Well, the package is under the Christmas tree, but it’s not exactly what we hoped for, is it?

It’s a lot smaller than we thought, for starters. Missing a few pieces, seems like.

And we won’t get much time to play with it. A bunch of smirking old men wearing American-flag lapel pins are gonna take it away from us, just because they can. Doesn’t matter that we paid for it. Or that we’ll keep paying for it, for years.

When Vito Corpulento rose to power I thought that maybe, just maybe, the GOP would eventually wipe the blood off its flabby mitts, look around at the wreckage of the Republic, and say, “Whew. Well, we got almost everything we needed from the loony bastard. He’s not even a made guy. Let’s kick him to the curb.”

Wrong. The GOP is a gang, like the Gambino family, the Klan, or the Hells Angels. And gangs under attack tend to overlook any niggling internal disagreements.

Hunter S. Thompson wrote about the Angels as a tuneup for writing about Nixon, and tell me if this quote from a Frisco Angel doesn’t sound like your modern Republican Party:

“Our motto, man, is ‘All on One and One on All.’ You mess with an Angel and you’ve got twenty-five of them on your neck. I mean, they’ll break you but good, baby.”

They couldn’t do shit in the House except make a lot of bad noise, like a poorly tuned Harley. That’s the junior chapter over there, a bunch of prospects on mopeds, hoping to wear the colors some day. Good luck with that. The Senate wouldn’t let a bag of farts like Louie Gohmert in the back door to swab out the toilets after Taco Tuesday if he promised to use his tongue.

No, the Senate is strictly for the heavy hitters. It’s where business gets done. And by “done,” I mean done.

“Package? What package?” smirks The Turtle. “We never got no package from those guys. What could I tell you? But hey, it’s the holidays. There’s a lot going on. It’ll turn up, someday, maybe.

“Now get the fuck out of here. We’re doing business. Family business. And you don’t look like family to me.”