Month: November 2020

The American

“The only way we can lose this election is if they cheat. OK, that’s the only way.“—President Donald Trump, speaking on 60 Minutes, October 18 2020

“Biden wins presidency, Trump denied second term in White House, Fox News projects”-headline on foxnews.com, November 7 2020

According to Donald Trump, Donald Trump could not possibly lose to Joseph Biden, unless Biden cheated. Then, Biden won. Ergo, cheating!

But how? Our award-winning (we predict) investigation shows exactly what happened. Here is the step by step analysis of how the election was stolen from you, the American people. Warning: you will be shocked!

1969: The long con begins when Joe Biden, a young attorney, begins a 50-year career in public service by running for a council seat in New Castle County, Delaware. He slyly appeals to voters by opposing a highway project that will obliterate several neighborhoods. Insidious!

1972: Biden stuns the world (or at least Delaware) by defeating a popular Republican’s re-election bid for the U.S. Senate. How did he do it? With a platform based on “withdrawal from Vietnam, the environment, civil rights, mass transit, more equitable taxation, health care, and public dissatisfaction with ‘politics as usual’”. Bwahahaha!

1973-2009: By working with leaders on both sides of the aisle, Biden steadily develops a reputation as a moderate can-do senator who gets common-sense legislation passed for the benefit of the American people. Diabolical!!

2008: After losing in the primaries for the presidential race to Barak Obama, Biden accepts Obama’s request to join the platform as his running mate, in hopes of furthering his eventual chances to become president…a bold tactic only attempted by 43 previous Vice Presidents!!

2008-2016: In a move no one saw coming, Vice-President Biden outwits his opponents by earning a reputation as a pretty solid Vice President! Brilliant!

2016: Biden craftily sits out the 2016 election cycle, forcing Donald Trump to win the election and give the American people four long years of his disgusting, divisive behavior…Genius!

August 2020: Biden insidiously snatches the Democratic nomination for President out of the hands of Bernie Sanders…by appealing to a broad coalition of progressives, moderates, the working class, and minorities!!

August-November 2020: Biden treacherously turns the table on President Trump by staying isolated and wearing a mask through most of the campaign. Trump is left helpless, unable to avoid big, patriotic, flag-waving rallies that make his followers sick!

September-October 2020: Over two debates, a nation can only watch in horror as Biden stays on message and displays a calm command of facts and figures!

November 4, 2020: In a lightning strike, Joseph Biden wins the election for President of the United States of America by receiving 80 million votes…more than any other candidate in the history of the nation, and 5 million more than Donald Trump. His mass of followers deliberately frustrates Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, by committing no election fraud whatsoever! Biden’s 50-year plot to steal the 2020 election has succeeded!!!

Next week: How NASA “put a man on the moon”…by putting a man on the moon!!

The Killer in the Oval Office

WASHINGTON — In the final weeks of President Trump’s term, his administration intends to execute three inmates on federal death row, the last scheduled executions by the Justice Department before the inauguration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has signaled he will end federal use of capital punishment.—The New York Times, 11/18/2020

Ordinarily, one associates the exit of an incumbent president with pardons, which can be compassionate, corrupt, or some of each. But this president is nothing if not extraordinary. He has discovered that a president may bestow not only liberty but also death on his constituents.

Now, here in the Garden, we oppose the death penalty. The use of deadly force to defend the life of one’s self or of others is one thing. But we the people should not be in the business of dragging someone who is safely behind bars out of their cell in order to gas them, electrocute them, or (in a grotesque parody of a medical procedure) inject poison into their veins. Killing should be left to God or nature, depending on your persuasion.

But you know what would be much worse, much more evil, than state-sanctioned killing-as-punishment? It would be the use of state-sanctioned killing as a partisan political tactic. Thank God that doesn’t happen in a civilized nation such as the United States of America!

Or at least it hasn’t happened until now.

Our president took a look at prisoners who have been harmlessly sitting on death row for decades in Federal prisons, and decided that he needs to make sure that they are good and dead before he leaves office. 

After three and a half years in office, Trump restarted federal executions this past July…the first federal executions in 17 years! As of the publication of the Times article cited above, that policy tweak has already resulted in seven executions. And now there is a rush to complete three more before the end of this year.

Why? Because the man whom we chose as our next president, Joe Biden, intends to eliminate the death penalty to the extent that he can, which is at the federal level. So President Trump is performing the ultimate act of taking one’s ball and going home. The ball, in this case, being at least three lives that Trump intends to snuff out before Biden takes office.

