Trump's Life Has Been Miserable For Years Now

Donald Trump is doing something never before seen in American national politics. He’s literally running for his freedom.

I think I have remarked on this blog that Donald Trump has been thriving on stress his whole adult life. Looming lawsuits, debts, financial failure and legal trouble have long been his motivation and have taken-up a lot of his time. We are all mortal. We can’t run forever. Even Trump, 8 years after first running for the White House, has slowed down. He no longer cracks jokes. He’s no longer entertaining. He has frankly become more scary since leaving office. He is more profane in his rally speeches. Thematically, he’s an angrier and darker man, and he vowing to be a ruthless and vicious leader.

And he’s alone. He’s been stuck in his worst-ever emotional state since November 2020.

His two sons still support him, but that hasn’t changed in decades. He has no loyal wife by his side. He has no best friend. George Steinbrenner is now 13 years gone. He’s down to one sibling, Elizabeth, who doesn’t have a public profile.

He almost didn't pause for his last living brother, Robert. He said goodbye to his brother in a hospital room and was playing golf at Bedminster the next morning as Robert passed away. He then abused his office to host his brother’s funeral at the White House - the first since JFK’s nearly 57 years before. His daughter is unofficially estranged. His son-in law is his handler and unofficial campaign chief. He is unofficially separated from his wife. He's alone. And he's at his most dangerous, without a check or guardrail in sight. This is how it has been for decades. No one has ever stopped Trump.

He lost the 2020 election, you may say. I will argue, that didn’t stop him. As the man would say, “you see what’s happening.”

The Republic Is Doomed

This week has me convinced that Trump is going to win in 406 days. How do I know? Our news media. They reported a surge of migrants crossing the southern border, but didn't point out that the vast majority of them were captured by CBP. Today they are describing Trump's speech in a non-union parts factory as a visit to striking UAW workers. Trump's behavior and past rape is not being covered. His age is not being mentioned. Fascism is coming. There haven’t been moderate Republicans since the Obama administration. Anyone who votes for Donald Trump is a bloodthirsty fascist.

And if, by some miracle, Trump loses, we’re still doomed. 2024 will signal to the world that American democracy no longer functions.

We have already crossed the Rubicon on this. There was no peaceful transfer of power in 2021. There probably won’t be a peaceful transfer of power in 2025.

It’s amazing how some smart people have come around on this. In October 2020, Trump didn’t meet the definition of a fascist. Today he meets and exceeds them. As Trump calls for the executions of people, all he’s lacking now is a military uniform. It’s a good thing he despises the military. He’s just a fascist with a poorer fashion taste. Most fascist dictators put on the dress uniform and medals and call it a day. Trump is happy with his dumb fucking red tie down to his scrotum.

I Wonder How That Happened!

The majority of COVID deaths in 2021 were among GOP voters who refused to vaccinate and protect themselves. If you read this blog you know where I stand on that. I am zero sympathy,.

The GOP Knows: It Is Easier To Destroy Than To Build

And apparently, the GOP voters love the destruction of our nation. They are here for it. They turnout and vote for it.

This blog, now in its 17th year, is run by a member of the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati. And in this post, I am repeating what I have said before: that the GOP is burning down our republic and our society. It threatens to sink the entire North American continent as Mexico is already a failed state, overrun by instability and out of control violence. But I am going to approach my argument from a different lens - through history.

First up, we have three US states that have authorized the construction of memorials dedicated to the fetuses that were aborted between 1973 and 2022. The states are Tennessee, Missouri and now Arkansas.

Liberals in the US need to think of these memorials this way: Monuments to fetuses are not about the fetuses. They are memorials that celebrate the taking of liberties away from women. They enshrine dominance over women and their bodies. It’s as if a state had left the Union during the Civil War, kept slavery to this day, and decided to erect a monument to slavery.

What liberals should do is ask themselves this: do you want to live in a country in which women have no liberties in over 20 states? Or 30? Do you want to live in a nation where local governments gloat about taking those freedoms away? What would we call such a nation? I know what I would call it: a failed, autocratic state. Arkansas needs to be removed from the union, or we need to fight like hell to have freedoms restored. But sitting there and doing nothing is NOT an option.

