The Orange God of Mar-a-Lago: February 2022

UPDATED 2/20/23

February 1, 2022: If Punxsutawney Phil could predict the political weather, he’d be predicting six more weeks of former-President Trump lying about the last election. If Phil saw his partisan shadow, it would be orange and he’d keel over dead. Trump is going to go to his grave lying about the “stolen election.”

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“He could have overturned the Election.”

 

Former-President Donald J. Trump

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Let’s just spell it out again.

 

1.     Trump didn’t get the most votes in 2020. Multiple recounts in multiple states have established that fact.

 

2.     Claims to the contrary, brought forth by Trump’s lawyers in dozens of court challenges, have been blown to bits by state and federal judges.

 

3.     Even by judges Trump appointed.

 

4.     The U.S. Supreme Court rejected one of the biggest challenges to the election results in a one-sentence finding. Kind of a judicial, “Go fuck yourself,” decision.

 

5.     Any dolt could look this up.

 

6.     On Sunday, Trump insisted in a statement that Pence did have the power to alter the results of the last election. “Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power. He could have overturned the Election.”

 

7.     Think about what Trump just said. He wanted the election overturned.

 

8.     Because he lost.

 

9.     The former president was only getting warmed up. Next, he attacked the people investigating the events of Jan. 6 in the U.S. House of Representatives. “So pathetic to watch the Unselect Committee of political hacks, liars, and traitors work so feverishly to alter the Electoral College Act so that a Vice President cannot ensure the honest results of the election.”

 

10. There’s going to be a bi-partisan effort to clarify what a vice president can and cannot do in regard to counting the electoral votes.

 

11.  Because we might have another president someday who is nuts. (God help us. Not Trump in 2024.)

 

12. And, finally, Trump let rip: “Therefore, the Unselect Committee should be investigating why Nancy Pelosi did such a poor job of overseeing security [before the attack of Mob Trump] and why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval, in that it has now been shown he clearly had the right to do so!”

 

Got all that? The narcissist is nuts.

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2/2/2022: I swear, someday, I’m going to stop blogging about Donald J. Trump. The problem is that on an almost daily basis, he reminds me that he’s a profoundly warped human being. 

And yet many Americans love him. 

At such times, I am reminded of a book on Adolf Hitler that I read in graduate school. Based in part on a psychological study conducted by the U.S. Army after the war, it was titled The Psychopathic God. 

Before I proceed, I should note that I have repeatedly said one should not compare world leaders to Hitler – unless those evil leaders have or had their own gas chambers up and running.

 

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“Tell me what company you keep and I’ll tell you who you are.” 

Cervantes

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I don’t mean Trump is as bad as Hitler. I am not aware of any murders he has committed. I only mean to say that his ability to hate scares me more than any other American politician in my lifetime. 

We were fortunate to have a system in place during his first term that was able – barely – to keep his worst inclinations in check. 

How bad was it – and how bad would it be if we were fool enough to let the man within a thousand miles of the White House in 2024? In just the last week, we’ve had Trump promise that if we elect him again, he has plans to pardon those who attacked the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. 

This comes in the midst of ongoing investigations in hundreds of cases related to the riot. Dozens of individuals have been charged with assaulting police. At least eleven defendants face charges of “seditious conspiracy.” That is, plotting to overthrow the U.S. government by means of violence.

 

Do all those defendants now hear the siren song of pardons yet to come, somewhere down the road? Does that encourage them to drag out matters legally – or hold back information that might damage the former president and his top advisors, if they have it? Is Trump hinting again that people who remain loyal, even those who beat police, threaten to kill the former vice president, and commit perjury, will pick up a “Get Out of Jail, Free” card when the Orange God returns to office? 

Floating the idea of a pardon has worked for Trump before. Ask eight-time felon Paul Manafort and seven-time felon Roger Stone about the joys of presidential forgiveness. Stone is under suspicion again – related to the Jan. 6 attack. And Stone deserves special mention for racking up one of those particular felonies, during the days of the Mueller investigation, tow it, for witness tampering. That involved telling another potential witness he was going to kill the man’s therapy dog, and sending threatening emails. 

“Prepare to die cocksucker,” Stone wrote. 

Ask Alex Jones, who admitted recently that he plead the Fifth “almost a hundred times” when forced (under shadow of subpoena) to testify before the House Select Panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack. As Jones put it, he was asked “pretty reasonable questions.” His interrogators, he added, were “polite, but they were dogged.” He claimed he wanted to answer every question, but feared to do so, lest answers be twisted and made grounds for a perjury rap. 

Now, visions of sugar plumb pardons are dancing in Alex’s head.

 

In the same way, you have Professor John Eastman, who might normally be sweating under the armpits. Congressional investigators have demanded documents related to his part in a plot to overturn the 2020 election. That plot included having VP Pence avoid asking courts questions beforehand – about the legality of the plan – and then going ahead and refusing to count the electoral votes from select states. Eastman refused to comply with a congressional subpoena. 

Now a judge has ordered him to review 1,500 pages of documents per business day, set aside any that might involve executive privilege for judicial review, and send the rest on to investigators. That includes 19,000 emails. 

Eastman has already appeared before Congress to testify. A source tells reporters he plead the Fifth 146 times. (See: 9/22/21 and 12/16/21 for more on Dr. Eastman.) 

We don’t need a source to find out how Stone handled similar questioning. He proudly assured reporters that he plead the Fifth to every question members of the Select Panel posed. 

Dr. Eastman deciding which questions not to answer.

Also pleading the Fifth was former Department of Justice underling Jeffrey Clark. In the waning days of Donald J. Trump’s time in office, Clark floated the idea of having DOJ send a misleading letter to Georgia lawmakers stating that DOJ was investigating serious voter fraud allegations in their state. For that reason, Clark wanted DOJ to say, they should refuse to certify the results of the election – which has since been validated by three recounts – and gift the state’s electoral votes to Mr. Trump. 

The problem with Clark’s plan, with Eastman’s argument in favor of Pence overturning the electoral count, and with Trump’s plan to pardon all his pals, is that you’re looking at the broad outlines of a South American or African-style coup. For instance, Attorney General Bill Barr, and, after he resigned his position, acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, had already informed the president, and Mr. Clark, that there had been no serious fraud in the Georgia election. 

Or any of the other states where Team Trump was trying to prove, legally, that a loaf of stale, moldy bread was a gourmet dinner.

 

“For us to remain a nation of laws, not men.” 

Even Sen. Lindsey Graham, as groveling a sycophant as ever crawled the halls of the U.S. Senate, finally balked at taking a bite of moldy bread. Appearing on “Face the Nation,” he was asked by host Margaret Brennan to comment on the idea of pardons for the rioting bunch from Jan. 6. 

“No, I don’t want to send any signal that it was OK to defile the Capitol,” he assured her. There are other groups with causes that might want to go down the same “violent path” if this batch got pardoned. “I think it’s inappropriate. ... I don’t want to do anything that would make this more likely in the future.”

 

Like clockwork, America’s Psychopathic God exploded. First, he attacked the senator from South Carolina. “Well, Lindsey Graham’s wrong. I mean, Lindsey’s a nice guy, but he’s a RINO,” Trump said in an interview on Newsmax. “Lindsey Graham doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about if he says that.” Trump once again described the attackers on Jan. 6 as “patriots.”

 

Graham stood by his comments later, saying what every Republican should be saying, but in Graham’s case, saying it three years too late, at least. “For us to remain a nation of laws, not men, we must speak with one voice when it comes to politically motivated violence,” he said. “All Americans are entitled to have a speedy trial and their day in court, but those who actively engage in violence for whatever political cause must be held accountable and not be forgiven.”

 

Nor was the senator from South Carolina alone – although most Republicans chose to duck and cover when the topic of pardoning insurrectionists was posed. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, at least, was blunt. Asked by a CNN reporter if those arrested should be pardoned, he replied succinctly: “Of course not.”

 

What did Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell think? The free press wanted to know. And Mitch was asked. (A writer for the Washington Post believes his answer was evasive. Mr. Blogger disagrees.) First, McConnell said again that Donald J. Trump lost the 2020 election. Second, McConnell said that the goal of the rioters was to “prevent the peaceful transfer of power.”

 

No one is ever going to claim that Sen. McConnell is a forceful speaker. But in his own no-charisma way, he was clear. “One hundred and sixty-five people have pleaded guilty to criminal behavior,” he said. “None of the trials have been finished yet, but 165 have pleaded guilty to criminal behavior.” As the Post notes, “145 of those pleas were misdemeanors. Twenty pleaded guilty to felonies, including six who admitted to having assaulted law enforcement officials.”

 

“My view is, I would not be in favor of shortening any of the sentences for any of the people who pleaded guilty to crimes,” McConnell explained.

 

How did that compare with other top Republicans’ answers? Clearly, most want to remain “top Republicans,” and that means weaseling out of jams where truth might offend one’s base. Sen. Ron Johnson, running for reelection in a battleground state this year, said he hadn’t seen Trump’s statements. And you assume he didn’t want to. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said he would “never judge the appropriateness or not of [Trump’s] comments. … That’s not my role.”

 

So, you could assume that if Trump had said he believed the entire Obama family should be murdered and their heads spiked on the fence in front of the White House, Sen. Hawley wouldn’t judge?

 

Not his role?

 

Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana said he listened to Trump’s comments, “and I didn’t really think much about it. Because he says a lot of things that, at the rallies, that I don’t know if he means it or not. So I don’t know if that’s helping or not.”

 

Trump means every word. He’s already pardoned several felons who committed felonies in an effort to protect him.

* 

ALSO DREAMING OF PARDONS to come – Rep. Matt Gaetz. Innocent until proven guilty, of course. And Rep. Gaetz has not yet been charged, let alone convicted. He may be as innocent as any bleating lamb. But he has to be getting sweaty in the groin area. A second sleazebag in the investigation into sex-trafficking of a minor, Joe Ellicott, a Florida collectibles dealer, has taken a plea deal. In December 2020, “Big Joe,” as he’s sometimes called, was served a subpoena by a federal grand jury, related to matters “involving commercial sex acts with adult and minor women, as well as obstruction of justice.” 

