No. 45 stuck in the low 40s and below

In one of his many, many fine, presidential moments, “President” Pussygrabber mocks a disabled man during one of his KKK rallies in November 2015. I remain such a proud American on this President’s Day.

Ah, President’s Day.

It’s hard to celebrate the holiday when for the past year-plus it has felt like my nation has had no president at all. It certainly hasn’t had a legitimate one, not since noon on January 20, 2017.*

“President” Pussygrabber’s approval rating, however, probably will make him a one-term president, if he makes it through even this term.**

Earlier this month Gallup had Pussygrabber’s approval rating at a whopping 40 percent, but right now has him back down into the high 30s (at 37 percent, to be exact).

Indeed, during most of his hostile occupation of the Oval Office, Pussygrabber’s approval rating, per Gallup, has remained stuck in the 30s, only occasionally breaking into the low 40s.

The highest that “President” Pussygrabber ever garnered in Gallup’s regular presidential-approval polling was 46 percent — a high that he hit shortly after his inauguration and that he never matched again.

In December, Vox.com reported that Pussygrabber’s December approval rating in the mid-30s was the worst presidential approval rating at that point in a president’s administration since long before I was born:

(Keep in mind that Gee Dubya’s December 2001 approval rating was so high only because of the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Americans rallied behind him because they were scared and because they wanted revenge for 9/11.)

I might be more fearful of Pussygrabber’s fascism if his level of popular support weren’t so low. I don’t see Pussygrabber becoming Hitler 2.0 when he is lucky to hit even 40 percent in a nationwide approval poll (in no small part because Pussygrabber is an incredibly bumbling Hitler wannabe).

That said, this nation has serious problems and we couldn’t afford yet another lost year, but that’s what 2017 was, and the only thing that will prevent 2018 from being even yet another lost year entirely is numerous electoral victories this coming November; minimally, we need to take back the U.S. House of Representatives.

Finally, as it’s President’s Day, it’s appropriate to note that the 2018 Presidents and Executive Politics Presidential Greatness Survey (a survey “based on responses from 170 current and recent members of the Presidents and Executive Politics section of the American Political Science Association,” per Politico), which appropriately was released today, lists “President” Pussygrabber dead last among all 44 presidents.***

Yup.

The “presidential greatness” survey puts Abraham Lincoln at No. 1, George Washington at No. 2, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt at No. 3. (I put Lincoln and FDR in the top three, to be sure, but I’m not sure on Washington; I have the feeling that it largely if not mostly was because he was the first president that he’s so well-regarded.)

In case you were wondering, Barack Obama came in at No. 8 in the survey; he skyrocketed 10 points since the survey was done last, in 2014, when he came in at No. 18. He now sits at one spot above Ronald Reagan, who is at No. 9. (That’s gotta hurt the wingnuts…)

I long have surmised that because Obama was sandwiched between the two worst “presidents” of my lifetime (neither of whom even won the fucking popular vote), Obama, by comparison, would look significantly better than he actually was, at least in the short term.

We’ll see how Obama is regarded in the long term (my prediction is that he’ll drop in the presidential rankings over the coming many years), and yes, to be fair, Pussygrabber has had only one full year in office on which to be evaluated, but no sane person could believe that it’s going to get any significantly better.

—

*I have been critical of Barack Obama, for whom I voted in 2008 but not in 2012 because of his broken campaign promises (to name just one of them, in 2007 he had promised to support labor unions in person but he didn’t show up once in Wisconsin in 2011 when Repugnican Gov. Scott Walker & Co. decimated Wisconsin’s public-sector unions).

Despite his shortcomings, however, Obama at least won the popular vote in 2008 and in 2012. George W. Bush lost it in 2000 and thus could not legitimately have been “re”-elected in 2004, and, of course, “President” Pussygrabber lost the popular vote — bigly — in 2016, and therefore he could not legitimately be “re”-elected either, since he never legitimately was elected in the first place (even all of that help from Russia aside).

Compared to Pussygrabber, Obama indeed was the second coming of Abraham Lincoln, as he pretty much had portrayed himself to be when he announced his 2008 campaign for president in Springfield, Ill.

It seems to me that the view of Obama having been a great president comes at least as much from how abysmally bad Pussygrabber has been as it comes from whatever actual greatness Obama as president possessed.

**My best guess is that Pussygrabber will decline to run for “re”-election (especially if impeachment actually looks possible right around that time).

I surmise that Pussygrabber had thought that the office would bring him much more adulation than it actually has, and also, I surmise that because he was quite used to being the infallible, unchallengeable boy-emperor of The Trump Organization, he has been deeply disappointed that he couldn’t simply replicate that model as “president” of the United States.

Why serve in heaven when you can reign in hell? Again, I’d be surprised if Pussygrabber truly even wanted a second term.

***Grover Cleveland was president twice in non-consecutive terms. So there have been a total of 45 presidential terms, but a total of 44 individuals have been president.

2017: Bye, Felicia! And greetings, 2018!

This past year has been what we’d known (or at least should have known) that it would be: a lost year, a year in which the unelected* Pussygrabber regime focused on three things: further enriching Pussygrabber’s already-filthy-rich cronies via tax cuts and deregulation and other forms of welfare for the plutocratic oligarchs; reversing anything and everything with Barack Obama’s name on it; and bullying the politically weakest among us, including immigrants (mostly brown-skinned people from Spanish-speaking nations) and transgender individuals.

The bad news is that two years (2017 and 2018) is enough time for the unelected Pussygrabber regime to cause plenty of damage that will take plenty of time to reverse once the Repugnican “tea party” traitors are out of power again.

And, unfortunately, when a shitty (= Repugnican) “president” is “elected” and both houses of Congress are controlled by his** party, usually the best that we can hope to do is to take back one or both houses of Congress in the next midterm election.

Thankfully, fivethirtyeight.com’s Harry Enten wrote recently, “the Democratic advantage in the FiveThirtyEight generic [congressional] ballot aggregate is up to about 12 points, 49.6 percent to 37.4 percent. That average … shows Republicans in worse shape right now than any other majority party at this point in the midterm cycle since at least the 1938 [midterm] election.” (As I type this sentence, fivethirtyeight.com now shows the Dems at 12.9 percent ahead of the Repugs on the generic congressional ballot, 49.9 percent to 37 percent.)

Enten concludes that the “Democrats are probably favorites to win the House. Their current advantage is larger than the lead Republicans had at this point in the 1994 cycle, the lead Democrats held at this point in the 2006 cycle or the lead Republicans had at this point in the 2010 cycle. Those were all years when the minority party won control of the House.

“And a 12-percentage-point Democratic advantage in the national House vote come next November would likely be more than enough for the House to flip again. I’ve previously calculated that the Democrats need to win the national House vote by 5.5 to 8 points to win the House. …”

I expect the Dems to take back the House in November 2018, neutering Pussygrabber for his remaining time in the Oval Office, just as the Repugnican “tea party” traitors neutered Obama for his remaining time in office when they took the House in November 2010 (and they have held onto it to this day).

Despite the lost year that was 2017, I must admit that I’m still happy that Billary Clinton didn’t become president. Why? Her win of the White House in November 2016 would have been parlayed as vindication for her brand of center-right, sellout, pro-corporate, Repugnican-Lite “Democratic” politics. Her (and Obama’s) brand of sellout, Democrat-in-name-only politics had to die, even if it meant “President” Pussygrabber in power for two years. To make an omelet you have to crack some eggs.

Further along that track, I’m actually glad that Bernie Sanders didn’t win the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination. Why? Because had he actually lost to Pussygrabber (which I don’t think was likely to happen, but which of course could have happened), the Democrats in name only would have parlayed that as “proof” that left-wing Democratic politics don’t work. They would have lumped Bernie in with other progressive presidential candidates who lost, including George McGovern, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.

