Month: January 2021

Where is the f…ing vaccine?

Supposedly the Trump Administration bought 300 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine awhile back before it was approved for distribution. That was a couple of months ago when everyone was excited about Operation Warp Speed.

Like a lot of Trump promises, the reality didn’t match the hype.

Supposedly, 45 million doses have been distributed in the U.S. and about half of those doses have been administered.

At this rate, it will take about 3 years to innoculate everyone. Meanwhile, the coronavirus is mutating into different strains, all of which appear to be more contagious and more lethal.

No bueno.

Only one person that I know in this city of 15,000 senior citizens has received a Covid-19 vaccination: my hiking buddy Lloyd. He was able to get it from the Veterans’ Administration in Las Vegas. It’s one of the few “benefits” he’s received for acquiring PTSD in Vietnam.

Here in town (Mesquite, Nevada) no one knows anything about when, where, and how we will be able to get innoculated. We’ve heard that the city will be setting up a vaccination center at a defunct hotel and we’ve also heard that our local Walgreens Pharmacy will eventually have vaccines. But, thus far…nada.

I remember very clearly the “60 Minutes” segment maybe 4 months ago when Army General Gustave Perna, the guy in charge of Operation Warp Speed, confidently explained the logistical side of distributing the vaccine when it became available. “We’ve got this!”, he bragged.

All of the sudden, the vaccine becomes available and …the Three Stooges are in charge! What happened?

It appears that the fly in the ointment is that the Operation Warp Speed plan was complicated by the fact that each of the States has a role in the vaccination plan, and each State is doing it a bit differently. Some are distributing and vaccinating according to strict criteria and others (like Florida) have basically said, “First come, first served”. Some States are holding back half of their supply for booster shots, and others are not.

And none of the State have enough of the precious vaccine.

New President Joe Biden has promised to unravel this Gordian Knot and speed up the distribution and inoculation processes.

I hope his Administration, which has made this logistical Mt. Everest its highest priority, can deliver because about 90,000 Americans are dying per month right now from Covid-19. At this rate, the death toll could reach 1 million by Summer.

Right about the time when the vaccine will be available here in Mesquite.

We got rain last night.

I know, everyone everywhere experiences this. However, we Mesquiters haven’t experienced measurable precipitation in 8 months.

In fact, our 9 month-old puppy, BonBon, had never seen rain until last night and was quite puzzled when she went outside to take a pee. She just stood there with the strangest WTF look on her face.

Little BonBon also wasn’t prepared for her next experience…thunder!! Oooooooh, she didn’t like that one bit. In fact, as we lay in bed, I could feel her tremble uncontrollably and tuck herself closer into my back.

It sucks when you’re a Boston Terrier and have those big ears that can hear every little thing, real and imagined. Between the rolling thunder and the flapping of the doggie door, it must have sounded to BonBon like the invasion of the body snatchers.

More rain is forecast for this coming week. We can use anything we can get: our annual rainfall total in Mesquite, Nevada averages about 6 inches and, with one-third of Winter elapsed, we might have 1/4 inch.

Not even cactus can survive such a drought.

We need a couple of “drenchers” between now and March so that all of the plants can rehydrate and put out those wonderful Spring flowers. It is so pretty here when that happens each year.

Charlie is keeping dry right now: it’s Tax Season. She’s hunkered down in her office helping clients get their share of the Federal PPP “stimulus” loans that Congress recently approved. And, in her spare time, is getting ready for tax prep.

And, she’s helping son Jonathan establish a few new bookkeeping clients.

She’s a busy lady helping small businesspeople stay afloat in this crummy economy: she deserves an award of some type.

Charlie and I are scrounging around on State and local websites trying to register for a Covid-19 vaccination. We’re in the priority age group; however, vaccine seems to be in short supply here in Nevada and elsewhere.

Ex-President Trump’s vaunted “Operation Warp Speed” evidently promised a whole lot more than it could deliver. Now we’re hearing that most Americans won’t sniff the vaccine until Summer.

I hope we’re alive by then.

The National death count is almost 3,000 per day, and that’s the good news. The bad news is that there are several variant strains of Covid-19 now making the rounds that are more contagious and more lethal than the original. It is unknown right now whether the current vaccines are effective against the “new and improved” Covid-19 model.

Just the news that we’ve been waiting for!

I’m guessing that one million Americans are going to die from this plague before it’s over.

Of course, by then, we citizens of Mesquite, Nevada could already be dead: from lack of rain.

What’s worse: to die of thirst or die from not being able to breathe?

I really don’t want to find out.

I got worked over yesterday by some Mormons up in St. George, Utah. They had their way with me.

Because I’m old, my primary care physician, Dr. Gladys Kodjoe, decided that I should have a colonoscopy. And, because I’d mentioned to her that very occasionally food gets stuck in my lower esophagus, she decided that I should get an endoscopy, as well.

Easy for her to say.

What happens in those procedures is that some specialist doctor called a gastroenterologist sticks television cameras down the patients throat and up his ass to see what’s going on. It sounds rather intrusive, and it is, but the beauty of the thing, if you can call it that, is that the patient is anesthetized…so you have no memory of the assault.

(I think Bill Cosby perfected this sort of thing…)

Anyway, the only bad part of the ordeal is the preparation: you need to be “cleaned out”. As in devoid of any food in the stomach or digested material in your intestines: Spic n’ span.

I’ve had a couple of colonoscopies in my life. It used to be that a bunch of enemas were prescribed to accomplish the dirty business. Enemas suck. Then some genius, probably an ex-Nazi medical doctor from Auschwitz, devised a chemical (Zyklon B?) that is ingested and chases everything out of your system, pronto. I think it was called “X-Prep”. It worked, for sure, but was pretty violent, as I recall.

This time (the last time!) I prepped for my procedures with some stuff called Plenvu, which was much more humane. The liquid (mix and water) tasted pleasant and did its job within an hour or so. No problema.

I joke about the Mormons up in Utah, but the medical facilities and staff up there (and clinics and hospitals) are absolutely the best I’ve ever encountered. (And I used to work in hospitals, military and civilian!)

From check-in to release from recovery, I was there maybe 1-1/2 hours. No muss, no fuss. Really nice staff and doctor. I can’t complain about anything.

That gas that they give you to fall asleep really works; I wish I could have some to go to bed at night. Instantaneous la-la land!

The gastroenterologist must make oral notes about the procedures as he is doing them because, by the time I checked-out, there was a full report for me including photos of my insides. Incredible!

I had four small polyps removed from my intestines and the doc found that my lower esophagus was inflamed, probably by some stomach reflux.

I will now have to modify my diet a bit and take an omeprazole pill before meals for the next eight weeks. I can do that.

Hopefully, my polyps will be benign ones and my esophagus will heal up…so I can continue eating spicy Mexican food!

Thanks to 81 million American patriots, the Trump presidency ended today as Joe Biden took the reins.

The nation can finally exhale: we outlasted the childish sociopath and would-be dictator.

It seems so long ago when the curse known as Donald J. Trump was inflicted upon the United States by voters who wanted to try something “different”, as in a guy with no governmental experience, a businessman with multiple bankruptcies to his name, a TV reality show host, a misogynistic lout with several marriage failures, a racist, a xenophobe, and a self-absorbed narcissist.

“What could go wrong?” Or, as candidate Trump put it to African American voters in 2016, “What do you have to lose?”

As is turned out, pretty much everything could go wrong and, in the process, threaten our Constitutional democracy.

The basic problem that President Trump had from the get-go was the fact that most Americans didn’t like him in 2016 and didn’t vote for him. He lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 3 million votes but gained the Presidency through the Constitutional flaw known as the Electoral College. Yes, he was President, but he had no popular mandate to govern.

His only chance to effectively lead the Nation was to add Democratic and Independent skeptics to his political base…which, for some reason, he chose not to do. Instead, he spent four years pandering to his extremely conservative political base and further dividing the country.

For all his faults, Donald Trump is a master of social media, which he has effectively utilized to mobilize his followers, demonize his enemies, obscure truth with lies, and advance cockamamie conspiracy theories. Like it or not, Trump has dominated television and radio “news” programming for the past five years. He is a true believer in the Oscar Wilde quote, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”

I cannot think of a day in the past five years when candidate Trump or President Trump wasn’t being talked about on “front page news”.