Also included in that subpoena: Rep. Gaetz. 

As Politico notes, 

 

Ellicott agreed to plead guilty…to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of distributing a controlled substance — Adderall. In exchange, Ellicott will “cooperate fully with the United States in the investigation and prosecution of other people” and to testify against them, according to his agreement.

 

Ellicott’s mugshot goes up beside that of former Gaetz “wingman,” Seminole County, Fla., Tax Collector Joel Greenberg. 

Mr. Greenberg is facing serious jail time, for sex-trafficking a teenager, and defrauding local taxpayers. So, like all these other miscreants, he might want to call the toll free Pardon Hotline at Mar-a-Lago.

 

* 

WHY EXACTLY, am I reminded of the book about Hitler, despite the absence of poisonous gas? Trump’s attacks on those investigating him should unnerve all thinking Americans. This past weekend, Trump blasted prosecutors in New York, Washington D.C., and Georgia who are looking into his fiscal sins in the former case, and his political sins in the second and third instances. “If these radical, vicious racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal,” Loser Don screamed at a recent rally in Texas, “I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt.” 

Then he ramped up the hate. Sounding like a Mafia don, Don insisted those investigating his possible crimes were involved in “prosecutorial misconduct.” He called them “vicious horrible people,” adding, “They’re racist and they’re very sick,” he continued. “They’re mentally sick.” 

If he could have put a bloody horse’s head in some prosecutor’s bed, you know Don would have done it, and then boasted about it with his pals. 

In Fulton County, Georgia, prosecutor Fani T. Willis was forced to ask the F.B.I. for added protection for her staff and herself, as they delve into what would appear, from the evidence we have so far, to be a brazen attempt by Trump to steal the Georgia election. 

Ms. Willis.

POSTSCRIPT: As long as I consider Trump to be a menace, I’ll keep blogging. And speaking of menaces, you can understand why Ms. Willis might be worried about her safety. Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced the arrest of a Texas man who was already one or two steps ahead of Loser Donald, and ready to open fire in the name of freedom. 

Prosecutors allege that Chad Christopher Stark posted on craigslist in January, saying: “Georgia Patriots it’s time to kill” [unnamed Georgia official]. 

“Georgia Patriots it’s time for us to take back our state from the Lawless treasonous traitors,” Stark added. “It’s time to invoke our Second Amendment right it’s time to put a bullet in the treasonous Chinese [Official A]. Then we work our way down to [Official B] the local and federal corrupt judges.” 

And for good measure, he warned: “Remember one thing local law enforcement the key word being local...we will find you oathbreakers...we’re going to make examples of traitors to our country.”

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2/3/22: Bad news, by way of National Geographic, from the roof of the world. Scientists on Mt. Everest have drilled an ice core in the highest glacier on earth.

 

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All the ice created in the last 2,000 years has disappeared.

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They found that even at 26,250 feet above sea level, climate change is altering the world’s environment. All the ice created in the last 2,000 years has disappeared in just the last 30 years. 

The leader of the scientific expedition, Paul Mayewski, summed up the bad news.

 

We know the oceans are polluted – we know that they are warming and acidifying. We know that there are times even in mid-winter when warm air masses reach the North Pole and temperatures there are above freezing. We know that there are certain times in summer when the entire surface of the Greenland ice sheet is melting.

 

And now, we have the evidence that even the highest glacier on the highest mountain in the world is rapidly losing its ice. So yes, it’s a real wake-up call.

 

 

FUN FACT – IDIOTS: Vaccines and shots really bother the right-wing crowd these days. Amelia King, a concerned Virginia parent, decided to give her local school board a piece of her mind when she heard a mask mandate would go into effect for her daughter’s school on Monday, Jan. 24. 

“My children will not come to school on Monday with a mask on,” the 42-year-old warned. "Alright? That’s not happening. And I will bring every single gun loaded and ready to ... I will call every...” 

At that point, someone on the board or working for the board cut her microphone – and she has been arrested.

 

* 

GOOD NEWS for Jeff Bezos, who now has permission to pay to dismantle a bridge in Rotterdam and rebuild it – so that he can manage to get his $485 million super yacht out to sea. (You have to wonder about anyone who would build a giant yacht in a place where it might be blocked in by a bridge.) 

In any case, this story proves that:

 

1.     We can’t ever tax the superrich because then they won’t be able to knock down bridges and block their giant yachts.

2.     There is no way that Amazon could ever afford to give workers a raise.

3.     Labor unions should never be allowed to organize Amazon workers who would only make greedy demands.

 

The boat cost $500 million to build; and it will cost another $500 million to take down and put back up the bridge.

How the yacht will look if it ever gets to sea.

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2/4/22: The Biden administration continues to crush it in terms of jobs. In January, another 467,000 Americans went back to work. 

Even more impressive: figures for November (249,000 to 647,000) and December (199,000 to 510,000) were revised upward. Once the final numbers for December are finalized (they’re subject to revision one more time), we will know the total. As it stands, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in just one year  Team Biden has seen 6,612,000 jobs added to the U.S. economy. 

The Labor Participation rate has also improved, to 62.2 percent, as more workers come off the sidelines. Unemployment ticked up to 4 percent, still down from 6.4 percent the day Trump vacated the White House. 

Very much unwillingly.

 

*

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“Frankly there is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.” 

Former Vice President Mike Pence

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THE JOBS NEWS was welcome, but one unemployed American continues to dominate the political scenery. Namely, unemployed former president Donald J. Trump. 

Today the Republican National Committee showed again that virtually the entire GOP is afraid of the Orange God of Mar-a-Lago. They proved it by censuring the only two members of the party brave enough to sit on the House Select Panel investigating the attack on Capitol Hill. 

In the Trumplican Party up is now down, yellow and blue no longer mix to make green, Rep. Lauren Boebert is a role model for morons, and those who rioted in Washington D.C. thirteen months ago were “engaged in legitimate political discourse.” 

The RNC censure reads:

 

Whereas, Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger are participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse, and they are both utilizing their past professed political affiliation to mask Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power for partisan purposes, therefore, be it resolved, That the Republican National Committee hereby formally censures Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and shall immediately cease any and all support of them as members of the Republican Party for their behavior which has been destructive to the institution of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Republican Party and our republic, and is inconsistent with the position of the Conference.

 

You’d almost think Cheney and Kinzinger stirred up the mob or plotted to have the U.S. military seize the voting machines in states where the vote went against Trump. But no. That was then-President Don.

 

Rep. Kinzinger responded forcefully:

 

I’ve been a member of the Republican Party long before Donald Trump entered the field. My values and core beliefs remain the same and have not wavered. I’m a conservative who believes in truth, freedom, and upholding the Constitution of the United States.

 

Rather than focus their efforts on how to help the American people, my fellow Republicans have chosen to censure two lifelong Members of their party who were simply upholding their oaths of office. They’ve allowed conspiracies and toxic tribalism [to] hinder their ability to see clear-eyed.

 

My efforts will continue to be focused on standing up for truth and working to fight the political matrix that’s led us to this point.

 

I felt compelled, out of respect, to tweet in response: “As a former Marine, sir, I would rather fight in a foxhole with you than rely on a thousand Trumps in a real battle.”

 

(I could have said a “million Trumps,” because no Trump has ever put on a uniform and gone to battle for this nation.)

 

Rep. Cheney also replied, posting a video of the violent insurrectionists attacking the Capitol.

 

 

“Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience.”

 

You don’t have to be a liberal blogger to be appalled by what the GOP has come to since Trump grabbed the party by the gonads. You just have to be a decent human being. The last decent man to run for president under the Republican banner, Sen. Mitt Romney, was painfully blunt. “Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience,” he tweeted, “who seek truth in the face of vitriol. Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost.”

 

That left the final word to Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, who he had attacked earlier this week. Trump insisted Pence could have overturned the results of the 2020 election.

 

This afternoon, in a speech to the Federalist Society, the man who served the Orange God for four years replied:

 

I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election. President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. Frankly there is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.

 

Yet, that is the very goal towards which Trump has been steering his party, and to which he was pushing the federal government, in the wake of his humiliating defeat at the hands of “Sleepy Joe” Biden.

 

For Loser Donald, the truth hurt. It hurt him to his narcissistic orange-toner, bad-combover core.

 

To assuage that pain, Trump was ready and willing (and had a plan on how to  do it) to cripple this nation in the end. For now, we can take solace, knowing there are good Republicans left. For the sake of generations to come we must pray they regain control of the soul of the party.

 

 

POSTSCRIPT - COWARDS: GOP “leaders” chose, generally, not to comment on Trump’s claim that his vice president could have magically made the election results disappear. (Pence noted that Vice President Kamala Harris couldn’t do it in 2024 either, should necessity arise. Nor could have Vice President Biden have changed the electoral outcome in 2016, had he and Mr. Obama been so inclined.)

 

When members of the free press inquired this week, mum was the word for GOP poltroons. Did House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy wish to comment? Could Pence have played kingmaker? McCarthy had rather not. Perhaps House Minority Whip Steve Scalise would like a word with reporters? Nope. Then why not Rep. Elise Stefanik, head of the House Republican Conference? Surely, she’d want to take a stan… 

Okay. Not her, either.

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2/5/22: Arizona Trumplicans are licking their wounds today, after a bill to allow them to overturn any election results they didn’t like went down in flames on Friday.

 

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“We gave the authority to the people.”

 

Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers

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That bill was torpedoed by Republican-with-a-conscience, and Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers. 

Bowers, a lifelong conservative, had trouble stomaching several provisions of the proposal:

 

1.     The legislature would have had the power to “accept or reject the election results”  and force a new election – any time the side they supported lost. (What could go wrong with that?).

