Meme o' the day

Good Times at Pottersville

The Third Rail

     One of my earliest memories was when my family and I lived in what was then West Germany. It was either during or just after the Kennedy administration and we lived on or adjacent to land owned by a blind German farmer. My father had just gotten a Doberman puppy we named King and King, let's say, had a mind of his own.      

     This particular memory was the aftermath of something that King had done. This blind farmer raised white rabbits that, for some reason, he never kept in a warren and instead allowed to run around free. One day, King ran into his property and slaughtered and ate every single rabbit in his yard. My memory is of my father putting an endless series of deutsche marks into the farmer's open palm by way of compensation that took place in this open field of bloody, still, white clumps of fur.      

     I seem to recall that King wasn't quite fully grown so he couldn't have been a year-old. But my father had a great love for that dog. He trained him to be a watchdog (as opposed to an attack dog) but he never seemed to seriously entertain the option of obedience training. When we left West Germany and moved to Tampa, Florida in the spring of 1965, my father continued letting King run around the neighborhood loose and he'd come home at the crack of dawn reeking of other peoples' garbage.      

     At no time did my father discipline him or mistreat him in any way. Yes, he could have put King in for obedience training or rehomed him but he didn't. We were dog lovers, all of us, and we accepted King's flaws. He did a wonderful job protecting our family and property and he more than earned his place in our family.      

     I began thinking of King's mass murder of that blind farmer's lagomorphs when I read what South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem had written in her upcoming Vice Presidential audition script carefully disguised as an autobiography. At one point, she'd written,       

     “I hated that dog... she was dangerous to anyone she came in contact with... less than worthless … as a hunting dog. (She went) out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life. (Cricket) grabbed one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another... (like) a trained assassin. (She) whipped around to bite me... At that moment, I realized I had to put her down.” 

     The Guardian goes on: "Noem said she retrieved her gun and led Cricket to a gravel pit. 'It was not a pleasant job, but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.' She then recounts how she killed one of her family's goats, a 'nasty and mean' male that had not been castrated, by dragging him to the gravel pit, and afterward she realized a nearby construction crew had watched her slaughter both animals before her children were dropped off by a school bus. 'Kennedy looked around confused,' Noem wrote, describing her daughter's reaction. “Hey, where’s Cricket?'” 'I guess if I were a better politician,' she added, 'I wouldn’t tell the story here'.”

     Noem obviously is not a better politician any more than she was any good at animal husbandry. Of course, being the typical, rigid-minded Nazi she is, she took to social media when passages from her book came out to double down and she had this to say on Twitter:

     "The fact is, South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down. Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did. Whether running the ranch or in politics, I have never passed on my responsibilities to anyone else to handle. Even if it’s hard and painful. I followed the law and was being a responsible parent, dog owner, and neighbor. As I explained in the book, it wasn't easy. But often the easy way isn't the right way."      

     And often, the legal way isn't always the right way, either. Or humane. (And, considering her scandals of late, Noem claiming to know the law is highly suspect, at best).

     The mystery is why Noem thought it was a good idea to put this horrible anecdote in her book, to begin with. And how come her publisher didn't flag it and demand it be removed?

     As stated, the prevailing opinion is that Noem's autobiography is nothing more or less than a bloated job application to be Trump's running mate. Perhaps Noem is all too aware of Trump's hatred of dogs (a hatred that's reciprocal, to say the least.). Perhaps, as a CNN panel theorized, Noem thought putting this horrific story in her book was a surefire way of getting on Trump's good side.

     What she doesn't seem to understand is that Trump is the ultimate weather vane. If being attached to somebody who's even momentarily radioactive hurts him in any way, shape and form, Trump will drop them like a 300 degree turd.