But even if Bernie had won the White House, he probably would have faced a Repugnican Congress (at least one of the two houses in Repugnican hands, anyway) that would have done its best to prevent him from having any progressive accomplishment — and again, the Democrats in name only would have parlayed that as “proof” that left-wing Democratic politics don’t work. (And they probably would have compared Bernie to Jimmy Carter.)

The best-case scenario is that the Dems take back the House in 2018 — and maybe the Senate, too, but that’s less likely — and that the Dems take back the Senate in November 2020 if they don’t do it in November 2018. Then, President Sanders will have both houses of Congress in his party’s control, and I wouldn’t expect him to utterly squander that rare alignment of the stars like Barack Obama did in 2009 and 2010. I would expect President Sanders to push his progressive agenda through, not to try to hold hands and sing “Kumbaya” with the intractably incorrigible Repugnican “tea party” traitors, like Obama did.

Oh, and if you think that Bernie Sanders can’t win the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination, know that the experts disagree with you.

A recent Washington Post ranking of the most likely 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate put Bernie at No. 1, former veep Joe Biden at No. 2, Sen. Elizabeth Warren at No. 3, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand at No. 4 and Sen. Kamala Harris at No. 5.

Biden ran for the Democratic Party presidential nomination twice before — in 1988 and in 2008 — and the voters rejected him. I’m not much worried about Biden and his outdated Clintonian-Obamanian “Democratic” politics. He is obsolete, and like with Billary, it very apparently isn’t in the stars for him ever to be POTUS.

Liz Warren is acceptable to me, but I still expect her to face actual misogyny and sexism should she run for president. (Billary faced a little misogyny and sexism, I surmise, but for the most part, methinks, people just hate her corrupt, despicable guts, and her biological sex certainly has not been her No. 1 problem, although when you are contemptible and corrupt, it’s certainly convenient to claim that you’re the victim of sexism and misogyny.)

Liz would be attacked not only for being a woman, but also for being progressive (“Communist,” to the Repugnican “tea party” traitors).

It isn’t fair to blame Liz for the predictable, unfair attacks upon her by right-wing scumbags should she run for president, but if the idea is to actually win the White House, then you go with the candidate who is most likely to do that. It certainly wasn’t the widely despised Billary Clinton in November 2016 (obviously), and it probably isn’t Liz Warren in November 2020. I say that as much as I love her.

Kirsten Gillibrand isn’t known well enough at all to win the 2020 Dem prez nomination, and pretty much ditto for Kamala Harris, who hasn’t been in the U.S. Senate for even one full year yet.

Harris most likely will be the candidate foisted upon us by the Only Black Lives Matter set (and she checks off two identity-politics boxes [female and half-black]), but The Washington Post puts her at No. 5 for a reason: because her chance of winning the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination is not high.

I am not even sure if I can support Harris (whom I did vote for in November 2016) as the 2020 Democratic Party vice-presidential candidate, given her dearth of experience in Washington, but I’ll cross that bridge if and when I come to it.

(The other milquetoast-to-corrupt candidate most likely to be foisted upon us by Only Black Lives Matter slacktivists, Sen. Cory Booker, ranks with WaPo at No. 6. Indeed, OBLM’s message to the rest of us very apparently is that after Obama, every Democratic president from here on out must be black or half-black, and that’s the only criterion. [Not that that’s black supremacist and racist or anything!])

I probably am OK with Liz Warren as the 2020 Dem vice-presidential candidate, even though a Sanders-Warren ticket of course would be savaged by the right. But the Colonels Sanders of the nation always have riled the stupid chickens up against the animal-rights activists. That’s perennial, predictable and probably unpreventable.

So, again, 2017 was a dead year, as I knew it would be, and that’s why, I’m sure, the frequency of my blogging dropped off. What can you do with the likes of “President” Pussygrabber but do your best to ride it out until order and balance finally are restored?

But 2018 gives us something to look forward to: the retaking of the House, which at least is a near-certainty, and perhaps also of the Senate, but if not in 2018, then probably in 2020 — setting up a great scenario for President Sanders come January 2021.

P.S. The Hill also recently named Bernie Sanders as most likely to win the 2020 Dem Party presidential nomination, with Joe Biden at No. 2 and Elizabeth Warren at No. 3. The Hill put Kamala Harris at No. 4.

—

*Pussygrabber lost the popular vote by almost 3 fucking million. He is, therefore, in my book, unelected. The anti-democratic (and anti-Democratic) Electoral College should have been abolished long ago.

If we actually believe in democracy, then the candidate who wins the most votes actually takes office. Fucking duh.

**As soon as we have a female president, I’ll write “his or her” or “her or his.” I promise you. (I don’t do “their.” “Their” is for two or more people, not for “his or her” or for a “non-binary” designation.)

Haters of free speech will get the repressive nation that they deserve

Image by Tyler Shields, YouTube

Comedienne Kathy Griffin is pictured above during a photo shoot last week in which she held up a prosthetic severed head of “President” Pussygrabber. Never mind the United States’ long history of the butchery of and the savagery against innocents that continues to this day; this act against yet another stupid white man by an uppity woman, in which no one actually was even harmed, was a bridge too far!

Living in a nation with truly free speech means that your precious sensibilities are going to be offended from time to time.

You’re going to have to get over it. (Please don’t make me have to call you a snowflake, and yes, there are snowflakes on the right as well as on the left.)

The first brouhaha this past week was when Kathy Griffin posed with a fairly realistic-looking replica of “President” Pussygrabber’s bloody severed head and posted it to the Internet on Tuesday. She held the fake head up to the camera like Perseus holding up the head of Medusa.

While the image certainly fulfilled a fantasy for millions, including me, I can’t say that it was funny. Just grisly.

And, of course, Griffin, or at least her handler(s) — assuming that she has one or more of them — should have known that depicting the violent death of the sitting “president,” especially if you are a famous or semi-famous person with an audience, would cause backlash.* It also gets you a visit from the men in black of the Secret Service.

I mean, Pussygrabber’s life is worth protecting as much as was that of our last wonderful Repugnican “president,” who also took office without actually having won the most votes and who is a complete and total baby-boomer buffoon (I know: redundant), but still, Griffin should have known.

To me, Griffin’s biggest “crime” is that she is a comedienne but that her Pussygrabber head thing wasn’t funny — just grisly. And, yes, fantasy-fulfilling. But not funny. (That said, I’ve never gravitated to Griffin, whose work I’m mostly unfamiliar with, and maybe that’s just because she overall isn’t very funny.)

But should Griffin be driven out of all paid work (if there still is a demand for her work in the so-called marketplace of ideas) for the head-of-Pussygrabber incident? No.

I’m not a fan of hers, but if we want free speech and if we want content, we’re going to have to cut our providers of content some slack when they fuck up. They’re probably not going to get it right 100 percent of the time. We expect too much of them.

On that note, on Friday night during his live politicocomedic talk show on HBO, Bill Maher remarked that he won’t work the fields of Repugnican U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse’s Nebraska because he is a “house nigger,” and that, of course, has prompted calls for his show’s cancellation, and such a call is only going to backfire on the Only Black Lives Matter** set.

Don’t get me wrong; I have problems with Maher’s show. Pretty much every fucking week he has to get in a dig against those Muslims who are violent and oppressive, as though Islam had the monopoly on violence and oppression.

(I’m a gay man in the so-called land of the free, and I didn’t get the right to marry until only two fucking years ago this month, and that’s mostly because of those loving, wonderful “Christians,” who, instead of more honestly just blowing you up with a suicide vest, kill you with their “Christian” “kindness.”)

