If you wrote this shit as a movie, you’d be laughed out of Hollywood …

A clueless alleged President Elect totally in bed with the Russian Gangster Czar, cutting deals on hotels in former Soviet states instead of attending to his transition, having his kids sit in on important government meetings, interrupting other meetings for the really important stuff (so he can talk to Indian hoteliers about still more personal business deals), merchandising your upcoming Presidency 24/7 with everything from caps to cups to chia pets for christmas before you’ve even set foot officially in your new white home (which you’ve let everyone know is a big step down from Trump Tower and you’re not happy), calling a meeting of reporters to give them crap in a vocabulary so limited it would embarrass Koko the Gorilla. Koko’s nicer, too! And more worldly wise.

No one would believe any of this in a screenplay … even for a movie with “Bad” somewhere in the title, maybe Bad President starring Billy Bob Thornton … and then you throw in the Media pretending this is business as usual? Nothing to see here?

Welcome to America Through the Looking Glass. Fuck me. Please make it stop.

 

The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!

That’s the title of a 1966 Cold War satire starring Alan Arkin as the commander of a Soviet sub that accidentally runs aground in new England, causing mass hysteria among the town folk. American kids back then had “duck and cover” drills just in case Russkie atom bombs were launched during Civics class, Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev could be seen pounding his shoe and saying “We will bury you” in a popular pre-cat-video meme, and the dicey (to say the least) Cuban Missile Crisis (Adios, Fidel) was a fresh memory for all.

We fought hot proxy wars with the Russia, the biggest of course being Vietnam. Southern California contractors got rich building missile system after missile system designed to protect us from the Russkies (and their little buddies, China) and stealth planes to spy on them. Devotees of spy stories are still talking about the Soviet mole who supposedly infiltrated the highest ranks of the U.S. intelligence services but was never found.

I could go on and on. But it’s fair to say that Russia is America’s most significant historical foe and – to young Republicans everywhere, especially in the Midwest and South – the most hated.

Now? Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are besties and rightwingers in the Midwest and South cheer? They cheer some more when Russian propagandists flood the internet with false stories against the Democratic nominee, which FOX and other rightwing outlets pass along, And they seem to think it’s just peachy that Russian hackers (under the direction of their present-day KGB) plagued the Clinton campaign with dirty tricks for the better part of a year and set out to rig the general election in favor of their butt buddy Trump.

Some of this stuff qualifies – by the way – as acts of war, but they have provoked no public outrage among the rightwing populace. And not much among the GOP faithful, traditionally Russia’s greatest opponents.Yeah, we know, the country isn’t Commie anymore, it’s mostly run by gangsters. But Putin isn’t Brando in his bathrobe during his retirement years. He’s John Gotti with a nuclear arsenal, a KGB that kills people overseas when it’s not busy hacking our elections, and military operations in Syria et al.

Putin’s a piece of shit. So it’s no wonder he’s attached himself to the biggest piece of shit to ever to run for public office in the United States of America. He wants Syria to himself. He has oil to sell and horses to ride shirtless. And he’s willing to cut good deals on hotels and the like in Georgia and other former Soviet regions that he rules gangster-style now instead of with tanks. Business is business.

I get all that. I just can’t figure out why no one in America seems to be upset about it. Especially the folks in those regions of America – many of whom favored Trump – who were historically most afraid of Russia. And alarmed by all the bad things Russia might do to us.

The Russians aren’t coming, they’re here. And they’ve done a bunch of bad things, not the least of which is installing their gangster-style business mole in the highest office in the land. And still no one’s upset. ‘Cause, you know, Mexicans. Muslims. Gays.

Welcome to Vladimir Putin’s America. Borscht, anyone?

New EPA Head Myron Ebell Announces 1st Project Under Trump

Trump House Gang appointee and award-winning science denier, Myron Ebell, has set forth what he hopes will be his first act as new head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Ebell will ease the onerous regulations that the Obama Administration put upon the Noah’s Ark recreation in Kentucky and authorize it to sail the Seven Seas!

In the ongoing liberal campaign to squelch free enterprise and defy the will of the markets. Obama himself had personally ruled that the Noah’s Ark recreation (which contains replicas of baby dinosaurs alongside baby lions and tigers and bears) was technically a “museum” and would not be allowed to charter cruises.

After Ebell corrects this injustice, the first Noah’s Ark Caribbean Holiday Cruise will depart from Miami this coming June. Among those expected to be on board with the baby dinosaurs et al are top executives from all the major oil & gas companies, Glenn Beck, James Dobson (of Focus on the Family) and his children and grandchildren, all of Mike Pence’s surviving highschool teachers from Indiana, a to-be-named-later descendant of William Jennings Bryant (who argued for God at the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1928), and Eric Trump.

The Donald has respectfully declined to be a part of the cruise as the Noah’s Ark Caribbean jaunt will interfere with tee times he has lined up in June and a Gala “The Apprentice” Reunion Show filming June 17th at Trump Tower.

Quick! Somebody tell Czar Donnie he can’t sue me …

And he sure as fuck can’t sue Harry Reid, the minority leader of the Senate.