But what just entered my mind reading these stories about the post-Dobbs power grab is that so-called liberals need to fight simply because many many people died winning civil rights over the centuries. And no, I don't mean we won rights fighting wars. Wars can only block the advance of tyranny, not expand freedoms. People died on US soil for these rights. And since the rise of Trump, rights and liberties are being taken away. Reproductive rights. Bodily autonomy. Free speech. The right to bloody live. We liberals are told not to fight - not to stoop to the GOP's level. "We go high" said Michelle Obama, which is a euphemism for "don't get into a street fight." Well if we can't get into a street fight when freedoms are being rolled back, then we can never fight to get them back. And there's no need to bring up Nazi analogies! Freedoms are just being taken away. It happens all over the world and now it is happening here. If we don't fight, we won't live long enough to see those freedoms restored. Simple as that. And by fight, I mean march through the state capitals of red states. Otherwise, we should tell these red states to leave the Union. We can't exist as a nation if women and queer people have rights in one state but are prosecuted in another. Fuck this.

We’re never going to see these rights return to us in our lifetimes. So we might as fight to make lives miserable for the people who took away our liberties. This is no longer a civil debate on what rights people should have is the USA. This is a war.

Frankly, people need to die for taking our rights away. Taking liberties from me and you justifies it. And if you are a registered Democrat and don’t feel the rage I do, then join the GOP, please. Get out my party. You suck, you spineless shits.

Follow Through And Expel Every Democrat

Why stop at the young black representatives? The Tennessee House has set a new prescient. If they can expel representatives they disagree with, then why not expel every Democrat? They can continuously expel Democrats as they are replaced. Just turn the Tennessee house floor into a never-ending expulsion ceremony. The egg has been cracked. Expel all the Democrats! It’s what the GOP wants to do, right?

While we’re at it, let’s toss out the medicine. All of it.

As we are seeing this week, the GOP is keen to set new precedents almost every day. They want to ban common, safe medications. Signaling a desire to effectively ban abortion nationwide by taking mifepristone off the market, the GOP is desperately trying to set a new precedent that any medication can be criminalized. So do it! Ban other life-saving medications. Start with insulin. Block the sale of chemotherapy drugs. Stop the sale of vaccines. The egg has been cracked. Ban all the meds!

And they want to prevent medications from being mailed to people. They are testing a dormant ‘zombie law,’ the Comstock Act, to see if it can prevent the shipment of drugs directly to consumers. It will likely fail, but it shows just how committed the GOP is to ruining everything for everyone.

And what’s the reason again? We made a black man president in 2009? We now respect queer people? We acknowledge that women and brown people have some rights? The GOP is waging a violent war against modernity and is taking down the nation with them.

All of this. All of these authoritarian actions by the GOP, are destabilizing our republic. It’s falling apart. The GOP, unable to win a national election, has decided to burn the Republic down and give their rich sponsors and friends an opportunity to plunder for a couple more generations while it burns.

The GOP Is What It Says On The Tin

Autocracy. Fascism. Threats of violence. Lies. Xenophobia. Homophobia. Transphobia. Physical violence.

It is all on the tin. The GOP is what they say they are.

This nation is doomed, partly because liberals and progressives like me sit and say nothing when the GOP explicitly tells us what it wants to do: abolish queer people, strip rights from women, inflict more suffering on the poor, drain the public wealth (like cutting public school budgets and diverting local tax revenue to charter schools), and use outrage and violence to win votes.

The GOP relies on manufactured outrage, instability and conspiracy fanatics to stay alive. That includes QAnon, sovereign citizens, the people who will never get over the short pandemic lockdowns, and right wing militias (Boogaloo Boys, Three Percenters, Proud Boys, Oathkeepers).

And there are the abhorrent policies. Just last week, over 20 South Carolina legislators co-signed a bill to put women to death if they terminate their pregnancies. That’s one-sixth of their state legislature, putting forward something that the Taliban or Saudi Arabia would enforce. And I’m just supposed to fucking sit there silently, and listen to Michelle Obama’s new podcast? In 2016 and 2020, she told us to “go high,” but what she really meant is avoid confrontation. She might as well have told us to just sit there and take fascism and oppression from the red states.