 

2.     A single lawmaker could challenge results, forcing a vote of the entire legislature.

 

3.     Early voting would be entirely ended. No more mail-in ballots. Show up on Election Day, or that’s it.

 

4.     If you still wanted to vote, you would have to carry a fifty pound knapsack on your back and climb the highest mountain near Flagstaff, Arizona to reach the only polling place in the entire state.

 

5.     Okay, I made up #4. But you catch the drift.

 

The New York Times explained why Bowers balked:

 

“We gave the authority to the people,’’ Bowers told Capitol Media Services, an Arizona outlet, earlier this week. “And I’m not going to go back and kick them in the teeth.’’

 

“As a conservative Republican, I don’t like the results of the presidential election,” he said in December 2020. “I voted for President Trump and worked hard to re-elect him. But I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.”

 

Left unsaid: You know Trump would. He’d violate any law – he’d violate every law – if he could get away with it.

 

 

* 

BACK IN WASHINGTON D.C., the House Select Panel has subpoenaed the phone records of Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward and her husband Michael. Ward is known to have called Republican election officials in Maricopa County, the state’s largest, to suggest they talk to then-President Trump about – you know – election results. 

Cough, cough. 

Mr. and Mrs. Ward have decided they don’t want investigators looking at their phone records, and they’d rather ask a judge to block T-Mobile, their provider, from releasing the logs. 

Both husband and wife signed a document in days leading up to the attack on Capitol Hill, indicating that they were duly chosen in 2020 to cast their votes (for Trump) in the Electoral College. 

This would have been news to Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, a Republican, who had already certified his state’s electoral vote, and announced that Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. had fairly won the state. 

Ward and Ward were lying.

___

2/6/22: On any given day, the most colossal idiot could find Democrats willing to bash Republicans, Democrats ready to smash Republicans, and everyone else hating on Whigs. So, it is always wise to tune 95% of the noise in politics. 

On Sunday, however, a number of conservative voices were raised against former-President Trump in warning against what has become of the not-so-Grand Old Party. 

On Meet the Press, Marc Short, former chief of staff for Vice President Mike Pence, offered his thoughts regarding the fable of the “stolen election.”

 

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“Bad advisers, who were basically snake oil salesmen.” 

Marc Short, former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence

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Asked to comment on the idea that Pence could have overturned the vote and gifted Trump a second term, Short told NBC’s Chuck Todd, “I think unfortunately the president had many bad advisers, who were basically snake oil salesmen giving him really random and novel ideas as to what the vice president could do. But our office…researched that and recognized that was never an option.” 

For Trump cultists let’s explain:

1.     Short says the Orange God was getting bad advice from “snake oil salesmen.” That is: con men.

 

2.     The Orange God believed them.

 

3.     You believed the Orange God, who believed the conmen.

 

4.     Either the Orange God was so profoundly  flawed as a human being that he was an easy mark for “snake oil salesmen;”

 

5.     Or, much more likely: he is and always was himself a “snake oil salesman,” and like attracted like.

 

6.     Four or five, it’s the same. For those of you still members of the cult, it’s time to admit you got sucked in by “snake oil salesmen.”

 

* 

“January 6 was a riot that was incited by Donald Trump.” 

SHORT WASN’T ALONE in sounding the alarm. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and took a crack at Mr. Trump. Responding to the claim that Pence could have overturned the results of the election, Gov. Christie refused to pull his punches.

 

“Let’s face it. Let’s call it what it is,” he told host Martha Raddatz. “January 6 was a riot that was incited by Donald Trump in an effort to intimidate Mike Pence and the Congress into doing exactly what he said in his own words last week: Overturn the election.” 

 

“[Trump is] trying to do a clean-up on aisle one here,” Christie added. “But it’s not going to change. He actually told the truth by accident. He wanted the election to be overturned.” 

 

* 

“An assault on the first branch of government.” 

ON CBS , former Trump National Security Advisor Gen. H.R. McMaster was featured as guest. 

That’s Trump’s own choice for the job, and not to be confused with other Trump choices for top jobs, who variously came to view him as a fucking moron, a threat to the U.S. Constitution, the most flawed person ever, a man who put self-interest above national security interests, and now the man who hoped to advance the most un-American idea ever, so he could get a second term in office. 

Asked to respond to comments by the Republican National Committee and his former boss, the Orange God of Mar-a-Lago, McMaster pointedly disagreed with any defense of the Jan. 6 rioters. 

Those rioters weren’t patriots, as Trump insisted. 

They weren’t engaged in “legitimate political discourse” as the RNC claimed in its recent statement.

 

What happened on January 6, Gen. McMaster said, “was illegitimate political discourse because it was an assault on the first branch of government. I think it’s really important for us to come together now,” he added. “I really think it is possible to improve the transparency and the security of our elections while ensuring that every eligible voter gets to vote.” 

He thought about it a moment, then added, “It is pretty clear that we are emerging from a number of traumas of the past couple of years.” 

Those traumas were: Donald J. Trump. 

– and – 

More Donald J. Trump.

 

* 

“Mr. Trump’s disgraceful behavior after the election.” 

IT COULD BE we are seeing the first signs of a rise among decent Republican and sensible conservative voices to take on the Orange God of Mar-a-Lago and try to return sanity to his bizarre cult. The Wall Street Journal, for example, backed the Vice President completely, saying, “Mr. Pence stands out as a rare Republican these days willing to stand up to Mr. Trump’s disgraceful behavior after the election. Too many in the GOP seem to have lost their constitutional moorings in thrall to one man.” 

Even Brian Kilmeade, in a broadcast of Fox Nation, said it was time for Trump to quit claiming he won the election in Arizona, in 2020. Kilmeade, who had kissed the Orange God’s ass so many times, he left a permanent imprint, must have been getting the word from on high. It would seem the Fox Empire has decided it might be time to cut ties with the lunatic. Kilmeade insisted, no one cared anymore about the last election. The OG’s constant whining about how the election was stolen was “cringe-worthy.” As for Trump’s claim that he had triumphed in Arizona, the Fox host got it partly right – and glaringly wrong at the end:

 

Nobody cares about 2020. Nobody. And everything that he said and the challenges that he made should have been done before the election. And they did a recount in Arizona, and the recount showed no difference almost, and he came out and said it showed that they won Arizona. That’s an outright lie, and please stop wasting our time with that, because he’s capable of doing so much more.

 

If you read Kilmeade’s comment one way, he’s saying Trump could change focus and offer his supporters “so much more.” 

What Kilmeade still hesitates to say – because he’s fundamentally a coward – is that what “more” Trump could offer, if he were elected president again was more outright lying and more and more serious threats to our system of government. 

None of this is even the least difficult to comprehend. When asked if he agreed with Pence, Sen. Marco Rubio was clear. “Vice presidents can’t simply decide not to certify an election.” 

Trump said they could. 

Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming concurred, explaining on “Fox News Sunday,” that Mr. Pence “did his constitutional duty that day. It’s not the Congress that elects the president, it’s the American people.” 

Pence upheld the Constitution. 

Trump wanted to tear it into little pieces – and if we give him another crack in the Oval Office, he will try again. (See: 2/11/22.) 

 

FUN WITH – STUPIDITY: Republican senators reacted badly to news that President Biden planned to pick an African American woman to fill the soon-to-be open seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Sen. Ted Cruz said that Biden was really saying to the majority of Americans, “I don’t care about you.” 

Whereas the majority of Americans – and we know Cruz means white folks – could only console themselves by gazing wistfully at Neil Gorsuch’s face. Or Bret Kavanaugh. Or Amy Coney Barrett. 

 

Cruz also called Biden’s announcement an “insult to Black women,” which made pretty close to zero-point-zero sense. 

Not to be outdone, Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana quipped that he hoped Biden would pick someone who knows “a law book from a J Crew catalogue.” Because, I guess, Sen. Kennedy believes most black women can’t?

___ 

 

2/7/22: Well, great news for the Republican Governors Association. Les Wexner has donated $250,000 to their campaign fund. In 2018, he made a similar donation to their fund. 

 

____________________ 

“I’m not. I ...” 

Governor Ron DeSantis

____________________ 

 

Wexner, the former owner of Victoria’s Secret is famous these days mostly for having been Jeffrey Epstein’s pal. 

Now that we’ve had a gratuitous picture of Stella Maxwell (above) to peruse, let’s throw in the story of a true coward – meaning, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Today, reporters pressed him on whether or not he sided with Mike Pence or Donald J. Trump. Pence says he had no authority to ignore the electoral votes on January 6, 2020 – and says it was the least American idea he ever heard of to suggest that one man could overturn the people’s votes. 

Trump said Pence could have done it – was a coward because he didn’t – and should have overturned the people’s votes. 

Reporters thought it would be fun to ask DeSantis what he thought. Was he Team Mike? Or Team Don? 

Here is his answer verbatim:  “I’m not. I ...” DeSantis said.

 

Curious reporters pressed him again. Could he clarify a bit? DeSantis abruptly changed the subject and said he had a “great working relationship” with the Trump administration, which of course, included both Mike and Don. (See also: 2/24/22, when DeSantis waffles on the question of vaccinations, too.)

___

 

2/10/22: Finally! We have some massive voter fraud to report on – from Wisconsin, where Trumplicans are battling ordinary Republicans in an effort to prove that the vote in 2020 was wrong and Donald J. Trump won by fifteen million votes. The district attorney for Fond du Lac County, Eric Toney, a Republican, has charged five (5) voters with using post office box addresses instead of home addresses, when they registered to vote. This quintet of scofflaws included at least one Trump fan, which is fun. We can also report that three of the five voted in the last presidential election. 

Massive fraud!! 

That brings to ten (10) the number of individuals charged with voter fraud in Wisconsin so far. Figuring, at most, that eight voted, and giving Team Trump the benefit of the doubt and assuming all eight voted for Joe Biden, this would cut deeply into Biden’s lead, reducing it from 20,608 to 20,600.

 

* 

REPRESENTATIVE Marjorie Taylor Greene makes another appearance in the headlines, when she complains about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her “Gazpacho police.” Greene says this without batting an eye. 