Maher’s Islamophobic comments are way beyond old and tired, and his handler or handlers should have reined him in on this long ago. Yes, he has his own show, but using his show to constantly verbalize his own personal pet peeves and prejudices, while it very apparently makes him feel better, degrades the show.

Maher on his show also frequently blasts so-called Democratic “purists,” that is, we progressives. We commoners are supposed to just shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down, and just accept a certain amount of self-serving, double-dealing, greed and corruption from so-called Democrats, you see.

It’s funny, because “Democratic” impurity doesn’t harm Maher. He’s a millionaire baby boomer (he gave a cool million dollars to Barack Obama for his re-election), and so he has plenty of buffer in money and in power, regardless of who (or what) is in the White House.

Baby-boomer millionaire and limousine liberal Maher isn’t affected by what we commoners are affected by. He has the best health care that money can buy, I’m sure, and if he had kids he’d have no problem putting them though the best universities. I rather doubt that he lives paycheck to paycheck or worries about ever being homeless.

So instead of bashing “purists” who have a lot more skin in the game than he does, Maher should check his rich, white, baby-boomer, limousine-liberal privilege.

Very much related to that, Maher’s throwaway use of the term “house nigger” demonstrated his privilege. It is easy for a rich, white baby boomer, whose life is quite comfortable, to make a casual, unfunny joke about the brutal system of U.S. slavery in which some black slaves had less arduous forced tasks than others.

Again, Maher’s “house nigger” “joke” wasn’t even funny. It was stupid and throwaway. (I watched Maher make the remark on HBO’s streaming service, and “the ‘n’-word” was edited out by muting it; it is the first word that I recall ever having been edited from his show, which is profuse with profanity, which I’m OK with.)

Like Kathy Griffin, Bill Maher is supposed to be a comedian, and one might argue that the only real wrong a comedian or comedienne can commit is to fail to be funny.

That said, Maher has apologized for his “house nigger” comment, and coming from him, I think that his apology most likely is sincere.

Should his show be cancelled because of it? No.

Is Maher a racist? Sure, to those black supremacists and race hustlers who believe that every white person is racist (even though, ironically, the race-hustling black supremacists are incredibly racist themselves), of course Maher is a racist, but I don’t know too many white racists who gave Barack Obama a million dollars and who have dated black women, and I have been watching Maher’s show for some time now, and he regularly has black guests, very probably at a proportion that significantly exceeds blacks’ percentage of the U.S. population (which is 13 percent).

One of Maher’s many frequent black guests is Cornel West, of whom I’m a huge fan.***

Maher gives West and other black Americans a voice that they often don’t get in widely broadcast television shows that are watched by a lot of white Americans, so it’s perversely ironic that any black Americans would call for his show’s cancellation.

(Black Americans’ No. 1 pastime, it seems, is shooting themselves in the fucking foot, such as how they supported Billary Clinton over the much more popular Bernie Sanders by a margin of about three to one [which has reeked of anti-white racism (and perhaps also of anti-Semitism) to me], helping to ensure that the widely despised Repugnican-Lite Billary lost the White House to Donald Fucking Trump in November.)

All of that said, yes, Maher needs to check his privilege, not only his white privilege, but also his class and generational privilege.

But his having uttered “the ‘n’-word” in a lame and tone-deaf apparent attempt to be funny doesn’t in one fell swoop wipe out all of the overall good that Maher’s show still has. (If his show didn’t have more good than bad, I wouldn’t still be watching it regularly.)

Maher needs to be further educated and further enlightened, not utterly destroyed, and the Only Black Lives Matter set apparently still needs to learn that mercilessly calling for the complete, total and utter destruction of offending/“offending” whites (which, ironically, is just part and parcel of their own racial supremacism) — instead of calling for the education and enlightenment of whites (where such education and enlightenment is possible) — only is going to drive more whites away from their cause/“cause” than toward it. (Which, ironically, at least on a subconscious level probably is their intent, given that actual interracial reconciliation very apparently actually is the last thing that they want.)

I, for one, don’t want to live in a United States of America in which all of the Bill Mahers are driven out of the marketplace of ideas, leaving us only the white supremacists (the vast majority of whom vote Repugnican) and the black supremacists (many if not most of whom only use the Democratic Party to further their selfish, racist agenda of black supremacism, and so who aren’t at all actually progressive themselves) to churn out their hateful speech.

If those of us who are sane and progressive don’t protect First-Amendment rights — which includes protecting those whose hearts are mostly in the right place from being the victims of incredibly hypocritical political-correctness lynch mobs when and if they ever cross the political-correctness line — then that is the kind of nation that we’ll live in.

—

*Yes, awful, racist, inexcusable things routinely were said of Barack Obama and of his family members, but I don’t recall any celebrity, major or minor, ever having posed with a prosthetic severed head of President Obama. Just sayin’.

**Anyone who has read me regularly knows that I support the political push for greater racial equality, including stopping cops from routinely shooting (and otherwise harming and killing) unarmed black men (and other historically oppressed minorities), ending the insane incarceration rate of non-whites, and tackling our insane rate of income inequality, which harms people of all races.

Of course black lives matter, but Black Lives Matter needs to rein in the black supremacists among its ranks, and I refer only to those black supremacists as the “Only Black Lives Matter” set — because that is their mindset, their worldview: they care only about black people, and for anyone of any race to care only about people of his or her own race is some incredibly fucked-up, and racist, shit.

***Cornel West is a true progressive who doesn’t kiss the center-right Democratic Party establishment’s ass. He courageously consistently has been appropriately critical of Barack Obama and of Billary Clinton and, being an actual progressive, he supported Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

And in a wonderful move consistent with acting according to his conscience, although West was on the committee that wrote the Democratic Party’s 2016 platform, he nonetheless ended up endorsing Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein instead of Billary, and I voted for Stein in November just as I voted for her in 2012, as I don’t vote for DINOs, but for actual progressives.

Don’t know WTF you’re doing? No problem! Become a ‘war president’!

I’d say that “President” Pussygrabber is focusing on military actions right now because he has no fucking clue as to how to handle domestic affairs.

That’s true, but the larger truth, I think, is even worse than that: War is a great diversion from the fact that our corporate overlords – Pussygrabber & Co. and many others – are continuing to rob us commoners blind, through such means as government deregulation meant to increase obscene profiteering, the continuing privatization of the commons and of governmental functions (including, of course, health care, public schools and prisons), and giving even more tax breaks to the rich while the rest of us continue to pay more than our fair share of taxes.

“I’m a war president,” George W. Bush infamously declared in February 2004. Never mind that the Vietraq War that he launched in March 2003 not only was bogus and immoral, but was illegal; the unelected Bush regime committed war crimes, causing the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people in Iraq, giving Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad a run for his money where body counts in the Middle East are concerned.

“War President” Gee Dubya went on to destroy the nation’s economy by the time he left office in January 2009, and, of course, not only did the Vietraq War provide war profits for Dick Cheney’s war-profiteering Halliburton (and for other war profiteers), but it distracted the masses while BushCheneyCorp and friends freely looted the nation. It was great cover.

This is what it’s about these days when the United States of America goes to war.

That and since Pussygrabber is an egomaniacal man-child who would do anything to get his awful favorability numbers up, expect the remainder of whatever time Pussygrabber has left in the White House to include a shitload of saber-rattling.

Finally, of course, the Pussygrabber administration’s new-found supposedly adversarial stance toward Russia (via Syria) strikes me as a transparent, cynical attempt to try to put to rest the months-long chatter about how Team Pussygrabber has been in bed with Russia (perhaps even literally) even before the presidential election.

When the unelected Pussygrabber administration drops a MOAB on Moscow, then maybe we can believe that the supposed, awfully conveniently new hostility between Team Pussygrabber and Team Putin is real.