Like many Americans, I found myself curiously interested in Trump world, checking various news sources daily to see what outrageous things he’d said, what oddball Federal policy he was pushing, which ethic group he’d insulted, how many allies he had alienated, what Presidential norm he was now violating, the names and shady credentials of his Administration appointees, and which of those individuals he had fired for being disloyal or, worse, competent.

It was also interesting to see the multitude of vermin that crawled out from under the rocks where they’ve been hiding across America, with their mean-spirited and hateful agendas now validated by the President of the United States.

White Supremacist skinheads flying Nazi flags were welcomed into society as “patriots”.

The “Trump Show” was so ludicrously entertaining that my wife Charlie, who cares nothing about politics or government or news, for that matter, started insisting that we began the morning watching the CBS News…to see what new shit Trump was up to.

It wasn’t long into the Trump presidency (maybe a few hours!) when American learned that their new leader was a world-class liar and, perhaps, the greatest the world has ever known. The pathology was right there for all to see: he seemed to lie even when the truth would have served him better. He was a true salesman…”always closing” some imaginary deal, at least in his mind. Even his Administration spokespeople were perplexed because they didn’t have the slightest idea what would come out of his mouth next or why. Hence, policy was flexible: it depended upon President Trump’s mood that day or hour.

The only thing that one could be sure of was that he was lying every time his lips moved, Tweeted, or posted to social media.

The new President took Nixon’s idea of an “enemies list” to new heights. Trump’s enemies included: the press; any Democrat; Mexicans, Muslims and Chinese; allies; the United Nations; any Administration appointee who didn’t go along with his lies or bad ideas; experts on any subject; career Federal employees; the F.B.I.; the World Health Organization; and Inspectors General in any governmental agency. If you found yourself on this list, you could expect name-calling through Trump’s social media, threats and intimidation, and retaliation.

Our new President was a bully, and he enjoyed bullying employees, Republicans, businesspeople, and foreign nations.

The Administration went through a bunch of Press Secretaries who tried like Hell to read his mind, lie like the dickens to cover up the Bosses obvious falsehoods, and re-engineer his public statements or Tweets to make him look more intelligent or less meanspirited than he actually was. At some point, live press conferences with the President became too hostile, and then live press conferences with Press Secretaries devolved into shouting matches, and then press conferences were eliminated. One Press Secretary held that position for nine months without holding one press conference.

The last person to hold that position, Kayleigh McEnany, promised on her first day that she “would never tell a lie” to reporters. That obvious falsehood was the first of many.

So many things that President Trump did were just wrong.

Our Commander-in-Chief complimented dictators, thugs, and kleptocrats like Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, Syrian President Bashar al- Assad, and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He gave Russian President Putin a pass on meddling with the 2016 election, paying Muslims to kill American soldiers, and an audacious cyber hack of American national security agencies.

At the same time, our President bad-mouthed America’s long-time allies and their leaders. Go figure.

President Trump engineered a tax cut, ostensibly for working class American, but the lion’s share of the benefits accrued to the Nation’s super rich. The latter group already controlled 90 percent of the country’s wealth: this made them richer.

The Trump Administration started a tariff war with economic foes and trading partner allies alike. This raised the cost of products here in America with no discernable balance of trade impacts upon the targets of the tariffs. The attacked nations responded with tariffs of their own. China, the prime target of the tariff war, experienced a 2.3 percent gain in GDP in 2020, while the U.S. economy shrank by 4.3 percent.

Several public instances of police brutality and systemic racism against African Americans outraged the Nation and sparked mass demonstrations in major cities. The President’s tone-deaf response: use police brutality to quell the protests. Accordingly, his redneck and “law and order” political base was elated, but Trump’s response to this crisis was an insult to African Americans who would, in the 2020 election, get their payback.

It is hard to understand Donald Trump’s mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic.

One would expect the Wharton School of Business graduate to understand that the underlying strength of the United States economy is its citizenry, and the condition of their safety, health and welfare should be the primary concern of the President. Sick or dead people can’t work, young children can’t babysit themselves, and consumers are going to spend less in a time of uncertainty.

The first priority of the President, when alerted to the potential of Covid-19, should have been to tell Americans the truth, ask them to join together to defeat the virus, give local public health officials whatever they needed for testing, and emphasize the urgency of the matter by setting an example.

He did none of those things. In fact, he smirked at these measures, and urged his followers to do the same…which they did.

From the beginning of the pandemic in January 2020, the President minimized the threat, scoffed at public health measures recommended by his own Coronavirus Task Force, advocated quack cures, and publicly dressed-down, demoted, or fired Administration officials who told the truth. He consistently told America that the problem would “go away soon” and that his Operation Warp Speed would develop and distribute Covid-19 vaccine “before Christmas”.

He was wrong, as usual.

We are now one year into the pandemic and 400,000 Americans have succumbed to this plague, 3,000 citizens are dying each day, untold millions have been sickened by it, and every worker, business owner, parent and child has felt its wrath. It has totally overloaded our Nation’s hospital system. The teeny, tiny virus that President Trump dismissed as “nothing more than the flu” has devastated the U.S. economy.

President Trump hasn’t publicly mentioned the pandemic in several months, hasn’t expressed empathy to those who’ve been affected, and hasn’t moved a muscle to help States deal with the carnage.

Speaking of health matters, candidate Donald Trump promised in 2016 that he would scrap President Obama’s signature health care insurance legislation (known as the Affordable Care Act or “Obamacare”), which benefitted the working poor, and replace it with a new and improved version. The President and his Republican allies in Congress had four years to “repeal and replace” Obamacare. Even as late as 2019 they were promising, in the coming weeks, a “beautiful” health care plan.

What did they come up with? (Drum roll)…absolutely nothing.

Candidate Trump promised to “Drain the Swamp” of lobbyists and politically-connected advisors in Washington D.C. He also promised to bring “the very finest people” into his Administration. What did he actually do? He filled his Cabinet and high Administration positions throughout every Federal agency with industry lobbyists, partisan political hacks, and relatives.

Those “fine” people, apparently the best he could recruit, didn’t last long: only a few made it through the four years, many quit in disgust, and most of them (90 percent) were fired by the President.

Their crime: not backing him up when he lied.

Truth was a scarce commodity during the Trump years because anything that didn’t square with things the President said were considered untrue, false, fake or damned lies by Mr. Trump and his faithful political base. Our modern-day Wizard of Oz even convinced three-quarters of his followers (according to a recent poll) that he actually won the 2020 election…which he lost by 7 million votes.

The President’s colossal Big Lie was the underlying cause of the deadly and destructive January 6^th Capitol Riot, for which Mr. Trump is now being impeached by Congress for inciting.

Today is Inauguration Day for Joe Biden. I have some neighbors who believe that Donald Trump is still the rightful President, that he won the election, and that Joe Biden is a usurper. Of course, they also believe that Jesus walked on water, so they are predisposed to believe in things with no factual basis.

The problem is that we have a country chock full of people like that. They’re not a majority, thank goodness, but there are enough of them to cause a lot of anger and turmoil. They are devotees of gossip and “fake news” put out by conservative media that takes advantage of their appetite for salacious stories. The goal: to exaggerate differences between “us” (the good guys) and “them” (Satan’s spawn).

Donald J. Trump, now ex-President with the shameful legacy of being the only American leader to have been impeached twice, has yet to concede defeat by Joe Biden. He’s the first President in 150 years to not attend the Inauguration, he and wife Melania didn’t welcome President and Mrs. Biden to the White House, and he purposely fouled up the transition between Administrations so that President Biden would have as rocky a start as possible.

What a classless guy! But, then, we already knew that.

My wife Charlie and I (and two neighbors) watched the Inauguration today on televison. It’s the first one I can ever remember watching live. To be honest, all of us expected something horrible to happen because of the events of January 6^th. Luckily, nothing did.

As President, Joe Biden will be the complete opposite of Donald Trump, a fact that was made clear in his Inaugural Address this morning.

