The Carpentariat

Trump, Clark, and scarcely the last of revealed criminal madness

For weeks I wondered why Trump was so uniquely obsessed, or so it seemed, with Georgia and its 16 Electoral College votes, since beating that state alone into criminal submission by rescinding Biden's lawful votes would not have affected Biden's victory. I've been slow on the uptake. But, in my defense, only a diseased presidential brain such as Trump's could have wrapped itself around the unfolding lunacy of the Justice Department's Jeffrey Clark's.

Based on Katie Benner's reporting, it now seems that Trump saw Georgia as a sort of political petri dish, in which the state's externally introduced corruption would contaminate the legislatures of other "disputed" states, which in turn would swing the EV count and re-enthrone the Toddler King.

His pixilated highness "wanted the Justice Department [which is to say, Clark] to file legal briefs supporting his allies’ lawsuits seeking to overturn his election loss," writes Benner, "appoint special counsels" — with an s — "to investigate unfounded accusations of widespread voter fraud," and dig into Dominion's imaginary, voting-machine skulduggery.

Once Trump had marched from Atlanta to sea, his scorched-earth, total-war maneuvering might broaden and "stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College results."

It was, of course, because of the Electoral College that an electoral minority could inflict the catastrophic schemer on us in the first place. Neither they nor we have since been disappointed in his maximum efforts to gut all that is normal and decent. So, no real surprise in this latest instance.

What did surprise, or, rather, caused me to face-palm, was this passage in Benner's reporting, which I have reconstructed:

"The Justice Department’s top leaders listened in stunned silence this month…. The department officials, convened on a conference call,… asked each other: What will you do if [Trump-plan-opposed Acting Attorney General Jeffrey] Rosen is dismissed? The answer was unanimous. They would resign."

Well brafuckingvo, ladies and gentlemen. After years of a cultivated string of manifold, corrupted Trumpian DNA, you might have finally and formally acknowledged the demonic pathogen that was the 45th president.

Please chip in. (See "Make a Donate" button in the sidebar; sometimes an external link fails in the main body. Weird.)

It didn't take long for the shitwagon buzzards to circle

Impeachment-voting Liz Cheney, reports Politico, is expected to be primaried by a retired Air Force officer as well as a former Wyoming state senator — both of them being boneheaded participants in Trump's sadistic orgy of revenge.

Freshman representative Peter Meijer of Michigan, "another impeachment backer," will be opposed by yet another military veteran, the growing aggregation of whose kind will soon become, it seems, the most populous and least representative voices in The People's House. This particular yahoo is a four-times-failed political candidate, but his splendiferous calling card next time will be that he has appeared on Steve Bannon’s insurrectionist podcast. Good boy.

Gene Koprowski, formerly of the Heartland Institute, a right-wing unthinking tank which denies the science of climate change and has worked in league with cigarette-manufacturer Philip Morris, is challenging Illinois' Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of the very few GOPers of some sanity.

In Ohio, former state rep Christina Hagan is rumored to be taking on U.S. Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, once an NFL wide receiver and now professional Trump-headbutter. Hagan lost a 16th CD primary bid in 2018, perhaps because she did not live in the district; in 2020 she ran again, this time in the 13th CD, in which she also did not live. 

I wish these buffoons well, and all other Congress-running automatons of Trumpian stink. As long as the Republican Party houses so much as even 10 U.S. representatives with a passable conscience, the Republican Party cannot attain its highest possible level of out-and-out rot.

Mitch McConnell and pals re-present their "Chamber of Horrors"

This morning the Hill reports this inevitable, crashing thump: ​​​​​"Republicans say the chances that former President Trump will be convicted in an impeachment trial" — whenever the hell that happens — "are plummeting…. Only five or six Republican senators at the most seem likely to vote for impeachment, far fewer than the number needed, GOP sources say." After all, what's a little violent insurrection among friends? 

Yesterday came another anticipated foreshadowing of Republicans' unfailing intent to screw over decency, democracy, Democrats, and most of all American citizens: "On Mr. Biden’s first full day in office … the Senate was in a state of suspended animation, unable to move forward with even the basic tasks of organizing committees or setting rules for getting virtually anything done," relates the Times. "Democrats’ ambitions for advancing another coronavirus aid package or any tax, infrastructure or health care legislation … gathered dust [since] the Senate [was] essentially paralyzed."

