Columns

The Loser in the White House

Back in November 2020—two months before his second impeachment—Donald Trump became the target for an astonishing blast of verbal vitriol from Down Under. An Aussie writer who goes by the name "Grumpy Geezer" produced a beyond-scathing, bum-whupping, verbal take-down of Trump, using "the language of Shakespeare" to roast King Don on the griddle of adjectival excoriation.

As Trump reluctantly prepares for his last day in the White House, this flamboyant grilling of the Orange Lobster of Mar-a-Lago begs to be read aloud. Here's a sampling. The full article can be read here. 

No grace, no dignity, no humility, no magnanimity, no class, no morals, no empathy, no soul. He has no friends, not even a dog. 

His wife can’t bear his touch, his daughter can’t avoid it.  

Devoid of humour, he doesn’t make jokes, he doesn’t laugh. Not ever. An occasional dismal rictus, a necrotic gash in his ochre-lacquered face-bladder signifies nothing more than his satisfaction in transacting failing with no compensating virtues. A craven coward. A sociopath. A serial rapist. A racist. A quisling. An opportunistic grifter. An inveterate cheat. A deceitful toad. A chronic liar. A shameless braggart. An ignoramus who lacks curiosity. He doesn’t read, he doesn’t care . . . . 

Rake the forests, nuke the hurricanes, inject the bleach, water bomb Notre Dame Cathedral, trade Greenland for Puerto Rico. Trump’s pompous idiocies are exceeded only by his appalling ignorance. Crediting the British with the foresight to build airstrips in the War of Independence (110 years before the Wright Brothers first took flight), revealing the hitherto unknown Himalayan countries of Nipple and Button, accusing Baltic leaders of starting Balkans wars! . . .  

It’s beyond our imagining that we’d ever have a bloated braggart, a liar, a hypocrite, a lazy shirker, a crony-stacking blame shifter at the helm filtering Murdoch’s kidney stones through his teeth . . . . 

After 4 years of what-the-fuck-has-he-done-now, 46,123 tweets and 20,000 documented lies while in office to 9th July 2020 he’s been reduced to pathetic whimperings from his puckered-sphincter pout, playing his invisible accordion to an audience of gormless dullards, fellow hucksters and his retinue of fawning toadies, thralls, invertebrate lickspittles and hangers-on . . . . 

Trump's Invisible Accordian Made Visible 

Karmic Strips 

Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau scored a hit and a miss with his January 10 Sunday comic strip. The strip, which was submitted before the Capitol riots, showed Trump cheating at golf with his hands covered in blood. (Trudeau made a pledge last month to portray Trump with blood-stained hands until the end of his presidency.) If the blood dripping from Trump's fingers was eerily prophetic, Trudeau scored a miss when his golfing companion observes it's "a bit unseasonable for golf" and Trump replies: "What else is there to DO now but golf and tweet?" Not even Trudeau could see Trump's Twitter-ban coming. 

Nit-picking note: The foregoing paragraph contains an error. In Trudeau's Sunday strip, the word "unseasonable" is hyphenated as "un-seasonable"—as is a sentence that reads, "I need a new dis-traction…." 

What's up? No other comic strip hyphenates. Some adjacent Sunday strips managed to cram up to 48 words into their word balloons without hyphenating a single verb, noun or adjective. 

The Race for 2022 

One of the upsides expected to follow the end of an election year is supposed to be a welcomed end to political campaign solicitations. No longer. This year desperate cries for money to save the Georgia runoffs continued to appear in Democrat email boxes well after the Ossof-Warnock victory had broken Mitch McConnell's GOP-block in the Senate. 

On January 7, Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) fired off a fundraising letter announcing "I'm not wasting one second in making it official. I'm running for re-election." The letter went on to ask for "a donation today of $50 or more." 

Kudos, then, to Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) who did something unusual: she mailed a postcard to supporters thanking them for funding her successful campaign. And she didn't ask for any additional contributions. 

There's something else that's bothersome: The flood of emails rightly accusing members of the GOP of threatening democracy by catering to the greed of the oligarchy only to have the righteous indignation (from heroes like Adam Schiff and Barbara Lee) undermined by an invitation to "Sign a Petition" that immediately links to a page asking for financial donations. 

