This Is The Final Year Of The USA As A Barely-Functioning State

2022. This is the final year of my nation as a functioning state. Once the Republicans take over the House in 2023, we’re an autocracy.

Neil H. Buchannan is one of the best scholars to make this consistent argument. He says the US is a “dead democracy walking.”

I have no idea if New York City will become a center of resistance to the GOP, or will fall in-line with the GOP as it did after 9/11. I want the former. I fear the latter. American cable news will carry on, because all it really cares about is ratings.

But while we wait for the GOP autocracy to rise, let’s enjoy this final year of freedom and relative stability. And yeah, I say “stability” knowing that we are stuck in the middle of a pandemic that is currently killing 1,700 Americans each day. That’s what I consider to be “stability” these days.

I haven’t really felt national stability since Bill Clinton was acquitted by the Senate in February 1999. While I hate the Senate, it was rational 23 years ago. Now we brace for another impeachment trial in 2023, which will be the GOPs irrational retaliation for two very legitimate impeachments of Donald J. Trump.

Be safe. Halve a plan to adapt if things become seriously unstable. Don’t stop paying attention to what’s happening locally and in DC.

And don’t stop wearing masks. We’re still living in a pandemic.

Now The Democratic Party's Failure Is Complete

All I have done since 1992 is vote for Democrats, and yet the nation is becoming unstable and liberties are being taken away.

"Roe is under attack. The DNC needs your cash before midnight to meet its fundraising goal and protect our liberties!" That’s not an exact quote, but that's the shit I have seen in my USPS inbox and email inbox for the last 30 years.

My response has always been: “I voted for you. Now shut the fuck up and deliver while there’s time.”

The last best chance the Democrats had to delivering came in 2009. And we know how that went.

View fullsize

For the last five years, one of the constant things i have heard from the Democrats is that they are the decent party. They are respectful. They are polite. They go high. They are grammatically correct. They are so intimidated and threatened by the violent right wing, that they stopped writing policy and protecting fundamental liberties.

View fullsize

The Democrats have been successfully bullied by the GOP minority. And here we are.

View fullsize

The Democrats have had the White House and Congress twice since Roe (also the year of my birth) and they failed to codify it into Federal law. Simply asking the Democrats to have a unified platform was just being unfair and demanding. Shame on those New York City Democrats who could see the overturn of Roe coming from 30 years away.

View fullsize

View fullsize

Simply put, as is the theme of this blog, we are fucked. We have entered the late phase of the republic in which rights are being taken away. The right wing will be coming for our birth control, same sex marriage and freedom to travel out of state next. The 14th Amendment has been broken and the liberties made possibly by that amendment are now under attack.

Thanks Bill. Thanks Barack. Thanks Joe and Joe. Thank you. For nothing.

Philadelphia Might Be Alright Now

Way back on July 3 of this year, members of the white nationalist group, Patriot Front marched through downtown Philadelphia. They were chased out. I am thrilled this happened. Finally. Everyone who considers themselves to be anti-racist needs to chase white nationalists out of town.

Having said that, we should acknowledge that Philadelphia has a terrible history of being an unjust town for its majority black population. You can’t get in line at Geno’s without seeing a message that black people are cop killing animals (and, I presume, that Italian-Americans are good, wholesome, superior people). Philadelphia and my New York both have the distinction of responding to the crime wave of the 70s and 80s by electing a white supremacist Italian American mayor, who was a disaster for the city and a menace to black residents.

Take These Monuments Down

Christopher Columbus was no Italian-American. In fact, he never set foot on the North American continent. But somehow he became an icon for Italian-Americans in the early 20th Century, as Italian immigrants fought for legitimacy and acceptance in the United States.

That was wrong and misguided. We must stop honoring him. He was a privateer, for the Spanish empire, no less. Enough.

And so, his monuments must come down. I chuckle at both New York mayor Bill de Blasio and former governor Andrew Cuomo who argued that it is possible to “honor” both Columbus and indigenous peoples. No it isn’t.

Soon, the monument at Columbus Circle will come down. It’s just a matter of time. The fact that the topic of taking it down is brought up each year is proof. It’s like same sex marriage or legal weed. When we all start talking about it, it’s inevitable.