     And part of the reason for the backlash isn't just the story itself but how she'd told it. "I hated that dog". Then she admitted shooting the poor creature in the face. This wasn't a merciful act of euthanasia as she's now trying to paint it. It was an openly sadistic act of rage. The dog wasn't serving its purpose so it got summary execution. Shooting a person or animal in the face betrays loathing, a deep-seated hatred that most of us never feel. It wasn't enough to murder the pooch for not being of use to her- She wanted it to suffer in its final moments. To slightly paraphrase Adam Serwer, "the cruelty was the point."

     And shooting and abusing dogs is apparently one of the very last third rails that's still capable of eliciting a strong emotional reaction from those across the political spectrum. Now, it would be fallacious to say that all Republicans hate dogs. I'm sure there are quite a few of them who love their dogs as much and as unconditionally as liberals love theirs (Like Joe Concha but more on him in a minute).

     But it can't be argued that, while not all Republicans hate dogs, it seems those in public service who profess a hatred of them tend to be exclusively Republicans. We still not so fondly remember the Mitt Romney/Seamus incident or Mike Huckabee's son killing a dog. Then there was Rick Perry's candid admission that he'd once shot a coyote.

     This is part and parcel to the paranoid, right wing mindset- If they perceive danger, shoot and ask questions later.

     But, again, if Noem thought admitting shooting her pup in the face, followed by a goat, was going to earn brownie points with Trump, she's got another think coming. Trump watches everything on Fox and I'm sure he was listening when Joe Concha just today said on Fox Business, "This story, Ashley, as a dog owner my whole life, absolutely makes my blood boil on two levels,. How utterly heartless do you have to be to shoot a 14-month-old dog in the face? I can guarantee you many people would have raised their hand to take that dog in. You just don't go ahead and murder it." 

     For good measure, Noem was also raked over the coals seconds later by former congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah): "I give her an A+ for being honest about it. But she just destroyed her political career."

      I think Chaffetz just wrote her political obituary: "Kristi Noem: She flew too close to the sun and fell on the ash heap of obscurity. Or gravel pit, as it were."

"A Horrible Brainless Empire"

 

"It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself. The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can’t win, and yet that he somehow deserves to. The attraction of such a pose is of course enormous..." -George Orwell. review of Mein Kampf, The New English Weekly, March 21, 1940 

     A little over 74 years ago, Eric Blair, more popularly known as George Orwell, wrote a review of Hitler's Mein Kampf. The book had already been out for 15 years but Orwell was reviewing the 1939 edition brought out by British publishers, Hurst and Blackett. As Orwell wrote in his review, Hurst and Blackett introduced the translated book to British readers with a decidedly pro-Hitler bent. They'd even pledged that all proceeds to the book were to be donated to the Red Cross in order to make Hitler seems less dangerous and demagogic than he actually was.

     But Orwell, as you can expect, wasn't fooled. His review of Mein Kampf, of course, wasn't a book review as much as it was a quasi psychological explication of Hitler's motives for advancing his ideas. In Orwell's view, it was all based on personal grievance, a twisted notion of nationalism that somehow was metamorphosed into actual patriotism. And it was all powered by Hitler's personal charisma.

     Keep in mind, Orwell's review was written less than six months before the London Blitz that had begun on September 7, 1940. And there was a major event that had occurred between Hurst and Blackett's translated edition and Orwell's review: Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, which, of course, touched off WWII.

     Early in his review, Orwell had written, "When one compares his utterances of a year or so ago with those made fifteen years earlier, a thing that strikes one is the rigidity of his mind, the way in which his world-view doesn’t develop. It is the fixed vision of a monomaniac and not likely to be much affected by the temporary manoeuvres of power politics."

     That's a ready-made segue into, yes, yet another comparison between Hitler and Donald Trump. If these comparisons are getting wearisome and perhaps even less relevant than ever, please keep in mind that Trump himself invites these comparisons, parallels that the perspicacious would do well to not ignore.