Memorable Head-hunting Headlines 

From the Huffington Post—posted after the huffing-and-puffing surrounding the January 6 invasion of the Capitol Building—a headline that read: 

"GOP Rep. Madison Cawthorn Was Armed With Gun During Insurrection He Helped Incite." 

While it's illegal to carry weapons around in the District of Columbia, Cawthorn gets a pass thanks to "the rights afforded to him as a member of Congress." Still, the rules of Congress are supposed to deny him the "right" to carry a pistol or rifle while in the House chamber. However, it looks like Cawthorn fudged that restriction. As he boasted to the Smoky Mountain News, the day after lawmakers were forced into hiding by a hoard of lawbreakers swinging zip-ties and nooses: "Fortunately, I was armed, so we would have been able to protect ourselves." 

It seems Cawthorn's concern about "protecting ourselves" doesn't extend to "protecting others." According to the Asheville Citizen, the North Carolina Congressmember told a local crowd "There is a new Republican Party on the rise . . . that will go and fight in Washington." Even more troubling, in December, Cawthorn encouraged his followers to "Call your congressman and feel free, you can lightly threaten them and say . . . 'If you don't start supporting election integrity [i.e. insisting that Trump won the last election], I'm coming after you." 

Lauren Boebert: Keep Your Eyes on the Glock 

Colorado's newly minted Congressmember Lauren Boebert is a gun-loving agitator from the town of Rifle who rose to right-wing fame by running an "open-carry" restaurant where both diners and wait-staff enjoy the dining experience while wearing pistols strapped to their hips. Boebert has expressed her eagerness to show up for elected duty wearing her Glock at the US Capitol. During the right-wing takeover of the Capitol building (during which, one demonstrator was heard boasting that he was looking to "put a bullet in [Nancy Pelosi's] noggin"), Boebert used social media to live-stream House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's location inside the Capitol building while armed thugs were searching the chambers looking to take politicians hostage. 

According to Denver's 9News TV, Boebert has accused Democrats of spawning most of the violence in America, "specifically pointing to Madonna, Johnny Depp, and Robert DeNiro." 

According to a provocatively worded report from the Denver Channel, Boebert "wants to be able to carry her Glock at the US Capitol. She's already taking aim at some of the politicians she'll join there, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one of her favorite targets." [Emphasis added.] 

Back on November 28, Boebert fired off a tweet asking Time magazine if it was planning to feature AOC on its cover for "Communist of the Year." 

The Name of the Game 

A January 13 note from Berkeley Agitator-Emeritus Arnie Passman bemoaned: "This violence in the Nation's capitol over not knowing what the new nickname of the Washington football team will be is unacceptable." 

AP's suggested a new team name: "The Washington Washtubs" 

My suggestion: "The Washington Supremacists" 

It's Not Easy Being Prez 

According to CBS correspondent John Dickerson (whose new book on the history of the American presidency, is titled "The Hardest Job in the World") Founding Dad Benjamin Franklin didn't much like the idea of a president to rule over the new country. Instead, he recommended a committee of trusted individuals to rule as a collective. Ben figured that would prevent the risk of any single individual becoming a tyrant. 

Dickenson's book also shares Bill Clinton's memory of his first order of business the morning following his inauguration. That's the moment when the Pentagon takes the new Leader of the Free World aside for a special "lesson on how to launch nuclear weapons." As Clinton remarked after leaving his personal introduction to DIY Apocalypse: "I left Blair House with my eagerness tempered by humility." 

"Humility"? How about "abject horror"? 

Honest, Abe? 

In the run-up to the assault on the Capitol building, an eager enlistee using the hashtags #1776Rebel and #OccupyCapitols, sent an email headlined "Operation Occupy the Capitol" that announced he would be among a group intent on "Taking back our country from corrupt politicians. January 6, all 50 states at noon." And the call to action included this quote: "We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution." This wasn't a Proud Boys quote. These words were penned by . . . Abraham Lincoln. In the 1859 letter in which those words appeared, Lincoln also noted: "We must prevent the revival of the African slave trade," however, “We must not disturb slavery in the states where it exists . . . ." 

And then there's Thomas Jefferson's November 1787 letter from Paris in which he wrote: "[W]hat country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure." 

Hardly comforting words in these dire and trying times. 

Invoke the 25^th Amendment 

The Founders Sing