Establishment Dems will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on this one, too

The establishment Democrats’ “plan” is only to continue to ridicule “President” Pussygrabber (which is like shooting dead fish in a barrel) — because that “plan” worked out so well for Billary Clinton in November.

Unfortunately, “President” Pussygrabber most likely won’t implode all at once in spectacular, schadenfreude-producing fashion. Even if the rumored Russian hooker urination video ever emerges, I’m not sure that even that would be enough to take him down; I’d truly thought that surely his video-recorded boast about grabbing women by the genitalia would take him down, yet he still sits in the White House (well, when he isn’t at his tower plotting his evil, like Saruman [using Twitter as his palantír], and when he isn’t golfing, and he golfs often).

Most likely, Pussygrabber’s political death will come through a thousand cuts over time. That is, this shit show probably will only continue to unfold on a daily basis.

That said, Pussygrabber is nothing if not a cockroach on crack; he is a survivor. And the establishment Democrats are so fucking clueless that just as they incredibly stupidly made the universally loathed Repugnican Lite Billary Clinton their champion for the 2016 presidential election, of course they could fail to deny even Pussygrabber a second term; never underestimate their stark incompetence and their political malpractice and dereliction of duty.

Perhaps Pussygrabber’s largest problem right now is that his favorability rating remains stubbornly stuck around only 40 percent (sometimes dipping down into the upper 30s and sometimes reaching into the lower 40s, but always around 40 percent), this when a new president’s ratings tend to be the highest that they’re ever going to be during his tenure (I’d write “or her tenure,” but, well…).

You might argue that Pussygrabber has nothing to worry about, that he has plenty of time to get his favorability numbers up, but, um, no, he probably doesn’t. If he doesn’t start bigly getting some of those yuuuge wins that he relentlessly promised on the presidential campaign trail — he was going to win so fucking much that all of us were going to vomit continuously from our vertigo from his non-stop victories, recall — he’s going to be bogged down with the reputation as a political loser who couldn’t herd even dead cats with a pitchfork.

I’m confident that a significant factor as to why so many Repugnican Tea Party members of the U.S. House of Representatives had no problem refusing to vote yes on the wealth-care bill this past week — despite Pussygrabber’s threats that he’d destroy their political careers if they didn’t vote yes — is that they know fully well that the widely unpopular Pussygrabber isn’t very politically powerful and thus not much of a threat to them.

(That and, of course, each member of the House must gauge how each important vote will sit with his or her constituents; coming up for re-election every two years certainly keeps you on your toes, and Pussygrabber asks an awful lot of a U.S. representative to vote a certain way for Pussygrabber when that vote might cost that representative his or her own seat.

Of course, Pussygrabber also apparently believes that he’s still a billionaire CEO, that when he screams “Jump!”, his victim must shit his or her pants on the spot. Pussygrabber still doesn’t understand or still refuses to acknowledge that the executive is only one of three co-equal branches of the federal government. This is why billionaire CEOs never should become president; the presidency is not actually a dictatorship.)

I expect Pussygrabber’s downfall to be a slow erosion.

In the meantime, don’t expect the establishment Democrats to step up to the plate to show real leadership. As I recently noted, they still snub Bernie Sanders, the most popular elected official in the nation, because he has the audacity to be a true Democrat, that is, an actual progressive, instead of a corporate whore.

(I don’t blame Bernie whatsofuckingever for eschewing the label of “Democrat”; who wants to be a shameless fucking money whore, a slimy piece of treasonous trash who sells his or her constituents out for personal gain at every fucking opportunity?)

Indeed, reports Yahoo! News:

After the Republican replacement for Obamacare was dramatically pulled at the last minute Friday due to lack of support, top Washington Democrats took a victory lap, mocking President Trump and claiming the bill’s failure as a win for their party and the American public.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a statement blaming the bill’s failure on what he characterized as two hallmarks of the Trump administration: “incompetence and broken promises.”

“In my life, I have never seen an administration as incompetent as the one occupying the White House today,” Schumer said.

“They can’t write policy that actually makes sense, they can’t implement the policies they do manage to write, they can’t get their stories straight, and today we’ve learned that they can’t close a deal and they can’t count votes.”

“So much for ‘The Art of the Deal.’”

In a press conference, surrounded by other congressional Democrats, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who was serving as House speaker when the Affordable Care Act was passed, was buoyant.

“Today is a great day for our country,” Pelosi said. “It’s a victory. What happened on the floor is a victory for the American people — for our seniors, for people with disabilities, for our children, for our veterans.”

Pelosi charged the Republicans with “spite” for originally scheduling a vote on the replacement legislation for Thursday, the seventh anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act. …

The same Yahoo! News writer posted a similar news article about Billary Clinton’s having called Obamacare’s reprieve a “victory.”

What we Americans actually need, of course, is single-payer health care; we need legislation that acknowledges health care for all as a basic human right to be enacted and to be carried out, and for-profit health care (except perhaps for purely elective medical care, such as cosmetic surgery for vanity) should be eliminated, as no one should profit from someone else’s health status.

But don’t expect such crazy talk from the establishment Democrats, though; to them, corporate cash is like heroin. Indeed, Obamacare keeps the corporate, for-profit health-care model — which I think of as wealth care — firmly in place.

The establishment Democrats’ “plan” is what Billary Clinton’s presidential campaign “plan” was: Not to lead, not to offer any bold solutions that don’t involve even further corporate enrichment, but only to snicker at how awful Pussygrabber & Co. are.

That “plan” didn’t work for Billary in November, and it won’t work for the DINOs now.

If the DINOs don’t morph into actual Democrats between now and 2020 — and history and all present signs indicate that they won’t — then “President” Pussygrabber being only a one-termer is not at all a sure thing.

LOCK THEM UP!

“Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence,” The New York Times reported yesterday in a bombshell news story.

(Dan Rather wrote that this might be bigger than Watergate; specifically, he wrote, in part: “On a 10 scale of Armageddon for our form of government, I would put Watergate at a 9. This Russia scandal is currently somewhere around a 5 or 6, in my opinion, but it is cascading in intensity seemingly by the hour. And we may look back and see, in the end, that it is at least as big as Watergate. It may become the measure by which all future scandals are judged.”)

“President” Pussygrabber’s shit storm of a tweet storm lambasting, among others, the supposedly “failing” New York Times and Washington Post (which aren’t “failing,” of course, but are growing, ironically in large part because of Pussygrabber and his non-stop bullshit) only bolsters the Times’ case; the pathologically lying fascists who comprise the Repugnican Tea Party always encourage us commoners to ignore the message and to shoot the messengers, as this is the best possible outcome for them.

(In his uber-presidential tweet storm, Pussygrabber, a noted media expert, also oh-so-helpfully noted that while MSNBC and CNN are “unwatchable,” “Fox & Friends” “is great!” [“Fox,” of course, is just short for “the fox guarding the hen house”].)

In a nutshell, yesterday the Times reported that during regular surveillance of Russian intelligence operatives (which not only is routine and very apparently very necessary, but is legal by U.S. law), U.S. intelligence operatives and law-enforcement officials discovered that several members of Team Pussygrabber, in the year before the 2016 presidential election, “had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials.”

While the Times reporters make clear in their news story that right now they have no evidence of these members of Team Pussygrabber having coordinated illegal activities with Russian intelligence officials, or even knowingly having had contact with Russian intelligence officials, that the associates of a presidential candidate (knowingly or not) had sustained contact with a foreign (and, in this case, an enemy foreign) nation’s intelligence officers is a stunning revelation that at the bare minimum reveals deep incompetence, negligence and untrustworthiness if not proven illegality.