     As Orwell said, the English ruling class, the property owners, industrialists and even the aristocracy had by the time of Poland's invasion had begun slowly crawling away from their previous support of Hitler. Their German counterparts were grateful to him for crushing the German labor movement. Little else if anything mattered to them as long as Hitler represented an immovable bulwark between them and Socialism. Socialism represented, to the property class, the most horrifying nightmare imaginable. And, just to play Devil's advocate, Stalin's own nightmarish vision for Communist Russia made this perception more than plausible.

     Since the birth of our nation 250 years ago with the formation of the first Continental Congress, democracy and capitalism had formed an uneasy and theoretically incompatible alliance that never should have succeeded as long as it has (depending on one's rubric for "success".). 

     Capitalism, of course, is a system in which a handful of the wealthy get to decide what wages their employees need for basic sustenance. It's a system in which power flows from the top down in a reprise of the pre-guild feudal ages of Europe. Democracy, on the other hand, represents the opposite: It's a system in which the power flows from bottom to top in which the power of the governing class comes, theoretically, from the consent of the governed.

     Hitler plainly wasn't interested in any of that and obviously not is Trump. And the simple fact is, neither Hitler nor Trump would've gotten as far as they had without the willing complicity of a supine press. The tragic part is, Hitler completely subsumed the German press and stuffed the newspapers and radio station with his own ideologues. Here in the US, the support is willingly given even though the American mainstream media still like to cling to the illusion that they're "the watchdog of democracy."

     But how can a press can be a watchdog of democracy when literally 100% of the mainstream media is owned by fewer than a half dozen corporations who are antithetical to the very concept of a democratic republic?

     Look at Arthur Sulzberger's diatribe about Biden's refusal to sit down for an interview with the NY Times. It was posted, not on the pages of the Times, but the paper's official blog. Sulzberger's Times has devoted more ink and space to Joe Biden's age than it has to Trump's. It's obvious Sulzberger and his people are just trying to trap Biden into a Gotcha moment. The irony is that, unlike Biden, Trump has insulted the Times at every opportunity.

     And the MSM's failing, as we see this with virtually every other Republican administration, is failing to recognize Trump for the danger that he is or at least represents. No matter how many times the snake bites them, they can't stop approaching it to pet it. Aside from the media's obsession with access, this lack of self respect and journalistic integrity makes no sense.

     But an uncritical press that pledges to never speak truth to power is exactly what power wants, especially if it's a totalitarian regime. The media know damned good and well about Project 2025, the nakedly neo Nazi agenda that's single-mindedly obsessed with stuffing the US government with over 100,000 ideologues if Trump gets back in the White House. It's beyond ironic that their agenda is remarkably similar to what Hitler did 80 years ago in Germany because Hitler's template for national domination was probably their inspiration.

     And yet, the MSM still treat Trump as if he's merely an alternative to Biden, just another presidential candidate, just a harmless presumptive nominee.

     He is not.

     This is why I said Trump is both a danger and a danger in what he represents. When Orwell wrote his review in 1940, Hitler was still not quite 51. Trump is 77, four years past the average life expectancy of an American male. After his time is over. there will be others like him, younger men not hobbled with incipient dementia, more energetic men who won't lounge in bed until 12 noon. Men who know how to use the levers of power.

     Will the MSM finally stand up and oppose them? I think we can be forgiven for our pessimism.

     Post WWII Germany wasn't merely suppressed as post WWI Germany was through the Treaty of Versailles. The creation of NATO in 1948 that prevented another threat like Nazi Germany, the introduction of democracy, military checks and balances, the deNazification programs managed by the Allies and the reinstatement of a free German press are some of the factors that led Germany to see the light, Yes, there's still a fascist movement in Germany in the form of the Afp but they're little more than a rump movement.

     Will the United States have the power and resolve to turn against the dangers of this "horrible brainless empire" promised by Trump that it's even now still courting? Again, I hope we will be forgiven for our pessimism.