Actually we’re now down to two, since Orlando Cordia Hall was executed since the Times article appeared. Mr. Hall had filed suit to stay alive, but the Supreme Court, or at least six out of the nine justices, disagreed this past Thursday, and the man was put to death the same night. Of those six, half were, of course, justices picked by our president.

And from the political party that loves to complain about “activist judges” we’ve heard no complaints about the new hangin’ Supremes. We submit that approving of executions just as the clock runs out is about as activist as you can get.

What more can we say about a man whose idea of tying up loose ends includes killing everyone he feels legally entitled to? Apart from being horrifically immoral, it does not bode well for this country over the next two months.

OK, Now I’m Scared

For Mr. Trump and his Republican allies, Michigan has become the prime target in their campaign to subvert the will of voters backing Mr. Biden in the recent election[…]The president has also asked aides what Republican officials he could call in other battleground states in his effort to prevent the certification of results that would formalize his loss to Mr. Biden, several advisers said. Trump allies appear to be pursuing a highly dubious legal theory that if the results are not certified, Republican legislatures could intervene and appoint pro-Trump electors in states Mr. Biden won who would support the president when the Electoral College meets on Dec. 14.—”Trump Targets Michigan in His Ploy to Subvert the Election”, The New York Times, November 19, 2020.

For the last four years I have felt in turns uneasy, disgusted and outraged. But now I am scared. If Donald Trump is able to “subvert” the 2020 presidential election, then the great American experiment is over. Sayonara, adios, au revoir, and see ya later, democracy. For how long? Who knows? If we’re lucky, future historians will refer to the period 1776-2020 as “the First Republic.” Or if we’re not so lucky, simply (and ironically) as “the republican era.” We don’t know what might come next…but I’m pretty sure we won’t like it. I’m certain it won’t be a return to greatness.

And I’m not so very comforted when pundits and sages use phrases like “highly dubious” and “longshot” to describe the probability that the election process will be sabotaged. Those terms of doubt are always used in the context of what we all agree the rules are—that the person with the most electoral votes, received on the basis of state-by-state popular votes, wins the election. Sure, if that is the basic premise, then Trump’s challenges are “highly dubious.”

But the person who is attempting to subvert that premise on the flimsiest of pretexts represents the executive branch of government. That includes the United States Justice Department, which enforces the law of the land and is run by a man (William Barr) who’s shown himself to be an obedient servant of the president.

Lest we forget, the President is also the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces. To their credit, the military has thus far shown a reluctance to take political sides. But in military culture, a refusal to take sides translates into a commitment to follow orders regardless of personal convictions. Every member of the Armed Forces has sworn an oath to defend the Constitution. But suppose that the constitutionality of the election is challenged in the Supreme Court, which then decides in favor of Biden. Who will the generals listen to about which interpretation of the Constitution is the correct one? The Supreme Court? Or, their commanding officer?

And it might not matter…three of the nine Justices (Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Barrett) are Trump appointees, and two more (Thomas, Alito) are reliably right-wing. Chief Justice John Roberts sometimes shows signs of centrism…but his vote may not even be needed to decide critical electoral cases in favor of Trump.

What about the Trump himself? I submit that any observer of his behavior over the past four years will dismiss the possibility of him acting “presidential” all of a sudden. But, you ask, isn’t overturning a clearly decided election going a bit too far, even for him? But, I answer, why would you think that? We’re talking about a man who openly declared that he could not lose a fair election–and who has called for the arrest of his political opponents.

Can we count on the legislative branch of government to save the republic? No more than the Roman senate could save the Roman republic, in my opinion. And it’s not clear how many Republicans in power even want to. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) has been ominously passive with respect to the President’s machinations. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S. Carolina) has actively campaigned state election officials and governors to see if they can figure out a way to toss out votes for Biden. (I guess it wasn’t enough for South Carolina to start just one Civil War. Please keep in mind, Senator Graham, how the last one turned out.) But without the goodwill of the President and the military, Congress holds no actual power.

In short, the levers of power over whether the electoral process is followed or subverted ultimately lie in the hands of those who want to do the latter.