The Repugnican Tea Party traitors, from the “president” on down, of course are focusing on the leaks to the media rather than on the substance of the leaks, but the leaks are necessary, because obviously the treasonous Repugnican Tea Party is not going to investigate itself. It has an obvious inherent conflict of interest.

When do the powers that be ever allow anything to threaten their grip on their own power?

Thus, leaks often (if not usually) are patriotic acts, especially when they reveal treasonous acts that otherwise never would come to life because the perpetrators and their aiders and abettors obviously are going to do everything within their power to prevent the knowledge of those treasonous acts from ever coming to light.

“President” Pussygrabber would much, much rather that we watch “Fox & Friends” than read The New York Times and The Washington Post.

I’ll stick with the Times and the Post, Mr. Pussygrabber, fuck you very much.*

—

*Again, it’s rather ironic that the “president” quite unintentionally greatly has helped the formerly struggling print media, whose services we need now more than ever.

I have subscribed to the Times online and I also read articles from the Post online daily. Both news outlets have been producing high-quality journalism for a while now.

It’s easy to join The Resistance

AFP/Getty Images photo

In a brilliant protest, members of Greenpeace suspended a large banner reading “RESIST” near the White House early this morning. From The New York Times’ coverage of the banner, apparently the banner was up at least from around 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. EST.*

Not all of us can participate in the scale of protest that members of Greenpeace orchestrated early this morning when they apparently spent hours scaling a crane near the White House in order to hang a wonderful banner. But all of us who oppose fascism can do something.

I’m way too chicken and out of shape to climb a crane, but I can and probably will give a donation to Greenpeace. I believe in rewarding and encouraging things like Greenpeace did this morning.

I routinely give to organizations whose work I like and want to see continue. I’ve given to the American Civil Liberties Union and to Planned Parenthood, for instance, as well to environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club (and to Greenpeace in the past), and to humanitarian groups, such as Mercy Corps.

I blog.

I talk about politics to those within my sphere of influence. (As I’ve noted here many times over the past year-plus, I supported Bernie Sanders, and those within my close sphere of influence voted for him in the California primary.)

I do what I can, given my time, energy and funds.

I suspect that many of us do nothing because we think that if we can’t do something big and brilliant — along the lines of what some brave members of Greenpeace did this morning — then our contribution won’t matter.

But our contributions do matter. They add up.

Fascism thrives where complicity thrives. “President” Pussygrabber and his fascist, neo-Nazi supporters will thrive only if we allow them an environment in which to thrive. We can fairly shut them down right now if enough of us choose to do so. (The fascists, being anti-democratic by definition, are famously stubborn to public outcry, however, so yes, this is probably going to take some time, and hopefully not, but perhaps, some bloodshed. [As the right wing loves to say, freedom isn’t free.])

Impeachment and removal from office aren’t the only tool to cripple a presidency (and they are far from certain to work); ask the Repugnican Tea Party traitors who did everything in their power to cripple Barack Obama’s presidency.**

Payback is a bitch, and we who oppose Pussygrabber should encourage our elected officials to be just as obstructive as the Repugnican Tea Party traitors have been obstructive over the past several years. (Most of what “President” Pussygrabber & Co. propose and do are and are going to be destructive, and so most of what they propose and do should be obstructed as much as possible.)

Even if one or more of your elected officials is a Repugnican, enough outcry from his or her constituents can make even a Repugnican elected official back away from the train wreck on crack that is “President” Pussygrabber. The vast majority of elected officials, after all, want to remain elected officials.

Yes, contacting your elected officials matters. Most people never contact their elected officials, thinking that it won’t matter, so your contact is magnified. I routinely e-mail my elected officials. (Sometimes I send them snail mails, especially on the issues that most concern me, but usually I e-mail them.) If you can visit your elected officials’ offices, including participating in protests at their offices, that’s even better. That does get their attention. (I’m not into calling my elected officials’ offices, as I prefer written communication, but if that is your thing, go for it.)

Organizations that are suing the Pussygrabber administration (such as the ACLU) — and there will be many federal lawsuits against the Pussygrabber administration — could probably use your donation, as lawsuits aren’t cheap.

I surmise that federal lawsuits are going to prove to be the No. 1 weapon against the unelected Pussygrabber administration’s fascist, unconstitutional and anti-American actions. Indeed, we have three branches of government in order to keep any one branch from getting out of control.

Pussygrabber is a modern-day Caligula, but unlike Caligula was, he is not an emperor. He will find that while it has been one thing to be the king of a business empire, the American empire is another thing entirely.

Pussygrabber is not a legitimate U.S. president, and so we should point out his illegitimacy at every opportunity.

The No. 1 thing in resisting the Pussygrabber administration, I think, is not to keep quiet. The Germans in Nazi Germany kept quiet and we know the consequences of their silence.

So speak up. Don’t be afraid; the unelected Pussygrabber regime can’t imprison or torture or kill all of us, and as soon as its treasonous members start to imprison or torture or kill any of us, it’s all over for them in short order anyway.

Be as effective as you can within your own sphere of influence. Most of us who oppose “President” Pussygrabber and all that he stands for effectively have our own cell, and millions of cells together make a difference.

Besides, think of the advantage that we of The Resistance already have: Despite his treasonous, anti-democratic lies to the contrary — and kudos to The New York Times for this week having flat-out called Pussygrabber’s lie a lie — about 3 million more of us voted for Billary Clinton than for Pussygrabber, and his approval ratings right now are historically low for a new “president.”

Pussygrabber is weak — and he knows it. He is scared — and he should be.

For more ideas of how to resist, you might consider reading the newly released book The Trump Survival Guide. Soon I’m going to buy the great political writer Matt Taibbi’s Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus.

Revisiting some classics can be useful, too. George Orwell’s anti-fascist 1984 (which is No. 1 on amazon.com as I type this sentence [and a different edition of the novel right now is at No. 6]) is a great read, and I’m planning to purchase Sinclair Lewis’ anti-fascist It Can’t Happen Here (which is No. 7 on amazon.com as I type this sentence).

You don’t even have to read a book. You simply can Google ideas. Hell, you don’t even have to type anything into Google’s search bar; I’ve done that for you, so just click here.

The main thing is to do something.

That’s always better than doing nothing.

Welcome to The Resistance, where every contribution matters.

The people, united, will never be defeated.

—

*The Times reports:

… Travis Nichols, a spokesman for Greenpeace, the environmental advocacy organization for which the activists were volunteering, said the protesters were there “to resist the environmental, economic and racial injustice that Trump and his administration have already laid out and put into practice.”

In his first week in office, Mr. Trump’s administration instructed officials at the Environmental Protection Agency to freeze grants and contracts, and, according to Reuters, ordered the agency to remove the climate change page from its website.

Mr. Trump has also resurrected the Keystone and Dakota Access pipeline projects that have been the subject of virulent protests by environmental activists. …

**I have had my problems with the-not-nearly-progressive-or-aggressive-enough Obama, and have written about them here over the years, but I recognize that he was the twice-duly-elected president of the United States of America. In 2008 and in 2012 he won both the popular vote and the Electoral College — and, unlike George W. Bush and “President” Pussygrabber, not only did he win the popular vote, the only vote that really matters in an actual democracy, but he didn’t get an assist from the U.S. Supreme Court or from an enemy nation.

‘President’ Pussygrabber sets fascist, deregulatory, anti-government tone

“These smug pilots have lost touch with regular passengers like us. Who thinks I should fly the plane?”

Cartoon from The New Yorker

I watched “President” Pussygrabber’s inauguration speech live today out of a sense of obligation to know exactly what toxic propaganda the fascist in chief is spewing into the political environment.

Thankfully it was a fairly short speech, and right off the bat Pussygrabber showed us the direction he’s dragging us in: Gub-mint baaad!