Pottersville Digest

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    And they're acting all butt hurt over discovering their sainted GOP is full of a bunch of lazy, incompetent fuck weasels who would listen with rapt attention to a lobbyist before any of them any day.

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     This asshole's sense of entitlement is breathtaking. If and when he goes to prison, he'll be getting shit on a shingle like every other prisoner. He wants his floors clean? Give the man a mop. Then he'll have complete control over that.

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     Yeah, yeah, "weaponization of our government", ho hum. Shut up and go to prison.

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     I wouldn't be surprised if Noem's book also contains admissions of fire-setting and bed-wetting. It would explain a good many things.

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    "DiGiovanni was identified for his likeness but also for sporting a jacket bearing the name of his construction business: 'DiGiovanni and Sons Construction'."

     Can you imagine how dangerous these people would be if they actually had brains?

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    If it wasn't for Lara Trump, I would've lived my whole life thinking we had just 50 states instead of 81. Now, if she'd tell me what the other 31 were, I'd be grateful.

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     Meshawn Mattock's greatest accomplishment in her life is in color-coordinating her nail polish with her tee shirts.

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    Well, well, look who filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection: The Gateway Putz, aka "the stupidest man on the internet." Of course, to listen to him, it's the "liberal media's" fault he lost half his traffic in one year.

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     Infographic intermission.

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     Lara Trump just boasted on right wing TV that the RNC will "physically" get its grubby paws on all the ballots. Fuck you, you will, you Nazi bitch.

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     Keep in mind, this is the same network that wanted Clinton impeached over a blow job.

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     No, the process is not the punishment. Jail time is the punishment. This is just the beginning.

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     Kari Lake, a weather vane for all occasions.

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     If the damned Senate had done its job during either impeachment and convicted him as they should have, this wouldn't be an issue. He would've been denied his detail and he wouldn't be allowed to run for office. You have Republican scum to thank for this.

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     Passing these sadistic ordinances is the only response the right wing has. They still don't get that moving the homeless from place to place like they're a pile of trash or briefly putting them in jail doesn't alleviate the problem of homelessness because they don't want to fix the problem. That's because Republicans by and large are sociopaths who are more interested in inflicting cruelty on the underserved than in pursuing actual solutions.

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     I suspect the aptly-named Charlie Spies got his law license in a Rotary Club raffle. And finally...

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     I think Trump just found his next legal genius.

"Mad, bad and dangerous to know."

 (By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." - Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers

It's one of those phrases that's been passed down in literary posterity. It was coined by Lady Caroline Lamb, the English novelist, and described the sixth Baron Byron, more popularly known as Lord Byron the Romantic poet. Lamb had had an extramarital affair with Byron in 1812 as we can assume she knew of what and whom she was speaking. Today, it lives out its posterity as one of those aphorisms that eviscerates its subject with a surgical use of a few spare words. Virtually all of its original punch has been leeched of its original power because Lord Byron died exactly 200 years ago on the 19th. Ergo, there's no one around to testify as to whether Caroline Lamb's appraisal was accurate or not. But there's no rule that says a good aphorism or insult can't be repurposed to fit more contemporary figures.

     Like Donald Trump, for instance.

    As far as recycled aphorisms go, we've, understandably, also seen this quote from the aforementioned Alexander Hamilton:

     "When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may 'ride the storm and direct the whirlwind'."

     Except, this is no directed whirlwind of anarchy but criminal court in Manhattan and the court is run by a judge named Juan Merchan who doesn't take shit from anyone. Not even "former presidents" incapable of understanding that he, too, is subject to the laws of the land and the fact that he's running for an office he never legitimately won does not inoculate him from legal comeuppance. During every trial both criminal and civil, Trump looks and acts like a seven year-old boy forced to go bra shopping with his mother.

