The trouble with having a certifiable loon as your ostensible “commander in chief” is that the other loons are liable to mistake his noise for signal.
“Say, Ebrahim, where’s the Great Satan’s aircraft carrier going? Who the hell is calling the shots over there, anyway?”
“The only shot this one cares about is the seven-iron he just shanked into the water hazard, your Supreme Leadership.”
* Apologies to Randy Newman.
The starter’s pistol cracks, the flag drops … and they’re off! Another lap around the calendar has begun.
Herself and I called it quits long before midnight after a New Year’s Eve feast of Alaskan salmon (h/t Matt Wiebe), roasted potatoes, steamed broccoli, and salad. French rosé for her; fake St. Pauli Girl for me, my Clausthaler Dry Hopped being unavailable anywhere at any price.
The celebratory pyrotechnics likewise beat the clock. I was hearing fireworks and gunfire 8-ish as I unplugged the holiday lights. Burqueños do love their pistolas, and will discharge them at the sky if no other, better target presents itself.
This continued into the night until a final, furious fusillade awakened me and 2021 more or less simultaneously.
This morning I checked the property for bodies, but found nothing, no shell casings, no blood trails. Herself inspected the Vault and found a deposit of $1,200 from Uncle Sammy, that senile, profligate, racist old fool. We are not wealthy, but neither are we desperate, and so we will be redirecting these funds to someone who is. What a colossal waste of time and energy. Somebody could have been spending this cash months ago on food, rent, cartuchos, whatever.
Meanwhile, the Sedition Party is gearing up for more mischief at King’s Landing. This is the thing that never changes with the calendar. In power, they can’t govern, won’t even try. Out of power, they see to it that nobody else can govern, either. This is why small businesses close and public works crumble and people like us get free money.
And yet every New Year’s Eve the People spill out into the streets, shooting into the heavens. One wonders when they might choose some other targets of opportunity down here on earth.
While we wait, anybody making New Year’s resolutions that don’t involve overthrowing the government? Sound off in comments.
“Pandemic Deal by Congress Provides Economic Relief, for Now,” reports The New York Times.
But it’s too little, too late, and perhaps the last of Uncle Sammy’s pennies in the ol’ tin cup for a while, adds The Old Grey Hoor, in an analysis by Ben Casselman and Jim Tankersley.
The injection of money comes months too late for tens of thousands of failed businesses, however, and it may not be enough to sustain unemployed workers until the labor market rebounds. Moreover, it could be the last help from Washington the economy gets anytime soon.
Call me cynical, but I think we need some brighter bulbs on this job.
*Apologies to Chris in the Morning.
So I’m standing in the kitchen after a morning of bad dreams, idly thumbing through the news on my phone as the toaster mutters to itself, when I stumble across these two items back to back on The Washington Post app:
• Stealing to survive: More Americans are shoplifting food as aid runs out during the pandemic. One manager interviewed said he usually doesn’t call the John Laws, but instead tells the offenders not to come back.
“It’s become much harder during the pandemic,” he said. “People will say, ‘I was just hungry.’ And then what do you do?”
• Dismissing health concerns, State Department treats 200 guests to holiday drinks, tours and leftover “Be Best” swag. The hoopla included a tour of the White House holiday decorations, beverages at Blair House, and “Be Best” merch’ from the phenomenally unremarkable anti-bullying initiative by the First Plagiarist, Countess Malaria Dracula.
“It’s time to get rid of the leftovers,” said one official.
Indeed it is. There’s never a guillotine around when you need one. Jan. 20 can’t come soon enough.
In our second installment of “Hey, He Can’t Do That, Can He?” we have Ed Kilgore making a case for … maybe. Not without help, anyway.
Writing for New York magazine’s Intelligencer, Kilgore concedes that “nobody knows for sure” how long Adolf Twitler will keep contesting the 2020 election results.
But Kilgore breaks down the process by which this GOP-enabled defiance may devolve “from sour grapes to dangerous delusion.”
The good news, writes Kilgore, is that “the odds of Trump being able to pursue a 2020 election challenge into 2021, with his party at the federal and state levels unanimously behind him, are very limited.”
“There’s almost certainly not enough evidence of electoral irregularities to overturn Biden’s victories within individual states, and not enough raw political and judicial power for Republicans to defy federal and state laws and pull off an electoral coup early next year,” he adds.
Plus, if Il Douche wants to have another grab at the brass swastika in 2024, as has been widely discussed, well … how can we miss him if he won’t go away?
Kilgore concludes: “In other words, he can’t play Napoleon returning from Elba in triumph until he accepts his prior exile. The real deadline for Trump’s surrender to reality is the moment leaders of his party throw up their hands and cry: Enough!”
“Ich bin ein Loser!” Achtung, baby.
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