To hear Pussygrabber tell it, the nation’s ills are due to the craven, selfish gub-mint workers in D.C. (federal elected officials and federal civil servants, I presume) who for the past several years have been working for themselves instead of for the American people (I’d thought that it was the Mexicans and the Muslims whom we need to dispose of in order to Make America Great Again, but whatever…).

Pussygrabber huffed and puffed:

… For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.

Washington flourished — but the people did not share in its wealth.

Politicians prospered — but the jobs left, and the factories closed.

The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country.

Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation’s Capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.

That all changes — starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you. …*

It’s funny, because I could have sworn that our corporate and other plutocratic overlords, most of them not in government, committed these crimes against us commoners — including by, yes, buying off way too many of those in D.C. — and it’s not that Pussygrabber truly believes that the government hasn’t helped the citizenry enough; no, it’s that the government has helped the citizenry too much, has been too regulatory.

The treasonous profiteers have a harder time treasonously profiteering at the expense of the people and of the planet when the government effectively is regulating bad actors.

Thus, we must put an anti-Environmental Protection Agency guy in charge of the EPA, an anti-Department of Energy guy in charge of the Department of Energy, an anti-public-school woman in charge of the Department of Education, and a white supremacist in charge of the Department of Justice, to name only some of the examples of Pussygrabbers’ having appointed rabid foxes on crack to guard the hen house.

And, of course, the filthy rich — Pussygrabber’s cohorts — want their massive tax breaks, and doing good, beneficial things for the citizenry takes tax dollars; therefore, we must convince the citizenry that the government spending tax dollars on them (even their own tax dollars) is bad.

And of course Pussygrabber and his deregulatory ilk have to falsely frame their deregulation schemes in terms of helping the average U.S. citizen when, in fact, deregulation more often than not harms the average citizen.

It’s all good, though; when the United States of America becomes a complete fucking free-for-all, a treasonous profiteer’s wet dream of deregulation, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth among the vast majority of those who incredibly stupidly voted for Pussygrabber. (Unfortunately, there also will be suffering for the millions of us who did not vote for Pussygrabber, and about 3 million more of us did not vote for him than did.)

Of course a billionaire never had any intention whatsofuckingever of helping the little guy. After all, he stole his billions from the legions of little guys. (You don’t get filthy rich by working; you get rich via the legalized thievery that is capitalism.)

In short order I expect the nation to go right back to the state it was at the end of “President” George W. Bush’s eight illegitimate years (or worse). I expect another nationwide economic collapse and environmental catastrophes (natural and man-made) for which the government is wholly unprepared and/or unwilling to manage effectively.

And, of course, we’ll probably have at least another unnecessary war; after all, as BushCheneyCorp knew fully well, the war profiteers can’t profiteer without a war, and it’s not that hard to fabricate a casus belli; a relentless campaign of propagandist lies will do the trick, as it did for the Vietraq War.

I mean, Pussygrabber already has started out just as Gee Dubya did: with a stolen presidential election. Nothing good follows a stolen election; a stolen election can be nothing else but a harbinger of doom. An individual who loses the popular vote but who takes office anyway isn’t a democratically elected individual.

And an individual who becomes president with the help of a foreign, enemy nation is a traitor — we’ll see how hard “President” Pussygrabber works to quash all further investigation into his very apparently treasonous ties to Russia and to his apparent puppeteer Putin.

With a patently fascist and treasonous “president” in the White House yet once again — yes, thank you, Gee Dubya, for helping to prepare us at least to some degree for Donald J. Trump — I am happy that I live in California, where regulation by the government makes our citizens’ lives better, not worse (if it decreases some bad corporate actors’ profits, oh, boo fucking hoo), and where I at least somewhat will be protected from the worst excesses from the unelected Pussygrabber regime.

We Californians, who reside in by far the most populous state in the nation and who voted for Billary Clinton over Pussygrabber by a margin of almost two to one, are not having this Pussygrabber bullshit and we plan to resist him the way that the Repugnican Teatards treasonously resisted the actually democratically elected Barack Obama every fucking step of the way.

As unpleasant as it is for me to hear “President” Pussygrabber speak even a short sentence, while he sickens me, as all neo-Nazis do — seriously, listening to even his short inauguration speech, one of the worst ever given, was work for me — I don’t feel that I didn’t do enough to try to prevent a “President” Trump.

From Day One I was a strong supporter of actual populist Bernie Sanders, whom I always saw as more likely to win the White House than the unlikable, corrupt, faux populist, Democrat in name only, Repugnican Lite Billary Clinton.

I gave Sanders’ presidential campaign more than $1,000 over time and spent countless hours writing about him and discussing him with others. I even stood on my feet for at least two hours waiting to see him at a rally attended by thousands here in Sacramento in May.

But in the end, the “Democratic” dead-enders shoved the coronation of Billary Clinton down our throats — even though the nationwide polls, right up to the end of the Democratic Party presidential primary elections and caucuses, consistently showed Bernie Sanders doing much better against Donald Trump than she — and as a result of that colossal collective “Democratic” stupidity, we now have “President” Pussygrabber.

Yes, blame the fucktards who voted for Pussygrabber in the general election, but blame the fucktards who supported Billary Clinton in the Democratic Party presidential primaries and caucuses, too.

Clintonism finally is dead now, thank Goddess, but now we have to deal with “President” Pussygrabber and the damage that he is going to wreak through his systematic dismantling of our institutions in order to benefit himself, his family and his rich cronies.

We survived George W. Bush, but I don’t know whether we’ll survive Pussygrabber.

I only know that I am part of the resistance, even though my conscience is clear and even though I can say, Don’t blame me — I voted for Bernie!

—

*Of course corruption, fraud, waste and abuse and even inefficiency should be rooted out in all levels of government and corrected, and of course in some states and locales (the vast majority of them Repugnican-controlled) the governments actually don’t do the people’s business but do the plutocrats’ business, but on the whole, all levels of government do the citizenry much more good than harm.

Government is all that stands between us peasants and our corporate overlords getting absolutely everything that they want from us and doing absolutely everything that they want to do to us.

This is why “President” Pussygrabber and his ilk want to destroy, or at least seriously cripple, government: So they can get to us more quickly and more easily.

“President” Pussygrabber must distract the angry hordes carrying torches and pitchforks from the real enemy: our millionaire and billionaire corporate overlords like Pussygrabber. Indeed, as the new head of the Repugnican Party, this is one of Pussygrabber’s chief jobs: to keep the faux populist propaganda flowing and to keep publicly identifying the wrong enemies of the people (Mexican immigrants, Muslims, and now, apparently, government workers and elected officials) so that our treasonous corporate overlords can continue to fuck us over blind.

‘President’-‘elect’ Pussygrabber is illegitimate and should be boycotted

Updated below (on Wednesday, January 18, 2017)

It speaks volumes about the Repugnican (Tea) Party that since (but not including) 1988, its presidential candidate won the popular vote only one time (in 2004). This is a weak political party that should have been polished off long ago, and it still exists only because of the ineptitude and the cowardice of the Democrats. Thankfully, there is a good chance that Putin puppet “President”-“elect” Pussygrabber finally will do the job that the Democrats never did: destroy the Repugnican Party as we know it.

“The number of Democratic members of Congress saying they will boycott Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday has increased to 26,” the BBC reports today, the highest count that I’ve seen thus far, but the BBC doesn’t list them all. (Yahoo! News apparently lists all or most of the boycotters here.)

The boycott apparently was jump-started* by Georgia U.S. Rep. John Lewis’ correct pronouncement this past week that Donald J. Trump is an illegitimate president (which of course drew the very predictable, very immature El Trumpo’s return fire on the very presidential platform that is Twitter).