     And, after just two weeks in court, for which he must appear or risk jail, Trump's worst character defects are magnified under the media microscope. As with his civil trial in the E. Jean Carroll and civil fraud cases, Trump has to settle for inveighing about his woes not to thousands of supporters who have entirely avoided the courthouse but to a handful of reporters waiting outside the courtroom.

     So, let's re-examine exactly how Trump is "mad, bad and dangerous to know."

Mad

Leave it to Trump to never let a single opportunity go to waste to try to wring sympathy out of anyone. This is why, since the Carroll trial, Trump had taken to randomly look right into the lens of any camera in the courtroom (and he always knows, with preternatural awareness, where they all are) so he can look into it with this put-upon "O woe is me!" face to show the American public about the torture to which this poor man is subjected.

     But once he walks outside the courtroom to hold his shrunken little rallies, he's a different person. There's no vulnerability, no hurt expression and, despite gag orders, he inveighs against anyone and everyone he perceives as victimizing him. Leona Helmsley, who's appropriately buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery,. once infamously said, "Taxes are for little people." Trump plainly feels the same way about the criminal justice system, that justice and legal comeuppance are only for the little people, especially if they're Democrats. Those people tend to be those who wound up in prison doing his bidding so he could keep his short fingers clean.

    But whether he's whining about the civil fraud case brought by Letitia James, the E. Jean Carroll defamation/rape trial, the documents case in Florida that, thanks to Aileen Cannon has gone nowhere at warp speed, the January 6 trial in Washington or the current hush money trial, Trump throws up a dizzying array of rationales as to why he shouldn't be at court, how he's not guilty, at how the bond laws don't apply to him or even why his supporters haven't shown up to commit mayhem on his behalf.

     He's going crazy because one prosecutor and judge after another is telling him what he can and can't do. And Trump has shown time and again that he doesn't thrive in environments that he can't control and that just makes him thrash around like a dying dinosaur. And his deepening dementia is no doubt exacerbated by his inability to sleep at night, which just makes his emerging psychosis even worse.

    There's also CNN's excellent analysis of how Trump's behavior has of late been "untethered to reality." To hear him talk, he's fighting the dragon of St. George, the lion of Hercules and the Kraken all at the same time. But the plain fact is, even though cameras are not allowed in the courtroom during the proceedings, eyewitnesses tell us he's nodding off. The one time he showed any actual defiance, Trump stood up and was ordered to take a seat by Judge Merchan.

     He also claims the NYPD is keeping his vast army of supporters away from the courthouse but file footage in the media shows traffic flowing freely around the courthouse. Maggie Haberman of the NY Times said there are no supporters because they're simply not showing up, a fact that resulted, of course, in Trump coining an idiotic nickname for her: Maggot Hagerman.

     The list goes on and on but I think you get the gist. At this point in every other household, the family would take the car keys away from him and maybe lock up the liquor cabinet for good measure.

Bad

 

Donald loves it when people go to prison for him. God forbid he should ever go away but, beyond that, Trump looks at people who go to prison for him as the ultimate loyalists. Many people have gone to prison for Trump and I'm not even including the J6 rioters but those in his inner circle. It's a quality prized in a subsection of American society- Organized crime.

      It's mystifying to me why so many people are willing to go to prison for Trump. His former CFO, Alan Weisselberg, is doing a second stretch in Rikers because he lied to investigators. Michael Cohen did three years in Otisville for committing crimes for Trump. Six years ago, George Papadopoulos spent 12 days in prison for Trump. Paul Manafort spent even more time in prison and he's the guy who knew where all the bodies were buried as far as the 2016 campaign's collusion with Russia was concerned. Steve Bannon is still running around free, at least inasfar as Bannon is capable of running.

     Trump wound up pardoning Manafort before he opened his big mouth. Same thing that same night with slope-headed, right wing rat fucker Roger Stone who was pardoned by Trump (It didn't hurt his chances that Stone released to the media something like, "Gee, it sure would be a shame if they forced me to sing like a canary...").

