The day after

 

 

By Isaiah Thomas
Board of Editors with
John Heartsfield in Berlin

The issue has been decided.  The guns have fallen silent except for a few scattered fusillades from an industrial zone in North Philadelphia.  The occupation is over.  The Tangerine-Faced Loser has been ousted from power, even though he continues to rave from his bunker.  Slowly at first the stunned inhabitants who survived the cataclysm (so far, at least 235,000 have not) return to the streets.  They celebrate.  They dance.  

Now what?

To focus attention on that all-important question and to recognize that the four-year Reign of Terror has ended, we have retired our former section heading in favor of this bright, shiny new one.  We like it because it contains the answer to the question.

As often happens, history provides useful guidance.

Here's what Berlin looked like in May 1945:

Here's what the same part of town (Potsdamer Platz) looks like today:

 

How'd they get from there to here?  Berlin has almost too much history to digest, but we'll focus on one group, who rose out of the rubble of their destroyed city.  They looked around at the endless overwhelming destruction and they decided they were going to clean it up, one brick at a time:

Now it turns out that not all German women spontaneously braved the pain and violence of postwar Berlin to clear rubble.  But some did.  And we could do worse than emulate them.

At first glance the destruction seems so immense as to defy human effort to rebuild.  The Supreme Court remains under the control of anti-democratic Republican hacks, mouthpieces, extremists, and sex offenders.  The Senate may stay under the thumb of Moscow Mitch and his band of spineless weasels.  The structural impediments to democracy – the Electoral College and the 50-state Senate – remain.  And of course Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression, sanctioned by Republican-dominated courts, continues in its full fury.

Already the usual suspects, all of them white and most of them men, tell us that we need to reach out to those whose jackboot was firmly planted on George Floyd's neck and beg them for whatever crumbs they will brush our way in exchange for impunity and privilege.

But just because the task is daunting is no reason not to try.  And as with any other massive rebuilding job, it proceeds brick-by-brick.

So let's pick up a few bricks.

The first brick is the Georgia Senate runoffs.  Winning both of them would give Democrats control of the Senate and the ability to legislate in the public interest.  It would also give them the ability to fill a Supreme Court vacancy without begging robustly healthy uxorious husband Mitch McConnell.

That's not a brick; that's a meteorite.

We are assured by the white dispensers of conventional wisdom that this is out of reach, that Republicans always win runoffs in Georgia, that it is a quest as hopeless as beating Moscow Mitch in Kentucky or saving Doug Jones in Alabama.  Except for one thing:

Oh, yeah, that. 

Before the election, that font of Conventional Wisdom, Politico, assured us that “the prospect of turning Georgia blue for the first time since 1992 is a stretch.”  

Stretch this, Politico.  

So when we're told that the two Senate runoffs are, um, a stretch, don't mourn just yet.  Despite the insane attraction that white racists feel for the Tangerine-Faced Loser, who wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire, Georgia appears to have voted for Biden.  Imagine what might happen if in the absence of the TFL on the ballot, every single person who voted for Biden voted on Jan. 5 for Warnock and Ossoff.  Does anyone think that white Republican turnout will be higher in the runoff?  

The path is clear.  If there are stones in the road, let's bend from the knees, pick them up, and clear them. You can contribute here.

The next barrow full of bricks are things that Biden and Harris can do without the consent of Moscow Mitch and his minions.  

A whole bag of bricks can be cleaned up just by replacing corrupt extremists like Torquemada Barr, Betsy deVos and Ben Carson with effective, honest leaders.  Just imagine what could be done in a Justice Department with a Civil Rights Division that devotes itself to, wait for it, civil rights.

Next come undoing the damage the Tangerine-Faced Loser did by rule and deed alone.  We can and will rejoin the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accord.  We should be able to restore the Iran nuclear agreement.  And just generally we can stop disgracing and degrading ourselves in the eyes of the world by no longer issuing passes to blood-drenched thugs like Putin, Xi, and Mohammed bone Saw.

The Biden Administration can repeal or simply concede defeat on a slew of illegal and monstrous immigration rules including the noxious public charge rule (now back in effect today), booting asylum seekers back to Mexico, separating children, barring refugees who have been individually vetted or those seeking to visit the United States from various Muslim-majority countries, and claiming that border-crossers are somehow a public health menace while COVID-19 rages out of control here. 

The same is true for environmental regulations, although sane efforts to limit the damage caused by global warming and other environmental assaults may need to be fought in courts now dominated by hack Republican judges.  But you fight every case, and with the return of a competent and respected Justice Department, maybe you'll win some.

Not to mention, but we will, undoing Pres U Loser's efforts in areas as divergent as worker protection, housing discrimination, financial system regulation, and thousands of others.

Then even assuming we narrowly lose the Georgia runoffs, there's a big pile of legislative bricks that can be lifted:

Like reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act.  Who knows, maybe Wilfred M. “Profiles in Courage” Romney and Susan “The Great Moderate” may have an attack of conscience and let this come up for a vote in the Senate?  Stranger things have happened.

Then there are a pile of bills that could curb Presidential power, which may attract more Republican interest when a Democrat is President.  Just for starters, the President's expansive and dangerous emergency powers could be cut back.  If you want to read something terrifying, here's the Brennan Center's Elizabeth Goitein summarizing how insanely expansive current law is:

The Brennan Center’s original research cataloged 123 statutory authorities that become available to the president when he declares a national emergency. Many are measured and sensible, but others seem like the stuff of authoritarian regimes: giving the president the power to take over domestic communications, seize Americans’ bank accounts, and deploy U.S. troops to any foreign country. Given how broad these powers are, it is critical to have adequate safeguards in place to prevent abuse. 