She means “Gestapo,” of course; but she is too dumb to know anything about Hitler or his Gestapo killers, or the U.S. Constitution, for that matter. This would be comical were it not so chilling. 

One is reminded of Barry Goldwater’s insult directed at a congressional colleague: “If he were any dumber, he’d be a tree.”

___ 

 

2/11/22: Since we were talking in our post for February 6, about the Orange God of Mar-a-Lago tearing the U.S. Constitution to pieces, let’s jump to a story about the real rending of government documents by the OG. 

You may remember that happier time, when the Orange God ranted and raved regarding Hillary Clinton and her missing 33,000 emails. Now we learn, in almost comical fashion, that in contravention of federal law, the OG decided to haul off fifteen boxes of presidential records that he was required to leave behind in D.C., to be catalogued by the National Archives. 

I did a quick estimate of how many pages of documents might fit in one fold-up cardboard file box, and figure you could get 6,400 pages in a box easy – or 96,000 pages of material. 

So, Russia, if you’re listening….

 

Nor is this “Fake News,” as Trump has already hinted. His own lawyers admit “they are continuing to search for additional presidential records that belong to the National Archives.” 

There’s really no reason to be surprised – that Donald would swipe documents in disregard of the law – or tear up documents in contravention of the same (as was reported by Politico in 2018) – or wad them up and stuff them down the White House toilet, as reported in a new book. 

We also hear that some of the documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago were clearly marked as classified, including some labeled “top secret.”

 

* 

NEED MORE PROOF that we don’t need to coddle millionaires and billionaires at tax time? A painting by Sandro Botticelli sold at auction a few days ago, for $45.4 million. The work, “The Man of Sorrows,” depicts Jesus, wearing his crown of thorns, and was painted around 1500. Someone bought it in seven minutes. 

Because – pocket change. 

Last January another work by the same artist, “Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Roundel,” fetched $92.2 million. 

Someone is a huge fan of roundels.

 

* 

SINCE WE’RE talking vast wealth, let’s give it up to Apple. The company saw profits jump in the fourth quarter of 2021 to $34.6 billion. In similarly good news, McDonalds raised prices in 2021. So consumers had to pay more if they wanted a lukewarm order of Chicken McNuggets and fries – and then had to blame Joe Biden for inflation. Somehow, McDonalds managed to power through all the supply chain issues we heard about and increase profits by 59%, compared to 2020. Also, Chevron piled up some serious profits in the last quarter of the year, to the tune of $5.1 billion. That meant the company had earnings of $15.6 billion for the year. 

So, sure. Gas prices had to go up, or Chevron couldn’t remain afloat.

 

* 

IT’S ALSO TRUE that not all businesspersons can be trusted. Case in point: Hewlitt Packard won a $5 billion settlement this month in a fraud lawsuit. A decade ago, for $11 billion, they bought a software company called Autonomy, which appeared to be doing an extremely lucrative business. 

It turned out, too late, that the chief financial officer for Autonomy, Sushovan Hussain, had been cooking the books. Yet more evidence that sometimes government control of business is a positive good.

 

* 

IN A RECENT Gallup poll, 68% of Americans said they approved of labor unions, even though only 6% of private sector workers in this country are unionized today. In 1983, 20% of American workers had union protections – down today to just over 10%, led mostly by local, state, and federal workers. 

The president who helped precipitate that decline: Ronald Reagan, who up and fired more than 11,000 of the nation’s air traffic controllers when they had the audacity to go out on strike.

 

* 

FINALLY, Fox News! Fox hosts are still trumpeting disease, hospitalization, and death, as they battle any and all mask and vaccine mandates, requirements or even subtle hints. Such as: Get vaccinated, or it’s curtains for granny! 

In fact, remember when Fox was howling that Obama’s healthcare plan meant death panels for granny? 

Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are both in big on the trucker protest in Canada, where a few drivers with big rigs, and their nutty we’d-rather-die than get a shot that would protect us (and our grannies) supporters are blocking the streets of Ottawa. (That’s the capital of Canada, right?) 

To listen to the nighttime bloviators at Fox, you might think this was historic Boston Tea Party-level protest – assuming the boys in Boston who dumped the tea were hoping to catch smallpox. 

The New York Times explains:

 

Mr. Carlson, host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” called the Canadian trucker convoy the “single most successful human rights protest in a generation” on Thursday.

 

“It has been a very useful reminder to our entire ruling class that working men can be pushed, but only so far,” Mr. Carlson said.

 

Mr. Hannity, host of “The Sean Hannity Show,” called the protests “inspirational” and “powerful” last week. He has also had Brian Brase, who is organizing a protest in the United States, on his radio show. “No more failed mandates, no more hysterical counterproductive, draconian restrictions, Johns Hopkins, and no more needless, divisive attacks against essential workers or anyone else for that matter,” Mr. Hannity said last week.

 

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: So, where do we stand on this protest in favor of infection? Posting this item late, we can check with CDC.

 

As of February 20, 80.9% of all American adults, including most truckers, and most members of the ruling and working classes had been vaccinated. Where this blogger’s son works, his company is offering workers a $2,000 bonus to get the shots and stop the spread. And some workers – fans of Tucker and Sean – are proving their love for freedom by coughing on each other, vaccine-free. On February 11, the U.S. was averaging 2,267 deaths from the virus per day, for a loss in one week of 15,869 human beings. Almost 931,000 Americans have died since the virus started to spread. But sure. Sen. Ted Cruz was dead-on when he washed up on “Sunday Morning Futures,” also on Fox, and said the Canadian truckers were patriots and heroes, “marching for your freedom and for my freedom.”

 

So, add it to the Bill of Rights: The right to sneeze on your family, friends, and innocent bystanders.

___

 

2/12/22: Back in June, at a Trump rally in Ohio, Dr. Doug Frank, a former teacher, chemist and math afficionado was trotted out to claim – of course – that the Orange God of Mar-a-Lago had been cheated out of a second term. 

As the Cincinnati Enquirer then reported,

 

“So do you think in Ohio we had a clean election?” Douglas Frank asked the crowd.

 

“No!” they roared, despite the fact that Trump won the Buckeye State by eight percentage points in November. 

 

Even better, the Enquirer noted, Frank and one of his allies were granted a two-and-a-half hour meeting with staff members in Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office. Again, we’re talking Republicans here. LaRose is a Republican. Regardless, spokesperson Rob Nichols doused the conspiracy nuts with two buckets of ice cold water. 

One apiece. 

“Dr. Frank,” he insisted, “acknowledged that he does not currently possess any evidence to prove his theories about irregularities in the 2020 election, or any previous elections which he also claims were tainted.” 

Nothing daunted, Dr. Frank wiped the cold water from his face and claimed against all logic, that, “You can’t argue with the math.” 

Now, fast forward to today. How’s the hunt for massive voter fraud going? Surely, in a battleground state like Ohio the forces of evil had to be hard during the 2020 election. There had to be, as P.J. O’Rourke once joked, at least a “ding-dong-dillion” bogus votes cast for “Sleepy Joe” Biden. 

Right?

 

As of today, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has referred a whopping total of five dozen, plus two, cases of voter fraud to the Ohio Attorney General David Yost, who will try to stop this tidal wave of criminal voting. Or not even voting. Half the cases referred appear to be non-citizens – who registered – but did not vote. A serious crime. Like almost speeding! 

The other 31 cases involve four who voted in earlier elections, and 27 who might have voted illegally in 2020. So, out of 5,922,202 votes, we had 0.0005 percent fraud (possibly). Those 27 votes would have been enough to propel the ticket of Bodie and Stoneham, which finished tenth in Ohio (with three votes) into eighth place, surpassing the ticket of Wells and Wells, sisters who piled up 16 votes, and Hunter and Adams who had 27. 

But sure. Voter fraud is “massive!” You can’t, as Dr. Frank said last summer, “argue with math.”

___

 

2/13/22: If you don’t realize Donald J. Trump is nuts by now, there’s no hope and you should not be reading this blog, referring to yourself as a “patriot,” or playing with your guns. 

Once again, Trump is suggesting Americans deserve to be executed for crimes not yet charged, let alone adjudicated. Mull that over a moment if you will. See if it squares with your understanding of protections enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

Trump has heard parts of a story about how, in 2016, the Clinton campaign might have paid a tech company to “infiltrate” Trump Tower servers looking for links between Trump and Russia, and how that alleged breach may have allowed Clinton operatives to keep spying while he was president and out playing golf. 

So, Trump has issued a statement based on a tenuous understanding of the case – and his idiot spokesperson put it out on Twitter, because her boss is already banned for spreading disinformation. That statement read in part – and  raise your hand as soon as you see the first mistake:

 

The latest pleading from Special Counsel Robert Durham provides indisputable evidence that my campaign and presidency were spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign in an effort to develop a completely fabricated connection to Russia. This is a scandal far greater in scope and magnitude than Watergate and those who were involved in and knew about this spying operation should be subject to criminal prosecution. In a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death.

 

Don’t see an error? Trump didn’t either because he never checks his imaginary facts. Liz Harrington, his spokesperson, didn’t catch the error, because she’s an idiot, working for a liar, and facts only get in the way. The mistake is minor but telling. Robert Durham did not issue the report. 

Try “John” Durham next time. 

More importantly, let’s not gloss over what has been proven in court. In multiple cases, real juries were impaneled, and real judges – with gavels – held trials. Witnesses were called. There were actual lawyers and cross-examinations. 

Plus, dozens of felony convictions. 

Multiple Trump aides and advisors did indeed have contacts with Russians during the 2016 campaign. So there is no “completely fabricated connection.” I am too lazy to go back and provide a full list once again. But here are names that come readily to mind regarding proven Russian interference in the 2016 election.

 

And let’s get this straight. Every U.S. intelligence agency came to the same conclusion. The Russians did interfere. They did interfere, because they wanted Trump to win. 