     And however many people who have already gone to prison for Trump, there will be others. As of now, Weisselberg and Peter Navarro are cooling their heels in prison. Now that Arizona has issued indictments in the fake elector scheme, we're likely to see more sanctions, disbarments and maybe even jail time. One of the most stunning falls from grace concern Trump's onetime lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Christina Bobb, and Boris Epshteyn. Add to that not so august list Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, Alina Habba and other assorted assholes, and you're seeing once-respected lawyers who willingly sacrificed their legal credibility on Trump's semen-spattered altar of selfishness.

     Some, like Michael Cohen, have already been disbarred or suspended and the only thing keeping Cohen safe from late night talk show fodder is the fact that he became one of Trump's biggest enemies and testified against him in Congress and what will surely be at least two criminal and civil trials. Giuliani's already gotten hit with a nearly $150,000,000 judgment for maligning two innocent poll workers in Georgia (He still insists they're guilty).

     And yet these idiots keep coming back for more in service to a guy who doesn't give a shit if they live or die. What keeps these aforementioned idiots in line is Trump's promise that he'll pardon them, which is what he's promised his body man, Walt Nauta, who's front and center in the documents case. Go down for me and I'll take care of you, is what he tells them, which is a very mafioso thing to say.

Dangerous to Know?

Despite his narcoleptic presence in Juan Merchan's courtroom, Trump is really a flared cobra in a basket that no one can seem to charm. But the more we see of Trump in courtrooms, especially when he has to be yelled at by judges refusing to put up with his puerile behavior, the more we get the impression that somewhere along the way, the cobra has been neatly defanged.

     Trump is still dangerous, don't get me wrong. After all, one of his followers shot up the Cincinnati FBI field office before he himself was gunned down. And, of course, there was January 6, 2021. But January 6, like September 11, was a singular moment in US history that's unlikely to be reprised. Not impossible but highly unlikely.

    Now, history teaches us power is acquired in three ways: It can be legitimately earned, it can be seized by force or it can be willingly conferred by others.

    Trump never legitimately earned power. Then, when the 2020 election didn't break his way, he had an epic, years-long shit fit and tried to seize it. Nowadays, the only power he has is that conferred on him by a supine Republican party that is at turns scared of him and, as with the Russians, cynically using him as a useful idiot who will help them achieve their goals.

     And Donald Trump is the only "ex president" who ever used mob rule or the threat of it to get his way. He's already said if and when he loses the 2024 election, it'll be a "bloodbath." And the people who give him what he wants, like the RNC in electing his Nazi daughter in law Lara as its co-chair or House Republicans who scuttled a broadly bipartisan border bill just because Trump told them to are simply giving him power he doesn't deserve.

     But it's obvious the crazies just aren't coming out for him any more. They're nowhere to be seen outside the courthouses at which he's being tried. They're certainly not in the courthouse where he lumbers out to deliver his piss and moan sessions (I don't think I'm the only one who fantasizes about him coming out and seeing no reporters waiting for him).

   What we're seeing, instead, is an aging Samson shorn of his locks, We're seeing a weirdly emasculated former Titan reduced to courthouse and Truth Social rants that change nothing, a petulant manchild forced to sit down by Judge Merchan when he inevitably begins acting out. What we're seeing is a man who controls no law enforcement, no military, nothing but a disaffected and disconnected mob of malcontents who are braver behind a keyboard than they are in the real world.

     What we're seeing, people, is an emperor that not only has no clothes but no Praetorian Guard.

Good Times at Pottersville

RIP, Dickey Betts

     I began writing my novel, American Zen, about 16 years ago. Before I'd finished the first draft, I came upon the idea that I'd assemble a soundtrack for the album, something few novelists have even attempted to this day. One of the major tracks that best captures the essence of my bildungsroman novel of a rock group in 1978 desperately attempting one more bid for glory was "Jessica" by the Allman Brothers. It was the last song that this fictional band, The Immortals, was to play at their final gig in November, 1978 before their front man announced a solo record deal. Obviously, the band never played "Jessica".