Back in 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ first voyage to the Caribbean, kids like me at the University of Massachusetts were demanding that the name and the monuments be taken down. Back then, refusing to honor Columbus was seen as radical. Now, nearly two generations later, we’re finally going to make some progress. Take the monuments and the name down. Rename Columbus, Ohio. Reject his name and colonialist legacy.

I Expect You To Die, United States. Please Do.

Mr. Sterling is back from a long, hot summer break. I think I can get my stack of draft posts into production before Christmas. I’ll treat this like a semester at university, as I first did 30 years ago when our popular culture changed for the better.

So I start with this hot take: the Republic is indeed dying. And I have shifted from being sad about it, to being afraid, to now expecting and almost wanting it to happen. We did this to ourselves. And we cannot accidentally or improbably rescue ourselves every time we walk-up to this abyss. This time, we are committing suicide.

When I last posted on this blog, the US had the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on the ropes. We were down to fewer than 300 deaths per day. Was it going to be that easy after nearly 18 months of suffering? Were we gong to end this pandemic?

View fullsize

Of course not.

Nope.

Holy shit.

The US had one job. It had to get as many as the 258 Million adults vaccinated before Labor Day. It failed. Full stop. It failed. We didn’t get the vaccine into even 180 Million adult arms as of today. And so now, 1 out of 4 (25%) US adults are unvaccinated. And we are seeing scenes like this in every state, including this example from my own city. The loud minority is winning this war.

The reason the richest country in the world failed to vaccinate its adults before the fall wave of new cases is because lies are far more effective in spreading than truth. That’s been the case for centuries. This vaccination effort was not going to be a smashing success, even with the late mandates now coming into effect. But it absolutely needed a big, clear and coordinated campaign, with Nashville music artists and Ford pickup trucks leading the way. It needed to be the biggest public morale campaign since World War II. Instead, we got mixed messages, starts and stops, and finally the crushing lies all over the internet, reinforcing dumb people and their resistance to authority (well, Democratic authority).

This all makes sense. About 70 Million people, who would be perfectly fine with long-term authoritarian rule, are blowing their tops over hospitals, local governments, and the Federal government asking that they get vaccinated - for free!

We could have at least tried to prevent this with a massive, coordinated propaganda campaign. We didn’t. The lies won. The loudest voices in the room won and we let them. This happened before, just 6 years ago, with well-established vaccines, by the way. And it will happen with future vaccines.

And this translates into a higher death toll. For example:

Too late, loser. You had four months to get vaccinated. You’re dead now. There are over 100,000 Americans like him now. There will be another 100,000. And another.

And you, shithead. You didn’t have to be hospitalized. This was preventable. You should have died. Good thing there were hard-working medical care providers, a spare ICU bed and medications that were available at your local hospital.

I could share hundreds of videos in this post. I’ll stop. If you are still reading this, you get it.

Which brings me to my point. It’s evil, so brace yourself. It’s this: I now celebrate of all this preventable death. We have asked American adults to get vaccinated, and we have given them six months to get it done. But 25% of them have refused. I take that as confirmation that they want to die. They have made their choice. They have chosen death.

So they should die. They should die and stop wasting our time. Our time here is short. The pandemic will soon enter its third year. Let’s step up the death count. 2,000 per day isn’t good enough. Let’s get it back to 4,000. No one will care. And my patience is extinguished. You probably consider yourself too polite to say that. That’s commendable. I couldn’t keep it inside any longer. I had to write these words.

And here’s the kicker. This was the plan of us leftists all along to kill-off the right wingers. We knew -we knew- that by telling people to get vaccinated, the 70 Million hard-core MAGA caps would commit to not getting their shots. It was the most incredible reverse psychology tactic in history, as John Nolte of Breitbart explains:

Could it be…? Could it possibly be that the left has manipulated huge swathes of Trump voters into believing they are owning the left by not taking the life-saving Trump Vaccine?
….
Have you ever thought that maybe the left has us right where they want us?

Just stand back for a moment and think about this…

Right now, a countless number of Trump supporters believe they are owning the left by refusing to take a life-saving vaccine — a vaccine, by the way, everyone on the left has taken. Oh, and so has Trump.

Now think about this.

