November 25, 2020: President Trump Pardons Felonious Pal

11/25/20: In a strange twist of political fate, Republicans in Georgia are suddenly calling on voters to cast supposedly fraud-prone mail-in ballots in the U.S. Senate runoff elections in January. 

Republicans are going to try to turn out the graveyard vote, since the president has been complaining that Biden won the state on the ghostly votes of untold numbers of deceased Georgians. 

(Maybe Confederate Gen. John B. Gordon, namesake of one of those military bases whose names Trump doesn’t want to change, will vote this time around.)

Gordon was wounded eight times, fighting against the U.S. government.

He was also a Grand Cyclops, or Grand Doodad in the K.K.K.

 

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IN WHITE HOUSE NEWS, we learn that President Trump is bogged down in the initial stages of grief, following his defeat. Those stages are:

Denial

Tweeting

Anger

Golfing

Bargaining

Lying

Depression

More Lying

Acceptance

 

For now, tweeting bolsters “denial.” Since the election, The New York Times notes, Loser Don has rarely appeared in public and has not taken a single question from any member of the free press. He has, however, fired off 550 tweets, including more than 400 which attack the legitimacy of the election. Trump was up late last night, railing against the Fates, on into Wednesday morning, insisting that he was the rightful winner. 

Not only was the president in denial he was thrilled to announce that most of his supporters were too. (See: 12/15/20, 12/16/20 and 1/22/21.)

 

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SPEAKING OF DENIAL, we know the president came out of hiding long enough yesterday to brag about how great the stock market was doing. No doubt his aides made sure not to tell him – and his supporters would be astonished to find out if they ever followed the news – the harsh truth. 

At this point in his first term, President Barack Obama had seen the Dow Jones rise by 62.8%. 

The Dow is up – even after a healthy post-election bump – under Trump by only 51.4%.

 

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STILL, one American had a great day before Thanksgiving. A few hundred others didn’t live to see the sun rise again. Lame Duck Don, in one of the least surprising moves of his presidency, pardoned Gen. Michael T. Flynn. 

The day before, CDC reported, we had another 165,282 cases of COVID-19 and 1,989 Americans died. 

That brings the toll, so far, to

 

259,005 dead.

  

POSTSCRIPT: If the Dow Jones hit the “sacred number” of 30,000 yesterday, it didn’t remain at that “sacred” level for long. Wednesday, weak economic numbers caused the Dow to retreat to 29,872. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its report early, since tomorrow is Thanksgiving. What the weekly numbers show: Seasonally adjusted, 778,000 Americans filed for unemployment in the last seven-day period. That was up for the second week, and up from levels that remain startlingly high. 

Including Americans receiving benefits under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, and other federal and state programs, 20,452,223 men and women will carve the turkey and pass the cranberry sauce tomorrow, knowing they have no job to go to on Monday. That marks an increase of 135,297 Americans out of work, compared to the last weekly reporting period. 

And don’t expect President Trump to notice. He’s busy tweeting, golfing, and pardoning felons. 

 

FUN FACT: The premier gun rights organization, N.R.A., admits in a tax filing that it “became aware during 2019 of a significant diversion of its assets.” 

Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre and five others are alleged to have raided the coffers of the allegedly non-profit organization to pay for personal perks. LaPierre has reportedly paid back $300,000 he charged for travel expenses. In a five-year period (2015-2019)! In other words: guy loves to travel. 

And if you’re going to travel, you want to look your best. LaPierre is also alleged to have charged $540,000 in clothing expenditures to the N.R.A. Sadly, he still looks like a ghoul in a suit:

Dapper dressing Wayne.

 

FIND PICTURE OF LAPIERRE.

July 1, 2021: Historians Rank Trump 41st Best President

 

July 1, 2021: July begins with President Joseph R. Biden Jr. sporting a 52.7% average approval rating. 

That means during his first 162 days in office, his average approval rating has been higher than his predecessor ever managed in four years.

 

____________________ 

Ratings are in and Trump is not the worst president in U.S. history! He’s better than three other losers. Party-time at Mar-a-Lago!

____________________

 

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NOW, a new month begins and….WTF! The Trump Organization is about to get slapped with an indictment. At 6:20 this morning, Allen Weisselberg, Chief Financial Officer for the business, turned himself in to authorities. 

Trump has already responded, in a perfectly Trumpian way, calling prosecutors in the case, “rude, nasty, and totally biased.” He insists that his company’s actions were “standard practice throughout the U.S. business community, and in no way a crime.” The problem with his denial is that we already know he cheats on golf scores, on wives (serially), and customers. In this case, he and his minions allegedly cheated the government – that he led – out of the kind of tax dollars you need to fund the military. Or dare we say, money to build the wall!