      During their improbable reunion 30 years later, they go back to the same venue and meet the leader of an all girl group led by their late front man's daughter. They complete their final gig by playing "Jessica" with the girls before heading home.

      "Jessica" was written by Dickey Betts and it was composed to be played with two fingers on the left hand as an homage to French guitarist Django Reinhardt. "Jessica", in my mind, is one of the most brilliant rock instrumentals ever written and it became sort of the anthem for my novel, American Zen.

      Dickey Betts died today at the age of 80 and the world of rock and roll is poorer for it. RIP, Dickey.

Good Times at Pottersville

 

Good Times at Pottersville

The Second Gettysburg Address

 

(By Donald J. Trump, aspiring dictator)

     The sleazebags in the liberal media like MSDNC have been making fun of my perfect speech about Gettysburg. So, I, your favorite president, the 45th and 47th, have decided to write my own Gettysburg Address.

     There were many fine people on both sides and, unfortunately, the wrong people won. But it was a historic day five scores and 11 years ago in the war of northern aggression. The confederates were about to take control of the airports until the other guys stopped them.

     People say that up to 28,000 people were killed during those three days but don't believe that for a New York minute, people. There was a lot of love on that battlefield that day and guys were kissing each other. Personally, that's not my thing but that's what I hear they were doing, I dunno.

     And all the southerners wanted to do was to watch The Apprentice, the greatest show in the history of television, but the blue meanies wouldn't let them have TVs. People come up to me all the time and say, "Sir, the moment you fired Omorosa on The Apprentice was the most beautiful moment of my life."

     Anyway, the Battle of Gettysburg was fought not too far from the Capitol of Philadelphia. It's a town that I won by a lot in 2016 and by a lot more in 2020 and you can't tell me Crooked Biden won his home state. I won by a lot, OK?

     And, for just $9.99 extra, I'll throw in a printed copy of this address along with my Bible that you can get for the low, low price of $59.99. MAGA!

Good Times at Pottersville: End of the World edition

Light Dawns on Marblehead

     It was over three years ago, asshat.

This is How a Party Devolves

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari, with a

tip o' the tinfoil hat to Constant Reader, CC)

It's ironic, if not outright impossible to believe, that Donald Trump's life could be characterized as calm. Trump's been called a lot of things in his life but calmness has never been associated with it. Yet, that's precisely what we're seeing despite the political and legal headwinds at this final phase of his life. It's the calm before the storm.

     The reason I say this is because right now Trump is enjoying nearly universal support from ultra right wing Republicans. More and more of them are even saying the quiet part out loud and calling for a repeal to the 22nd amendment that limits presidents to two terms.

     Republicans are perfectly OK with moving the goal posts when it suits them. When they have the majority in the Senate, they have no problem whatsoever in nuking the filibuster and denying the minority party a voice. When there's a Democratic governor in power, Republicans will move to strip that governor of his or her powers, such as what we've seen recently in Kentucky (Funny how Kentucky always seems to be at the epicenter of this right wing white-boarding). Then, when political conditions favor them again, they then move the goalposts forward.

     But with this emerging movement to get Trump a third term when he hasn't even come close to winning in '24, we're seeing the right wing's loathing for democracy and sheer ignorance of basic facts. First of all, you cannot get rid of a Constitutional amendment the minute it momentarily becomes inconvenient to your agenda. That would be problematic at best even in the wake of, God help us, a Constitutional Convention.

     Trying to get Trump a third term blithely ignores the fact that, statistically-speaking, he's already well past the end of his life span, which, as of last year, fell to 73 years. Considering his unhealthy lifestyle, it's a medical miracle Trump's still standing, albeit with a bizarre fronto-temporal forward tilt. It's impossible to see how anyone representing the apex of human evolution see many more years of life for this bloated fascist who gorges himself on hamburgers, fries and Diet Cokes. Plus, even if Trump lives into his 80s, only a blithering idiot would think his cognitive decline will arrest itself or get better. It's just a matter of time before Trump will make a public appearance sans pants.