Senate committees are still chaired by Republicans, even though Democrats took both Georgia seats and thus took control of the upper chamber. Yet there can be no real Democratic control — or any kind of sensible control — of the United States Senate as long as Minority Leader Mitch McConnell lurks powerfully in the cornered darkness of Republican malignity.

Something will have to give, or, rather, explode. The American electorate did not endure grueling campaigns and gruesome election aftermaths only to then be denied the sweepingly victorious party's plans to remedy four years of unprecedented, Trumpian-GOP horror. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and associates must subject the Senate's parliamentarian to sleepless nights of actionable research into democratizing the nation's undemocratic, undeliberative chamber, which, no doubt, Schumer & Co. has already done. I just wanted to get in my one pfennig of needless emphasis.

"Betting against America’s capacity for reinvention and revival was never a good idea"

"A great global uncertainty" is how the Times' Roger Cohen describes the vast cacophony and narrow prejudices of Trump's foreign policy legacy. The Post's David Ignatius characterizes the coherence-deprived, twice-impeached and recidivist felon's careenings in foreign policy as a "demolition derby."

Both summations seem inadequate in capturing the multifaceted stench of Trump's unfathomable policies. But, in brief, accurate yet still understated is that "America, to foreign observers, has fallen," notes Cohen. It's become a cliché, nevertheless the 45th president and No. 1 calamity was indeed a one-man wrecking crew in his unschooled bulldozing of the world order and estrangement of long-valued allies.

America's name and "image" — that additionally clichéd warhorse of Madison Avenue public relations — are mud. We can no longer be trusted, say Europeans; they're trapped in a "crisis of American power," says their Council on Foreign Relations; we're a spent partner in essential multilateralism, having violated their trust once too often. The scattered, rubbled foundation of our betrayal sits in the not-unreasonable assessment that the "US political system is broken," says Europe's CFR.

But, as Mr. Cohen further remarks, our "Constitution held. Battered institutions held" against the "traumatization" of National Guard troops deployed and razor wire strung. And, a reminder: "America held when troops were similarly deployed to protect state capitols during the civil rights movement in the 1960s."

Some Americans have perhaps forgotten just how politically broken and domestically violent were the 1960s and early 70s: brutal state power — to the world's utter horror — unleashed on African-American citizens demanding only their constitutional rights; bloody, riotous clashes over "The War"; the National Guard's willingness to actually kill college students attending a peace rally. America, to foreign observers, had fallen.

Four decades earlier, the U.S. abruptly withdrew from its multilateral intervention into European slaughter and subsequent engagement of internationalist order. The deceptive siren of luxurious isolationism lured American politicians and constituents into the complacency of the 1920s and '30s. America, to foreign observers, had fallen.

But it soon staged a noble comeback, and 50 years later, well after the Soviet Union had skillfully exploited the racial and cultural strife of America's 1960s — after totalitarians proved that any nation conceived in democratic representation cannot long endure — it was the USSR that lay in ruins. America would go on to elect a black president; formally honor home groups which had been abused and marginalized; and reestablish itself as a respected world player. America's name and image, once again, gleamed.

I shall give Roger Cohen the final word, which is damn smart — and led me to this here post's title: "Betting against America’s capacity for reinvention and revival was never a good idea, even at the worst of times."

The full force of the law should bear down on these miscreants

"In the immediate hours following Biden being sworn into office on Wednesday, sources with direct knowledge of the new administration's Covid-related work told CNN one of the biggest shocks that the Biden team had to digest during the transition period was what they saw as a complete lack of a vaccine distribution strategy under [Trump], even weeks after multiple vaccines were approved for use in the United States" (emphasis mine). 

Team Biden has suffered more than from just seeing it; they and masses of everyday innocents have had to live it (if they're lucky), and plenty more — the cruel indifference of an administration dedicated to sloth, sloppiness, siccing states on each other for protective equipment, rising death tolls and the sabotage of an administration set on re-professionalizing the federal government and thus acting in the interests of the American people.

"There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch," said one member of President Biden's team now laboring in shock — which is understandable, though the Trump administration's just-as-determined negligent homicide was also predictable.

And every one of those members, including the Mar-a-Lago strangler, should have their hides relentlessly sued in court on civil-rights grounds, if not prosecuted. Their crimes are akin to domestic genocide — remember that Jared Kushner said of blue-state New York's horrific troubles, "That's their problem" — hundreds of thousands of lives already slain and yet more to come.

What's the deal, man?