Fuck that. I am fighting. Is anyone with me?

Anyone?

It's The 2020s: Time For Progressives To Go On The Offensive

This is part two of a quick two-part post. It’s about the short term political future of the US in the turbulent, depressing 2020s.

I’m going to keep this brief, as books have been written about how the left should fight back against states pulling right. The solution is to go left. Pull back left. Do not ever surrender.

Okay, but how? While never easy, the strategy is to cut off Democrats that are furthest to the right. If progressives had their way. Democrats like Richie Torres, Henry Cuellar, Adriano Espaillat and Ed Case would be upset by progressives. The needle for the Democratic caucus would edge left, in-step with the culture. The Democratic policymakers who don’t care about women’s rights, or the environmental catastrophe or freedom-destroying red states would be purged from the party.

Locally, progressives need to pull left. Codify abortion rights. Get those marijuana decriminalization laws passed. Raise the state minimum wage. Tax the rich a little more. Make your good state better.

Run for office. Policies will not write themselves. We need progressives to win seats, no matter how minor. Get that school board chair. Get on the city council. Oust that cranky old mayor. Quit your job and run for office. You job sucks anyway and you can probably go back to the private workforce if you have a decent political career.

Policies will beat back the Right. Pointing out their hypocrisy does not work. Shaming them does not work. They don’t give a shit about your feelings, your opinions or your tweets. Get into office and get to work on policy.

Outsmart them. And out-policy them in the halls of government.

They are the minority party. We are the majority party. Let’s act like it.

GOP: To Hell With The Children

I am an old Gen-Xer. I remember when the GOP was all about The Children ⟨™⟩. It was a winning stroke of GOP marketing. They were the party that was all about prosecuting bad guys and keeping children safe. Whitney Houston unwittingly gave them an anthem at the peak of the Reagan era. The political worship of children had reached a peak.

Well, now the GOP is all about terrorizing children. Just look to Donald Trump for an example. He wants gory, televised Federal executions, which he thinks will frighten children enough to prevent them for committing crimes.

The GOP has not cared about the actual welfare of children for over a century. So childhood poverty, malnutrition and the slow destruction of public schools is not their concern. Well actually, bleeding public schools dry and replacing them with for-profit charter schools is one of their goals. Children are valuable to the GOP if there’s money to be made.

More recently, the GOP has declared war on transgender children and transgender healthcare. They have gone after student athletes, student restrooms, course and curriculum content and the teachers and their unions.

Roe Is Dead. And So Is The United States.

The mess that the overturn of Roe has caused will last decades. I'm reading opinions that states that ban abortion might sue New York and California for luring thier women to commit "criminal acts" (which we good people call accessing medicine). How can a nation function if medicine in one state is "homicide" in another (Louisiana)?

Texas is going to assemble a challenge to Plyer v. Doe (1982) which could end the requirement for states to provide free education to all children regardless of nationality in grades 1-12, effectively closing all public schools in some states.

States will challenge Loving, Griswold and Obergefell. And soon states will pass laws banning all sex reassignment medicine and procedures.

And then there's the misoprostol pills, the next abortion front. Will states try to ban medications? Will they try to create their own DEA-like agencies? Will they sue drug makers to stop making pills they want to ban? Will they sue the US Postal Service, UPS, FedEx and DHL for allowing banned medications to be sent into their state from outside states or overseas?

What other drugs will more than 20 states want to ban? Hormones? HIV treatments? How about vaccines?

This wouldn't happen, but what would stop this Roberts court from allowing a state to ban alcohol sales? It's a fair analogy because the Court just let states ban a major category of medical care. This isn't a mild difference in laws so some states allow gambling, fireworks and open alcohol containers. This is an extreme legal divide in which legitimate medicine obtained in New York is categorized as a felony by one or more states.