On this very day, about 1,000 people in the U.S. will die of the China Flu. How many of those lives could’ve been saved had they been vaccinated?…. Does it matter?

And if the left is all vaccinated and we’re not, who’s winning?
.…
I could be wrong.

Maybe the left isn’t that evil and sly.

But when I think of the unvaccinated lying there dying, being told by their doctor, “Sorry, there’s nothing more we can do to get enough oxygen to your lungs,” I don’t laugh. My heart breaks for that person. Imagine lying there dying thinking that all you had to do was get the Trump Vaccine.

Even if this isn’t the left’s plan, who’s owning who?

That’s right, genius. It is the bank shot to rule all bank shots from the same people who couldn’t pass a deficit-neutral Medicare enrollment option for the uninsured. Sigh.

The pandemic will burn for years. The Republicans have the courts. Gun rights are being expanded in 2022. Roe is being overturned in 2022. The Republicans are going to take back Congress in 2023. And then, in 2025, they will steal the White House and cement authoritarian rule for at least a generation. By the time that happens, the Republic will be dead.

What the GOP has done since 1980 is extraordinary. They have won the presidency twice while losing the popular vote. They have packed the courts with corporate-friendly judges, who have sharply tilted the Supreme Court to the right since the early 1990s (particularly since the arrival of Justice Alito in 2006). And they continue to win big locally, winning close to two thirds of State Houses and state legislators. There are tens of millions more registered Democrats then Republicans. But Republicans are in charge through minority rule. And we are seeing them shift from minority rule to autocratic rule.

Biden's agenda has been stopped. Congress can't anything done. The republic is clearly dying. And Republicans are more than okay with that. They think, unwisely, that the states will be okay if Washington’s power collapses. This is not true. No one is going to be okay when the wildfires and hurricanes hit. Only the millionaires and billionaires will be okay when capitalism reaches its final limits. And there will be no reason to defend this nation any longer when freedoms -particularly bodily autonomy and the right to vote- are taken away. We're all doomed, thanks to Republican ruthlessness and Democratic weakness.

The only question I have remaining is will the masses in cities rise up when the republic collapses, or will we follow the more common historic example and just take it with a whimper? Will New York City just become a symbolic center of resistance like Barcelona under Franco? We Americans are pigs who love our treats. If the treats are still available on Amazon, I think we will just take authoritarianism.

Pathetic.

I’m ready to watch it all go down. Raise your glass and watch it all burn. It’s what the Republicans want.

New York Deserves Eric Adams

This blog is going to post a few redundant posts this year. This is because we’re acknowledging a common theme: Americans don’t give a shit. They don’t care. That's how this empire dies. No one cared to protect it and put smart people in charge.

New Yorkers, who see themselves as special and above all other Americans, also don’t care.

How else to explain the next mayor, Eric Adams?

We know he’s a lunatic. We don’t care. We know he has no real policy ideas. We know he’s not even a Democrat. We don’t care. We know he doesn’t even live here. We don’t care. We know he sides with landlords and real estate developers, and has the audacity to blame young arrivals from Iowa and Ohio for gentrification. And we will never care.

So of course, New York City, confused by two progressives in the race for mayor, tripped, fell and let Eric Adams walk on through by less than 20,000 votes, thanks to very low turnout and a big case of not really giving a shit.

Enjoy your victory lap, Mister Adams. No, you are not the face of the Democratic party. No, you are not a rallying cry that moderates will prevail. No, you are not evidence of some sleeping giant of black power. Not the black power I prefer anyway. What utter horseshit. Fuck Errol Lewis.

Know why it’s all horseshit? Just look at how right wingers are reacting to Adams. They are already trashing him as a ‘corrupt,’ big city politician (read: black). They are trashing him using the same terms they use to trash Joe Biden, another moderate Democrat. See, the Democrats will never learn. You can declare yourself a moderate all you want, you are still going to get trashed by the same Republicans, at the same intensity, over the same non-issues. Democrats who are sincerely moderate in this era are living their dreams to be a popular 1980s Republican. Enjoy it while it lasts. Because it won’t. This republic will soon collapse.

Adams cannot wait to take over from Bill de Blasio in January 2022. He’s going to let the NYPD trample on peoples’ rights, let the real estate developers continue their profit-making run, and keep his voters happy by trashing people like me who live in Manhattan.

