Disrespect This Elder…With Extreme Prejudice

September 12, 2021

I guess this is the new thing: Ratpublicans are going to play Chicken Little for every single fucking election from here to eternity. Turmp did it constantly throughout the 2016 election season, and again for about two years prior to getting unquestionably crushed by Joe Biden in 2020. Turmp and other fascist fuckers are at it again – preparing for the impending California governor recall by preemptively whining that the election is rigged. This has now become a raison d'être for Ratpublicans, who without benefit of all manner of anti-democratic machinations would have trouble winning elections for dog catcher in most parts of this country. They damn sure would never have a majority in the House.

George H.W. Bush was the last Ratpublican to have won the popular vote for president. His idiot son does not count since he “achieved” his incumbency by virtue of being appointed president by the Extreme Court after they stopped Florida (whose governor at the time was Jeb Bush, and whose secretary of state was Katherine Harris, who infamously – and illegally – purged Florida’s voter rolls of some 100,000 mostly black voters) from actually counting their votes, though he still lost the popular vote the first time around. Instead of risking legitimate elections, Ratpublicans are happy to replace faith in elections with insane lies and voter suppression and disenfranchisement.

And, just in case poisoning the well ahead of time is not enough to guarantee their pyrrhic victory, Ratpublicans are not afraid to stop vote counting, threaten election officials and/or mount fraudulent election audits. They are secure in their knowledge that any election they win is legitimate and any election they lose was merely a result of rigging, cheating and voter fraud, which every single study and investigation has shown does not exist to any significant extent, and to the extent it does occur, is almost always by Ratpublican voters. Recall that they sent a mob of paid white men in suits to sabotage the counting of votes in Florida, setting the stage for the Extreme Court to step in and illegally appoint George WTF Bush.

Right now the totally psychotic talk-radio host Larry Elder, who has made a career of espousing white supremacist talking points, is chirping about how the upcoming recall election in California is rigged. Elder, who recently opined that descendants of slave owners are the ones who deserve reparations, not the descendants of slaves, because – and I am not making this shit up – at the time, slavery was legal and slave owners had their property and livelihood taken from them with no compensation whatsoever. Move over Ben Carson, whose statement that slave ships were filled with hopeful immigrants with dreams of a better life in the New World, seem almost quaint in comparison. I said ‘almost.’

Did I mention that like Ben Carson Larry Elder is not white? Larry Elder is not white. In fact, to the untrained eye, he appears to be of African heritage, but only because of the color of his skin, not by the content of his character. Elder is the current frontrunner should Gavin Newsome lose his bid to avoid being recalled. Elder also insists that there were “shenanigans” in the 2020 presidential election and has been accused by his ex-fiancée of waving a gun at her.

And lastly, Elder is a huge fan of Stephen Miller, Turmp’s top nazi/advisor/screech writer, and thinks Miller should be president. Of the United States. Of America.

This has been a Paying Attention Special Broken News report.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled angst.

Oh, The Lack Of Humanity

Every Day Is January 6^th Now

Fascist firebrand fuckwit freshmen: Greene, Cawthorn, Boebert – They did.

September 9, 2021 also, January 6, 2021

One wonders if all these neo-fascist Ratpublicans like Marjorie Taylor Goon, Lauren Boobert and Hitler-fanboy Madison Cawthorn, who keep comparing the use of masks for protection from the coronavirus to Nazi SS and concentration camp mentality, know that Hitler drew heavily upon the American reservation system for its native inhabitants as a model for their concentration camps. Oh, and genocide.

The New Ratpublican Young Dumbs

Young Dumbs: We will fucking shoot your ass

For his part, Cawthorn’s bucket list included a visit to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest retreat, which he has oh-so-enthusiastically already checked off. The freshman pissant also threatened further violence against the United States government and to break out the incarcerated insurrectionists who already committed violence against the United States government. North Carolina’s finest recently told a roomful of rubes, “if our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen, then it’s going to lead to one place — and it’s bloodshed. The freshman fuckhead continued, “I will tell you, as much as I am willing to defend our liberty at all costs, there is nothing that I would dread doing more than having to pick up arms against a fellow American.”