The civil suits will be endless. Lawyers are about to get decades of guaranteed extra cases that shouldn't exist in a functioning nation. We're a failed state. Any one of us could be entangled in a criminal or civil case involving us directly or indirectly. Plus, we're all going to fund our state's lawsuits and defenses. This nation is finished. Will 0.5% of our GDP be simply interstate civil suits clogging up our courts and our lives?

For the average American, the overturn of Roe should be a bigger story than Russia's invasion of Ukraine or even the investigation into Trump’s failed coup in late 2020 and early 2021. And given that Democrats would rather talk about fighting Russia in a proxy war than the looming loss of freedoms at home, it's quite telling how absolutely screwed we all are.

In fact, I think the overturn of Roe is the biggest development in the US since our invasion of Iraq. Easily, I think. One could even argue that the Dobbs decision is the most consequential bad Supreme Court decision since Ferguson (1896).

Red states are assembling agencies to spy on their citizens and to keep tabs on abortion providers in other states. Red states are putting together wish lists of what types of medicine they want to see banned. What's coming is horrifying. And no matter where you live, in any of our 50 states and 5 colonies, your life is going to become more difficult thanks to the overturn of Roe.

My argument is not an easy one to make, I admit. And I can't diminish other major US events in this century. We’ve had two stolen presidential elections (if we count George W. Bush’s 2001 inauguration as a completion of a steal that occurred at the end of the year 2000), a ruling that corporations have rights like people, and a US president who chose a violent transfer of power over a peaceful one. But one could make the case that the overturn of Roe and the failed Trump coup are directly linked. The tyranny of GOP minority rule is evident in both. The attempt to keep Trump in power failed, but the full assault of the 14th Amendment is now on. We're about to live in a nation in which legitimate medicine administered in one state is a felony homicide in another. A nation with that kind of split simply cannot stand. We're a failed state.

The GOP signaled, way back in 1994, that they were going to govern by dismantling our society and removing all liberties and protections for the poor. They were going to inflict pain and suffering for the sake of it. Reagan started it, but didn't say it out loud. Newt said it out loud. By the time we got to Ted Cruz and Trump, they weren't just saying it out loud, but they were using macho and violent marketing to motivate their voters to vote for the destruction of the US.

The GOP project to overturn Roe has been mainly a patient, focused 29 year project, starting with Bush 41’s appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Court in 1991, over objections that he was under-qualified and a serial abuser of power in the workplace. Then his son, Bush 43, appointed John Roberts in 2005 and Samuel Alito in 2006. It is notable that Alito’s confirmation vote was the closest and most controversial since Thomas. The late, great Robert Byrd was one of only two Democrat's to vote in favor of Alito, who went on to be the most bitter and mean spirited Justice in Supreme Court history. Then Donald Trump traded a solid right-wing justice, the late Anton Scalia, with three Justices selected by the Heritage Foundation. The Supreme Court transitioned from a 5-4 center-left majority in 1990 (White, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens, Kennedy) to a 6-3 right wing supermajority (Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett) by 2020. This took incredible effort, hundreds of millions of dollars, and some good fortune as both Bush 43 and Trump failed to win the popular vote in their first presidential elections.

When a minority party is aggressively attacking the majority, and taking their rights away, the majority needs to aggressively to fight back. And in my book, some violence is now justified.

I'm not saying that I am going to conspire to kill Republicans. But if say, an armed left-wing mob stormed the Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Dakota, or Nebraska State House and killed every Republican lawmaker they could find, that would be justified at this point, because a small number of Republicans are threatening the lives of millions.

Too violent? Okay, how about long occupations of those statehouses, so legislative business could not be conducted? How about a national strike in which every labor union walked out for 14 days? The damage to the economy would be swift. Hit the old men in charge where it hurts - the markets and the GDP.

In my view, only a violent revolution can save the USA. And since that is not coming, I am casually preparing to flee the USA later in life. I don't want to die in an authoritarian or autocratic regime.

Uncle Tim contributed to this post.