The entire theme of the Inauguration was “unity”, from the Invocation, to the Presidential Address, to the entertainers, to the words of the Youth Poet Laureate, to the Benediction. Empathy for others was also a common theme, as was the goal of actually listening to the other person. Diversity was celebrated on a day when Kamala Harris, a citizen of Indian and Jamaican ancestry, was inaugurated as the first female Vice President in the Nation’s history.

None of these themes ever graced a speech by candidate or President Donald Trump. For five years, Trump inundated America with imagined horrors, demonization, pandering to hate groups, bragging about things “he” accomplished, and blaming others for his actual failures. “Unity” was not in his vocabulary nor in his public demeanor, despite being President of the United States of America.

Joe Biden’s entire life has been about public service, as a councilman, a six-time Senator, and a Vice President for two terms. He is known for working “across the aisle” in Congress to achieve bipartisan legislative successes. He is a decent human being who is respected by all who know him.

Very few Presidents have had to deal with so many problems on the day they took office. Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, for sure. It’s a very short list. Joe Biden stepped up to the plate and accepted the challenge.

If anyone can help mend the fractured political, social and economic landscape that is America in 2021, it is Mr. Biden. He has a big heart and will endeavor to be a good President to all citizens including, as he noted today, “Those who didn’t vote for me.”

This pledge is something that Donald Trump never made nor attempted to fulfill. His goal was to obtain power and use it to reward his political base and self-deal, if the opportunity presented itself. As to the folks who didn’t support him in the 2016 election: they could go to Hell as far as he was concerned.

That was the key to Trump’s downfall: he tried to be a one-man team, with one-man’s ideas, while disdaining help from other players. As any coach will tell you, there is no “I” in team. By not reaching across the political aisle, by not developing policies that would benefit all Americans, even those who didn’t vote for him, Donald Trump doomed his Presidency.

Speaking of Hell, ex-President Trump can expect a world of torment now that he is just a private citizen. Scads of lawsuits await him as do several banks who’ve lent him hundreds of millions of dollars. And he is still subject to his impeachment trial in the Senate. He’s going to be a busy guy in retirement.

And, in the end, he will go to Hell.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

The United States Constitution is silent on the subject of political parties.

The Founding Fathers did not originally intend for American politics to be partisan. And yet, for most of the Nation’s history there have been political parties, and for the past 160 years there have been two predominant parties: Republicans and Democrats.

I suppose that having political parties is a good thing, in that the “platform” of each party (i.e. the policy goals) helps to simplify the public’s task of voting by relegating a candidate’s personality to a place of less importance. If that candidate is a Republican, for example, we can expect that individual to pursue Republican goals once elected.

This presupposes that the political party’s policy goals remain relatively static; i.e. if the Party supports free capitalism during an election, then one would expect that policy goal to be pursued after the election. “Bait and switch” is not kosher when selling someone a consumer item and it is not acceptable in politics, either.

If someone (Bush Sr.) says, “Read my lips…no new taxes!”, then voters should expect him to avoid new taxes like the plague. Of course, any politician who promises something unrealistic (like building an impenetrable wall on the Mexican border) is just blowing smoke, and well-informed voters should avoid that guy. Promising not to raise taxes when one can’t predict the future is also…stupid.

My Dad was a conservative Republican; in fact, he was a far-right conservative who read Birch Society stuff back in the 1960’s, loved Winston Churchill, felt strongly for Barry Goldwater. He was a good man who taught me right from wrong, gave me my values, and always did the “right thing”. He had some racist tendencies (which most Caucasians at that time did) but was a fair man who treated all people respectfully. I got my basic political education from him. He was my hero.

I have been an “independent” voter for most of my life, not really wanting to be characterized as a member of either of the dominant parties. Sometimes I vote for Republican candidates for President (Nixon twice, Reagan twice, Bush Sr., Bush Jr. twice) and other times for Democratic candidates (Johnson, Carter, Mr. Clinton twice, Obama twice, and Mrs. Clinton). I just recently voted for Joe Biden.

My feeling is that the balance of government (which employed me for 32 years) needs to be adjusted from time to time in order for new ideas to be given a chance to improve the situation. It is not a good thing when one political party, or an elected official, gets too comfortable in positions of power. As Lord Acton said, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” I believe this wholeheartedly.

The Republican Party has been struggling for many years to stay relevant while the demographics of the Nation have been changing. The U.S.A. is becoming “browner” and more liberal while the core of the Republican Party is Caucasian and conservative. Religion is becoming less influential in the general populace (church attendance has dropped significantly in the past fifty years), while it has become a major driver of the Republican political base. Younger voters, more educated voters and women tend to identify with the Democratic Party, while aging, male blue-collar and retired voters constitute the core of the Republican base. City dwellers tend to vote Democratic, and the country is become increasingly urban in nature.

The political handwriting has been on the wall for decades. In the past twenty-eight years (comprising eight elections), only a single Republican candidate has won the popular vote for President.

The Republican strategy to counter this demographic change has had several components: (1) Hold the base; (2) Suppress Democratic voting; (3) Demonize the opposition; (4) Deny Democratic policy victories; and (5) Distract the public.

Instead of modifying the policy goals of the Party to reflect the values of younger, smarter, and more diverse citizens, the G.O.P. chose to solidify its political base by pandering to single-issue voters like Protestant Christians, gun right’s activists, anti-regulatory business groups, “law and order” supporters, White Nationalist hate groups, conspiracy theorists, and blue-collar workers whose jobs have disappeared, presumably “stolen” by Mexicans, the Chinese, and other bad actors.

A variety of methods were utilized by the Republican Party to minimize the impact of the burgeoning Democratic voter base.

First, Republican legislators and executives engineered electoral boundaries within their states that virtually assured the victory of a Republican candidate. This is called “gerrymandering”, and it is possible to draw electoral district boundaries in such a way that more Republican candidates than Democratic ones emerge victorious in an election even when the majority of the area’s citizens are registered Democrats. By doing this, “safe” seats were created, meaning that a Congressman, for example, didn’t have to worry much about being reelected and could, therefore, focus on the agenda of the Republican base.

Secondly, various forms of “voter suppression” were instituted by Republican state officials to depress Democratic turnout at elections. In many cases, voter I.D. laws were instituted, polling places were relocated to distant or awkward locations, voting facilities were reduced in Democratic precincts to create lengthy wait times, and early voting and mail-in voting were prohibited. Minorities were stripped from voter registration rolls, requiring those citizens the extra burden to re-register in order to exercise their voting franchise.

And thirdly, voter intimidation was employed in some precincts, wherein law enforcement officers or local goons employed by the G.O.P. as “election observers” hovered near the polling place, tending to discourage and scare-off minority voters.

During “campaign season”, which is ongoing 24/7 for all 535 members of the House of Representatives (since they must stand for reelection every two years), efforts were made to brand their Democratic rivals as “soft on crime”, “free spenders”, “Socialists” or “Communists”, “anti-American”, “business unfriendly”, “atheists”, “guys who want to take your guns away”, “welfare cheat enablers”, “pointy-headed Liberals”, and worse. Right-wing media (Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc.) emerged to pound home these themes day and night, often creating the very news that they then reported on. By the time an election was held, the Democratic candidate was firmly established as the Devil’s spawn.

When the Democrats won the Presidency or a statehouse, opposition Republicans used every trick at their disposal to deny the incoming executive substantive achievements, so as to diminish that individual’s credentials in later elections. Partisanship, dirty tricks, and bad sportsmanship became commonplace. The acquisition and use of power became the order of the day; the idea of people working together to solve problems (which is the purpose of government) was lost, gamesmanship reigned, and little work was done by legislative bodies other than spitwad fights.

Accordingly, since nothing was being accomplished by either political party, the public gaze was purposefully misdirected to imagined horrors (“There they go again!”), intentionally misinformed (“fake news”), or a total blackout was levied by spokesmen who failed to answer questions. The public, with lots of questions about an incident of police brutality, for example, would instead be redirected to a made-up achievement or supposed policy initiative of the Republican officeholder. Blame would be shifted to “the other guy”.

Despite these many efforts to hold back the Democratic tide, Republican strategists saw their brand inexorably losing market share over the past fifty years. What to do, they thought.

