Shell game

The Turtle won’t stick his neck out. Original photo by Susan Walsh | AP

With ’Is Lardship’s second impeachment in hand, The World’s Greatest Deliberative Body™ does … fuck-all.

According to The New York Times, the Turtle has rejected a plea by Democrats to recall the Senate and go to trial. After the House vote to impeach, he said there was “simply no chance that a fair or serious trial could conclude” before Sleepy Joe’s inauguration next week.

In low tones that for some reason emitted from the rear of his shell, The Turtle spake thusly:

“I believe it will best serve our nation if Congress and the executive branch spend the next seven days completely focused on facilitating a safe inauguration and an orderly transfer of power to the incoming Biden administration.”

O, to be sure. The People’s Business been uppermost on his devious little mind ever since he discovered he could run it at a profit for himself.

The good news? The Turtle is said to have sworn that he will never again speak to ’Is Lardship. Boy, that’ll show ’em.

The big show

Let’s not start sucking each other’s — well, you know — quite yet.

Well.

Keeping the advice of the redoubtable Winston Wolf in mind, the news out of Georgia seems … well, frankly, astonishing. Shit, I might ask for a recount, and these are my people we’re talking about here.

Next in the spotlight is what should be a routine confirmation, during a joint session of Congress, of Sleepy Joe’s victory in the Electoral College. One small step for man, one giant leap toward issuing that eviction notice effective Jan. 20.

Yet again, we acknowledge the wisdom of The Wolf.

The Turtle has many tricks up his shell, as does the Flying Monkey Caucus. Also, Adolf Twitler’s Brown Noses are in the streets, and one wonders how many more are wearing brass hats in the Pentagon.

And Mike Ha’pence, the Envelope Opener-in-Chief, is such a fence-straddling chickenshit that you will never find his feet firmly on the ground on one side of an issue.

Particularly this one. His bet was called and now he has to show his hand, which contains nothing but an envelope full of bad news for his dumb ass. He has peered timidly into the future and seen that neither Jesus nor history will treat him kindly, if indeed the Republic survives to have a history that chronicles his craven, self-serving obesiance to a dime-store dictator, and that our posterity retains enough literacy to read it.

All he can do is dance like a puppet, one final time. But to whose tune? One foot to one beat, the other to another, as per usual. No matter who’s holding his strings for this final performance on the American political stage, he will never be a real boy.

He’s gonna have one helluva nose, though. Stained a deep and odiferous brown, too.

• Update: Well, Adolf’s Brown Noses aren’t in the streets anymore. They’re in the Capitol. Naturally, they didn’t check their white privilege at the door. These dudes were Black, they’d have been dead 10 times already. I also seem to recall a rather robust response to Vietnam War protests in the vicinity. But them was hippies, so, whatevs.

The lighter side of the news, from
the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

• Update No. 2: Mother Times calls it for Ossoff in Georgia, which means the Donks have the Senate. Storm that, motherfuckers.

• Update No. 3: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) tweets that she’s drawing up articles of impeachment against Adolf Twitler. Sounds a bit like horses and barn doors, but there has been discussion of this elsewhere as a prophylactic measure to keep the stubby ginger dick from rising again. The National Association of Manufacturers, meanwhile, called on Ha’Pence to A25 his boss’s fat ass. Yeah, good luck with that. He’s already soiled his armor.

• Update No. 4: Charlie Pierce has gone full “throw the rascal out.” And as usual, I agree. Adolf Twiter goes out on his fat ass, Ha’Pence gets to be president for a few days, and then the shovels and mops come out. Sure, maybe he wants to get tossed out, and then have Ha’Pence pardon him, a la Nixon-Ford. Still, sez Chazbo: “Leaving him in place even for an hour would be the final dereliction of duty, and we have had far too many of those. Force him out. Do it now. Complicity is its own dark reward.”

Flail away*

“The Nimitz did what?”

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.

More, late*

A little light and a lot more tunnel.

“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.