Trash Manhattan at your peril, asshole. And Fuck Brooklyn.®

So liberal, progressive town this is not. Look at Buffalo. What a triumph for India Walton and the DSA! Meanwhile we're heading into a dark four years of scandals, insane tirades and incomprehensible speeches. Warren Wilhelm made promises he couldn't keep, was corrupt, made his wife a city employee with a bloated staff and budget, and generally made every press conference an exercise in excuses and squirming about "unfair questions." Adams is going to take incompetence and Trump-like zaniness to a new level. Anyone unfamiliar with the history of the office being a dead-end is going to see it in action. No contemporary NYC mayor ever goes on to be congressman, senator, governor or president.

High-End Housing Sits On Decaying Cities And We Have Questions

Specifically, Samuel Stein has questions, and his piece in The Baffler is a must read.

I have pointed this out before. In 2014, I wrote:

what we are seeing are overpriced luxury homes being built on top of decaying infrastructure

I don’t think anything will wake-up educated Americans to this fact and want to change anything. I don’t think even Chicago becoming uninhabitable could wake people up. So be it. We’re doomed. And millionaires can enjoy their towers for about 10 more years. Have fun.

The Fact She's Elected Is Proof We're Doomed

Majorie Taylor-Greene. Why are we writing about her? Because we’re doomed, that’s why. I hate this bitch so much I can’t post her photo on this post.

The fact that she's a congressman and not working at a big box retail chain or Amazon fulfillment center is all the proof we need that this society and republic are doomed. She writes no laws. She doesn't govern. All she does is play act, pose, troll and distract. And in DC, she is far from alone. You wonder how empires crumble? Review US history since 1980.

The Michael Flynn Problem Won't Easily Go Away

Mike Flynn, Trump's first national security advisor, was unquestionably an undisclosed agent of Turkey. Never in our history has a president had a person that close to the center of government who was advocating for a foreign power. If I were Biden, I'd be very worried that Trump would be selling US intelligence to foreign nations. I'd certainly be against Trump receiving any intelligence briefings at Mar-a-Lago.

And the Michael Fylnn saga is still not over. Following his pardon and Judge Sullivan being forced to close his court case, Flynn went on to commit more crimes on behalf of Trump in his failed attempt to reverse the election results. The Flynn saga is not over. We haven’t seen the last of him in a courtroom.

Get Off Our Televisions

Dr. Anthony Fauci has caused more harm than good. He needs to go.

In March 2020, millions of Americans were asking if they should wear face masks as a means to help prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2. I had attended my last, crowded, indoor party on Saturday March 7. On the next day, Sunday March 8, Dr. Fauci was interviewed by 60 Minutes. He was asked if Americans should start wearing masks. He replied, “there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.” Of course, he changed his messaging a month later. But this mistake was enough for me. Fauci could not be trusted. He couldn’t tell the truth to the public. He balked.

For the next year, Fauci danced around Donald Trump, trying to prevent being fired. And why? Why was it so important for Fauci to remain on the job? And how many people had to die due to his mixed messaging as he tiptoed around Trump, trying not to set off the president’s rage?

And now Dr. Fauci is in the middle of a non-stop media campaign, telling Americans that vaccine supplies will be strong by April, and that children as young as six can get the vaccines by September. Both of these claims are not backed by the evidence, the research, or the reality on the ground.

I get it. Dr. Anthony Fauci is window dressing. He’s the cheerleader for defeating the pandemic. He’s public relations. But let’s be clear: he does not deserve to be idolized. He has made too many mistakes. And more important, he never called out Trump’s lies while people died. He’s not a profile in courage. He's a profile in career preservation. He just danced and dodged so he could outlast Trump and finish his career under a president who was competent. But he didn't have to. He could have resigned in protest. But he didn't.

Ship him to sea. Get off our televisions, Doctor.

We Did This To Ourselves

I have written this before, ad nauseum. But I must say it again. We did this to ourselves. All of it. From the moment Trump got his own TV show, to his becoming the leader of the “Birther” conspiracy theory salespeople, to his 2015-2016 campaign, to his election, to his growing list of crimes as sitting president. We did this. This is on us. If we had done our fucking jobs, Donald Trump would be a convicted felon, slowly paying his fines to New York State for the tax evasion and fraud he committed over the decades. His “Trump University” and charity fraud alone would have barred him from public office.