One thing they could do was take advantage of a flaw of the Constitution, which gives small, rural States an electoral advantage in Senatorial power (each State gets two Senators regardless of size) and, thus, in the Electoral College which determines who wins Presidential elections.

Part of Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” was to lock down these small rural States in the Republican camp by pandering to their peculiar political agenda (“State’s rights”, “gun rights”, protecting religious freedom, xenophobia, racism, etc.) By playing to this region’s hot-button issues, Republican could assure themselves of a minimum of 28 Senatorial seats in the South and Bible Belt regions. That’s pretty good start, because it only takes 51 Senators to assure Republican control of the Senate.

And, if you control the Senate, you control the policy agenda of the Nation.

While only one Republican candidate over the past 28 years has won the popular vote for President (George W. Bush), during that same period Republicans have controlled the Senate for 18 years. This has ensured that Democratic Presidents have seen limited success getting anything accomplished. And, during that time, while demographics were trending more liberal, the Judicial Branch of government was becoming more conservative.

This was accomplished because Presidential nominees for Federal court judgeships must be submitted to the Senate for “advice and consent”. It is possible for the Senate to approve all manner of poorly-qualified judges to lifetime positions, as long as their politics are “correct”, and it is possible for the Senate to stall or reject qualified nominees. The activist Republican-controlled Senate, under Mitch McConnell for the past six years, has done all of these very partisan things, loading up the Federal judiciary with conservative Republican jurists.

Why? The simple political answer is “because it (the Senate) can”, but the actual reason is one of desperation: demographics are trending the Nation more liberal, and the only chance that Republicans have to ensure conservative Federal policies and laws is to place young, conservative judges on the Federal judiciary. This will tilt the government to the right even when it wants to go left.

Some would call this tactic “sour grapes” or “poisoning the well”, but there are few options available to conservative Republicans at this point.

Trumpism is the culmination of Republican frustration over the past few decades and is indicative of total desperation on behalf of the G.O.P. The attitude of many Republican voters reached “Why not a reality TV show host?” level in 2016.

Donald Trump is not really a Republican; in fact, he was a registered Democrat until just before he ran for President in 2016. Many in the Party adamantly opposed his candidacy (“Never Trumpers”) because he had no experience in government, had no discernible moral compass, disdained traditional political norms and traditions, had a history of personal and business failure, and was very obviously a self-absorbed narcissist. He was, however, a ruthless, hard-charging asshole who bullied his way through the 2016 primaries unscathed, making all manner of promises to those folks in the Solid South, the Bible Belt, and the unemployed in the Rust Belt.

On the other hand, he was very media savvy and focused his skills on fanning discord, blaming Democrats for everything wrong with America, and focusing attention on himself. He alone was the answer to all that ailed the country.

Once Trump was elected, the Republican “platform” became anything that Donald Trump wanted, even though it might have conflicted with traditional Republican positions.

The “Party of Lincoln” under Trump became one that openly sought to divide White Americans from colored ones, exponentially increasing racist rhetoric (from the Presidential podium, no less), demonizing Black Lives Matter protesters, calling Mexican immigrants “rapists”, and publicly encouraging and praising police brutality against minorities.

The Republican Party, which had been energized by “Tea Party” fiscal conservatives twenty years ago (balanced budgets, spending caps, “no new taxes”, etc.), became free-spenders once Trump gained power. A huge tax cut was engineered, of which 90 percent of the benefits accrued to the wealthiest 80 percent of Americans. At the same time that the Federal government was cutting tax revenue, the Republicans increased spending, including massive amounts for the military. This ensured an imbalanced budget for the foreseeable future and trillions of dollars added to the National Debt. Republicans, who gleefully called Democrats “tax and spend” liberals in the past, now became “borrow and spend” conservatives. The hypocrisy was startling.

Republican administrations (and Democratic ones, too) in the wake of World War II created a world banking and free trade model which enabled tremendous economic growth for all nations, particularly the United States. Enter the G.O.P. under Donald Trump: imposition of tariffs upon friend and foe alike. The new policy position of the Republican Party was that every nation which enjoys a surplus in trade from America is…our enemy.

Tariffs, which are an indirect tax on U.S. consumers who buy foreign-made products, were imposed on all manner of products. Prior Republican platforms abhorred un-voted upon taxes: now, apparently, that patriotic position (i.e. the Tea Party in Boston) was thrown out the window. Also, since trade partners reciprocated with their own tariffs, the Trump Administration felt compelled to respond with large subsidies to American businesses which had suffered from his ill-advised tariff war. Again, more tax money being spent to prop up businesses: another un-voted upon tax.

Republicans like to boast that they are strong proponents of capitalism, free-enterprise, less government is good, etc. They are the “business-friendly” Party, according to them. However, free enterprise and capitalism are the reasons that businesses have fled America: manufacturers can produce products cheaper, and make more profit, overseas. Profit is the measuring stick of capitalism, so making more profit cannot be bad, right? According to Donald Trump, whose family profits from cheap apparel made in Southeast Asia, these foreigners are “robbing” jobs from Americans. Republicans need to get their story straight.

Republican administrations since World War II have been instrumental in building alliances with other countries throughout the world to counter strategic economic and military threats. President Trump, upon assuming office, instigated a campaign to dissolve virtually all trade agreements, defund NATO, and find an excuse to pull out of the United Nations. America’s standing in the world, as a bastion of freedom and defender of democracy, has plummeted. Relations with our two bordering nations, Mexico and Canada, have deteriorated as America has increasingly been viewed abroad as a bully.

Under the Trump Administration there has been an endless campaign against the traditions, laws, and normal practices that have governed previous Republican and Democratic administrations. Transparency, i.e. the ability of the public to see what the Federal government is doing, has been deliberately minimized. Press conferences have been markedly reduced, and those that occur shed little light but, rather, intentionally mislead the public with obvious falsehoods. Logs of visitors to the White House have been made unavailable to the press, as have been records of who the President meets with at his Mar a Lago compound in Florida.

Over the years, Republicans in Congress have gleefully availed themselves of the ability to oversee Federal government operations, hold investigations, and demand changes in laws and Administration policy (when Democrats held the White House). Under the Trump Administration, the oversight function of Congress has been undermined by instructions from the President to his Cabinet members, advisors, and Administration officials to ignore Congressional requests and/or subpoenas for factual testimony. Top officials who work for the President are subject to Non-Disclosure Agreements, so they face prosecution by Donald Trump if they spill the beans about corruption, wrongdoing, or malfeasance.

Along with this, the internal watchdog function of the Federal government, accomplished by inspectors general in the major agencies, has been emasculated by President Trump with support from his Republican enablers in Congress. “Whistleblowers” have been sought out and fired, despite legal protections enacted through previous bipartisan action. Inspector General positions have been widely eliminated.

Facts and science have driven the American economy for a hundred years, helping it to become preeminent in the world. And yet, under the Trump Administration, a concerted effort has been made to “dumb down” government by replacing experts with political hacks and to publicly disparage and contradict proven science and factual evidence which contradicts policy that the President and the Republican Party advocate. Prime examples of this are opposition to the Paris Treaty on Global Warming, opposition to CDC guidance relative to the coronavirus pandemic, and opposition to the 2020 electoral victory of Joe Biden. “Belief” has conveniently replaced factual evidence in the Republican Party, so that any statement of President Trump is considered “truthful” by his political base.

The Republican Party has long claimed the moral high ground in American politics, claiming to encompass “the moral majority”, claiming to be the “law and order” party, claiming to be the defender “of God and Country”, and regularly disparaging Democrats as less “patriotic” and, to some extent, “anti-American”. And yet, in January 2021, a Republican President and a majority of Republican Congressmen opposed the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 Presidential contest and incited a mob of 8,000 Trump supporters to storm the Capitol building, trash it, and leave 5 people dead.

This Republican President, the 147 Republican Congressmen, and those fanatical Republican insurrectionists all know, but don’t want to believe, the facts of the 2020 election…because it’s not convenient for them. It means that they will be losing political power for the next four years.