Boobert who lives in Rifle, Colorado (for real) and owns a bar called Shooters Grill (home of the open-carry waitresses), is a gun-obsessed (Does she use them off-label?) mental midget and reality-averse reject, who during her campaign just happened to forget to mention that her hubby raked in almost $500,000 in each of the previous two years as a consultant to an energy firm. Some wonder if this might have any effect on the congresswoman’s blind devotion to fossil fuels. Did I mention she has more guns than Canada?

Georgia’s Taylor Goon, who within days of being sworn in, was stripped of all committee assignments due to her overzealous assholery and has been kicked off Twitter several times for anti-vax rhetoric, also compared mask mandates to the murder of 6,000,000 Jews by the Nazis. Her excuse for comparing the need to protect ourselves and each other by simply wearing masks during a deadly worldwide pandemic was that she is just too fucking stupid to know that by comparing mask mandates to the torture and death of 6,000,000 Jews during the Nazi Holocaust, she was comparing mask mandates to the torture and death of 6,000,000 Jews during the Nazi Holocaust.

I. Mangrey, reaching a boiling point.                                                                              

                                                                                           

Thought For The Day

Nixon's The One

September 6, 2021

So, it's Labor Day. When all Americans honor the working stiff, especially the proud tradition of this country’s labor unions. Oh wait, must have been a dream. The unions assured members of a fair wage. They gave us the 40-hour work week* and the weekend. Unions have had their problems, but overall, just about everyone would be worse off had unions not emerged. Everyone that is, except those at the very top, who continue to fight to keep every penny that their workers make for them. Still opposing a living minimum wage, ‘til the day they die. And on this Labor Day, 7.5 million Americans are losing the temporary unemployment benefits that were instituted because of the pandemic.But that’s not why I asked you here today.

Strawbs - Part Of The Union

The McConnell-stolen/Turmp-packed Extreme Court decided to turn a deaf ear to the insane and draconian anti-choice law now in effect in the hate state of Texas. The one-paragraph unsigned statement by the Court passed on hearing the lack of pros and myriad cons of the new Texas death sentence to abortion rights in America.

Ironically, while Texas Ratpublicans fight for the non-existent lives of cell masses inside women’s bodies, they are also fighting to kill fully living people with their new Wild-West-esque gun-totin’ laws, and fighting to extinguish the votes of completely formed individuals -mostly people of color, of course – with their new-Jim-Crow voting restrictions. Not to mention, Texas is happy to let its citizens die because of outdated infrastructure, and from all its anti-vax/anti-mask state-mandated insanity. So it turns out the only time these numbnuts even accept that science exists is when it comes to abortion, and they get it completely wrong. But I digress.

Who would have guessed that beer-boofing-bozo Brett Kavanaugh was lying through is rape-denying teeth and crocodile tears when, in order to secure her vote to confirm his ill-gotten, ill-advised nomination to the Extreme Court, he promised Susan Collins that he would respect legal precedent and the Constitution (though certainly not women), in particular regarding Roe v. Wade. Simply shocking…I mean, predictable; both Kavanaugh’s raging dishonesty and Susan Collins’ pathetic idiocy. Although to be fair, it is possible that Collins is also full of feces. In any event, fuck Susan Collins.

Pat Buchanan and Richard Nixon ironing out the details for ending democracy

And why is it not surprising that all this anti-abortion bullshit can be traced back to Richard Nixon via Nixon’s speechwriter/special assistant and fellow anti-Semite Pat Buchanan who saw the abortion issue as a way to sow division among the American electorate.

Oh, and just for good measure, Fuck Joe Manchin.

* Representative Mark Takano (D-Calif.) recently introduced a bill into the House which would reduce the standard work week to 32 hours.

This has been your Paying Attention Thought For The Day.

You're welcome.

What is your thought for the day?

Broken News

Deep In The Heartless Of Texas

September 3, 2021

Now Texans can open-carry guns in public without needing a permit or any training in the use of guns. Of course, Texans can also concealed-carry brains without a permit or any inkling on how to use brains.

And with the new Texas anti-abortion law, Texans will be permitted to use their guns – but not their brains – and shoot anyone they believe might be even thinking about getting an abortion or anyone with any contact with anyone even thinking about getting an abortion. And don’t even get them started on wearing masks or getting vaccinated. Unless you are extremely quick on the draw.

The Texas law not only permits, but requires vigilantes to track down and indict not only those seeking abortions, but anyone who has anything to do with that person. Move over Taliban.