He’s like any one of the 19 hijackers twenty years ago. We had multiple chances to stop him. We failed at every turn. Trump will get away with everything. He continues to trick us, again and again, that he’s a functional president and everything’s fine. With only 11 days left, he might as well start shooting people.

The Republicans got the judges and tax cuts they wanted. They don’t care if their party implodes or the Republic dies. They got what they wanted before they themselves die.

View fullsize

It’s over. All nations and empires die. This one has died.

The Biggest Mess Left Behind For A New President

I think I’m correct. This is by far the longest list of crises left to a new US president.

For example, Truman was ready to take the helm in April 1945. FDR’s death didn’t rattle the nation in despair and chaos. But 2020? It sure ain’t 1945.

The Trump horror show is ending with rushed Federal executions, a shattered republic, an ongoing withdrawal from Afghanistan, broken confidence in our democracy, and a failed public rollout of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.

The vaccine is not reaching Americans in group 1C. I got my vaccine, but my 79 year-old parents haven’t heard shit about their pending vaccinations. What. The. Fuck.

The Biden administration is doomed. It hasn’t begun, but it is set for failure. All because we let an angry, reclusive, sick New Yorker take shits on our Federal government and our nation for nine long, painful years (if you include the long buildup to Trump’s run and nomination, which I do - just look at Trump’s 2011 and 2012 Twitter feeds).

There’s no movement to help Biden fix what Trump has broken. There’s no widespread public desire to heal our wounds and take care of our elderly. We’re just a nation of selfish monsters who are acting like the pandemic is over. It will linger for years, until the next pandemic.

We will never change. We will never learn. And we will never be good. Just like Donald J. Trump.

The Alternate 2020

What could an alternate 2020 looked like? For a while, in January and February, it looked like the US was headed for a real war against Iran (presumably with Saudi Arabia doing some of the fighting). The illegal airstrike that killed General Solem Soleimani could have easily set the Islamic Republic off. It would have resulted in thousands of civilian deaths, but the US had committed an act of war on top of Iran’s provokation of having their top general in Iraq. Instead, Iran fired warning shots at US forces (which still caused concussions and ruptured eardrums, which Trump didn’t care about, but that’s another story).

Another alternative 2020 would have been a close, but not unexpected re-election for Donald Trump. After all, we didn’t know at the time, but Trump had been gaining in popularity throughout his residency, particularly with Hispanic and Black men. Against a old, non-confrontational Biden, he probably would have won.

And in yet another alternative 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic still happened, but Trump took it seriously and let a panel of public health experts set a national policy, keeping the death toll under 100,000. His good handling of the pandemic would also result in a re-election victory.

For Dianne Feinstein, The Senate Is Just A Club

Marie Solis over at Jezebel said it best: Thanks for nothing, Dianne Feinstein.

Senator Feinstein has spent a long Senate career accomplishing astonishingly little for the people of California and the United States. Her conception of the job seems to be that a Senator's prime responsibility is to be collegial with her colleagues, and reassure them that disagreements needn't be handled disagreeably, and the feelings of Republicans mustn't be hurt. In that sense of the job, she's been a smashing success.

So she agreeably went along with George Bush's greatest brain fart, the war against the people of Iraq. And she helped guarantee that none of our brave, CIA heroes were called to account for the kidnappings and torture that characterized our "War on Terror ". Spying on the citizens of the United States? Wire taps, surveillance, arbitrary arrests of Muslims, the atrocities of Abu Graib, the stain of Guantanamo? None of these things ever interfered with Feinstein's goal of a happy and friendly Senate.

I hope this means that California's senior senator is not running for re-election in 2022. Dear Diane has done more than enough. It's past time she returns to the Golden State.

Frederick Douglass Is (Still) Doing A Great Job!

The Belfast city council has approved a statue of key American abolitionist Frederick Douglass to be designed and installed in the city center.

Congratulations, Frederick Douglass! How's he doing, by the way? I heard Trump say a few years ago that he’s “done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more,” but I haven't heard much about him lately. It's great to see his recent accomplishments are now being recognized in the U.K.