"New weekly unemployment claims retreated only slightly from last week’s elevated level as the coronavirus pandemic continued to grip the U.S. economy" — Yahoo! Finance

Hey, I thought the Biden administration was going to lift the sliding economy and steer the pandemic's lethal direction into oblivion.

Don't laugh. That sort of preposterous gibble-gabble is just around the corner, warming up in the right's overheated, staticky noise machine. Its Jim Jordan avatars, Mitch McConnell establishmentarians and pay-to-puke jackanapes on cable networks will, before you can say "Shut the fuck up," be raining down all manner of shameless humbuggery on their eager malcontents, and the nation at large.

Wait for it, as they say. But you won't need to wait long.

Borowitz reports

All along, the GOP has been a fraud

President Biden's greater challenge lies not in repairing our wrecked relations with foreign allies — most are reasonable polities that, accordingly, will come around to acknowledging that a U.S. alliance beats the hell out of Chinese and Russian encroachments — but from within: an opposition party that over the years has turned dark, delinquent, pridefully ignorant and, it seems, most unlike our allies, incurably hostile.

Thus out rush the Republican Party's older-guardian strategists and makeup artists to make it all better — more palatable and less repulsive. In a false reconstructionist vein already all-too familiar, Karl Rove, for instance, writes in the Wall Street Journal that "GOP officeholders, candidates and party leaders should offer ideas that apply timeless conservative principles," meaning they should preach that "what they’re for is as important as what they’re against:... originalist judges, a pro-growth tax cut, regulatory relief, strong national defense, recognition of the global threat posed by China, secure borders, and respect for life and religious liberty."

They should also reaffirm, says Rove, that "the values underlying Republican initiatives are crucial, too" — their belief in "traditional values, family, faith, personal responsibility, patriotism and law and order."

Let us take a gander, however, at not only where the GOP stands, but where, after years of sliding decadence, it has metaphorically(?) overtaken Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray. The party …

denies legitimate election results, countenances violent insurrections, tolerates lawless chief executives, encourages and thrives on racism, …

flip-flops with remarkable predictability on debt and deficits, undermines national security by focusing on little more than military hardware, cages and separates children from their parents, ...

treats women's bodies as government property, screams nonexistent threats to religious liberty, heaves "traditional values" such as plain human decency overboard, confirms not philosophically balanced but extremist judges, …

contributes to family breakdown by cold-shouldering basic needs, refuses to accept personal responsibility, and embraces broadcast demagogues such as Hannity, Carlson and Limbaugh, who exclaimed yesterday that Biden's election was "something that's been arranged, rather than legitimately sought and won…. They have not legitimately won it."

GOP officeholders, candidates and party leaders have conditioned the base to be dark, delinquent, ignorant and hostile — just as the base, simultaneously, has likewise conditioned its leaders. Earlier I placed a question mark after "metaphorically" since the GOP's Kevin McCarthys and Josh Hawleys have given real life to Wilde's fictional character.

Dorian Gray's condition was irreversible and so is the Republican Party's, now grayed — in places — into also flimflamming — as a change! — that it and almost exclusively it cherishes respect for life, national security, economic growth and lawfulness, as Karl Rove blindly promotes its future. Liberals don't give a damn about these things, implies Rove. "There are more conservatives in America who believe in traditional values, family, faith, personal responsibility, patriotism and law and order," he blathers, "than there are liberals who don’t."

Same old twaddle, repackaged and marketed as renewed and improved American conservatism. When one gets right down to it, their exclusive values, as hawked by them, have been an exercise in propagandistic fraudulence all along. The only genuine development is that they've become insufferably arrogant and unbearably nasty as well.

More than anything, if some Republicans really wish to tidy up their image, they'll hie to the nearest courthouse — and change their name.

Bittersweet ...

At last, the bliss of a president who calls for a moment of silence for the full 400,000 American lives lost needlessly. 

***

Unity, compassion and understanding are in; Blood & Soil is out.

Once again ...

           

                         

I am reposting this at precisely noon, EST, which makes it official.

Selected delusions of 2016

My thanks to sometime columnist and novelist Kurt Andersen for recalling a Ross Douthat column published in Nov., 2016. In it, the NY Times columnist imagined what he very well might be writing in 2020. A few segments:

Here we are four years later, watching Trump bask in the glow of an easy re-election over the Warren-Booker Democratic ticket. And given how successfully he defied expectations all through 2016, the path he’s taken to this point probably shouldn’t have come as such a surprise.