Rep. Lewis cited Russia’s having tried to influence the presidential election as the source of Pussygrabber’s illegitimacy, but to that I would add the fact that Pussygrabber lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes, making him, in that sense, even more illegitimate than was “President” George W. Bush, who in 2000 lost the popular vote by almost 544,000 votes.

Of course the Repugnican Teatards aren’t at all concerned that Pussygrabber lost the popular vote by almost 3 million, aren’t concerned that the loser “won.” They weren’t concerned when this happened in 2000, either, because the Repugnicans are fascists, and fascists never care whether or not they actually win the most votes; they care only about taking power, with or without the consent of the majority of the American people.

This is why I also call these fascists traitors. They aren’t individuals who act in good faith with whom I simply disagree on politics, ethics and morality; they are actively anti-democratic and as such they are the enemy to all of us who actually value democracy, who believe that merely paying lip service to democracy isn’t nearly enough.

To attend “President”-“elect” Pussygrabber’s inauguration ceremony on Friday is to give him, at least tacitly, legitimacy that he does not have, and to give the dint of legitimacy to an unelected, treasonous fascist like Pussygrabber is to work against the nation’s best interests, whether one intends to do so or not.

(Those who argue that they are attending the inauguration ceremony in order to honor the office of the presidency rather than to endorse, by their presence, the specific individual who is taking over the Oval Office on Friday are trying to have it both ways — but they cannot. Their presence indeed will give Der Fuhrer Trump the appearance of legitimacy that he does not have and indeed will serve only to further normalize the infantilism, fascism and treason that are El Trumpo’s most prominent traits.)

To boycott All Things Pussygrabber isn’t to be a sore loser, since Pussygrabber didn’t actually win, but actually lost the election. To boycott Der Fuhrer Trump, then, is to be a sore winner.

Just as I never considered George W. Bush to be the legitimate president of the United States of America, I never will consider Donald J. Trump to be the legitimate president.

If the majority of the American voters had actually selected these inept fascists, perhaps I could get over it, but both inept fascists lost the popular vote and both had significant, extra-democratic help from others.

Bush Jr. had help from his brother Jeb!, who was then governor of the pivotal Electoral College state of Florida that Bush Jr. “won” also with the help of then-Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who just coinky-dinkily also had been on the committee to see Bush Jr. elected in Florida (no conflict of interest there!).

And, of course, the coup de grâce was when the “justices” of the U.S. Supreme Court who had been appointed by Repugnican presidents voted to stop the recount in Florida — by so doing to install Bush Jr. into the White House, the wishes of the majority of the American voters be damned.

All of this brazen corruption and these extra-democratic political machinations, yet we commoners were expected to accept George W. Bush as the legitimate president of the United States of America.

Ditto for Donald J. Trump, even when it’s evident that probably for the first time in our nation’s history, another nation — and historically (and presently) an enemy nation — probably was instrumental in helping their chosen Manchurian candidate “win.”

This is treason, and those who cooperate with “President”-“elect” Pussygrabber in any way are complicit in this treason.

No true patriot could support Donald J. Trump in any way, even by “just” attending his inauguration.

P.S. I have e-mailed my two California U.S. senators and my U.S. representative and asked all of them to boycott Friday’s inauguration ceremony. I encourage you to do the same, even if you think there’s no way in hell that any of your representatives to D.C. will do so.

While it’s most likely that none of my three D.C. representatives will boycott the inauguration, the most likely to do so, it seems to me, is the newly minted Democratic U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, who has been pretty good on civil rights. (Harris already has said that she will vote against Alabama U.S. Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III for U.S. attorney general.)

My other U.S. senator, “Democrat” Dianne Feinstein, is fairly worthless, and I expect little to nothing from her.

My U.S representative isn’t much better than is Feinstein, and I’d be shocked if she were to boycott, because that would be way too bold and courageous for her, as it would be for Feinstein.

I am glad and proud to see, however, that several U.S. representatives from California are joining the boycott.

Update (Monday, January 16, 2017, 9:20 p.m. PST): Slate.com now reports that 35 members of Congress won’t attend the inauguration on Friday, and lists them all.

I am pleased to see that new to the growing list of boycotters is Minnesota U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, whom I still support for the new chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Still no U.S. senator has said that she or he won’t attend the inauguration, and while 11 U.S. representatives on Slate.com’s list of 35 boycotters are from my home state of California, where Billary Clinton on November 8 beat Pussygrabber by about two to one, my U.S. representative (Doris Matsui) isn’t on Slate.com’s list….

Update (Wednesday, January 18, 2017): Now more than 50 members of the U.S. House of Representatives are boycotting Friday’s inauguration ceremony. No U.S. senator thus far has had the cajones to do the right thing and boycott. (The senators are D.C. elites, you see.)

Speaking of D.C. elites, as was entirely predictable, my lame U.S. representative, “Democrat” Doris Matsui, has chosen retaining her status as a D.C. elite over doing the right thing, and of course she will attend the inauguration.

“I love my country,” Matsui said lamely, like a junior high school student. “And our country is so important and critical in the world. I thought that my personal feelings about Trump should not prevent me from showing support for our democracy.”

No, she’s just showing up to show her support for election theft, treason and fascism. Because she loves her country.

(“It’s a serious occasion, the peaceful transference of power,” Matsui said of the inauguration ceremony, as though she were teaching civics to kindergarteners. “The rest of the world is watching, too. I think it’s important for us to look as unified as we can because we have to look forward.”

Just: Wow. “Looking” “unified” is the most important consideration here? No, cooperating with fascism is cooperating with fascism. This is why the “Democrats” lose: they continually sell out their base to the right in the name of high-mindedness while the Repugnican Tea Party never returns that favor. “Opposition party” isn’t in the DINOs’ vocabulary.

Speaking of which, Pussygrabber spokesnake Sean Spicer, like Matsui, also calls the inauguration ceremony a “peaceful transfer of power,” because we Americans all must be peaceful, you see, even though yet another presidential election has just been stolen. Peacefulness and the appearance of unity, you see, are far more important than are fair elections in which the winners of the most votes actually take office and in which enemy foreign nations don’t interfere.)

I didn’t vote for Matsui in November because of her blindly obedient, elitist support for her fellow DINO Billary Clinton, who obviously was the wrong presidential candidate to put forth in 2016, and I don’t see myself casting a vote for the Trump-loving, simple-minded, D.C. elitist, sellout Matsui ever again.

Update (Wednesday, January 18, 2017): Good Morning America now puts the count of boycotting U.S. representatives at a full 60 and lists them all. (Of course no Repugnican Tea Party U.S. representative dares to boycott Der Fuhrer Donald’s installation.)

There are 194 Democrats in the House of Representatives, so 60 of them boycotting means that 31 percent of the House Dems are boycotting. And 60 representatives is 14 percent of the full House of Representatives, which has 435 members in all.

—

*The BBC reports that the first member of U.S. Congress to announce his or her boycott of Pussygrabber’s inauguration was Illinois U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, last month, but apparently the boycott didn’t catch fire until Rep. Lewis announced that he also would boycott.

Kudos to Rep. Gutierrez for having gone first in doing the right thing! I wish that he were my U.S. representative!

Trump is toast

As an American politician or political candidate you can get away with saying all manner of vile, oppressive, even dangerous things in a “nice,” “polite” way, but a sex scandal always can bring you down like a ton of bricks in the hypocritically Victorian U.S. of A. Yesterday, The Washington Post released a video of Donald Trump in 2005 braggadociously reporting that he had tried, unsuccessfully, to “fuck” a married woman although at the time he already was married to his third wife, Melania. Trump, in Yoda-like fashion, also advised that with women whom you want to fuck, if “you’re a star,” you simply “Grab them by the pussy.”