Law No More

Five ultra-conservative Supreme Court justices, in the dead of night, without commenting on their single-paragraph decision, has allowed Texas to flaunt the Constitution and long-repeatedly-settled law, and has for all intents and purposes set the stage for overturning Roe v. Wade, making abortion illegal in the United States. Even conservative Chief Justice John Roberts chastised his five fellow assholes for their disgraceful behavior. Roberts is now powerless to control the “veto-proof” majority of the Extreme Court as it now stands.

Nearly two-thirds of the American public supports a woman’s right to choose what to do with her body.

There are too many mental defectives who only support a woman’s right to control whether or not they have to wear a mask to protect public health, but not the right to control the rest of their body, even in cases of rape or incest.

But Wait, There’s More

Add this happy horseshit to the new ultra-racist new Texas voting laws. And their unending support for the coronavirus.

At least the Texas Taliban won’t be requiring burqas – too much like wearing a mask.

This has been a Paying Attention Special Broken News report.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled fear and loathing. 

America The Black Is Beautiful

Some, I Assume, Are Very Good People

September 2, 2021

As the Jan 6 Commission plows ahead with its investigation into the terrorist attack on the Capitol, which as much as anything exemplified the last throes of white supremacy’s desperate struggle for survival, I am reminded that descendants of slaves have been instrumental in pushing this nation toward becoming a "more perfect union" and pulling America's ass out of various fires forever. Some people never learn.

One of those descendants, Ben Carson, renowned neurosurgeon, second-most-absurd 2016 presidential candidate (the most absurd, of course went on to win) and all-around numb-nuts, said this about his ancestors, “That’s what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.” Ouch. I imagine that the only dream those in the bottom of slave ships dreamt about was waking up from they surely hoped was either nightmare or dreadful hallucination.

Sure, there have been quite a few white folks who were game-changers in their day, but it is much easier for someone who is not either personally or generationally beaten down to stand up for what is right, and naturally, white folks have always had a different stake in protecting this nation, since they have always (at the very least acted like they) owned the place, often protecting the nation from threats they either imagined or created. And repeatedly, Black Americans have had to save America from itself.

From Crispus Attucks, the son of a slave father and a Native American mother, who had escaped slavery – the first to be killed by British soldiers on March 5, 1770 during the Boston Massacre, which paved the way for the American Revolution. It is very possible that Attucks was minding his own business and was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. So, possibly the first innocent black man in America gunned down by law enforcement.

To Rosa Parks, iconic figure in the Civil Rights Movement who got arrested for refusing to demean herself, preferring to sit where she chose on a bus. Many Black Lives have been ended by law enforcement for much less in more recent times.

Rosa Parks and some other black guy
who tried to save America from itself

To Frank Wills – the Watergate security guard who helped put an end to the dishonest, war-crime addled, paranoid administration of Richard Nixon. Wills foiled the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Democratic National Committee inside the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. by calling the police after discovering that locks at the complex had been tampered with. Wills’ life was fairly well ruined for his trouble.

Watergate security guard Frank Wills

To Texas Rep. Barbara Jordan, who in 1974, made an influential televised speech before the House Judiciary Committee supporting the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.

Barbara Jordan - Excerpt 1974

To Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman who, during the January 6, 2021 United States Capitol attack, diverted the crazed rioters from the United States Senate chamber, almost certainly saving the lives of many legislators on whose heads Turmp’s mob had placed bounties.

Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman

To Capitol Officer Harold Dunn who was repeatedly called the n-word by Turmp’s Treasonous Tourists. Dunn continued to do his job and eventually testified before the Jan 6 Commission, “Telling the truth shouldn’t be hard. Fighting on January 6^th, that was hard. Showing up on January 7^th, that was hard… Liz Cheney and Adam Kinsinger are being lauded as courageous heroes. And while I agree with that notion, why? Because they told the truth? Why is telling the truth hard? I guess in this America it is.”

Capitol Police Officer Harold Dunn

And if not for Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd, who shot the unfortunate idiot tourorist Ashli Babbit, there is a good chance Turmp’s minions would have executed some number of legislators. In return, Byrd whose not-white hand can be seen in the Jan 6 video, poised to protect Congress, yet hoping his orders to stand down would be obeyed so no shot need be fired, has been relentlessly attacked by white wing media (often referred to as “right wing media”) as a murderer of a martyr. Byrd again risked life and limb by doing a nationally televised interview with Lester Holt, despite repeated death threats and other assorted slurs of a nature one could guess with little effort.