And, to make matters worse, demographic shifts mean that Republican prospects in foreseeable elections are not promising: this reality is the basis of the predominantly White, male rage that was demonstrated on January 6^th in Washington D.C.

What is the future of the Republican Party?

Demographics tell us that a lot of old, conservative, White people (who skew Republican) will be dying off in the coming years, to be replaced by a younger, a more diverse and liberal population which tends to vote Democratic.

A large number of mainstream Republicans who voted for Trump because he wasn’t a Democrat, will flip parties in disgust over the Republican anti-democratic coup attempt on January 6^th. A majority of Republican Congressmen took a public part in the atrocity and many will be shamed out of office in the 2022 elections by “real” American patriots. How many? It depends on how they act relative to Trump’s second impeachment by Congress and if they publicly renounce their repudiation of the 2020 election results. Otherwise, they will go down in American history as members of the Sedition Caucus, a group of anti-American traitors, their political careers mortally damaged.

I suspect that the Trumpist political base will shrink by at least half as a result of recent developments. Trump and his political brand will not be viable going forward: this rules out the potential “dynasty” involving Donald Jr. or Ivanka. There will still be a core of diehard rabble rousers, and they will continue to affect local elections in the South and the Bible Belt. This will seriously diminish the Republican Party brand.

The upcoming vote on the second impeachment of President Trump will separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. Congressmen who vote to convict will immediately earn the scorn of Trump’s hard-core base.

The G.O.P. will need to re-invent itself: perhaps Trumpism retains the soiled “Republican” brand and mainstream Republicans create a new political party. A politically active lady on TV this morning described herself as a “Trumplican” which could be an indication of the developing schism.

That Party is going to have to craft a platform that appeals to people of color, the college educated, and women. In a word, they will need to become more like Democrats to stay relevant. They will need to anticipate and embrace change, rather than being hidebound against it. They will need to develop a vision of America’s future rather than basing their success on dividing, labeling, and trying to scare people about other people. They will need to become more honest and factual. They will need to demonstrate that, despite who’s in power, they can work cooperatively with others to achieve positive societal goals.

The Republican Party needs to shed its image as “The Party of No” and become the party of “Yes we can!”.

“We”, as in all Americans.

Every now and then I read something that is so “spot on” that I feel it necessary to include it in my blog verbatim.

Dahlia Lithwick, who writes for Slate Magazine on the courts and legal issues, wrote this piece THE DAY BEFORE the Trump Riot of January 6, 2021. How prescient she was summarize, in only nine paragraphs, the malignancy of the Trump Administration and the short-sightedness of the Republican lawmakers who enabled Donald Trump’s lawless behavior for four years and help send our democracy down a very dangerous path.

“Leave Us With the Mess” (Dahlia Lithwick, Slate Magazine, 1/5/21)

Donald Trump is ending his presidency as he started it—wholly and unrepentantly himself. With his rambly, menacing call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, threatening vague criminal consequences if he declines to change vote tallies in Trump’s favor and demanding confidential voting information, Trump exits as he entered, on a wave of almost-certain election criming we are hearing that these last frantic actions are too Trumpy to carry sober legal penalties or consequences; as Michelle Goldberg observes almost no appetite to prosecute Trump for anything in part because it is virtually impossible to prove that he has sufficient understanding of fact or law to establish he was doing something unlawful. (Goldberg calls this “the psychopath’s advantage”; I have come to think of it as a blanket preemptive and collective insanity defense.) More concretely, Democrats in Congress and those in the Biden administration seem to feel impelled to look forward and not back, as Hakeem Jeffries, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus put it on Monday. The growing consensus seems to be that there are too many other life-and-death priorities facing the government, from COVID to the economy, and that the best thing America can do about Trump and Trumpism is to bury it all in a box and forget it once he is gone, which he will be soon, even if he is still sucking up as much oxygen postelection as he did before.

It’s tempting to say that everything we are witnessing in these last weeks is so deeply Trump-specific that it can be ignored as Trump-specific and then, eventually, forgotten. Whether it’s the pardons for those who may have helped him obstruct justice, or the willfull and deliberate exacerbation of the COVID crisis, or these repeated sad little attempted shakedowns of state elections officials, the actions all seem so tragically small, so pathetically self-obsessed, and ultimately so artlessly executed that of course we want to just tie all of it to a boulder and yeet it out into the deepest part of the ocean. But as we witness, this week, what will become either the swan song of the sorriest clown show in American history or the actual demise of a functioning representative democracy, it’s useful to realize that throughout the past four years, the smallness, the tawdriness, and the shabbiness of Trump have been the tools he has used to get away with it all.

Donald Trump has managed to evade consequences for virtually everything he’s attempted—from lying about his taxes, to payoffs to mistresses, to lying about the basis for the Muslim ban, to implementing and denying a family separation program, to inflaming white supremacy, to withholding aid money to Ukraine. All of it just bounces off him and ends up pooled at his feet because so many of the efforts were either dumb and small or transparently vile and lawless. Too stupid or too bold to be countenanced as serious. This pattern of the past four years repeated endlessly on a loop: He would mess himself and walk away, because the very silliness, ugliness, and cheapness—even as it was bound up in grandiosity and excess—protected him. And what we keep missing, when we say the Mueller report wasn’t worth it, or that impeachment wasn’t worth it, or that investigating and prosecuting Trump and all of those who enabled his self-absorbed whims and fits for four years won’t be worth it, is that while Trump is (please, Lord, please) going to go away in two weeks, the smallness and the tawdriness and the silliness have spread throughout government.

Recall that a handful of Senate Republicans who voted to acquit Donald Trump after he was impeached in the House still had the vestigial good grace to be embarrassed for him. Lisa Murkowski acknowledged at the time that the president’s conduct was “shameful and wrong,” that he had “degraded the office,” even though she could not ultimately vote to convict him. Susan Collins, like Murkowski, gravely conceded that the president’s conduct with respect to Ukraine had been “improper” and “demonstrated very poor judgment” but was sanguine that he had “learned from this case” and would “be much more cautious in the future.” That was then. Now, 13 (and counting) U.S. senators are trying to collude to set aside the election results. And there are no apologies, no displays of remorse, no hedges or caveats. The smallness of this doomed, performative act is not in doubt. But the rationale is purely Trumpist: The smallness, the shabbiness, and the pointlessness are the very object. You can’t nail them on it, because it doesn’t materially affect the outcome. But it only doesn’t matter until eventually it does matter, at which point it will matter so much that it may end our democracy.

The actions taken in the Senate this week, bolstered by the purely Trumpian logic of “people are saying” and “who could object to gathering more information” is proof positive that America is not poised to snap tidily back to the days of democracy, reasonable governance, and triangulating for the good of the people. The small, forgettable, tawdry cynicism of this particular effort is not even the first indicator that leadership by distortion, untruth, and nihilism will be the new normal for some substantial portion of the GOP; while Trump was in some sense unstoppable because he was incapable of shame or comprehension, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley—who are at least theoretically capable of both—may become unstoppable because they now know that there are no consequences for distortion, untruth, and nihilism. The slapstick falls away, and only the absence of consequences remains.

The narrative that the election itself banished Trump and we are all free to move on is alluring. Nobody wants to excise the reckless viciousness of the past four years by reliving it in exacting yearslong impeachments, investigations, and prosecutions that will further inflame the country’s most flammable constituencies and may well come to nothing. But Trumpism has leached into the waters we will be drifting in for years to come. It’s already set the playbook for contenders for the 2024 presidential race; it’s tainting lawyers and the practice of law in ways we couldn’t have imagined even a year ago; it’s clawing through a burgeoning conspiracy-minded, fake news–driven media that profits off and further feeds the smallness and the tawdriness it engenders. At first it doesn’t matter because it is small, but eventually it matters because this kind of smallness has infected such a large percentage of the population that the smallness itself is too big to fail.