Of course, at 201 years of age, he's probably slowing down a bit.

American Totalitarianism Started In 2019

The arrival of Bill Barr. The suppression of the Mueller report. Trump’s secret police. The destruction of the US Postal Service. Voter suppression. The Bible moment (preceded by tear gas). The transparent requests to throw out urban votes (and by urban, I really do mean black).

Democracies are not guaranteed to live forever. They can die. We saw American democracy die a little in 2000 with Bush v. Gore. We saw several more stages of death in the last two years.

It would take an effort of colossal proportions to prevent the republic from dying. The nation is sliding down a deadly slope. One idea to rescue it is to open it up to a new wave of massive immigration. Bring in over 300 Million hard working people to turn it around and fund all new infrastructure and a new surge in education funding. I am not a big fan of Matthew Yglasias, a young pundit who has been incorrect so many times before (or is that Ezra Klein? Oh, it’s Ezra. I get all my millenial pundits confused!). But Yglasias does have a point. Every time the US has had a wave of significant immigration, the nation has gotten stronger and the quality of life has improved. There’s no guarantee that it would work the next time. However, the historical track record is well-established.

If pushing for a doubling of the US population seems like an impossible task, then you have a grasp of how difficult it will be to save the republic. Because something quite radical is required to save it. Any radical change would require a colossal effort that I don’t think we’re capable of - even the activists and progressives among us.

Rudy Giuliani Won't Live Much Longer

When Borat 2 came out, and we saw the edited, embarrassing footage of Rudy Giuliani, I thought of the old joke, “Time wounds all heels.” 35 years ago, Rudy Giuliani was a Federal prosecutor with a self-polished image of being the man who brought down the mafia in the US. 25 years ago, he was the free speech and due process-squashing mayor of New York who was brought to power on the crest of a racist backlash against David Dinkins, mainly from voters in Staten Island and Queens. 15 years ago, he was still riding his title of “America’s Mayor,” and was gearing up for a ill-fated presidential run in 2008. But if you can remember, that new title saved him for a while. He didn’t have nine lives, but 9/11 was one of his three major career shifts. His three significant career phases were US Attorney, big city mayor, and paid homeland security celebrity.

By the time of the 2001 mayoral primary (on the morning of September 11), Giuliani was not liked in New York City. The citizens had enough of him, his bullying, his disregard for the Bill of Rights, and his very public and embarrassing divorce. They were sick of his bratty son, Andrew, as well as his new girlfriend, Judith Nathan. They were ready for him to leave. Just over a year before his career was rescued by a terrorist attack, Giuliani had a disastrous month in his failed bid to run against Hillary Clinton for Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s Senate seat. But 9/11 actually made America forget how nuts he was for about seven years. During that time, he cashed-in and gave six-figure talks at conferences as a so-called expert on terrorism and foreign policy. He also opened a bullshit consulting firm, Giuliani Partners. Giuliani had a renewed political and professional life until Joe Biden, of all people, cut him down.

Joe Biden dispatched Giuliani during a Democratic presidential debate in 2007. “A noun, and a verb and 9/11” pretty much summed him up, as Joe Biden called him unfit for any future office. At that moment, Giuliani was finally done. He had no lucrative future. I can now add Borat, crackpot conspiracies, and heavy drinking to the long list of disqualifications for "America's Mayor”. The site of his November 7 rant, masquerading as a press conference, was held in a landscaping company parking lot, perfectly located between a sex shop and a crematorium.

New Yorkers are currently annoyed by a mayor who falsely claims to be a progressive, who shamelessly attempted to enrich his wife as a senior staffer, and is generally a depressing disappointment in leadership. However, I have to remind my fellow city residents that with Giuliani, we had a deeply corrupt mayor, who demonized people who were tortured and killed by police, who exhibited strange behavior, and annoyingly inserted himself into Christmas with his name being Rudolph. We’ve forgotten the clip below, but we must not forget. In 2000, when this video was shot, these two men were jokes.

Notice this video was shot in a department store (is this Loehmann’s?), which is quite prophetic given the active defamation lawsuit against Trump from Jean E. Carroll, who alleges that Trump raped her in a Bloomingdale’s dressing room in 1996.