And lastly, for the time being, Rep. Bennie Thompson, 14-term Congressman from Mississippi and the lone Democrat in the Mississippi Congressional Delegation and current Chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, steps into the breach. Thompson now chairs the House of Representatives’ select committee on the January 6^th insurrection. Thompson is intent on following every lead, turning over every stone in order to learn the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about Jan 6 and all pertinent events leading up to it. Many white people will not look fondly upon Mr. Thompson – especially those people (all of whom will not coincidentally be white) on the wrong end of his subpoenas and those (other white people) who blindly follow them.

Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson

Meanwhile, all the white Ratpublicans who are supporting the insurrection, and attempting to hold up the terrorists who invaded the Capitol to stop the certification of the free and fair election of Joe Biden as patriotic heroes, refuse to have anything to do with the search for the non-alternative facts.

Gil Scott-Heron - Whitey On the Moon

I. Mangrey for a change.

Curiouser And Curiouser

Threw The Looking Glass

August 30, 2021

It is always interesting to watch Americans’ minds at work. Probably thousands of people have decided to rely on the internet for medical advice, preferring Uncle Louie’s F&#*book feed to the advice of almost the entire medical community. Or, even worse, many of these people relied on what pro-virus ex-president Donald Turmp has suggested. From “the virus is a hoax” to “it will just disappear like a miracle” to “ingesting disinfectant,” the man who made damn sure this pandemic would survive past his second impeachment and the end of his first term has the ear of a large minority of Americans to this very day.

Studies show that Turmp’s MAGAts are largely responsible for the virus’ continued success, thanks to their continued ignorance-fueled refusal to wear masks and/or get vaccinated, or do anything that might help stop the pandemic. And of course, the Ratpublican Party writ large is loath to do anything that might contribute in any way to the success of Joe Biden and the Democrats. Ratpublicans only love America when it does what they want.

All Those Opposed, Say Neigh

These people have now opted to take medicine designed for livestock rather than risk becoming magnetized, injected with tracking devices (which if true, surely cannot track anyone better than phones, computers, tv sets, cars and other non-injectable technologies already do). Or become “mutants” – this, according to Alex Jones who also opined, “Maybe Trump's actually a dumbass,” for finally quarter-heartedly suggesting that his supporters get vaccinated.

This new red state “designer” drug – Ivermectin, is also used in humans to treat parasites and as part of a COVID cocktail in countries that don’t have access to the vaccine. But since these folks are unable to get an actual prescription, they decided to buy their drugs on the street, or more accurately, from a feed store, or perhaps from a website run by fake doctors.

Not sure if this is where most Ivermectin goes,

or why this image jumped to mind

To be fair, Fux News has been flogging these “alternative cures.” Specifically, Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and who-knows-what-else. Barely-lit bulbs like Florida governor Ron DuhSantis continue to disavow the seriousness of the pandemic at the same time his state is experienced more cases and more deaths than at any time during the COVID siege. Even super genius (and doctor who created his own organization so he could claim to be a Fellow of the organization) Sen. Rand Paul has weighed in, albeit oh-so-lightly, The hatred for Trump deranged these people so much, that they're unwilling to objectively study it. So someone like me that's in the middle on it, I can't tell you because they will not study ivermectin. They will not study hydroxychloroquine without the taint of their hatred for Donald Trump.” What has been studied closely for several years now are the veracity and mental acumen of Sen. Rand Paul. The finding are not promising.

These are the same people of course, who believe 3% of scientists on the climate crisis and insist that the other 97% are perpetrating a conspiracy, or some kind of weather witch hunt. Or perhaps nothing more than a bunch of Jewish space lasers hell-bent on world domination.

These are the same people who are scared to death of Afghan refugees – almost all of whom are responsible for saving American lives over the past 20 years – calling them all terrorists, but are desperately attempting to canonize actual terrorists who executed an actual terror attack on the Capitol, a few Capital police officers. And if not for Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd, who shot the unfortunate idiot tourorist Ashli Babbit, there is a good chance Turmp’s minions would have executed some number of legislators.