Listening to the Trump phone call with Brad Raffensperger makes it easy to draw precisely the wrong conclusion about the end of Trumpism. The call—equal parts mob boss, abusive spouse, circus performer, and crazy uncle shakes fist at sky—is no different from the petty, childish Donald Trump who sailed down an escalator and into political history with the claim that Mexicans are rapists. He still is what he always was: tiny, shabby, and wholly self-obsessed. But the lesson of the call is not that Georgia’s secretary of state didn’t give in to the president and therefore everything is OK. The lesson of the call is that the president attempted, on tape, to steal the election, and even though he did not succeed, he will suffer no consequences for it. Nobody will suffer any consequences for anything they do this week. The conduct of Senate Republicans, the conduct of Mitch McConnell, and the conduct of anyone in power who is watching all this without stepping in because it’s only Trump being Trumpy are enabling a project that renders all of us tiny and shabby. There are costs to watching this happen and doing nothing—the past four years have taught us that. While experts race to confirm that this conduct may be illegal, we race to tell ourselves that prosecuting it is likely futile. Building a culture in which everything is probably illegal and every effort to stop it is probably futile is Trump’s legacy to the country.

The consequence of four years without consequences isn’t going to be a reversion to all the norms and values that came before. It will be a spreading of anti-democratic, illiberal, and purposively small, petty, performative shabbiness that will always seem, in the moment, too silly to matter, and that will continue to be, going forward, too important to ignore. Trump was always the symptom, not the disease, and our distaste for curing it will mean that we spend the coming years coughing, choking, and gasping for air, from something at once too trivial to hurt us and too contagious to be stopped.

Couldn’t have said it better, Ms. Lithwick.

True to form, in the aftermath of the Trump Riot, several prominent right-wing media personalities blamed Joe Biden and the generic “Antifa” bad guys for the whole shameless mess.

Ringleader Republican Senators and Congressmen called for Democrats to “dial back the temperature”, ignoring the fact that they brought napalm to the party.

Yesterday, Senator Roy Blount (R-Missouri) said, “The President should be very careful over the next 10 days that his behavior is what you’d expect from the leader of the greatest country in the world. Now, my personal view is that the President touched the not stove on Wednesday and is unlikely to touch it again.”

What has this Senator been smoking for the past four years? The Republican dumbass has no clue about Donald Trump.

It is difficult to put into words the events of the past week, when American democracy suffered a direct attack from supposed “patriots” led by, of all people, the President of the United States.

Similar to the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor which was, in Franklin Roosevelt’s words, “A day that shall live in infamy”, the Trump Riot of January 6^th 2021 will forever be part of the ignominious legacy of our 45^th President.

Donald J. Trump, who once swore to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution”, spent most of the Summer and Fall of 2020 sowing distrust of America’s electoral system, probably because he knew he was going to lose the popular vote again, by many millions of votes. And then, when his defeat became real, the President began a scorched-earth campaign to discredit Joe Biden’s victory via angry Twitter screeds, scores of lawsuits, and demands for polling recounts. He would annoy his way to victory.

With no evidence to back his claims that the election was “stolen” from him, he enlisted his army of G.O.P. sycophants in the House of Representatives and the Senate to throw a wrench into the Constitutionally-mandated ceremony in which Congress accepts the results of the Electoral College and declares the winner of the Presidential election.

Twelve Republican Senators and 140 Republican Congressmen enlisted in the ill-conceived farce, which was headed by Senators Josh Hawley (Missouri) and Ted Cruz (Texas) and supported by the House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

Months of propaganda disseminated by Republican officeholders, the Republican National Committee, the Trump Campaign, friendly media outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, and web-based conspiracy bullhorns had evidently convinced a majority of Republican faithful that the Presidential election had been rife with illegal voting, fraud perpetrated by the Democratic Party, and “irregularities” condoned by State officials which tilted the election against President Trump.

The President was reported to have had a number of conversations with advisors on the possibility of declaring martial law, asserting control through the Insurrection Act, and utilizing the military to rerun elections in swing states that the President had lost. Shortly thereafter, an opinion piece in The Washington Post, signed by all ten living former secretaries of defense, cautioned against any move to involve the military in pursuing claims of election fraud, arguing that it would take the country into “dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory.”

Those White House discussions were tabled, for the time being.

Now, at the 11^th hour, Republican officeholders were reporting “lots of angry constituents” (i.e. the ones that they’d been brainwashing for months) who were demanding that something be done to reverse the so-called “stolen election”.

This “self-licking ice cream cone” justified their principled opposition to the ceremonial January 6^th approval of Joe Biden’s win by Congress. As one observer put it, “This is the arsonist calling the fire department to put out the blaze that he kindled.”

In reality, the lame-ass stunt planned for January 6^th was the obvious self-serving positioning of these opportunists to demonstrate fealty to President Trump, who controls a huge political action committee and was making threats (daily at that point) that he would “primary” any Republican who wouldn’t go along with his attempted coup. These 152 so-called “patriots”, “public servants” and “honorable” lawmakers were very publicly making a deal with the Devil, backing an unlikely putsch to the detriment of the Constitutional democracy which they had all sworn to support and defend.

The President and these lapdog Republican elected officials were warned, by leaders of both political parties, that they were playing with fire, that meddling with the electoral process and attempting to disregard the will of the people could, as Majority Leader McConnell said, send “democracy into a death spiral”.

(That’s the first thing that McConnell has ever said that I agree with!)

As the saying goes, “Words have consequences.” And yet, all of these ambitious political nincompoops insisted that theirs was a virtuous undertaking, a patriotic quest for answers, an endeavor rooted in love of country and the Constitution.

Bullshit. It was blatant kowtowing to Donald J. Trump.

White House Trade Advisor and Trump apologist Peter Navarro then went on Fox News and claimed that Vice President, as presiding officer of the Congressional electoral vote confirmation, had the authority to postpone Inauguration Day so that Congress could investigate the allegations of election fraud. Pence does not have that authority, by the way, and Navarro acting in a Trump campaign capacity via the Fox News interview was violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits Federal employees from campaign activities while serving in the Administration.

(Not that Trump or any of his Cabinet members or advisors have paid much attention to the Hatch Act over the past four years. And, besides, Peter Navarro has previously waded into areas that he knows nothing about, like medical advice during the pandemic and the impact of tariffs on imports. The guy is a loudmouthed doofus whose primary skill is polishing Trump turds.)

Simultaneous with Navarro’s ignorant claim, the President pushed forward in his effort to reverse the results of the election in key swing States that had gone Democratic. Having tried without success to strong-arm Republican officeholders in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona, Trump then called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to talk about the voting fraud that must have occurred in Georgia…because Trump lost there.

Raffensperger, a Republican who supported Trump’s reelection, had followed-up on the election with three recounts to verify accuracy of the count and of the integrity of the voting machines and software: Trump had lost fair and square. But now the President was on the line and went on for 60 minutes laying out discredited conspiracy theories, asking the Secretary of State to “find” enough votes for him to win, and threatening Raffensberger with criminal charges and possible political payback if he wouldn’t play ball…and throw the election to Trump.

The whole sordid exchange, which was tape-recorded and later provided to the news media, was eerily reminiscent of the extortion conversation that President Trump had with the Ukrainian President more than a year ago and led to his impeachment. In that instance, the President was promising military support in exchange for a promise that the Ukrainian government would dig up some dirt on Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

Trump can’t help himself: he’s pond scum.

And so, with a few days left before the critical Georgia runoff elections for two Senatorial seats, President Trump publicly soiled himself, revealing once again what a low life he is and the extent to which he will debase himself and the Republican Party to retain power.

One can only imagine the glee in Georgia Democratic headquarters when this public relations disaster hit the airways, just days before the all-important Senatorial runoff elections in that State to determine which party would control the U.S. Senate.

At about the same time that Trump’s ill-conceived shakedown was taking place, another Republican bootlicker, Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas was filing a lawsuit in Federal court seeking to force Vice President Mike Pence to help throw the election to Donald Trump.

Louie Gohmert is the same Congressman who refused to wear a facemask a few months back, berated other Congressmen and staff for wearing them, and then got Covid-19 himself.

Gohmert’s claim was that the Vice President, as presiding officer at the January 6^th Congressional counting of Electoral Votes, had the power to decide which electoral votes to count, suggesting that vice presidents can directly determine who wins a presidential election, regardless of the results, even in an election where that individual (the vice president) is on the ticket.