Rudy’s drag alter ego, “Rudia,” lasted about three years, from 1997-2000. Giuliani’s friendship with Donald Trump goes back 34 years. And in this decade, the two men have only gotten closer. Rudy pledged his full loyalty to Trump and delivered an insane speech at the 2016 RNC. In that speech, Giuliani delivered to the media the first of many iconic images of a man in decline. Soon after Trump took office, Trump lost Michael Cohen and turned to Giuliani as his personal attorney, fixer, and rat fucker. That’s when we saw Giuliani’s behavior take a much more disturbing turn in the spring of 2019.

I am not going to go through the whole saga, which is apparently ongoing. Giuliani went to Ukraine with his subcontractors / henchmen to try to collect dirt on Hunter Biden and get Ukrainian officials to smear the Bidens on the record. Along the way, they nearly got a US ambassador killed. He also began to tell Fox News, Twitter users and journalists of his project while it was in-progress. It’s no wonder it led to Trump’s impeachment. It was in plain sight. He even went to Ukraine late in the impeachment proceedings. It was also around this time that Giuliani finalized his divorce from Judith Nathan and made himself a new base at The Mark Hotel on the Upper East Side.

Despite a sharp drop in income, he has not relinquished his luxurious lifestyle. He reportedly drinks day and night. Throughout COVID-19 pandemic, he has been seen at the bar, maskless, inside the hotel. By this time last year, he was giving bizarre interviews from the hotel. He’s reportedly easy to find at the Mark and is available to rant to any journalist who is willing to endure him.

He was maskless again at his extraordinary press conference yesterday. It made his November 7 event look like a minor gaffe. It was off the rails, with wild conspiracy theories and “constitutional law attorney” Jenna Ellis insulting a reporter who dared ask for any evidence of one of the wild conspiracies they tossed into the public sphere. And we need to confront that shit. Specifically, the charge that vote counting machines were programmed to reduce a set percentage of votes for Trump across all counties, giving Biden a handicap, is insane. They also claimed that late-night reporting of mail-in ballots was actually a dump of manufactured, fraudulent ballots, organized by Democrats in a desperate attempt to to maintain Biden’s lead, because Democrats didn’t program the counting machines to change a high enough percentage of Trump votes. That is even more insane. And yet, here we are, with close to half the nation believing just that - that this election was stolen through a vast Democratic conspiracy that spanned cities, towns, counties and states.

The hair dye dripping down Guiliani's face was an unnecessary but near perfect metaphor for this demented attempt to overturn a democratic election. "America's Mayor", who may be suffering from severe alcohol addiction, is clearly unhinged, and his "legal team" looks like the cast from a Monty Python sketch. Are we really supposed to believe that Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan dictator, dead for more than seven years, funded the installation of thousands of voting machines which could change Trump votes to Biden votes through some mysterious "algorithm,” which is really just described in the Pennsylvania complaint as a percentage cut? Are we really supposed to believe that George Soros and Antifa have engineered a massive theft of the votes that would have delivered a massive landslide for Trump?

I think the republic has been permanently poisoned by Trump’s desperate attempt to delay the Biden transition. But here’s something else I started to think a year ago when Rudy gave that unhinged interview to New York Magazine: Rudy is going to wind up dead soon. And it’s sad because no one has bothered to try to save him. Doesn’t he have any friends?

View fullsize

He’s going to be found cold and lifeless in his hotel room. His drinking will eventually finish himself off. Rudy Giuliani doesn’t have long to live. His obituaries are not going to be flattering. His legacy is long destroyed. His mind is gone. His heart and liver aren’t far behind.

Who will Donald Trump turn to for legal assistance then? Will Trump even be in the country by then?

Uncle Tim contributed to this post.

Ignore The Hawks On American TV News

This is MSNBC being hawkish in its analysis of Trump’s refusal to concede in the 2020 presidential election. The story goes that Trump’s obstruction of a peaceful handover makes the US susceptible to foreign attack, whether military or electronic.

Here it is again. This is Bullshit. MSNBC is going out of its way to praise Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan as an Air Force veteran and therefore, an expert on national security. I’m here to say no, she isn’t. Look at how Willie Geist praises this Congresswoman simply for being a veteran from a military family. This conversation could have been on Fox News 20 years ago.