The Fifth Estate is finally doing its job, explicitly calling out Trump’s claims about election fraud as…fraudulent. Even Fox News has jumped off the “steal the vote” bandwagon. If there’s one concrete bit of positive news, it’s that even Lord Rupert sees Trump—or at least his narrative of a stolen election—as a losing bet. But to paraphrase Joseph Stalin, how many divisions does Rupert Murdoch command?

I am positing a worst-case scenario here. But the worst case has never looked more likely than now.

Like the Pope, I don’t command any divisions. (And there the similarity ends, I am sure.) But I will continue to cry long and loud about this treacherous atrocity being perpetrated by our sitting president and his cronies. My country has a lot of problems, and always has, but I’m rather fond of it.

Odors I Have Known

The smell of sunheated bricks and batshit in downtown Fort Worth
The smell of lighter fluid and hot dogs
The streetmarket smell of frying cakes and sewage
The backyard smell of cigarettes and charcoal and steak
The wine-dark smell of rotting persimmons
The clinical smell of latex and alcohol
The smell of beer and piss and popcorn
The smell of rain and soft coal in East Berlin
The smell of a friendly kitchen
The smell of steam and laundry powder
The motel smell of roach spray and cleaning fluid and mildew
The smell of perfume and purse leather
The smell of a house that burned last week
The smell of a warm matchhead
The smell of something dead in the bushes
The smell of a sun-warmed telephone pole
The smell of a sun-warmed cat
The smell of a tar truck
The smell of dead alewives on the beaches of Chicago
The smell of paint and plaster and sawdust
The smell of a grass median on fire
The farty smell of an old couple’s gas heater
The smell of hot grease and garbage behind the strip mall
The dealer smell of new tires and burnt coffee
The downtown smell of pigeon shit and bus exhaust
The smell of oily steam from a train’s brakes
The solemn smell of dust and cold marble
The temple’s smell of dust and incense and cedar
The smell of machine oil and fresh paper
The smell of gin and lipstick on a glass
The smell of steaming corn tortillas
The way an old couch smells
The salt and seaweed smell of an unseen ocean
The smell of onions frying in butter
The smell of a thousand hamburgers from an exhaust vent
The smell of eggs baking in bread
The smell of an empty but filthy ashtray
The smell of sawing a 2×4
The smell of a used-book store on a damp afternoon
The sour smell of unwashed laundry
The smell on your fingers now
The airplane smell of fuel and sweat
The smell of hay and horseshit
The smell of a hot country road cooling at night
The smell of the inside of a garden hose
The way an old shoe smells
The smell in a flower shop
The rootbeer-and-vanilla smell of jasmine on a fence
The smell of 3-in-One oil on a bicycle chain
The smell of soap on a person hugged

The Red Sun Rises in the South

File:Flag of Mississippi ("New Magnolia Flag").svg

Instead of being governed by President-elect Joe Biden, state Rep. Price Wallace (R) reportedly said on Twitter that Mississippi should “succeed” from the rest of the United States and form its own country.—The Washington Post, 11/11/20

January 20, 2021—Joseph Biden Jr. is sworn in as the 46th president of the United States of America because he, like, won the election.

January 21, 2021—After Googling the difference between “succeed” and “secede,” Mississippi officially secedes from the United States and becomes a sovereign nation. President Biden holds a press conference and states, “Hey man, whatever they wanna do.”

January 22, 2021—Mississippi’s two U.S. senators are dismissed from the capitol, “flipping” the Senate and giving the Democrats control of all three branches of government. At a press conference, former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s lower lip is seen to tremble. More than usual.

January-February 2021: College graduates, African Americans, women, gays, and anyone else with a lick of sense flee the Republic of Mississippi for anywhere except Alabama.

March 2021: As U.S. tariffs quickly strangle Mississippi’s economy, the country launches a desperate PR campaign to attract foreign tourists: “Let us swamp you with fun!”

April 22-24 2021: Seeking a strategic foothold on the North American continent, Cuban navy and infantry forces storm and occupy Pascagoula Bay after a fierce but brief defense by the Mississippi National Guard. Local units of a highly trained white nationalist militia flee the battle after realizing they might get hurt. Biden, on the Cuban occupation: “Hey man, not my problem, lol!!”

May 3, 2021: Former president Donald Trump, from his bunker in Mar-a-Lago, calls for building a wall to keep out desperate Mississippi families from entering the U.S. illegally in search of menial jobs and decent Chinese food.