First, there was no economic slump…. Trump’s Keynesianism was mostly defense spending and tax cuts, but it included a huge infrastructure push.

Trump also turned out to be good at bipartisan maneuvering. Well aware that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell had held their noses to support him, he quickly promised Chuck Schumer major input on a few key domestic issues.

On energy and financial deregulation … he has afforded [Democrats] fewer targets than they expected.

Somehow Kellyanne Conway, "counselor to the president" and all-purpose Svengali, has persuaded him to tiptoe around racial politics.

Meanwhile his obvious lack of interest in social conservatism has enabled Trump to effectively decentralize the culture wars.

Finally, in foreign policy, Trump has delivered what he promised: A brutal realpolitik, built around détente with Russia and China (the promised trade war turned out to be mostly rhetoric).

His second term could still look like the disaster that I and so many others feared would arrive in his first one. But here in the fall of 2020, halfway through the Trump era, we also need to reckon with reality: By charting the same distinctive ideological course he followed in his strange political ascent, President Trump’s campaign-trail boast — "folks, I made America great again" — is one that a majority of Americans understandably believe.

The higher irony is that any reasonably sane demagogue would have done these things, and then swaggered to reelection in 2020. But of course my modifiers exclude Trump.

The revenge of "Sleepy Joe," and our salvation

​​​​​You may have overlooked the Times' complete, 2015-2021 list of Trump's ad hominem tweets, from ABC News being "sick and biased" to Mort Zuckerman as a "dopey clown" (OK, on occasion Mr. T had a point there). So Behold! — here, in one grotesquely amusing bundle, are all the tweeted slings and arrows he aimed at Joe Biden, who, in a few minutes, will kick Trump's ass out of the Oval Office seat he so wretchedly defiled.