The Biden Presidency Is Over

The original title of this post was “The last political cycle is repeating itself, only worse.” I wrote that in June 2021. Below is the aborted text of that post:

If Joe Biden was hoping for a bi-partisan epiphany from Moscow Mitch and Cowardly Kevin, he's delusional. The Republicans are replaying 2009 and 2010 when a Republican president left a hot mess for Obama and decided they would obstruct everything  Barack needed to do to avoid a depression and begin extracting us from two unnecessary wars. And their plan worked. The stimulus needed to begin a robust recovery was far too small, and Republicans ran in 2010 on the lie that the Democrats were taking over health care and exploding the national debt.

In the 2010 off-year elections, the Democrats were crushed, losing control of the House of Representatives  for the next 8 years, getting annihilated in state legislative races, allowing the Republicans to gerrymander dozens of Congressional seats, and giving Obama an obstructionist legislature for his final six years in office. Mitch and Kev intend to do it again. And this time, if they're  successful,  they stand ready to elect a right wing president in 2024, regardless of the outcome of the vote. A majority of House Republicans voted to overturn the presidential election in 2020. If they control the House and Senate in 2024, they will surely do it again. The Democrats had to have seen this coming. They did nothing to stop it.

Republicans want to win elections when they don't have enough voters. So logically, they want to take rights away. They want to make their rich friends richer. They want to destroy the regulation regime (EPA, CDC, FDA, IRS, Department of Education, OSHA, FEMA). They want to dismantle state gun regulations (as the Court will do to New York this summer). And when leftists complain, they say, "you're being hysterical. You're in power. You're exaggerating. That little rally in he Capitol was overblown. You're making it all up." Or in the case of overturning Roe, they say, "the Court is just sending the issue back to the states." That's what you call taking away liberty from women. That is gaslighting.

It is really happening. And while I might come across as a crazy person now, we shall see where the nation stands in 2025 when President Noem or DeSantis steals an election, and the next one. And then stacks the court 7-2 or even 9-0 to the right. Sotomayor looks ready to walk and Breyer won't live much longer.

Republicans are evil. Anyone who joins their side is in for some fun in online forums, "owning the libs," or encouraging their children to murder their classmates, but it will destroy the nation in the process. And that is the bottom line. Republicans would rather burn the nation down than share power with brown people and women. That is what we are seeing. The bros and their white supremacist allies are having their final stand. It's one last party for the bros who marked keggers in their calendars.

10 months after I wrote those words, it is clear this nation is is being destroyed. The decline is noticeably fast now.

Joe Biden got his single Supreme Court pick. Joe Manchin will ensure he gets nothing more accomplished. The Biden presidency is finished.

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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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?

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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.

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.

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.

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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, 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.

It Will Get Worse Again Soon

Joe Biden didn't beat Donald Trump. No, Donald Trump beat himself. His big mouth lost him Pennsylvania and Arizona. His refusal to be decent and kind set up his defeat years ago. I'm thrilled he sunk himself. But we have to acknowledge that his loss is all on him. He had this election almost in the bag. Turns out Americans didn't care about the recession or COVID-19! They were ready to give him a full pass! But he insulted the ghost of John McCain and insulted Pennsylvania. Cocky bastard.

We’re getting another Trump. Sooner than we think. And he or she will be more competent, charismatic, and get even more votes.

As much as I want to see Harris become president after Biden, we have to acknowledge that Trump’s base is huge. If there’s a slip in enthusiasm on the Democratic side, the GOP takes back the White House easily. Or worse, if the vote is close enough, the GOP will steal the election.

We need to build a movement to keep the Democrats in power. Threatening and shouting to move to the center is not going to get that done. Glorifying and worshipping militarized police and sheriffs departments is not going to get that done. Cheering on fossil fuels for another decade won’t do it either. Another catastrophe is coming in the form of a destructive, abusing Republican president, and this time, I won’t care as much. I’ll be in my 50s and I will be well past the point of giving a shit. Good luck, kids.

Now We Have Trump To Kick Around

Donald Trump will leave the White House. We have no idea how soon or which tactic he will take. Could he just play golf every day for the next three months? Could he disappear for long stretches of time? Could he flee the nation, knowing that both new York State and the Southern District New York (SDNY) are likely preparing indictments for him and his family right now? I have made many inaccurate predictions about what will happen to Donald Trump. But it appears that Thursday, January 21, 2021 could be the worst day of his life. If I were Jay Alan Sekulow, I’d suggest fleeing the country as an option to both Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani.