We know, then, if we are not too lazy to do a little reading, that the following Trump pals had contacts with Russians: 

Roger Stone – seven felony convictions, including one for witness intimidation. 

Paul Manafort – eight felony convictions, and an admission of guilt in ten more cases, and then another felony for witness-tampering. I can never remember how many total felonies Manafort had, because he also got a few for tax evasion. 

Konstantin Kilimnik – zero felony convictions – because this Manafort pal escaped to Russia before he could be arrested. 

Michael Cohen – three felony convictions (for non-Russian related crimes, with Trump listed as an “unindicted co-conspirator” as the criminal cherry atop the ice cream sundae). Cohen also admitted to working on a Trump Tower Moscow deal even after Donald had clinched the Republican nomination to run for president. 

Even more fun: Rudy Giuliani – no felonies yet – later admitted that negotiations for a tower in Moscow remained active up to November 2016. Ha, ha. Until just days before the election – up to the moment Trump won!!! 

George Papadopoulos – one felony conviction. (I had to keep looking, to make sure he plead to a felony; but he did. Later, he ran for a seat in Congress, which was nervy, but didn’t win. You can even read the fourteen-page “statement of offense” in his case, online, if you wish. 

(I’ll be honest. I didn’t.)

 

General Michael T. Flynn – two admissions of lying about contacts with Russians, but pardoned by Trump prior to trial. The judge who dismissed the charges against Flynn, after the pardon, went out of his way to note that a pardon in no way meant Mr. Flynn was innocent. 

In December 2015, Flynn was paid nearly $34,000 for giving a speech at a Moscow dinner, with Putin seated on his left - but failed to get necessary approval from the U.S. Army beforehand. (I had previously seen a figure of $45,000; but only learned today that part of that fee went to Flynn’s speaker’s bureau. I was looking at an old story and learned (thanks, Politico) that “documents also show Flynn got two payments of $11,250,” for other speeches, delivered in Washington D.C., “from a Russian cargo airline company and a Russia-based cybersecurity firm.” 

We also know that Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Manafort met with Russians in Trump Tower in June 2016 and discussed an offer of help in the election. This meeting was kept secret for thirteen months until the free press in this country blew the lid off the story. You can easily read up on that story, too. 

Not “Fake News,” as Trump would call it. Not the work of “enemies of the people,” as he likes to call journalists. 

Just good reporting. 

For a final bit of fun let’s add that Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who attended that meeting, was later charged with assorted felonies, including one for obstruction of justice. She also fled to Russia ahead of arrest.

 

With that as background, let’s get back to the John Durham story. The details are murky – but that hasn’t stopped right-wing types or rejected-President Trump from howling about the despicable spying – which has yet to be proven in court. At least one individual has been charged with lying to the F.B.I. Would it be illegal to break into the Trump Tower servers? I’m no expert on cyber security. I fairly sure it would. Prove it in court and let’s see what a judge and jury consider fair punishment for the crime. 

It appears that there is no evidence that spying occurred after Trump was elected. So. No treason at all. 

Again, let’s see what comes out in court before we start yelping about execution. You know. Respect all the amendments, such as IV, V, VI, VIII and XIV, that protect defendants in court. 

(Such as Eric Trump recently pleading the Fifth in court five hundred times.) 

 

FUN FACT WITH TRUMP PALS: Sadly, the former president and his idiot spokesperson are not the only persons to fail to grasp the fundamentals of the U.S. Constitution and the nuances of the Bill of Rights. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, as noxious a supporter of the former president as you can find, said on Sunday that he agreed with Trump in calling for the death penalty in this case. After posting the statement in a tweet of his own, Jordan said Trump was “right on target,” assuming you thought targeting other Americans for death was cool.

___

 

2/14/22: The word for the day is “piffle.” As in, the former two-term Republican governor of Montana, and the former chair of the Republican National Committee, Marc Racicot, calling the Orange God’s claims of a stolen election a bunch of piffle. 

That is: “nonsense.”

 

____________________ 

“The former president didn’t experience defeat in 2020 because of fraud.” 

Former Governor Marc Racicot

____________________

 

This is actually nicer than calling Trump an ill-informed lout, a colossal liar, or a narcissist incapable of facing the truth – that he got beat by Joe Biden, a man he called  the “worst candidate in the history of Presidential politics.” 

In fact, Gov. Racicot took a shot at the RNC, for its claims that the rioters on Jan. 6 were involved in anything but a violent attack on American democracy. 

As he wrote in an op-ed today,

 Although it is ever so neat and tidy to blame the defeat of the former president on the existence of decisive and widespread fraud, there is not even a scintilla of evidence, anywhere, to support such piffle. The former president didn’t experience defeat in 2020 because of fraud. The truth is quite the opposite. The defeat of the former president is explained by the fact that legions of responsible citizens, part of that Great Middle of America, voted the way they did because they embraced the very fidelity to their country and its Constitution that the RNC claims to embrace in its Party Platform.

 

In fact, he adds,

 

Many intensely loyal Republicans, more polite and less dangerous than those who breached the Capitol, are, in larger and larger numbers, quietly but persistently looking for alternatives in the form of political movements and candidates of conscience, character, conviction and courage. 

 

He further states:

 

In the Republican National Committee’s search for power for its own sake and its obsession with winning at any cost, you have sacrificed, by your proclamation and its revelation of the presently existing soul of the party, the allegiance of a great many, and a growing number, of your most ardent and long-time supporters. Regrettably, it appears, “you have hitched your wagon to the wrong star.”

 

Gov. Racicot faults the current GOP leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives for refusing to support the investigation, insisting it has many Republican lawmakers with only one option, “to close their eyes to the truth and curse the darkness.” (See also: 2/6/22.)

 

*

 

IN A SIMILAR VEIN, former Judge J. Michael Luttig, appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit by President George H. W. Bush, has been advising a number of senior Republican senators. At issue: making changes to the Electoral Count Act of 1887. 

 

That act, according to the Orange God, would have given Vice President Pence the power to count only the electoral votes of states which would have given his boss, the deranged OG, a second, undeserved term in office – and four more years to turn the country into an autocracy.

 

As Judge Luttig writes,

 

Mr. Trump and his allies insist that the 2020 election was “stolen,” a product of fraudulent voting and certifications of electors who were not properly selected. Over a year after the election, they continue to cling to these disproved allegations, claiming that these “irregularities” were all the evidence Mr. Pence needed to overturn the results, and demanding that the rest of the G.O.P. embrace their lies. The balance of the Republican Party, mystifyingly stymied by Mr. Trump, rejects these lies, but, as if they have fallen through the rabbit hole into Alice’s Wonderland, they are confused as to exactly how to move on from the 2020 election when their putative leader remains bewilderingly intent on driving the wedge between the believers in his lies and the disbelievers.

 

After explaining all the reasons why members of Congress, on a bipartisan basis should reform the Act, Judge Luttig sums up those who would oppose changes this way. “Come to think of it,” he writes, “the only members in Congress who might not want to reform this menacing law are those planning its imminent exploitation to overturn the next presidential election.”

 

As, for example, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the leading suck-ups to the Orange God of Mar-a-Lago.

 

 

FUN FACT: If you weren’t paying attention, you missed the story of Mazars, the OG’s longtime accounting firm, cutting ties with the Trump Organization. Mazars warned the former president’s company that his financial statements from 2011 to 2020 “should no longer be relied upon and you should inform any recipients thereof who are currently relying upon one or more of those documents that those documents should not be relied upon.”

 

That is, they may be fraudulent.

 

Mazars also announced that it would no longer be doing business with the Trump Organization.

 

Because: the documents may be fraudulent.

___

 

2/15/22: Scientists report that the American Southwest is experiencing its worst drought in at least 1,200 years. According to experts with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the “moisture deficit” in the soil since the year 2000 is 42% worse as a result of climate change. 

That’s the science, folks. 

As for the history: the last time the Southwest was this dry, the Anasazi had to abandon their pueblos and cliff dwellings and vanished from the region.

The Anasazi vanished.

___ 

 

2/16/22: P. J. O’Rourke, the conservative author of Parliament of Whores, died this week. 

Always willing to criticize both political parties, he was always worth reading, even if you disagreed. As he once explained, “The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer and remove the crab grass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then get elected and prove it.” 

As for the Orange God of Mar-a-Lago, in March 2020, O’Rourke explained his decision to hold his nose in 2016 and vote for Hillary Clinton. “Politics is a matter of least bad,” he said. “She was the devil I knew – she was going to be another eight years of Obama, which we had endured. Donald Trump? I knew people who knew him. Nobody liked him. I just thought he was unstable…dangerous. I still do.” 

(Mr. Blogger concurs.)

 

* 

WE KNOW the Orange God refuses to go away, but maybe there’s hope for rising sea levels to wash the Trump stain away. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warn that ocean levels will rise one foot by 2050 – at which time Loser Donald would be 104, and still whining about how he was cheated out of a second term. At the current rate, oceans will rise by at least two feet by the end of this century, with parts of Miami, for purposes of comparison, only three feet above sea level. Nuisance flooding will increase all along the world’s coasts, and storm surges will become more damaging. 

If nothing is done to address climate change – as, for example, was true when Trump was in office – sea levels could rise seven feet, overwhelming The Netherland dikes, swamping New Orleans, wiping small inhabited Pacific Islands off maps, and flooding half of Bangladesh. 

Dr. Rick Spinard, the head of the NOAA, calls the latest evidence of the damages caused by climate change a “wakeup call” for the United States and the rest of the world.

 

* 

IF THE PLANET is having a bad day, so is Sarah Palin, the famous quitting-governor of Alaska. Having filed suit for defamation against The New York Times, she suffers the ignominy of having a judge say he’s going to dismiss her case no matter what the jury finds. She and her legal team failed, he says, to prove there was actual malice in reporting by the Times. 

The jury is deliberating at the time, but soon returns with a verdict that goes against her, as well.