“Fake President!” “lying,” “a total disaster in handling the H1N1 Swine Flu,” “would do a terrible job of Vaccine delivery,” “Sleepy Joe,” “a corrupt politician who SOLD OUT Michigan to CHINA,” “the living embodiment of the decrepit and depraved political class,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “a corrupt politician,” “bought and paid for by China!” “Sleepy Joe,” “betrayed Hispanic-Americans,” “Sleepy Joe,” “a pathetic laughing stock,” “didn’t know what he was doing!” “bought and paid for,” “a corrupt politician who SOLD OUT Pennsylvania,” “promising to delay the vaccine and turn America into a prison state,” “A vote for Biden is a vote for Lockdowns, Layoffs and Misery,” “a disaster,” “Sleepy Joe,” “did a very POOR job of handling H1N1 Swine Flu, yet all he talks about is Covid, Covid, Covid, like he would actually know what he is doing,” “The only people who’ve benefited from his policies are himself & his family,” “shows up every 4 years, and then goes back to D.C. and caters to his special interests,” “the candidate of rioters, looters, arsonists, gun-grabbers, flag-burners, Marxists, lobbyists, and special interests,” “a corrupt politician,” “has done nothing but betray you for 47 long years,” “He will stab you in the back,” “only cares about political power,” “profited from the misery he unleashed,” “Sleepy Joe,” “He has NO clue!!” “will destroy the United States Supreme Court,” “Sleepy Joe,” “would lock us down forever,” “a diehard globalist who cares nothing for working people,” “At every turn, Biden twisted his knife into the back of Michigan workers,” “speech is 90% made up stories and lies,” “a corrupt politician,” “Biden will make you a prisoner in your own home,” “Joe is lost!” “Sleepy Joe,” “a corrupt politician,” “If Biden Wins, China Wins,” “Sleepy Joe!” “Corruption!” “If you vote for Biden, your kids will not be in school, there will be no graduations, no weddings, no Thanksgiving, no Christmas, and no Fourth of July!” “Sleepy Joe,” “got lost in a ‘mental fog’,” “A disaster,” “FAILED BADLY,” “He knows nothing,” “All talk and no action!” “a corrupt politician,” “If Biden wins, China will OWN the USA,” “a corrupt politician,” “he’s COMPROMISED,” “corruption,” “didn’t have a clue!” “Sleepy Joe,” “totally corrupt,” “Sleepy Joe,” “the living embodiment of the corrupt political class that enriched itself while draining the economic life and soul from our Country,” “a corrupt politician,” “a corrupt politician,” “Sleepy Joe,” “a CORRUPT POLITICIAN!!!” “Corrupt,” “makes Crooked Hillary look like an amateur!” “SLEEPY JOE,” “really bad interview,” “Sleepy Joe,” “very bad showing last night,” “Sleepy Joe,” “He’s always been a corrupt politician,” “Disgraceful!” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “corrupt,” “has never been a nice or kind guy,” “obvious & rapidly getting worse ‘dementia’,” “unacceptable for USA!” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “very dumb,” “fool,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “He has Zero to say!!!” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “A complete and total disaster,” “let the Unions down,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe!” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “a man who is totally unqualified to be your President,” “a PUPPET of CASTRO-CHAVISTAS,” “weak on socialism,” “Sleepy Joe is out of it!!!” “LIED,” “ALL TALK!” “a disaster,” “didn’t have a clue,” “a man that should NEVER be president,” “Sleepy Joe!” “He’s been a wacko for years,” “very low IQ,” “SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO RUN,” “47 years of lies, 47 years of betrayals, and 47 years of failure,” “too weak to lead this Country!” “Sleepy Joe,” “WEAK Leadership!” “Nobody wants Sleepy Joe as a leader,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “a very LOW ENERGY INDIVIDUAL,” “John McCain’s lapdog,” “Sleepy Joe!” “Sleepy Joe,” “wants to quadruple your taxes,” “If Biden Wins, the mob WINS,” “If Biden Wins, the rioters, anarchists, arsonists, and flag-burners WIN,” “No one has been more wrong, more often,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “betrayed Scranton, and America,” “a corrupt globalist sellout who never missed a chance to stab American workers in the back,” “sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Weak, Tired, and Sleepy,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Joe sleeps in his basement,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Pathetic Joe,” “does not BELIEVE in our Country,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “spent 47 years in politics being terrible to Hispanics,” “Sleepy Joe,” “will raise your taxes and DESTROY our Country!” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Agenda is Made in China,” “Sleepy Joe,” “doesn’t have a clue!” “(FAKE) candidate,” “Sad!” “Basement Biden,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe’s,” “a very Sleepy person,” “Sleepy Joe,” “doesn’t have a clue,” “so bad for the USA!” “Joe Hiden’,” “Sleepy Joe Hiden’,” “sits back in his basement and criticizes every move we make,” “Joe Hiden’,” “has completely lost control,” “bad record!” “a Low Energy Candidate the likes of which we have never seen before,” “a Low Energy Individual,” “He’s back in his basement now,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Lies,” “Joe Hiden’,” “Joe Hiden’,” “Joe Hiden’,” “will also raise your taxes like never before,” “Sad!” “his poll numbers are PLUNGING!” “MUST always be weak on crime!” “Slow Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “the guy right now in his basement unwilling to lead or even speak out against crime,” “he’ll go back to basement soon!” “Polls are dropping fast,” “very slow reaction time,” “crazy!” “Ridiculous!” “He has no clue!” “He will never change, just words!” “Sleepy Joe,” “Joe allows CRIME!” “Slow Joe,” “merely an afterthought,” “Very strange,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Slow Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “a Trojan Horse for the Radical Left Agenda,” “Sleepy Joe,” “the puppet of the Left,” “Nothing matters with him,” “corrupt,” “puppet,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Corrupt,” “You & your children won’t be SAFE in Biden’s America,” “Sleepy Joe,” “No one will be SAFE in Joe Biden’s America!” “Sleepy Joe,” “Corrupt Joe,” “spied on my campaign,” “criminal,” “Corrupt,” “will make you very poor, FAST!” “Corrupt,” “Corrupt,” “He has no clue,” “Corrupt,” “He knew the questions and still couldn’t answer them,” “Corrupt,” “Corrupt,” “Corrupt,” “Corrupt,” “Corrupt,” “a Low IQ,” “Sleepy Joe is definitely a Low IQ person!” “Corrupt,” “Corrupt,” “so mortifyingly stupid,” “He has no idea,” “Corrupt,” “failed with China,” “4 decades of betrayal, calamity and failure,” “he NEVER did ANYTHING!” “Sleepy Joe,” “a TOTAL FAILURE,” “He ‘bungled’ everything that he touched!” “failing grades and polls,” “clueless handling of the Swine Flu,” “has been a part of every failed decision for decades,” “complete lack of leadership,” “He’s weak & shot!!!” “Sleepy Joe,” “refuses to leave his basement ‘sanctuary’,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “can never escape his Crime Bill!” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “has been in politics for 40 years, and did nothing,” “he pretends to have the answers. He doesn’t even know the questions,” “has been politically weak all of his life,” “Sleep Joe,” “Joe doesn’t know anything,” “he is clueless,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “handling of the H1N1 Swine Flu was a complete and total disaster,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe’s poor work ethic,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Nobody in 50 years has been WEAKER on China,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “was asleep at the wheel,” “SLEEPY JOE WILL NEVER GET YOU THERE,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “cannot bring us to greatness,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe,” “has given you nothing, and never will,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “not even a factor,” “a tired, exhausted man,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe Biden.”,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “an easy mark,” “a disaster in handling the H1N1 Swine Flu,” “disastrous approval numbers,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe’,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “doesn’t know where he is, or what he’s doing,” “I don’t think he even knows what office he's running for,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy,” “Sleepy Joe,” “a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy and Very Slow,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Crooked Bidens,” “Crooked daddy,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “By the way, the Bidens were corrupt,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe,” “being protected by the Media,” “Sleepy Joe,” “doesn’t have a clue!” “Does anybody really believe he is mentally fit to be president?” “Joe doesn’t have a clue!” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sooo Boring,” “our Country will do poorly with him,” “Sleepy Joe,” “will lead us into an economic sinkhole the likes of which we have never seen before,” “Sleepy Joe,” “the Sleepy One,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “admitted he worked with segregationists,” “Joe Biden is a reclamation project. Some things are just not salvageable,” “He deserted our military our law enforcement and our healthcare,” “Added more debt than all other Presidents combined. Won’t win!” “Sleepy Joe,” “exhausted,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “is drawing flies not people to his rallies,” “Sleepy Joe,” “low IQ idiot,” “low IQ individual,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe,” “will not have a chance of being elected,” “Swampman,” “a low IQ individual,” “Swampman,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Sleepy Joe,” “let China get away with “murder!”,” “SleepyCreepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Fake News,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “not very bright,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Sleepy Joe,” “I only hope you have the intelligence, long in doubt, to wage a successful primary campaign,” “Sleepy Joe,” “got tongue tied over the weekend,” “unable to properly deliver a very simple line,” “another low I.Q. individual!” “Crazy Joe,” “trying to act like a tough guy,” “Actually, he is weak, both mentally and physically,” “He doesn’t know me, but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way,” “Don’t threaten people Joe!” “not very bright”