Trump has been kicked around by the news media all his adult life. But starting now, he’s getting his ass kicked by the voters, and soon, some prosecutors and banks. If he thought he was “treated badly” before, he’s in for a shock. He will be kicked around for the rest of his miserable life.

In the meantime, we have what may be the most damaging remarks made by a sitting president in our history. Past presidents have done more damage through war, absolutely. But I can’t think of a president who did more damage with words than Donald Trump. His press conference on Thursday November 5 was an atomic bomb of words. It could have triggered one or more gun massacres. It could have blown up our republic. Thankfully, Trump’s followers didn’t act. They had to make dinner or help their kids with their homework, or something. They had more important things to do.

Look at that. That’s far, far worse than, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” Play that on loop at the Trump presidential library, which at this stage, will be someone’s basement game room in Nassau county or Alabama.

A presidential library? Can you imagine the grift and fraud just getting the damn thing built?

When Nixon was in his last days as president, he was drinking heavily, talking to the paintings of his predecessors hanging on the White House walls, and asking that famously religious leader, Henry Kissinger, to join him in prayer. I've always thought that Nixon's going round the bend was likely to be the record setter for presidential meltdowns. But you have to hand the crown to Trump. He's utterly, unquestionably unhinged, and I hope the Joint Chiefs are prepared for the possibility of batshit crazy orders in the next two months. It would be wonderfully, hysterically funny, if it wasn’t so dangerous.

Oh, and by the way, we're adding 100,000 new cases of a lethal virus every day in this poor, benighted country, and more than 239,000 of our fellow citizens have died. Other than that, we're doing splendidly.

Uncle Tim contributed to this post.

Trump Can't Be Smooth And Likable Like Reagan When He Dips Into White Nationalism

When Trump goes all racist and white nationalist, he can’t make it go down easy. He can’t say it with a joke or a smile. He just rants, and can’t use coded language or dog whistles. He is a racist bullhorn.

Trump is closing out his campaign by attacking Senator Kamala Harris for her ethnicity, complexion, sex and name. Grandfather Reagan would never do this. He was so much more smooth.

Remember 1980, when Reagan opened his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a town where 3 civil rights workers had been murdered by klansmen in 1964? He insisted it was merely a coincidence, and not an obvious appeal to the white racist vote in the south. After all, the incumbent president, Jimmy Carter, was from Georgia, and Reagan was counting on the southern states to get him elected. This was the same "Dutch" Reagan who incessantly spoke of a ‘welfare queen’ who drove a pink Cadillac and spent her food stamps on booze, (which is impossible because food stamps can't be used to buy alcohol). Who spoke of young, unemployed black men as "strapping young bucks" and who told Richard Nixon that African diplomats in the U.N. hadn't yet learned "how to wear shoes.”

The party of Lincoln long ago abandoned any pretense of concern for African Americans, as it pursued power by following a race based " southern strategy " Trump is just the latest, and worst, iteration of the corruption and cynicism of the Grand Old Party.

So of course this past spring, Trump chose another atrocity site to launch his campaign for reelection. It's as predictable as the sunrise. He only changed the date when enough outraged people pointed it out that his planned rally was on Juneteenth. So imagine that - a campaign launch on Juneteenth and in Tulsa. A double dose of deliberate insults and salt in our wounds that will never heal.

Trump's Enemies List Is Even More Pathetic Than Nixon's

Here’s a sample of Trump’s enemies list. It’s comedy. Richard Nixon had an enemies list, and it was drawn from politics, journalism and entertainment. Trump, who imagines himself an entertainer and showman, is furious that most people in show business despise him. His feelings were badly hurt that not one actor, singer or musician from the "A list" appeared at his inauguration.

Trump’s attempt at an enemies list reminds me of Marx's famous remark that, "history repeats itself, first as tragedy, and second as farce".