Now, many of these folks who had been begging the virus to infect them, are finally getting their wish, and ending up in ICUs. I guess they showed us. They insist that this is all in the name of freedom. The only problem is that they are occupying ICU beds that less-stupid people, with non-COVID-related medical emergencies need to survive. Some of these people are now dying due to lack of beds, equipment and personnel being wasted on assholes who refused to take this deadly pandemic seriously. Why didn't they drink their damned disinfectant before it was too late? To these people, freedom’s just another word.

I. Mangrey, reeling.

The White To Vote

Vote First, Ask Questions Later

August 28, 2021

I still vividly recall, as an impatient teen giddily awaiting the aging process to allow me to get my hands on a steering wheel and my foot on an accelerator, learning that driving was not a right but a privilege. This was defined as such in no uncertain terms. This was described in stark contrast to voting, which was in fact a right (once a certain chronological milestone had been reached, which changed during my later teen years), and not a privilege. No one, to my knowledge has ever been denying the privilege to drive based solely on the color of their skin. I may be mistaken in this, thanks to my life-long white privilege (again, not a right, though some might argue this point), but let’s assume this for the sake of argument.

Recent polling revealed that by a 67% to 32% margin Republicans believe that voting is a privilege that can be limited. Huh? The same poll showed that Democrats believe by a 78% to 21% margin that voting is a fundamental right. Here’s another breakdown for you: How do Americans feel about voting being a fundamental right according to their racial profile?

Black                      77%
Asian                      66%
Hispanic                  63%
White                     51%
Native Americans     ??% - apparently, they were not important enough to be asked

Based on the above, it should not surprise anyone that the ultra-white, largely racist, and demonstrably anti-American Ratpublican Party* has been pulling out all the stops to stop the steal. However, the steal they are desperate to stop is not the one their cult leader, a white (albeit comically spray-painted orange) nationalist has been whining about of late. Turmp, who was a sore winner when the obsolete Electoral College (and his Russian benefactors) handed him an ill-gotten victory in 2016, was unsurprisingly an even sorer loser after being clobbered in both the popular and unpopular (Electoral College) votes in 2020.

The real steal, as far as Ratpublicans are concerned, is the electorate stealing power from the corporate ownership of the government. This issue has taken on increasing significance and desperation as the white power structure in America is rapidly waning in favor of a multi-cultural, multi-racial society and leadership. Angry white people are apoplectic that non-white people would dare to insinuate themselves into a country that was stolen from the non-white original inhabitants and literally built on the backs of non-white slaves for more than a century and a half prior to its Declaration of Independence and for most of its first century since the birth of the nation. And since the “ending” of slavery, our very survival has been held aloft on the work-broken backs of underpaid non-white migrant laborers, perpetually disrespected, but no less critical to the nation’s economic survival.

Ratpublicans are not only trying to whitewash history by banning the teaching of anything that might make white children and their parents uncomfortable (guilty conscience much?), like slavery, the real reasons for the Civil War and “States’ Rights,” or Jim Crow, or the new boogie man – Critical Race Theory, they are trying to bleach the ballot box into toxic, likely fatal, whiteness.

Pennsylvania senate candidate Malcolm Kenyatta

White people need to STFU, grow up, wise up, and deal with the fucking fact that this not only is not their country, but not their world.

I have mentioned this idea previously, but it bears repeating – maybe white people, especially white men, should be disenfranchised (or maybe just subject to a literacy test, or a quiz on the Constitution, or having to correctly count the stars in the sky after waiting in line to vote for 12 hours) for a century or so to give them a taste of this very bitter, often fatal medicine.

*To be fair, and there is absolutely no reason to bring fairness into any fight with Ratpublicans, it is entirely possible that they would not try to disenfranchise voters of color if they voted Ratpublican. Not sure if that makes what they are doing better or worse…just kidding, they are utterly disgusting, and working overtime to remain irredeemable.

I. Mangrey resisting.

Broken News

Paying Attention Book Club

August 25, 2021

Book recommendations are nothing new here at Paying Attention. Usually they are books we have published, including such favorites as Good Night Goon, Donald and the Very, Very Large Uh-Brain, Orange Dregs and Scam, and the like. Today we want to alert you to the work of real authors whose books contain more words than pictures. We’re confident that one or both of these fine volumes will end up prominently displayed in your library, on your coffee table, or conspicuously flaunted wherever you invite others into your recently deep-cleaned environs, if not in fact read from cover to cover.