 

* 

IF ANYONE is having a good day, it might be those of us who cherish free and fair elections. The House Select Committee studying events surrounding the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill has subpoenaed six more figures possibly involved in the scheme to send fake electoral votes to Congress.

 

Asked to appear and testify are Kelli Ward, chair of the Arizona Republican Party, State Sen. Doug Mastriano, candidate to become next governor of Pennsylvania, and Rep. Mark Finchem, a member of the Arizona legislature, hoping to be the next Arizona secretary of state. Finchem was in D.C. on the day of the attack and hoped to deliver “evidence” of a stolen election to Vice President Pence, in hopes Pence would overturn results.

 

We can also throw in two officials for Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign: Michael Roman and Gary Brown. Both men allegedly promoted false claims of election fraud and encouraged officials in several states to appoint fake electors pledged to the OG. The panel also wants to talk to former Michigan GOP chair Laura Cox. She witnessed former Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani pressure state lawmakers to reject election results in Michigan.

 

We’ve already mentioned that recounts in Arizona and Michigan indicate there was no significant fraud.

 

And in the year since Pence refused to throw out the votes, no real election fraud has been proven in court. None. Nothing. Zero proof.

 

Which means? 

Team Trump was trying to steal the election.

 

*

 

IN RELATED MATTERS, President Biden has ordered visitor logs from the White House, related to events of January 6, 2021, turned over to investigators. The Orange God and his team had tried to claim that who visited with President Trump was a matter of executive privilege.

 

So, for example, if he had been visited by Bill Cosby, or the head of the American Nazi Party, or the leader of the Oath Keepers, we’d have no way of knowing with whom he had been hobnobbing on January 6.

 

The Biden administration voluntarily discloses visitor logs on a monthly basis, as did the Obama administration.

 

So, it can easily be done.

___ 

 

2/17/22: No, dummkopfs! Not all politicians are alike. Voting makes a difference, whether or not you get everything you want from the people you help elect. 

Was there anyone in Trump's cabinet who wasn't a crook
or didn't quit and call the president a moron?

For example, the Biden administration is:

 

ü Allocating $5 billion to help states build more electric charging stations for cars and trucks.

 

ü Reversing a Trump administration policy which stripped the power of  California and other states to set stricter tailpipe emission standards.

 

ü Taking climate change seriously, with Biden not being an ignoramus, like Trump, who called it a “hoax.”

 

ü Pushing a bill to cap the monthly costs for insulin (needed by 1.6 million type-1 diabetics in this country if they want to live) at $35 per month –because drug companies have been gouging patients for years.

 

ü Forgiving student loans for 1,800 individuals, for a total of $71.7 million – those students having been bilked by rapacious agents of the for-profit DeVry University.

 

ü Which reminds me of Trump University, which got socked for a $25 million penalty for screwing students.

 

ü Not choosing a former executive of DeVry University to help run the Department of Education, as did Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, of the ill-fated Trump administration.

 

ü Not having cabinet members get ousted for ethics violations, as opposed to Team Trump, which featured E.P.A. administrator Scott Pruitt paying top aides who didn’t show up for work.

 

ü Not getting “F” marks from 170 major environmental groups for failing to protect the environment – thanks, Scott Pruitt, et. al.

 

ü Not having Biden labeled “the worst president for the environment in history,” as the Sierra Club labeled Trump.

 

ü And not having Tom Price, Trump’s first head of Health and Human Services, stick taxpayers for the cost of more than a million dollars in unauthorized flights.

 

ü And not having Alex Acosta, who became Trump’s Secretary of Labor, being the guy who gave Jeffrey Epstein a sweet deal which kept him from spending significant time in jail, allowing him another decade during which he was able to prey upon young girls.

 

ü And, as we just found out just this week, Trump’s Secretary of Interior, Ryan Zinke, who was negotiating a deal with land developers in Montana, by which he hoped to profit, while also “serving” as the man in charge of all federally-owned lands. Which caused Zinke to lie to the Inspector General with responsibility for upholding ethics in the Department of Interior.

 

ü And, as a bonus, Zinke asked members of his staff – paid for by “We the People” through taxes, to help him make the deal happen. Sort of the double-whammy of bad ethics.

 

ü But at least his staffers were showing up, unlike staffers for Pruitt, so you could call that a plus.

 

ü Not just vowing, as did Republicans, if they take control of Congress in 2022, to “secure our border, finish building the wall, and name it after President Donald Trump.” (And getting Mexico to pay for it?)

 

ü Not making life harder for transgender individuals, by announcing as Republican just did, this principle: “Men are men, women are women, and unborn babies are babies. We believe in science.” 

 

ü And not being hypocritical about believing science. Republicans don’t believe in climate change and don’t believe in vaccines.

 

ü They do believe in QAnon’s hocus pocus. 

 

FUN FACT: Normally, this would be embarrassing for everyone involved, but Donald J. Trump has endorsed Rep. Mark Finchem to be the next Arizona Secretary of State. It turns out, Finchem is nuts. He has called the vaccines – which Trump loves to brag about getting developed at warp speed – a “crime against humanity.” Finchem has also made it clear he didn’t get vaccinated because he was worried about “potentially deadly gene therapy.” 

Doesn’t that mean, Rep. Finchem should be warning that Loser Donald is trying to kill people?

 

FUN FACT #2: According to a recent Gallup poll, “The percentage of U.S. adults who self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or something other than heterosexual has increased to a new high of 7.1%.” That would be “double the percentage from 2012, when Gallup first measured it.” 

(Mr. Blogger still identifies as heterosexual – but it’s time to accept that many of our friends, neighbors and family members are not – and they’re not all trying to sneak into our bathrooms to watch us pee-pee.)

___ 

 2/18/22: Let freedom ring! A group of Republican senators, including Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, has voiced “strong opposition” to placing airline passengers convicted of unruly behavior on a “no-fly” list.

____________________ 

“This puts everyone at risk and disrupts the safety of flight.” 

Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA

____________________ 

 

This would be terrible and treat them like “terrorists,” and they would be sad, and tears would drip down their cheeks and wet their masks – if they were wearing any. Instead, the idea Cruz and Rubio and six others are floating is to let the airlines create their own lists. In 2021, the airlines had 5,981 reports of unruly passengers, 4,290 of which involved individuals who thought wearing a mask was reason to punch someone nearby, such as an unlucky flight attendant or another masked passenger, or try to kick in the door to the cockpit. 

See also: Sen. Ted Cruz and the hero trucker protesters. So, if you would like to kick a flight attendant on your next flight, don’t worry. You now have a “constitutional right to engage in interstate commerce.” 

Hint to Republicans: If you want to drive a wagon across the USA and exercise your constitutional right, have at it. Or bicycle coast-to-coast like this blogger has done. If you want to fly, quit being a dick. 

Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, which represents 50,000 members, flying on twenty different airlines, responded:

 

We’ve been punched, kicked, spit on, and sexually assaulted. This puts everyone at risk and disrupts the safety of flight, which is never acceptable and every single one of the senators who signed this letter knows full well what is at stake if we leave a gap in aviation safety and security. It is irresponsible and political brinkmanship that will put our economic security at risk right along with our lives.

 

This wasn’t just about masks, Nelson added – although for Republican lawmakers anxious not to anger the already fired-up anti-mask, anti-vax, pro-spreading-disease base that’s all it was about. “You’re either for protecting crew and passengers from these attacks or you’re against. We need clear and consistent rules with strict consequences for those who cannot respect our collective efforts to keep everyone safe,” she added, “in the air and on the ground.” 

Captain Joe LePete, speaking as president of the ALPA, which represents 62,000 pilots, backed Nelson up. “There should be zero tolerance for airline passengers who threaten the safety of others.” He called on the Justice Department “to prosecute these perpetrators to the law's fullest extent,” and for the Department of Homeland Security “to create a no-fly list for unruly passengers” and for the Federal Aviation Administration “to issue the final secondary barrier rule.”

 

* 

IN OTHER NEWS, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that three lawsuits filed against former President Trump by individuals seeking damages for injuries suffered during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack can go forward.

 

[Mehta] wrote that “it is reasonable to infer that the President knew” that “militia groups” like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers were in D.C. on January 6, and that “they were prepared to partake in violence for him.” Moreover, Mehta noted, the idea that there was “a tacit agreement” between Trump and those doing violence on his behalf “is made all the more plausible by his response to the violence that erupted at the Capitol building.”

 

That is: There was no response from the President for three bloody hours.

 

Nor was that Trump’s only court defeat on Thursday. A second judge ruled that Mr. Trump and two of his adult children, Don Jr. and Ivanka, will have to answer questions under oath, in regard to an investigation into the business practices of the Trump family and the Trump Organization. (See also: 2/14/22.)

___

 

2/21/22: Dr. Fiona Hill, former National Security adviser to President Trump blames him for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He treated the country like a “playground,” and never cared about the Ukrainian people, or what was good for them, or what was good for U.S. interests. He never stood up to Vladimir Putin. 

____________________ 

“Not once did I see him do anything to put America first. Not once. Not for a single second.” 

Former Trump White House advisor Fiona Hill, commenting on her old boss.

____________________ 

 

He only wanted Ukraine to help him get reelected in 2020. 

In an interview with CNN today, Dr. Hill was frank. “There’s no Team America for Trump,” she said. “Not once did I see him do anything to put America first. Not once. Not for a single second.”

___

 

2/23/22: Imagine if you will that an American politician in September 1939 had said, when panzers smashed across the border into Poland, that Hitler’s plan was “genius.” That the German dictator was “savvy.” Imagine that that American politician would shrug, and say he got along “great” with Hitler. “He liked me. I liked him. I mean, you know, he’s a tough cookie, got a lot of great charm and a lot of pride. And he loves his country, you know? He loves his country.” 

Finally, imagine that that politician of yesteryear would attack Franklin D. Roosevelt, instead. 

And there you have the utterly soulless Donald J. Trump, responding this week to news that his old pal Vladimir Putin was sending tens of thousands of troops and heavy armor crashing into Ukraine.

