Put A Lid On It

Well. Happy new year.

It's going to be a whiz-banger of a week. For starters, on Jan.4, we will see the first anticipated album release of the year, as Steve Earle and the Dukes will drop "J.T." as a digital release. This is sure to be a touching album as it features songs from Earle's son Justin Townes Earle, who died this year of an overdose. It is released on this date to coincide with what would have been the younger Earle's 39th birthday. Proceeds from the album's purchase will be donated to a trust for Etta St. James Earle, the three-year-old daughter of Justin and Jenn Earle. There's my first plug.

Then on Jan. 5, there's this thing going on in Georgia. Something about affecting the entire makeup of the U.S. Senate and breaking the cruel, illogical stranglehold that the Republican "Moscow" Mitch McConnell has on any type of reasonable, progressive legislation has of even being considered for passage. I found a few bucks to send to Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock. If you can too, go for it. ActBlue makes it easy. There's my second plug. There will be a third plug below, and I will thank you for engaging with that one as well.

Then on Jan. 6, a joint session of Congress will be held to certify the results of the 2020 preznential eleckshun. This is often a routine affair, although we should be reminded that House Democrats, mostly from the Congressional Black Caucus, persistently challenged the election result in 2000 and again in 2016, with no assistance from a single Senator. However, I am not equivocating those efforts with the certain-to-be ridiculous challenges that Republicans are promising. The Supreme Court handed W that election, and all evidence says if the recount had continued, it woulda been President Gore. And I probably don't need to tell you how 2016's election was weird as a pine-tarred bat.

But 2020's election was as straightforward and honest as Mary Richards. Number of electoral votes that margin Joe Biden's victory: 74. Number of votes between the candidates: More than seven million. Percentage-wise, that's 4.4 percent. Lawsuits tossed out on their asses: 59/60. Christopher Krebs, former director of the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, says "The November third election was the most secure in American history." Even former Attorney General of the United States, rat-fink Bill Barr could not justify attempts to overturn this election result. Even he had to concede that "to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected [sic] a different outcome in the election."

And yet, here we are.

Out of 435 House members, 140 are now on record as intending to challenge the 2020 election results. Unlike when Democrats previously challenged election results, there is now at least one Republican Senator, Josh Hawley, who is on the record that he will sign a challenge.

This is an obscenity. To review the Trump presidency with any objectivity is to conclude that this was an incompetent, embarrassing, horrible awful president who did not do his job and lost the election because he did not do his job. He refused to put any of the powers of the federal government to work to battle this insidious virus. He bullshat insane ideas about conquering the virus off the top of his head in official White House briefings to the public. From this era's incipience, he maintained that he would not bring those suffering cruise-goers to shore because it would be bad for the numbers. He said this in public and in front of a television camera. Preznit Carnage One-Term Loser could not even protect himself nor his own family from contracting this, nor dozens to hundreds of his own loyal supporters. He didn't do his job. He does not deserve another term. We fired him. He needs to be sent out with a box full of his stuff.

What confounds me most daily is how easy it would have been for him to legitimately retain his office for another term. He wouldn't have even had to enact any public policy, nor would he had to have been the effective deal-maker he claimed to be. Nothing fancy or complicated. No, Preznit Carnage One-Term Loser could have retained his office for another term just by leaning on any scintilla of decency he might have possessed. He could have worn a mask. He could have not mocked mask-wearers and not turned it into a political issue. He could have not held Covid-19 briefings with a packed dais of non-mask wearers. He could have not held a Convention at the White House where attendees were sitting in each others' laps. He could have not held dozens of political rallies where people were standing in one anothers' pockets.

This moron could have retained his office not by any machinations of the federal government nor sound and just public policy. He could have stayed just by being a decent person. He couldn't. Because he isn't. And the simple fact is that to be a Republican today, you have to think otherwise of him, and that's insane. These Congress-critters are going to make Jan. 6 an unnecessarily tragic day in these Untied States of America. I will be wearing black that day. We should all.

My third plug: One of my best friends in the known universe is in the hospital with Covid-19. Please keep Clifford Bailey in your thoughts and prayers, if you think and/or pray or that kind of thing. Thank you, and mazel tov.