That’s ironic, the idea that a Vice President wields such power. John Nance Garner, who served as FDR’s sidekick from 1933 to 1941, observed that the Vice Presidency is “not worth a bucket of warm spit”.

The Gohmert lawsuit was so ludicrous that even Vice President Pence implored the court to throw it out, stating that “Ironically, Representative Gohmert’s position, if adopted by the Court, would actually deprive him (Representative Gohmert) of his opportunity as a Member of the House under the Electoral Count Act to raise objections to the counting of electoral votes, and then to debate and vote on them.”

Not surprisingly, the Federal court unceremoniously showed Gohmert the door.

The President had one more ace up his sleeve, or so he thought. That was his planned rally in Washington D.C., at the Capitol, on January 6^th, the day that the Congress would meet to count the Electoral Votes. For a month Trump had encouraged his MAGA supporters to mass there and vent their outrage at the “stolen election” and their anger at Congressmen of both parties who wouldn’t accept the President’s version of reality: “It’s gonna be wild”, he said of the blatant attempt to intimidate Congress.

Web sites favored by Trumpists, 2^nd Amendment militias, White Nationalists, QAnon conspiracy nutjobs, and wingnuts of all stripes hyped the upcoming rally and, not so subtly, advised Trump supporters to come ready to fight. These aggressive dingdongs planned the riots openly on social media for weeks, bragging about how many guns they’d bring and the mayhem they’d set off. They called themselves “Donald’s Army”.

Thousands of supporters massed near the Capitol on January 6^th and listened to speeches by the President, his sons, daughter Lara, and others…egging on the crowd, telling them that the bad folks in the Capitol right then were about to formalize the “steal” of the election and that they should be outraged, which they already were.

In essence, a lynch mob was thrown a rope by the Commander-in-Chief, who said that he would march down the street to the Capitol with them (which, of course, he did not).

At about the time that the first “objection” to the Electoral College results was being filed in Congress by the President’s lackeys, the unruly, pissed-off gaggle of rebellious Trumpists stormed the Capitol building, pushing down barriers, breaking windows, overwhelming the Capitol Police, and wandering the halls looking for traitorous lawmakers (Republicans and Democrats alike) who were about to legitimize the President’s electoral defeat.

Lawmakers were ushered to safety out of harms way while the massive crowd of insurrectionists ransacked offices, posed for pictures, and pilfered “trophies” to show the folks back home. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s lectern was proudly carried off by one idiot.

One policeman was killed when someone hit him on the head with a fire extinguisher, one protester was killed when shot by Capitol security forces, and three other protesters died from medical emergencies during the fracas. Numerous Capitol Police and Washington D.C. policemen were injured trying to restore peace. One wonders what would have happened if the violent crowd had actually encountered a “disloyal” Congressman or, heaven forbid, the Speaker of the House.

It took four hours for law enforcement personnel to clear the building. Amazingly, almost all of the insurrectionists were allowed to merely walk out of the Capitol building, get into their cars, and go home. Only 13 individuals were arrested out of the thousands of trespassers, vandalizers, thieves, assaulters, and (in one case) murderers.

No kidding.

Had these White insurrectionists been African-American protesters, it is certain that the Federal response would have been immediate, massive, and deadly.

The incident was a very public manifestation of White privilege, which minority Americans have been exasperated about for generations, where White urban terrorists (like the Klan, the militia that stormed the Michigan capitol early this year, the youngster who shot BLM protesters with his assault rifle and was allowed to exit the area by police without arrest, White policemen who kill unarmed Black men for sport, etc.) rain violence down on society without penalty. On the other hand, people of color are harrassed by police for driving their car, eating ice cream in their house, and jogging through their own neighborhoods.

While the Capitol was under siege by the Trump-instigated insurrection, our President released a video in which he said, “This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people”.

“These people”? Does he mean the Representatives and Senators elected by the citizens of the United States?

And, then he added, “So go home. We love you. You’re very special.”

I’m guessing that the family of slain Officer Sicknick wouldn’t categorize these hooligans as “very special” in any sense of the phrase.

Gee, Trump’s compliments of the rioters are similar to what he said after the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, when he included White Nationalist murderers in his “very fine people” quote.

By the way, this planned, seditious riot was telegraphed by organizers long in advance on the Internet (“Bring guns”). Many did, and one guy had a dozen Molotov cocktails ready for use. Question: Why was the Capitol unprepared to defend itself on this day? Could it be that President Trump wanted it that way?

When the dust settled, the National reaction was swift and furious. Everyone had seen the whole fiasco on TV and knew who had lit the fuse. If the Trump Organization had been publicly traded, its stock would have cratered.

Leaders of both political parties were outraged, the media had a field day, the National Association of Manufacturing called for the removal of President Trump, and a Wall Street Journal editorial called on Trump to resign.

Yes, that Wall Street Journal, the one published by Trump’s buddy and Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch.

Needless to say, members of the House of Representatives were not amused by the televised spectacle, which saw them awkwardly fleeing for their lives and then returning to their trashed chambers and offices.

There was blood in the water, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was enraged, and calls for activation of the 25^th Amendment (removal of the President on the grounds of incapacity) and/or impeachment were made immediately by numerous influential lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans alike.

Not exactly what Donald J. Trump had in mind when he arose that morning.(Of course, who really knows what goes on in his mind.)

Once they’d shaken off the dust and regained their composure, Congress resumed the ceremonial task of approving the Electoral College results. Amazingly, after the nationally-televised insurrection caused by bogus election fraud allegations by Trump and his band of conspirators, a large contingent of Republican Senators and Congressmen continued to object to the reality that Joe Biden would be the next President.

The bottom line for the day was that Trump’s coup attempt had failed, his legacy was permanently stained by treasonous behavior, and those Republican enablers who had played along with his dangerous scheme would also forever wear a Scarlet Letter identifying them as anti-American insurrectionists.

Not exactly what ambitious ringleaders/Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz had in mind when they woke up on the morning of January 6^th.

Probably more damaging to Donald J. Trump was the quick reaction of social media giants Twitter and Facebook which banned him from their sites. This wiped out the President’s preferred method of communication to stoke or incite his political base: 88 million followers on Twitter and 33 million followers on Facebook.

As his former attorney/fixer Michael Cohen once said, “Trump’s dependence on Twitter supercedes even his basic need of oxygen to breathe.”

Trump biographer Gwenda Blair likened it to “virtual impeachment”.

What a week it was!

Oh, by the way, Trump’s Riot was maybe not the biggest news of January 6^th. The other earth-shaking development was the realization that the Democrats had won both Senatorial contests in Georgia, giving that political party full control of both the Executive and Legislative branches of government!

This means that incoming President Joe Biden will have the opportunity to execute policy initiatives without being hamstrung by Mitch McConnell and his band of Republican flamethrowers in the Senate. It will also allow Mr. Biden the opportunity to get speedy approval of his Cabinet nominees and, perhaps, put a liberal judge on the Supreme Court when the occasion presents itself. And, it will allow Biden the unfettered opportunity to erase much of Trump’s deregulation efforts which were so dear to Republican conservatives.

None of this would have been possible if President Trump had behaved like an adult after his November 3^rd election defeat. Instead of wallowing in pity, spending precious time enumerating his personal grievances, and striking out at perceived disloyal Republicans, he could have been helping with the campaigns of the two Republican candidates in Georgia.

But, true to form, the last two months of the Trump Presidency, just like the four previous years, were all about Donald Trump, not the Constitutional democracy that he was elected to lead. He is what he is.

And the Republican Party will now have to reinvent itself while it sits on the bench, watching the Democratic varsity have its way in Washington D.C.

In a political sense, Donald J. Trump really screwed the pooch.

UPDATE: Four days after the riot in which Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick was killed defending Federal property, Senators and House of Representatives members, the White House lowered its American flag to half-mast.

Can you imagine the arm-twisting that must have been involved to gain that concession from the President?

UPDATE: On 1/11/21, with only 9 days left before Joe Biden is inaugurated, a resolution was introduced in the House of Representatives to impeach President Trump for “inciting insurrection”. The resolution will be voted on later in the week. If approved, Donald J. Trump will be the only President to have been impeached twice.