 

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WHAT ELSE is going wrong for Don? He won’t get this because he knows about as much U.S. history as a cicada; but C-Span has released its Historians Ranking of Presidential Leadership survey, which it does every time there’s a change at the White House. Forty-four men have held the highest office in the land (Grover Cleveland had two terms, but not consecutively, so counts twice.) 

Trump ends up ranked 41^st. 

(Can you guess the names of the three losers that Loser Donald beat? 

42. Franklin Pierce (admit it, you didn’t even know he was a president) 

43. Andrew Johnson (took over when Lincoln was assassinated, first president ever impeached) 

44. James Buchanan (left a mess for Lincoln to inherit; our only bachelor president; he couldn’t even get a wife) 

Poor Trump. His overall score was dragged down because of his rating on “administrative skills,” where he finished #44. He also finished last in the category of “moral authority.” He did better in the “public persuasion” category (#32), but when you think about it, he was mostly good at persuading people to believe idiotic crap.

 

Finishing in the top ten: 

1. Abraham Lincoln 

2. George Washington 

3. Franklin D. Roosevelt 

4. Theodore Roosevelt 

5. Dwight D. Eisenhower 

6. Harry S. Truman 

7. Thomas Jefferson 

8. John F. Kennedy 

9. Ronald Reagan 

10. Barack Obama (that’s right, Trump fans, historians rate Obama 31 spots higher than the Tangerine King of Mar-a-Lago)

 

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ANYTHING ELSE that might be troubling Loser Don? Suddenly, he hates Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley – who holds that post because some numbskull gave him the job. 

Oh, wait. That was Trump. 

Milley’s sin? Insisting that it was good that officers in the U.S. military be taught to understand racism in American history. Trump was furious. Milley should resign and “be replaced with someone who is actually willing to defend our military from the leftist radicals who hate our country and flag,” said Don. He also called Milley “sad” and “pathetic” and a liar. 

Among others who have come to Gen. Milley’s defense, we have his predecessor as Joint Chiefs chair, Gen. Joseph Dunford, and Trump’s former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.

 

On the other hand, Tucker Carlson is on Trump’s side. He said of Milley, he’s “not just a pig, he’s stupid.” 

Imagine what Carlson would say if some liberal person called a man who has worn the uniform for more than 40 years a “pig.” 

Whereas Tucker has 0 days of service, tying his Orange King, who also has 0 days in uniform.

 

For fun, let’s take a trip down Memory Lane – still unpaved, since Trump never did get an infrastructure deal. Trump picked Gen. Milley to head the Joint Chiefs in December 2018. With Dunford stepping down, and Milley stepping in, the then-president tweeted, “I am thankful to both of these incredible men for their service to our Country!” 

He called Milley “a friend.” He “never had a doubt” about his choice. In fact, he went out of his way to choose Milley and not an officer recommended for the job by his then-Secretary of Defense, Gen. James Mattis. Trump loved “Mad Dog” Mattis, once upon a time, but came to hate him too. 

And he can’t stand his old White House Chief of Staff, Gen. John Kelly, either. 

And, of course, Trump now hates Sen. Mitch McConnell and his former Attorney General, Bill Barr. (See 6/28/21.) 

Trump might have been a terrible president, but you can’t deny that man was good at hate. 

 

NOT-SO-FUN FACT #1: We have already highlighted the record high temperatures set in the final days of June. But one deserves special mention. On Tuesday, Lytton, Canada, a tiny village in British Columbia, recorded a high of 121°, the hottest temperature ever in that country. 

The old record was set on Monday – in Lytton (118°) – and that broke an older record, still – set Sunday – in Lytton (116°). 

That high Tuesday was nine degrees hotter than Baghdad the same day. That was also the highest temperature ever recorded, anywhere in the world, north of 45 degrees latitude. 

Or as all but the numbest skulls would admit: More evidence of the growing threat posed by climate change.

 

NOT-SO-FUN-FACT #2: Axios offers an update on the heat wave gripping the Pacific Northwest. 

Based on “normalized data,” climatologists estimate that this kind of heat could be expect in the region no more than once in every 4,776 years. Or as one Twitter user notes, “Once in recorded history.” 

This means multiple states and provinces in Canada are seeing temperatures 25 to 50 degrees above normal. In Portland and Seattle, streets buckled, as pavement expanded and cracked. Seattle had only three recorded days of 100 degree or higher temperatures in its recorded history. 

Now, the city had three in a row.