Trump still likes Putin!!! WTF!!!!

 

While Trump finds Putin “charming,” those who possess even a vestige of empathy know what’s at stake. A country of forty-two million people, twice the size of Texas, with a freely elected government, has been invaded. 

Trump might say in 2017, that Putin wasn’t such a bad killer – adding, “What, you think our country is so innocent?” But Putin is a killer, and by no means a reluctant one. He’s the guy who has had critics thrown off fifth floor balconies, poisoned with radioactive tea, and nearly killed when a deadly nerve agent was smeared in the critic’s underpants after KGB agents snuck his suitcase off a plane. Putin is also the guy who has stolen an estimated $70 billion from his people. 

Trump likes the guy. 

Why would anyone be surprised? Trump stood before the world in Helsinki, four years ago, and denied that Putin had interfered in the 2016 election – even when U.S. intelligence chiefs told him Putin did. And if you don’t know his first campaign was shot through with aides and relatives who met with Russian agents – who were offering help in defeating Hillary Clinton – you desperately need to brush up on recent history (see post for 2/13/22). Now our former president has made it clear he doesn’t care how many Ukrainians are run over by Russian tanks. He doesn’t care if all forty-two million, minus those killed by the invaders, fall under Russia’s heel. 

And while he  might like the Russian killer, Trump has never liked our NATO allies. He once wondered aloud why we would honor Article V of the alliance, the keystone, which holds that an attack on one member will be considered an attack on all. He also mocked NATO’s sacrifices during the Afghanistan War. 

When our allies rallied to our aid. 

Trump’s downplaying of the NATO alliance – was sweet, sweeter, sweetest music to Vladimir ears.

* 

The cracking of their bones still wouldn’t register with Trump. 

IN A stunning radio interview on Tuesday, Trump not only failed to condemn Russian aggression, he praised Putin’s moves, instead. 

Trump’s allies and fans may try to spin this tale as “Fake News.” Unfortunately, the clip was provided by his spokesperson, Liz Harrington, who had the choice of what to post, proving that she is nearly as soulless as the man for whom she works. 

“In the last 24 hours we know Russia has said that they are recognizing two breakaway regions of Ukraine, and now this [Biden] White House is stating that this is an ‘invasion,’” host Buck Sexton says to Trump. 

“That’s a strong word. What went wrong here? What has the current occupant of the Oval Office done that he could have done differently?” 

(Pay attention to everything Donald doesn’t say.)

 

“Well,” he responded, “what went wrong was a rigged election,” he said, once again misrepresenting the results of the 2020 contest. And, even worse, making U.S. foreign policy all about him.

 

If ten thousand Ukrainian children were run over by Russian tanks, the cracking of their bones, and the blood on the treads still wouldn’t register with Trump. The invasion of a sovereign nation is all about him.

 

About his hurt.

 

“What went wrong,” he added, “is a candidate that shouldn’t be there and a man that has no concept of what he’s doing.” 

Did it bother Mr. Trump that 42 million Ukrainians were now in the path of Russia’s guns? Not a bit. “I went in yesterday and there was a television screen,” he told Sexton, referring to how he spends his time at Mar-a-Lago, “and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of Ukraine…Putin declares it as independent. Oh that’s wonderful! So Putin is now saying it’s independent. A large section of Ukraine. I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force – we could use that on our southern border.” 

(Sure, Mexico, remembering 1846, would love that concept.)

 

Trump wasn’t appalled. Trump was impressed. “That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re going to keep peace all right,” he said. “No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy. I know him very well. Very, very well.” 

“By the way,” Trump continued, “this never would have happened with us had I been in office. Not even thinkable. This would never have happened. But here’s a guy that says, ‘You know, I’m going to declare a big portion of Ukraine independent. He used the word independent. And we’re going to go out, and we’re going to help keep the peace. You got to say that’s pretty savvy. And you know what the response was from Biden? There was no response. They didn’t have one for that. Now, it’s very sad.” 

Read that again. With the U.S. at risk of being dragged into a wider war, with all our key allies rallying to oppose Putin – Donald J. Trump calls his successor “sad,” but calls an enemy leader a “genius.” Says, he likes the man. It’s as close to sounding traitorous as any U.S. president has ever come. 

 

* 

The world rallies against Putin – but not Trump. 

BY COMPARISON, Mr. Biden had no trouble labeling the entry of Putin’s troops into the disputed Donbas region of Ukraine as “the beginning of a Russian invasion.” Then he ordered sanctions in response to a “flagrant violation of international law.” 

He has also rallied allies in support of Ukraine. Germany has agreed to back the U.S., cutting off a pipeline from Russia that would have brought in much-needed natural gas. This will mean sacrifice for the German people in the form of higher energy prices. Britain has bolstered ties with Poland in the face of growing threats, and the U.S. has sent 5,000 additional forces to Poland. You might think Trump would care about our troops. No. Trump only cares about himself. The Brits have sent the Ukrainians 2,000 anti-tank missiles. Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia remember a half century they spent under Russia’s boot, following World War II. They understand what’s at stake and have asked for additional NATO troops. The U.S. is not alone in its response. The 27 members of the European Union have voted unanimously to implement their own sanctions. Denmark is offering $25 million in aid to help the Ukrainian military. The French and Czechs have sent arms and ammunition. Canada has sent a special operations team to help. Turkey has sent drones. 

No one else has called Putin “savvy.”

 

Barbara Woodward, the British ambassador to the United Nations, warned that the Kremlin decision to invade would unleash “the forces of war, death and destruction on the people of Ukraine. The humanitarian impact will be terrible,” Woodward added. “We know that women and children will suffer most.” 

Trump didn’t mention children at all. 

The nations of the world are speaking up. Trump has not. The U.N. ambassadors of Kenya, Gabon, and Ghana condemned the Russians. New Zealand called in the Russian ambassador and expressed “strong opposition.” Australia announced fresh sanction. Japan promised “severe actions.” South Korean President Moon Jae-in was clear. “Ukraine’s sovereignty and territory must be respected,” he said. “A military clash against the wishes of the international community...would bring huge ramifications in the politics and economies of not only Europe, but to the whole world.” 

Ireland’s premier denounced Putin’s actions as “an outrageous and moral breach of the most fundamental and basic principles of international law. 

“Our thoughts must be with the innocent people of Ukraine at this, their most difficult hour. 

“We stand with them.”

 

Trump? Trump didn’t mention “innocent people.” He saved all his vitriol for Joseph Biden. Always anxious to attack the man who beat him in 2020, he said sanctions would never work. He said Biden had no plan. European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell disagreed. He told reporters Tuesday that the package of sanctions “will hurt Russia, and it will hurt a lot.” 

Yesterday, Russia’s stock market fell by 33 percent.

 

Russia’s neighbors remember what happened last time they ended up under the Soviet yoke. The Romanians remember the boot on their necks. Their president called Putin’s actions a “flagrant violation of international law, which must trigger the most severe response from the international community. We strongly support Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”  Romania also announced it could shelter up to half-a-million refugees if needs arose.

 

It never dawned on Trump that a refugee crisis might result. He was only impressed by all of Putin’s tanks.

 

Putin liked him. He liked Putin. That was good enough for Trump. 

Every country on Russia’s western border understood what was at risk and condemned the Russian leader – save one – Belarus. The autocratic leader of that country manages to remain in power with the backing of Russian troops. Moldova condemned  the invasion. Norway referred to the invasion as “a serious violation of the rule of law.” Finland announced it would reevaluate plans to partner with a Russian company to build a massive nuclear power reactor. Even Hungary, led by a right-wing president, announced, “Hungary is part of the [European Union’s] common position.” 

No one in Slovakia thought all those tanks were impressive. Prime Minister Eduard Heger warned that, “Recognition of separatist republics [in Ukraine] is the support of violence and hatred. Ordinary people will suffer. I am deeply outraged by President Putin’s move.” 

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic warned that the crisis “could spread in other parts of Europe and the world, especially on the Western Balkans.” Trump wouldn’t care about the Balkans and couldn’t find the region on a map unless he was going to hop a plane and go there to play golf. 

In fact, Trump was thrilled to think that Putin’s moves might cause trouble for his successor in the White House.

 

He called Biden’s actions “weak.”

 

He said Putin was going to love watching what would happen. “Now it has begun, oil prices are going higher and higher, and Putin is not only getting what he always wanted, but getting, because of the oil and gas surge, richer and richer.”

 

Trump still couldn’t bother to mention the death and destruction that would be visited on the Ukrainian people. 

 

Removing bodies after a Russian missile attack hit a park.

 

*

 

“Just walking right in.”

 

WEDNESDAY, he doubled down. He said Putin was beating Biden “like a drum.” Talking to his fat cat pals at a dinner in Mar-a-Lago, where every member knows they’ll be safe from Russian artillery and rocket fire, Trump mocked his successor. Putin, he said, was “pretty smart.” He was “taking over a country, literally, a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in.”

 

And all “for $2 worth of sanctions.”

 

Trump wasn’t worried that the Ukrainians would fight long and hard to keep the enemy from “just walking right in.” He wouldn’t care if Russia wiped their entire population from the face of the earth. He only cared about making the man who beat him in the last election look bad. Again, we shouldn’t be surprised. In 2019, Trump put self-interest ahead of U.S. national security when he refused to provide Ukraine with more than $400 million in military aid, until the Ukrainian president agreed to investigate Hunter Biden and dig up dirt on his dad.

 

That’s not “Fake News,” either. Trump’s own national security advisor, John Bolton, said that’s what his boss did. And so did a parade of witnesses, which led to Trump’s first impeachment.

 

Former White House Russia advisor Fiona Hill – who once worked for President Trump – summed it up best. She told CNN on Sunday that Trump’s foreign policy had emboldened Vladimir Putin. Trump, she said, had always been driven by personal concerns rather than U.S. national interests.

 

“There’s no Team America for Trump,” she cautioned. “Not once did I see him do anything to put America first. Not once. Not for a single second.”