It's only fitting - more pardons by the pope of corrupt absolutions

Would you buy a used car from this man?

Or from this hail-fellow-well-met?

Nor would Trump. But to them he has passed out pardons; two more political associates, Elliott Broidy and Steve Bannon, in the poisonous vein of Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.

And so Trump dots the final i of his iniquity. (We think. He still has nearly three hours to go.)

Last year Broidy, a Trump fundraiser who also knowingly evaded foreign lobbying laws, pleaded guilty — the second time since 2009 he has confessed to a felony — for having conspired to extradite a Chinese dissident to his tormentors and for seeking to have embezzlement charges dropped against a wealthy Malaysian scammer. Piratical parrots of a feather. Bannon, much like Trump, swindled donors to a border wall — yep, these idiots were funding a construction project that Mexico, as Trump had promised, was to pay for.

In some countries, pardons can be revoked. Would that they could be here. Some measure of justice could be obtained by permitting Broidy and Bannon's theirs in exchange for cancelling Trump's clemency for four Blackwater goons who murdered 14 Iraqi citizens. Perhaps the twosome's pardons will help to convict the pardoner in the Senate. But there can be no justification whatsoever for letting cold-blooded killers off the hook.

The "hanging judgment" of America's electorate

I once worked for a regional branch of the National Archives, whose historical documents included a sentencing penned by U.S. District Judge Isaac Parker, the "hanging judge." Parker's poetic words conveyed, on the eve of their execution, the rather bleak future of a murderous varmint. I once had them committed to memory; now, regrettably, I can only paraphrase, and but poorly:

Tomorrow, the sun will rise and the birds will chirp, but you won't be there. Children will play and scamp in the streets to the delight of us all, but you won't be there. Life will go on in its many felicities, but you won't be there — for I hereby sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead.

Today, on the eve of President-elect Biden's inauguration, I recall Judge Parker's unsentimental sentencing with immense joy. America's sun will rise tomorrow and its birds will chirp, its children will play and our lives will go on — without, at long last, the abhorrent, White House criminality of Donald J. Trump.

For he won't be there.