And here is more nonsense. There was a massive shift in the way US news covered wars, beginning with the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Instead of objective reporting, US news media began to refer to US armed forces as “we” or “our,” and it also started to inject itself into military strategies. Here’s MSNBC cautioning a president not to tell “the enemy” where “our” troops are going.

Trump refusing to go quietly is a scandal. It’s one of the worst things he has ever done. But it does not jeopardize national security. That's neocon talk. That’s bullshit. Trump trying to throw out legal ballots is not going make the Chinese navy appear in Hawaii or give foreign hackers a clear path to intrude into our systems, or give foreign spies more wiggle room on our soil.

I shouldn’t have to mention this, but apparently buried in the 9/11 commission report is some bullshit theory that the legal battle over Florida recounts made our nation vulnerable to the major terrorist attacks. The legal battle over Florida in November and December 2000 delayed the presidential transition 37 days. The commission report goes on to argue that the delay was a major contributing factor in how unprepared the Bush 43 administration was to an attack involving four hijacked planes 9 months later. Do I really have to say that the failure to protect the nation was entirely on the Bush administration and the DOJ?

Ignore David Ignatius. Ignore Chris Coons. Ignore Chris Murphy. Ignore Susan Rice. Ignore Eric Swalwell. This is fear mongering. We didn't tolerate it when it come from the Bush-Caney administration. We can't tolerate it from Democrats, either.

Democrats are the new Republicans! Who would have thought that 20 years after 9/11 that it would be the Democrats who would talk the most about "national security"?

It is extraordinary and alarming how the Democrats have made themselves the party of the military and national security. The words coming out of Democrats mouths today is not that different from the words of Bush, Chaney, Rice and Rumsfeld 20 years ago. Be cautioned, Democrats. We're moving to the right when we should be moving left. Of course it was right to speak up when Trump didn't care about our troops, but I see a party that is becoming far too hawkish, too militarized. Don’t let Trump’s disrespect of military drive you to throw your arms around it. I’m afraid that has happened.

Something Worse Is Always Coming

The GOP appears to be backing off from its threat to stage a coup. But the damage has been done. And Lindsay Graham might have just gotten away with a felony, just one month after violating another law.

The GOP is testing the media and Democrats. They want to know how far they can run with this. The further they can go with this, the more likely they will stage a real coup in the future. Think back and reflect on the recent history of the GOP. With each cycle, they have become more crazy and more evil. From Goldwater to Nixon to Reagan to Newt to Bush 43 and now Trump. That's why people like Joe Scarborough talks about Newt Gingrich like he was just a sensible politician who wanted to cut the deficit. Joe will insist to the end that the GOP was being 'noble' and 'sincere' in 1994. Never mind they wanted to kill Social Security and Medicare, as well as repeal Title VII (the Civil Rights Act and Affirmative Action), Title VIII (the Voting Rights Act), Title IX and Title X.

Incredibly, the Republicans of the recent past don't seem so nuts today, because the party is becoming more and more nuts. That's why some Democrats speak kindly of the worst president we ever had -Bush 43. And that's why, 10 years from now, some talking heads on MSNBC will say that Trump wasn't so bad, given who will be president in 2030. Something worse is coming. Since Goldwater, something worse is always coming.

Trump Isn't Ill. He's Evil And Depraved.

Captain Queeg wasn't evil, only paranoid and unfit for command responsibility. Trump, of course, is mentally ill, and has a clear narcissistic personality disorder. His psychological and anti-social pathologies render him manifestly unqualified to hold ANY public office.

But there the analogy to Queeg ends. Trump is also -to use a very old term- evil. That is to say, he is depraved. He deliberately harms people, including small children, who he separates from their parents and locks up for months. In such a case, this deliberate cruelty is the point of his policy. He seeks to use the power of his office to arrest and prosecute his predecessor, his previous opponent, and his current opponent. If permitted, he will steal the coming presidential election, and call on his most devoted and unhinged followers to unleash armed violence on the democratic institutions of the country. If he loses this election, he calls for blood in the streets in order to enact revenge on his own people.

All of this is not to argue that Trump isn't suffering from mental illness. Ge obviously is. But he's also the most evil and depraved person ever to hold the office of president. He must be defeated, and then held responsible for his countless crimes.