June 2021: A desperate Mississippi turns to Venezuela for economic assistance. Governor-President Tate Reeves to Nicolás Maduro: “We ask for your help in the people’s struggle against capitalist imperialism! Also if you have any spare gasoline, sugar or a left rear turn signal for my Ford F-150!”

July 2021: A humanitarian crisis emerges in the Yazoo River delta, with outbreaks of malaria, dysentery, beri-beri, dengue fever and like where you get an itch in the back of your throat and you keep clicking your tongue but it doesn’t really help. Biden to Reeves: “I guess Obamacare isn’t looking so terrible now, lmao!!”

August 2021: Civil war breaks out over a border dispute between Kemper County and neighboring Newton county. “We’ve been taken advantage of for too long by those pig farmers over in Scooba. What kind of idiot would name a town ‘Scooba,’ anyway?” asks Clyde Blankenship of Chunky.

September 2021: The U.N. Secretary General declares Mississippi a disaster zone and asks President Reeves for permission to deliver humanitarian aid. Reeves responds defiantly: “Keep your goddamned blue helmets and your so-called aid out of my country! Except maybe for bottled water, diapers, rice, penicillin, and if we could camp on to your Netflix account for a couple of weeks!”

October 2021: The 2021 Ole Miss football season starts and ends as it defeats Mississippi State-Biloxi, 101-0.  The Ole Miss head coach proudly declares, “Now the whole state knows what comes after 100!”

November 22 2021: In a desperate bid for survival, Mississippi agrees to be acquired by China. Tate Reeves, the new People’s Commissar for the Agricultural District of Mississippi, warns: “Any of y’all got a problem with that, tell it to the People’s Liberation Army!”

A Time for Gloating

With the campaign over, it’s time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation. It’s time for America to unite. And to heal.—President-elect Joe Biden, November 7, 2020

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens… a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh…a time to mourn and a time to dance…Ecclesiastes

It has come to our attention here in the Garden that after four years of miserable dejection and despair, many of us feel suddenly overcome with giddy feelings of euphoria, vindication and (most illusory of all) triumph. The temptation to rub it in must be resisted. This is the time to reach across to “the other,” to recognize the pain “they” also feel over lost jobs, the opioid crisis, a sense of helplessness in the face of all the problems in the world. We must connect, communicate, understand, and love.

Starting tomorrow, that is. For today, I need to gloat.

I have suffered for four long years—and it’s felt like a hundred—under a president who:

Couldn’t be bothered to be driven to a cemetery of American troops killed in France because after all they’re “suckers” and “losers.”

Pressured the president of the Ukraine, as the Russians were kicking in his front door, to frame his political opponent as a condition of getting U.S. military aid already approved by Congress.  

Continues to waffle between denial, dismissiveness, and absurd claims of victory in the face of a plague that to date has killed a quarter of a million of his own citizens.

Used the power of the United States Department of Justice—our national institution dedicated to enforcing the law—to stop a woman from pressing charges of sexual assault against himself.

Inexplicably fawned over bloody dictators while insulting long-time democratic allies.

Steered millions of dollars of Government business—such as accommodations for his own Secret Service details—to his own businesses.

Has treated the burning and drowning of this, our one and only planet, as a joke.

Who deliberately and vindictively fired a career FBI officer one day before pension eligibility—for doing his job.

I could go on (re: tax returns, Jamal Khashoggi, John McCain, etc etc etc), but my WordPress account only allows me a few terabytes of text.

But it’s not so much the man himself who makes me cry in my morning elitist fair-wage coffee. It is his legions of unquestioning supporters. Those who love to parade in front of state capitols with enormous flags and assault rifles with phallically extended clips. Who (with the president’s encouragement) chant “lock her [Hillary Clinton] up”…for the laughably trivial offense, let’s remember, of storing emails on an unsecure server. Who call people like me “libtards.” Who actually believe that Hillary Clinton runs a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor in Georgetown—or just say they believe it, which is even worse. Who are happy to see poor brown children separated from their mothers and locked in chain-link cages. Who treat the wearing of a surgical mask in public as if it were an assault on their liberty. Who aren’t terribly concerned when a black man is choked to death on the ground by police officers but clear out the gun store shelves when they see a shop window smashed on TV. Who came out in massive numbers  to re-elect their hero not in spite of, but because of four years of his obnoxious, vindictive, mean-spirited behavior.

And to those people, I want to say, respectfully…up yours. Today, we won.

I’ll behave like an adult and treat you with respect tomorrow. Or maybe the day after.