As the alleged President Elect, Vladimir Trumpy has to sit there and take it when I call him a fraudulent, ignorant, orange-haired, sexually creepy, uninformed, unskilled, unsavory Asswipe. And I happen to mention that he’s a Mobbed-up cheater, liar, and conman. Who does have a small penis. And whose father didn’t love him.

When DT realizes being President means never getting to say “I’ll sue you,” maybe he’ll take his russky nesting dolls and his Cliff’s Notes on Mein Kampf and head back to Trump Tower.

P.S. I suppose Trump could go the Nixon route and put together an “Enemies List” of people who piss him off in public and private life. But Tricky Dicky mostly used the IRS to harass his enemies and I’m not sure the IRS will cooperate with Trump. They haven’t seen a check from him in a really, really, really long time. And his lawyers never answer their calls.

And he sure as fuck can’t sue Harry Reid, the minority leader of the Senate.

As the alleged President Elect, Vladimir Trumpy has to sit there and take it when I call him a fraudulent, ignorant, orange-haired, sexually creepy, uninformed, unskilled, unsavory Asswipe. And I happen to mention that he’s a Mobbed-up cheater, liar, and conman. Who does have a small penis. And whose father didn’t really love him.

When DT realizes being President means never getting to say “I’ll sue you,” maybe he’ll take his russky nesting dolls and his Cliff’s Notes on Mein Kampf and head back to Trump Tower.

P.S. I suppose Trump could go the Nixon route and put together an “Enemies List” of people who piss him off in public and private life. But Tricky Dicky mostly used the IRS to harass his enemies and I’m not sure the IRS will cooperate. They haven’t seen a check from Donald in a really, really, really long time. And his lawyers don’t answer their calls.

Pick Flick

I can’t write directly about what has just happened to us. It’s too big. And by “us,” I don’t only mean Americans. I mean the world.

(Just to name one consequence, the 2016 election ensures nothing will be done about climate change for four more years. Get back to me about building walls when entire nations become uninhabitable.)

But I watched most of Hillary Clinton’s concession speech this morning and I was struck again by the virtually impossible task of being a female American and running for higher office.

Even now. In 2016.

No one commented on Clinton’s hair or what she was wearing, but even I found myself wondering if she’d cry and what people would say if she did. What they will continue to say because she didn’t.

A man giving a Presidential concession speech – in 2016 – would be allowed to shed tears, be expected to when he gets to the part where he thanks his staff and family. He would be applauded for “bravery” in showing his emotions. No one would speculate on whether or not he had a vagina and fallopian tubes. And whether they disqualified him from leadership positions.

Further, men in public life are expected to “get things done,” which means cutting deals, trading tit for tat, compromising, holding your nose and making sure the check clears. Men are applauded for this behavior and even the good Christians in their midst concede Rome to the Romans as long as they are male.

If a woman does any of the things listed above, she commits two sins. The first is the sin of “corruption,” which is what “business as usual” becomes when it’s done by a high-profile female in American politics. The second – far weightier – sin is that of ambition. Also know as “pride” in the red states. Clinton made it clear that she considered baking cookies a secondary occupation at best, especially for a woman with any other discernible skills, and segments of Middle America never forgot and never forgave.

Which brings us to Tracy Flick in the 1999 movie Election. Tracy was ambitious to the point of ruthlessness, manipulative beyond the point of effectiveness, corrupt for realz, sexually suspect, and – worst of all – prideful. She had no time for cookies, but did make a mean muffin as long as it was big enough to contain her name in frosting letters.

Hillary Clinton was not guilty as charged of anything that I’m aware of. Not Whitewater, not Bengazi, not the stupid emails. Few people in American life have been so vigorously scrutinized and come up so clean. But the charges never stopped. As Clinton asserted early on, she was the victim of “a vast rightwing conspiracy” to smear her and remove her and the other Clinton from American public life.

In this latest election, the rightwing conspirators were joined by the more witless fringe of Berniebots, who accused Hillary (on non-news internet sites) of everything from being the brains behind the Trilateral Commission to sleeping with Sasquatch. It was irresponsible and dumb; it had an affect on the election. And, truth be told, a lot of the energy coming from that camp felt like garden-variety sexism. Which can comfortably stay sexist if your man is Trump but has to seek some other justification (however specious) if your man is Bernie Sanders, who made his own manly deals to be a Senator.

(Can you say no gun control, woodsy Vermonters? I can.)

Clinton found herself surrounded in 2016 by a lot of men (on her right and her left) who just weren’t comfortable with the fact she was a she. And had no way of thinking about her, judging her, characterizing her, except as some pants-suited grownup version of Tracy Flick. They demonized a good candidate – a good person, a good woman – and the world will now suffer mightily as a result.

Hillary Clinton bears no resemblance to Tracy Flick. They have no character traits in common. Except maybe pride. If pride is what we call it when a woman has the temerity to suggest she can do this job or that as well as a man can.

With all that said, in a race between Tracy and Donald Trump, I’d Pick Flick. At least Tracy possesses basic competence and only hates people who get in the way of what she wants.

Words. Just words. On this saddest of post-election days. “Ah, Bartleby. Ah, Humanity.”