     So, what will transpire when the inevitable happens and Trump is turned into a 300 pound pile of compost occupying the back nine of Mar a Lago?

     Well, one doesn't need to be a political scientist to know what will happen. But before I go into it, let me tell you about a video I once saw on the internet a long time ago.

     It was a dead water buffalo lying in a shallow river. The animal's body was unnaturally moving because its carcass was being hollowed out by scores of piranha furiously feeding on its innards.

    This is precisely what MAGA has long since done to the Republican Party. We've gotten so accustomed to the idea of Neo Nazis and white nationalists completely subsuming a major political party that it's hardly shocking anymore. It's now a party that, through a bizarre alchemy, turned Liz Cheney into a voice of reason within the conservative movement. And Liz Cheney was no centrist like, say, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. This is a woman who'd voted with Trump 93% of the time... until January 6th.

 

"But wait! There's more crazy!"

But Cheney's apostasy, which was completely based on the January 6, 2021 insurrection, cost her her political career. She was thrown out of the Republican conference chair then was humiliated in 2022 by losing her Republican primary to a wild-eyed lunatic named Harriet Hageman, who is what the local church lady would look like after an unsuccessful regimen of Haldol suppositories.

    Almost all of the 10 House Republicans (including Cheney) who'd voted to impeach Trump the second time are now out of Congress. Some got hounded out, others lost primaries or elections. Since then, we've seen the retirements of dozens of Republicans, most notably Ken Buck of CO-4 and Mike Gallagher of WI-8. When Gallagher leaves, that'll shrink the Republican majority to one. It's like an Agatha Christie novel only with AR15 lapel pins.

     So, I think it's safe to say the GOP is the hollowed-out water buffalo stuffed with piranhas.

     Don't believe me? Ask Marjorie Taylor-Greene how things are going in the Freedom Caucus.

    But Marjorie Taylor-Greene was no victim. This is the latter-day Republican Party we're talking about. There are no victims, except in a mutually inclusive sort of way that depends on a torturous redefinition of the word. Time and again, we see and hear stories of disparate factions of the far right movement tearing each other to pieces when they realize there are differences in ideology.

     To revisit the movement to overturn the 22nd Amendment and keep Trump power for life, MAGA betrays its short-sightedness in hitching their wagon to an incipiently demented con man and grifter statistically past the end of his life span. But what happens when Trump finally shuffles off this mortal coil?

     What will result will be the largest and most vicious Nazi power struggle this planet has ever seen.

     We never saw it at the end of WWII because the end came so swiftly. Seeing the end was near, Nazi leaders like Himmler and Goering approached the Allied powers with peace deals that prompted Hitler to issue arrest warrants for them just before he ate a bullet and a cyanide capsule. Himmler mysteriously died in British custody and Goering committed suicide literally hours before his execution after the Nuremberg trials.

     They did turn on each other, sure, but because the Allied powers moved so swiftly and because the major figures died so quickly, we never saw what would have been a long, protracted power struggle after Hitler's suicide. And when you practically predicate an ideology on hatred and intolerance, it's inevitable that when the Dear Leader dies, there will be a power vacuum then a power struggle. And when Trump is finally gone from the picture, psychopaths-in-waiting will seek to inherit or steal that mantle outright.

     It will be, well, a fascist bloodbath the likes of which the world has never seen and it will, ironically, be staged in the nation that did more to end fascism in Europe than any other. And considering how thoroughly MAGA has occupied the GOP, it only stands to reason that, when MAGA falls, the GOP will fall with it. To hope for another outcome would be like trying to separate the Titanic from the 1500+ souls that went down with it.

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