We all already knew that Der Fuhrer Donald Trump is boorish, but the recording of him proclaiming in 2005 that “when you’re a star, they [(attractive) women] let you do … anything,” such as “Grab them by the pussy” just makes that knowledge so real. (The audio-video recording of Trump’s remarks about “do[ing] anything” to women whom you desire “when you’re a star” is here.)

This very most likely is the end of Trump’s campaign for president (although of course he has proclaimed that he won’t drop out; only someone who possesses a modicum of shame would do that).

I generally don’t believe in the public release of private remarks, but I don’t know that you really can call this case an invasion of privacy. I mean, Trump was openly talking to a TV show host and his remarks were picked up by a hot microphone. He wasn’t chatting at home or talking on the telephone.

And just as we needed to know about Clarence Thomas’ character before he incredibly stupidly was put on the U.S. Supreme Court, we need to know about Trump’s before he incredibly stupidly is put in the Oval Office.

Trump already was on a downward trajectory anyway after his shitty first presidential debate performance and the news that he apparently hasn’t paid federal income taxes in many years — fivethirtyeight.com right now puts his chances of winning the White House at only only 18.6 percent to Billary Clinton’s 81.4 percent, and I expect his chances to continue to dwindle — but it’s really over for him now.

“No woman should ever be described in these terms or talked about in this manner. Ever,” Repugnican National Committee head Reince Preibus was forced to declare just a month and a day before the presidential election, and 2012 Repugnican Tea Party presidential candidate Mittens Romney similarly proclaimed, “Hitting on married women? Condoning assault? Such vile degradations demean our wives and daughters and corrupt America’s face to the world.”

Pretty Boy Paul Ryan, Mittens’ running mate in 2012 and speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, called the recording “sickening” and stated, “I hope Mr. Trump treats this situation with the seriousness it deserves and works to demonstrate to the country that he has greater respect for women than this clip suggests.”

In his own “defense,” Trump proclaimed, “This was locker-room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course — not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended.”

Wow.

“Locker-room banter,” yes, indeed, but Trump wants to be president of the United States of America, and this banter didn’t stay inside of the locker room. And while 2005 was a bit over a decade ago, Trump is 70 years old now, so he was plenty old enough to know better in 2005. His claim that today he is a changed man is incredible; he didn’t make these remarks when he was in his teens or 20s.

I’m sure that we’ve had plenty of lechers in the White House, but, again, we haven’t heard recordings of their lecherous words; their lechery has remained, for the most part, an abstraction.

And when Trump tries to bring in Bill Clinton — who no doubt indeed was one of the former lechers in the White House, replete with semen-stained intern’s dress and all —  Trump reminds me of his opponent Billary Clinton, who frequently tries to throw someone else under the bus or tries to use someone else as a political human shield (Barack Obama, usually) when she is cornered.

It’s no wonder that both Trump and Billary are the most hated U.S. presidential candidates in modern history.

Speaking of Billary, I will note (to be, you know, fair and balanced) that some of the remarks that she reportedly made to Wall Street weasels in her highly paid speeches to them (you know, the transcripts of which she has refused to release) have been leaked by WikiLeaks, and while some of them are unflattering, in terms of political scandals, they’re nothing on the level of Pussygrabgate. (On that note, maybe it’s because I’m gay, but how, exactly, do you grab a woman by the pussy? You can grab a man by his junk, I suppose, especially if he’s gifted in that area, but there’s not much of a woman’s crotch to grab, is there?)

Anyway, let’s see: Billary allegedly stated that “politics is like sausage being made,” adding, that “if everybody’s watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.”

Like El Trumpo’s presidential proclamation about pussy-grabbing, this statement about sausage-making isn’t exactly shocking coming from Billary. For instance, I’ve always believed that she personally supported same-sex marriage long before she finally publicly came out for it in March 2013 (after Barack Obama finally had done so in May 2012), for fuck’s sake. And when NPR’s Terry Gross grilled Billary on it in June 2014, she reacted in such a hyper-defensive way as to reveal that she indeed has a public face and a private face, that she’s shamelessly two-faced.

Billary also allegedly stated, in the material in the latest WikiLeaks dump, “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, sometime in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.”

Slate.com notes that “This may thrill the [progressive] editors at Vox, but presumably not white working-class voters in Ohio. Point Trump.”

I would be fine with open trade and “a hemispheric common market” if they were run by us commoners instead of by corporate weasels; my problem with globalization and “free” trade thus far isn’t with the concepts of them, but with the execution of them thus far: by corporate weasels who care only about profiteering and not at all about people and not at all about the planet. The treasonous corporate weasels can and will pervert any good idea on which they can get their greedy little grubbies.

I’m also fine with a significantly more porous border between the United States and Mexico and the rest of Latin America. We Americans have more to gain than we have to lose from such a more open exchange of culture, ideas, goods and services.

But let’s face it: What’s preventing such a more open exchange between the United States and Latin America is that Americans are economically richer, as a whole, than are Latin Americans, and most Americans don’t want that socioeconomic inequity to change any decade soon. This is why even many (if not even most) who identify as Democrats don’t want a significantly more permeable southern border (and a wholly open border is an uber-non-starter for the vast majority of Americans, I’m confident).

Speaking of the southern border, Donald Trump this past week made a comment that I find more offensive and harmful than his frat-boy pussy-grabbing comment from 2005: This past week Trump alleged that the federal government is allowing “illegals” from Mexico to come into the United States to vote for Democrats.

Not only is this a fucking lie — The Washington Post notes that “There’s no evidence … that immigrants (a) come to the country illegally to vote, (b) register to vote illegally and (c) cast votes in federal elections on any substantive scale” and that “There’s essentially no in-person voter fraud in American politics” — but demagogue Der Fuhrer Trump really needs to get his anti-Mexican rhetoric straight:

Do Mexican “illegals” come to the United States to rape, murder, pillage and plunder, as he and his xenophobic, nationalist, fascist, white-supremacist supporters repeatedly have alleged — or do they come here to vote?

Because, you know, when I think of hard-core criminals, I just don’t think of them as being committed voters. (Seriously: For sure, right after a man has raped and murdered and done some drug-running, he wants nothing more than to go vote illegally!)

Trump’s fucking fascist lie that Mexican “illegals” are crossing the border in droves in order to vote illegally is meant to accomplish at least two evil things:

(1) To bolster the fascist wingnuts’ delusion that the majority of us Americans actually agree with their hateful, ignorant, bigoted, demented, basket-of-deplorables worldview, and therefore, when the wingnuts lose elections, it only can mean that the elections were rigged (and therefore, any election results that don’t favor the wingnuts should be disregarded). This mindset is a grave threat to our democracy.

and

(2) To continue, for political and personal gain, to demonize and dehumanize the brown-skinned denizens from south of the border, much how the Nazis demonized and dehumanized Jews (and many, many others) for political and personal gain. We know what happened to the Jews and to the other victims of the Nazis.

Donald Trump is a fascist piece of shit who must never become president, and who, should he actually make it that far (which at this point is highly unlikely but not absolutely impossible, I suppose), must be relieved of the office by whatever means necessary. The republic is more important than is any one individual, especially a fascistic, pussy-grabbing, Latin-American-bashing piece of shit like Donald John Trump.

Thankfully, while fivethirtyeight.com puts Trump’s chances of becoming president at not even a full one in five, I put it at about one in a hundred (one in fifty would be charitable).

Bloodshed over Der Fuhrer Trump most likely won’t be necessary, but if the fascist traitors who support Der Fuhrer Trump want a rematch of the Civil War, my standing response remains: Bring it, bitches!

P.S. Oh, yeah (duh): The second presidential debate is scheduled for tomorrow night. There is a pretty good chance that I’ll live-blog it. Especially now.