break up some airlines- because obviously the lack of consumer choice we have in this country means that between the TSA and their gropings/strip searches and airlines that treat us all like cattle, flying can well, suck big donkey balls. If the Republicans and/or Democratic Party could detach themselves from what I'm sure is a big, juicy delicious teat of corporate money of a variety of different shades and do something about this, that would be lovely. But I'm not holding my breath. Another Three Facepalms and a Middle Finger for this one. Because fuck these guys, #BoycottUnited.

Fourth, Sean Spicer. That really should be all I have to say, but instead, he said this:
You had someone who was as despicable as Hitler who didn't even sink to using chemical weapons.
He said a bunch of other stuff too that was equally as moronic. First rule of finding yourself in a hole, good buddy? Quit digging. When even Alex Jones is all like, "Dude, that's fucked up." You've probably strayed a little far off the path. The fact that this fuck-up came during Passover just added fuel to the fire.(Do I think he's going to be fired? One would hope that gross incompetence is grounds for termination, but this is Washington D.C. we're talking about. If they start firing people for being incompetent fuck-ups, there won't be much of a government left.)

Basically: never compare Hitler to anything. Just don't put the fucker in a sentence and you should- should- be fine, But this is Sean Spicer we're talking about here- so I'm probably wrong. Four Facepalms out of Five for this, because if there's a way to fuck-up that's bigger than this, I have every confidence that Sean Spicer will find a way to do it.

Finally, the Filibuster. I have refrained from saying anything about the Nuclear Option being employed to force Neil Gorsuch's confirmation to SCOTUS through because well, arguments about SCOTUS are stupid. This whole mess- if you flip the parties around, it would still be the exact same argument. But the whole creation of the Reid Option was moronic and it's lamentable bit of leftist myopia I'd like to get rid of. You can make decisions when you're in the majority assuming that you're going to stay in the majority- you gotta think about when you're back in the minority and you've handed the other dudes a fully loaded gun to use- this time on you! That was what made the whole Reid Option thing stupider than stupid and I wasn't the least bit surprised when the GOP went ahead and used it with Gorsuch. But the myopia is apparently still out there, because, get a load of this.  Moronic! You start tossing this idea around and what's stopping the GOP from doing the exact same fucking thing. You want ten Conservative justices on the court for life? Wake up, idiots.

This wasn't quite as a moronic, but came close. No, you can't put the ketchup back in the bottle on this. What you might be able to do, is to force people to talk. None of this threat of a filibuster- no, make their asses hold the floor until they go down like Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. Strom Thurmond still holds the record for longest filibuster and it's about time some other Senator who's not, well, a product of a different time, let's say, breaks the record. And if you don't want to make 'em all talk, well then, shit. What good is a filibuster anyway? Three and a half Facepalms for this.

Happy Monday, everyone. The weekend is four days away.

*Weirdly, Target has almost the inverse problem of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has like two lanes open at any given time with lines ten miles long. Target has every lane open for the line ten miles long and it still takes forever.

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