 

He’s not a real patriot – and Vladimir Putin has to be loving every word he’s hearing spill from Donald’s lips. 

Trump doesn't care about anyone in Ukraine.

 

 

POSTSCRIPT: As has so often been the case, our former president remains singularly ill-informed. He talks about “$2 worth of sanctions.” But the European Union has issued a 600-page list of penalties and sanctions against Putin and his cronies. No more lavish trips to Paris to buy luxury goods. No more visits to their villas on Lake Como. They’ve been banned from travel anywhere in the EU. Britain also announced travel bans on three of Putin’s richest money-grubbing pals and froze their assets. Included in the list of sanctioned individuals are Putin’s chief of staff and his minister of defense – because where one kleptocrat goes, we go all (to steal a QAnon kind of line). All three hundred lawmakers who approved Putin’s decision to invade have been banned, as are a number of well-know “propagandists” for the Russian oligarchs.

 

No doubt some of the crooks will have stashed their ill-gotten gains in places hard to reach. But consider the pain of Vladimir Solovyov, a prominent television anchor known for sucking up to Mr. Putin and telling viewers how lucky they are to be led by such a fine leader.

 

According to The New York Times, Solovyov has “publicly boasted about owning a house near Lake Como. The 900-square meter, three-story mansion near the lake features a large pool and a garden,” and  was valued at “5.6 million euros, about $6.3 million,” in 2016. Now the homeowner is banned.

___

  

 

2/24/22: The Washington State Patrol trooper who told Gov. Jay Inslee to “kiss my ass,” rather than be forced to get a vaccine, has shown Inslee up, once and for all. 

 

____________________

 

Suppose Governor Inslee ran Florida.

____________________

 

 

Rather than get the shots, Robert LeMay took early retirement last October. Now he is taking an early trip to heaven. LeMay contracted COVID-19 and died this week.

 

He was fifty.

 

It would appear LeMay was also a believer in the QAnon myth of liberal elites running a Satanic human-trafficking pedophile ring – which has somehow never been proven. That, however, is supposition.

 

What is not supposition is that 10,669 residents of Washington have succumbed to the disease.

 

According to the Washington State Department of Health, on the day before Mr. LeMay died,

 

Unvaccinated 35-64 year-olds were

 

• 4 times more likely to get COVID-19 compared with fully vaccinated 35-64 year-olds.

 

• 7 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 compared with fully vaccinated 35-64 year-olds.

 

Unvaccinated 65+ year-olds were

 

• 5 times more likely to get COVID-19 compared with fully vaccinated 65+ year-olds.

 

• 9 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 compared with fully vaccinated 65+ year-olds.

 

• 7 times more likely to die of COVID-19 compared with fully vaccinated 65+ year-olds.

 

*

 

DOWN IN FLORIDA, Governor Ron DeSantis is trying to carve out a special lane for himself, to run for president in 2024. Not only has he refused to say whether or not he has received a vaccination booster, he is backed up by a new Florida Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo.

 

Dr. Ladapo hates mask mandates. He hates vaccination campaigns unless they are voluntary. He won’t say whether or not he has been vaccinated. And, so, the anti-vaxxers love him – and keep dying in far greater numbers than necessary.

 

In fact, during a contentious two-hour confirmation hearing, the doctor adamantly refused to answer questions posed by Democrats. Had he had the shots? He refused to say, pleading the Fifth, I guess.

 

Meanwhile, nearly 69,000 Floridians have died from COVID-19. So there’s that. A quick check shows that Florida ranks #18, for worst per capita death rate from the disease, with 321 deaths per 100,000. That’s more than twice as many, per capita, as in the State of Washington (153 per 100,000) where Governor Inslee has been told he should be kissing unvaxxed posteriors.

 

Suppose Governor Inslee ran Florida. There are a few variables here that would have to be considered. Yet, a little math razzmatazz tells me (because I am not a numbskull, like DeSantis) that if DeSantis had followed Inslee’s lead, only 33,000 residents of his state would be dead of COVID as of today.

 

Or, to put it differently, DeSantis has, if not blood, at least germs on his hands, and he’s helped get an extra 36,000 constituents killed.

 

(For an extensive look at the kind of odds one faces, if unvaccinated, vs. those of us who took the shots, see 1/26/22.)

Governor DeSantis.

___ 

 

2/25/22: If you believe climate change is a threat to humanity, take note. A recent aerial survey shows that thirty oil and gas wells in the Permian Basin (Texas) have been leaking massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere for the last three years. These “super emitters” have done as much damage as a half million cars and trucks. Roughly 100,000 tonnes (we are using a story from Reuters) of methane have escaped these sites every year. NASA has been helping with the tracking. 

All our grandchildren are going to pay a steep price for political inaction now – but, then again, this is Texas. So Texas government isn’t going to do anything, except make voting harder.

___ 

 

2/27/22: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is in the news again – which means she’s in the news for stupidity and racism again. 

On Friday, she gave a keynote speech at a conference organized by white supremacist Nicholas J. Fuentes.

Greene should probably "google" Hitler, too.

Fuentes, 23, is a piece of far-right work. As the New York Post reports, “he has been labeled as a white supremacist by the Anti-Defamation League,” and “has long been banned from attending CPAC. In the past he has denied the Holocaust, defended segregation, and urged his followers to kill state legislators.” 

“[They say] Vladimir Putin is Hitler, and they say that’s not a good thing,” Fuentes joked, during the same event Greene attended Friday night. “I shouldn’t have said that” he added, with a laugh. 

Yes. Humorous. Watching Ukraine get invaded and watching Ukrainians and Russian soldiers get killed. 

Giving Hitler a plug! 

Genius! 

In a video statement posted today, Greene claimed she had not been aware of Fuentes’ views and said did not support white nationalism. Also: she was too stupid to “google” the name, “Nicholas J. Fuentes.” Then again, she does believe Jews are starting forest fires with space lasers. And bankrolling a global pedophile ring. 

(So: Two peas in a white supremacist pod?)

 

For starters, you can easily find the story where Fuentes suggests Trump supporters have no choice left but to kill lawmakers. 

Or: Fuentes, as a teen, explaining how the First Amendment doesn’t cover Muslims or immigrants. 

Or: Fuentes’ ideas on race:

 

Fuentes and his America First adherents vocally support the closure of the U.S. borders to immigrants, while opposing “liberal” values such as feminism and LGBTQ+ rights. Fuentes views these societal changes as the “bastardized Jewish subversion of the American creed. The Founders never intended for America to be a refugee camp for nonwhite people.”  

 

Fuentes believes in the Great Replacement Theory, which he refers to as the “Great Replacement REALITY.” In this view, white people are replaced in Europe and in the USA by dark-skinned immigrants, and the white race faces extinction. “If you are a White male zoomer,” he warned recently, “remember that the people in power hate you and your unborn children and they will try to genocide you in your lifetime.” 

So: “Sieg heil,” and out, you pathetic right-wingers. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: Sen. Mitt Romney was asked this morning to comment on the appearances of Greene, and another GOP lawmaker, Rep. Paul Gosar, at the Fuentes hate fest. Quoting a line from an old movie, he replied, “I’ve got morons on my team.” 

Racist morons.

___

 

2/28/22: Well, it’s curtains for me. You know what Alex Jones said. If we got vaccinated for COVID, we’d be dead in a year. 

Today is my expiration date, like milk curdled in the fridge. One year ago today I had my first shot. 

Well, don’t mourn me when I’m gone. I had a good run. I never voted for Trump. I’m proud of that. 

Unlike Trump, I volunteered to join the Marines. Even volunteered to go to Vietnam. Twice. 

Because I was dumb. 

Lucked out. I didn’t get sent. But, unlike generation after generation of Trump’s, my patriotism is not just in my tongue.

I even got to eat at a few nice restaurants before I died.

 

I had a great time teaching middle school for 33 years. I tried to teach my 5,000 students to have empathy for others, something someone should have taught President Trump. I can’t name five kids I didn’t like in all those years – and if you ever want to restore your faith in humanity, work with the young. (I hope none of my old students comes by and spits on my grave.) 

On my tombstone, I want the words, “Things could be better,” carved in stone. I think my former students, who will remember my rules of good writing, get the joke. 

I’ve had a blast in this life, and I hope I don’t come back in the next as a cat (I hate cats), or a slug, or a friend of Matt Gaetz. 

If there’s a hell, I don’t want to go there, because I’d be spending the rest of eternity with Paul Manafort and Roger Stone. And the former president. I Trump would be talking about the “stolen election” non-stop. 

Well, like I said. It’s been fun. I finally got to see the Bengals in the Super Bowl before I died.

 

My wife is still cool after all these years. My four kids – I love them all and they make me proud. They’re all honest in dealing with others and that’s important to everyone in our family. None of them has ever had to go to court and plead the Fifth five hundred times, either. (You know: Like Eric Trump.) The three grandkids are shaping up well. I hope climate change doesn’t make the world they live in significantly worse; but at least I was never dumb enough to call it a “hoax.” 

I’ve committed my share of sins along the highway of life, but I’ve done my best to atone whenever I could. 

I got to pedal my bicycle across the U.S.A. twice, and raised $35,000 for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund in the process. I was going to do another cross-country ride in 2024, when I turned 75, but now I’m doomed. 

Guess I won’t have the chance. 

Anyway, I can say I’ve been happy almost every day for the last 72 years, 10 months, and 23 days. You’re lucky if you can say that about your life. I only have a few hours left. So, I better practice my last words. I want them to be good. 

I tend to use profanity, so I hope my last word is not an “f-bomb.” That would really be f---ed up. 

I’m thinking more along these lines: 

“Hey, why does this escalator only go down? And is that brimstone I smell?” 

“I wish I’d eaten more vegetables…” 

“Too late, Anne, for sex?” 

“Whodey?” 

Well, love you all, and hope if you’re reading this you live happily ever after. 

I hope Ukraine holds out. 

I’ll see you all on the other side someday.