In an unprecedented publishing event, on the one-month anniversary of the release of their second best-seller about the twice-impeached, double-ex (thanks to his recent non-reinstatement) president, I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker are releasing a sequel/correction, I Alone Can Fuck It Up: Donald J. Turmp’s Catastrophic Four Years.

This is the double album of the printed word: think Really White Album

According to one reviewer: Yes, his final year was a catastrophe, but it took years of “work” to arrange the conditions – mentally, socially and politically – for Donald Turmp’s beyond catastrophic final year of his disgraceful, crime-riddled, twice-impeached, and ultimately deadly single term. Leonnig and Rucker’s follow-up to I Alone Can Fix It paints a much more complete picture of a psychopathic autocrat who could never have done anything different when faced with a deadly pandemic that required a cool head, flexible thinking and empathy – all qualities completely beyond Trump’s horrifyingly miniscule repertoire. As painful as it might be to dredge up the worst presidency in American history, this is and will be an important documenting of the surreal Turmp administration. The racism, the Russian collusion, two fucking serious, legitimate impeachments, the inevitable attempted coup (if it didn’t happen now, it would have happened at the end of his (unthinkable) second term, and of course, the tsunami of grisly details of the perpetual psychosis and staggering stupidity underlying all of it. If you don’t read any books this year, read this one. Don’t wait for the movie to come out.

Donny Goes to School - The President Show

This has been a Paying Attention Special Broken News report.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled hilarity.

Biden’s Folly

Stop Saying It’s So, Joe

August 23, 2021

While Joe Biden struggles to explain and recover from the inexcusably sloppy exit from Afghanistan, the repercussions of which will not be fully known for some time, he still has to keep his eye on the domestic policy ball. With any luck, all Americans will be safely evacuated, and hopefully our Afghan allies wishing to escape the Taliban will be rescued. While Ratpublicans will unsurprisingly exercise their hypocrisy, pretending that Joe Biden was the only president to shit himself in Afghanistan, Biden must still keep them close in order to keep things like infrastructure rescue, the resumption of voting rights, and economic survival on track. Biden must keep one eye on the ball and the other eye on the knife Mitch McConnell is waiting to plunge into Biden’s back at first opportunity.

“With Trump gone, you’re going to see things change. Because these folks know better. They know this isn’t what they’re supposed to be doing.”
                                   President Joseph R. Biden

No, Mr. Biden, they do not know better, and whatever concessions they may appear to have made with the bipartisan infrastructure bill, you can be sure that there is something other than concern for roads, bridges, life or limb hidden within their apparent acquiescence, or at best an abject desperation that they will be exposed for the hateful partisans who are so vehemently and perpetually opposed to helping anyone but the ultra-rich. They are, as a group, not good people. The narcissism and insanity of Donald Turmp over truth and/or country. They have chosen cynicism over reality. They still grovel in spineless, shameless fealty to the Big Liar. Meaning they themselves are – not simply in effect, but in absolute truth – inveterate liars.

Mitch McConnell, beholden to Russia, his wife Elaine Chou, in bed with China,

and Joe Biden, long-time corporate lackey, trying to change his spots, but

still willing to pal around with domestic terrorists (i.e., Ratpublicans)

As Rep. Adam Schiff warned in his closing argument during Turmp’s first impeachment, where Ratpublicans had an exit strategy from Turmp handed to them on a silver platter, “You can’t trust this president will do what’s right for this country. He will do what's right for Donald Trump. The American people deserve a president they can count on to put their interests first.” The very same thing can be said of the Ratpublican Party writ large. You cannot trust them to do the right thing. Rather than take the exit ramp from the sink-hole-ridden Turmp highway-to-nowhere, McConnell and his malignant minions epoxied themselves to the soon-to-be-re-impeached Bloated Orange Lizard. They decided of their own free will, to go full Stockholm Syndrome. Ratpublicans unflinchingly became the Patty Hearst to Turmp’s Symbionese Liberation Army.

In his first Turmp impeachment closing Schiff also said, “If you find him guilty you must find that he must be removed because right matters, the truth matters, otherwise we are lost.” So, now we know, especially as people like Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Biden continue to fantasize about reaching across the aisle and still having a hand at the end of their wrist when they finish reaching, and much of America continues to side with Turmp and the Ratpublicans, we are lost.

I. Mangrey, really.