Charlie and I just enjoyed a nice visit from our “adopted 5^th son”, Jason Friedman.

Jason, who is in his late 40’s, lives near Golden, Colorado and is a big-shot manager working for home builder Richmond-American. He recently survived a bout of Covid-19 and the 5-day visit to our house in Nevada was his first escape from home since the pandemic began.

He brought his Siberian Husky “Ashka” along for the mini-vacation. She is Jason’s regular hiking partner up in the Rockies. Ashka is 12 years old and very fit. And, she also gets along great with our dogs.

Jason, Ashka and I did several hikes during his visit.

The first was to The Vortex, a popular spot near St. George, Utah which features petrified sand dunes and very unusual landforms.

We also spent a morning hiking in the Valley of Fire, which is Nevada’s first State Park. It is a maze of tortured red rock where you can hike in virtually any direction and find interesting stuff.

You can lose stuff, too. Jason fell victim to the “Pickpocket Bush” along the way, and we had to spend an extra hour or so retracing our steps to look for his car keys lanyard. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack but, miraculously, I found it hanging from a sticky bush.

While at Valley of Fire, we also hiked out to a rock formation called the Fire Wave.

The next day, Jason, my friend Lloyd, and I went golfing at Conestoga Golf Club here in Sun City Mesquite.

We had a great time. I shot 85 with a triple bogey and two double bogies. I think my golf lessons are beginning to pay off. With just a few corrections, I could have broken 80.

On Friday, the four of us (including Ashka) drove about an hour south to the Mormon Mountains and hiked out to a place called Hackberry Springs. Nothing much remarkable about the hike except a few interesting petroglyphs, some of which appear to show Spaniards riding horses. I’m guessing that the rock art was made maybe 200 to 300 years ago.

That night we enjoyed a great dinner of short ribs and mashed potatoes (courtesy of Lloyd) and we played several games of cards. Jason kicked our asses.

He’s driving home today but will stop about half way to do an overnight hike in the mountains east of Salt Lake. We plan to visit him at his home in Colorado in the Spring.

The embarrassing demise of President Donald Trump has shown the world what a bad loser he is.

It has also demonstrated the extent to which he has the political futures of many Republican officeholders firmly in his grip, even as he prepares to leave the White House.

It now appears that quite a few Republican Senators and Representatives will demonstrate their fealty to the outgoing President on January 6^th when Congress will formally accept the results of the Electoral College and name Joe Biden the 46^th President of the United States.

Trump, the nominal leader of the G.O.P. who controls a PAC worth hundreds of millions of dollars, expects “loyal” Republican Party officeholders to formally oppose Mr. Biden’s affirmation on the 6^th because, in the collective opinion of brainwashed MAGA diehards, the 2020 election was “stolen” from President Trump…by 7 million votes.

Over the past seven weeks, sore loser Trump has railed against his own Administration officials, Republican Congressmen, members of the state and Federal judiciary, Republican state Governors, Republican state election officials, and even his television propaganda arm (Fox News) for accepting the results of the November 3^rd election, even after G.O.P.-demanded recounts and, later, recounts of the recounts.

Republican, as well as Democratic, citizens manned the polling places, and Republican poll watchers scrutinized operations, expecting to find massive fraud and irregularities: they found nothing significant. Every state in the Union has certified the election results. The Electoral College has also done so. State courts have rejected every substantial objection raised by the President and his minions. The Department of Justice could find no evidence of wrongdoing. The Administration’s head of Cybersecurity (before he was fired) said that the 2020 elections were the most secure ever. The Supreme Court, of which six of nine Justices were appointed by Republican presidents, turned a deaf ear to Trump’s claims of election impropriety.

Get over it, Trump…you lost!

Nevertheless, in three days from now a large group of kowtowing Republican Congressmen will publicly demonstrate their political loyalty to the President by opposing the will of the 81 million Americans who voted for Joe Biden. The claim: the election was “rigged”.

In doing so, these so-called “patriots” and “public servants” will mark themselves forever as opponents of the very American Constitution that they have sworn to defend.

Incredibly, they will contest the 2020 election that not only elected Joe Biden as President, but also elected or re-elected most of them to new terms as Senators and Congressmen. These dishonest political hacks would have their constituents believe the election was tainted only at the top of the ticket; that there was electoral fraud via some massive Democratic conspiracy, but only in the vote for President. So, of course, there’s no reason to question their own re-elections.

Question: If it were that easy for Democratic bad actors to “rig” the Presidential vote, why wouldn’t these mysterious badmen have seen to it that scads of crummy Republican Senators and Congressmen (like themselves) were also tossed out of office?

That’s not what happened, of course.

Republican candidates other than Donald J. Trump did better than expected in the 2020 elections; the Democratic Party actually lost some ground in the House of Representatives. So, if the election was rigged by those clever Democrats, they did a very poor job of rigging.

Of course, the current National Pity Party is produced and directed by Donald Trump. It is the second coming of the Passion Play, where Jesus is treated badly by the Jews and even betrayed by some of his Disciples before his crucifixion.

Everyone is against the guy. And they’re cheating, too.

Bad loser, narcissist and self-proclaimed dealmaker extraordinaire Trump is orchestrating this dramatic exit from the White House to somehow assuage his hurt feelings and demonstrate that he will be a force to be reckoned with in the coming years.

All of this “sour grapes” poppycock is being gobbled up by the Trump faithful, many of which hail from the Bible Belt. Mostly Protestant Christians, they have already consumed massive amounts of religious Kool Aid, and are conditioned to expect persecution from others for their Holier Than Thou beliefs. So, the “harassment” and “mistreatment” of President Trump, who several prominent Christian televangelists have pronounced “God-sent” and a “messiah” over the past four years, falls neatly into the programming that these sheep have absorbed from their local pulpits, Prosperity Gospel con men, and from years of Trump messaging.

Just like Jesus, poor Donald Trump can’t catch a break.

I would venture a guess, three days from the Crucifixion, that a strong majority of the traitors who oppose the election of Joe Biden (the Devil?) on January 6^th will be Senators and Congressmen elected from the Bible Belt states. (Also, not coincidentally, from the former Confederate States of America; those folks are flat-out bad losers and have always had a very selective understanding of our Constitutional democracy.)

It is ironic that Vice President Mike Pence will preside over the January 6^th proceedings.

Pence’s place on the 2016 Republican ticket was a nod to the Bible Belt; Pence is an in-your-face Born Again Christian. He’s also a guy who has spent four years making excuses for the President’s blatantly non-Christian outbursts, mean-spiritedness, and lack of compassion, not to mention serving as Trump’s most prominent bootlicker and loyal turd polisher.

Now the hapless Pence must play the role of Judas, at least in the eyes of the Trump cult. It will be his Constitutional duty to drop the hammer and declare Joe Biden the next President. How unfair is that!

We can expect a couple of shameless Trump-produced spectacles in the coming weeks: a big “Stop the Steal” street rally on January 6^th in Washington D.C., in a lame attempt to intimidate a majority of Senators and Congressmen to throw out the election results and hand a second term to President Trump, and further protests in the streets of D.C. on January 20^th to spoil Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day.

Yes, we must endure more of 2020 in 2021.

It is doubtful that President Trump will attend the Inauguration itself: the classless guy cannot utter the words, “I lost” or “Congratulations!”.

What do you expect from a 74 year-old adult who has the maturity of a 5 year-old?

After January 20^th, the tantrum-throwing, “Never Say Die”ex-President will retreat to his Mar-a-Lago sandbox and begin to plot his Resurrection, either through the regular Republican Party, a new political party of his design, or by fomenting a second Civil War.

At least Jesus Christ knew when to give up the Ghost.

Donald J. Trump, civilian, is going to suffer psychological withdrawal symptoms beginning in late January when he isn’t front page news anymore and his comments and Tweets rapidly lose their thunder.

The Nation will less bombastically move ahead to solve the big problems that the Trump Administration failed to manage, like the Covid-19 pandemic, the tens of millions of Americans without work, hungry and homeless citizens, victims of systemic racial injustice, and the existential threat of global warming.

Thank God that we made it to 2021.