Yikes.  We especially like closing down the Internet.

Then you could throw in some laws requiring Presidential candidates to release their taxes, subjecting Presidents to all federal conflict-of-interest law, and just for laughs creating a private right of action for violations of the Emoluments Clause.  

Last but not least we can clear the rubble of disinformation and deceit around public health and the current pandemic catastrophe just by returning control of COVID policy to competent scientists and administrators instead of Fox News frauds and assorted mixed nuts.

That's a pretty big pile of bricks to clean up on day one.  But if we're willing to do the heavy lifting, maybe someday our country will look like this:

It could happen here.

Today's Print Edition, Page One

 

The Spy's Complete Election Coverage

 

The Spy's Ace Political Pundits Break Down the Election and Explain It All to You

[TK – Ed.]

A word from our special election correspondent, Moshe

 

Again this year, we know that most of you are waiting to learn whom The Spy will endorse in the Presidential election before casting your ballot.  Very wise.

In this hour of national catastrophe, we do not take this responsibility lightly.  We have ruminated about this choice endlessly.  To help us, we have enlisted the help of a great writer and thinker whose previous pronouncements have often been described as “prophetic.”  So please ponder these words of wisdom from our coreligionist, Moses:

You stand this day all of you, before the Lord your God  . . . your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp . . . . See I set before you this day life and Joe Biden, death and Donald Trump . . . . If your heart turns away and you give no heed , . . I declare to you this day that you shall certainly perish . . . .

 The Lord will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him. The Lord will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess.  The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. The Lord will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed. [In other words, California – Ed.]

The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies.  . . . Your carcasses will be food for all the birds and the wild animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away.  The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured.  The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind.  At midday you will grope about like a blind person in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you.

. . . .Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and will not be returned. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and no one will rescue them. Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, and you will wear out your eyes watching for them day after day, powerless to lift a hand.  A people that you do not know will eat what your land and labor produce, and you will have nothing but cruel oppression all your days.   The sights you see will drive you mad.  The Lord will afflict your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head. . . .

The foreigners who reside among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. . . . They will be the head, but you will be the tail.

All these curses will come on you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey . . . and observe the commands and decrees he gave you. . . . Because you did not serve . . . joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity, therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the Lord sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you. . . .

If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name . . .  the Lord will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses.   He will bring on you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will cling to you.  The Lord will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed. You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you did not obey . . . .  Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you.

 . . . . You will live in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never sure of your life. In the morning you will say, “If only it were evening!” and in the evening, “If only it were morning!”—because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see.  The Lord will send you back in ships to Egypt on a journey I said you should never make again. There you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before your life and death, Biden and Trump.  Choose life – if you and your offspring would live . . . .

 

Our Special Correspondent would like

a word with you

Devarim [Deuteronomy] , ch. 30 v. 15-19, ch. 28, v. 20-67 (excerpts)

You listened last time (except for the idiots who voted for Jill Stein in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania).  So we're going to count on Moses again this year.

In 2016, we thought that Moses was talking metaphorically about life and death, like any good Reform Jew.  

Now that the Orange Whiner of Death sacrificed 235,000 human lives on the altar of his vanity, corruption and incompetence, we're not so sure.  

Maybe this time we should read these words the way Hasids do.  

You know, literally and seriously.

Stay safe out there.

 

– The Editors

 

You Read it First in the Spy (and Lots of Other Places tbh)

Of all the things President Trump has destroyed, the Republican Party is among the most dismaying. 

“Destroyed” is perhaps too simplistic, though. It would be more precise to say that Mr. Trump accelerated his party’s demise, exposing the rot that has been eating at its core for decades and leaving it a hollowed-out shell devoid of ideas, values or integrity, committed solely to preserving its own power even at the expense of democratic norms, institutions and ideals.

. . . the Republican Party’s dissolution under Mr. Trump is bad for American democracy.

. . . Today’s G.O.P.  . . . has instead allowed itself to be co-opted and radicalized by Trumpism. Its ideology has been reduced to a slurry of paranoia, white grievance and authoritarian populism. Its governing vision is reactionary, a cross between obstructionism and owning the libs. Its policy agenda, as defined by the party platform, is whatever President Trump wants . . . .

With his dark gospel, the president has enthralled the Republican base, rendering other party leaders too afraid to stand up to him. But to stand with Mr. Trump requires a constant betrayal of one’s own integrity and values. This goes beyond the usual policy flip-flops — what happened to fiscal hawks anyway? — and political hypocrisy, though there have been plenty of both. . . .

His presidency has been an extended exercise in defining deviancy down — and dragging the rest of his party down with him.

Having long preached “character” and “family values,” Republicans have given a pass to Mr. Trump’s personal degeneracy. . . .  

For all their talk about revering the Constitution, Republicans have stood by, slack-jawed, in the face of the president’s assault on checks and balances. Mr. Trump has spurned the concept of congressional oversight of his office. . . .

 Despite fetishizing “law and order,” Republicans have shrugged as Mr. Trump has maligned and politicized federal law enforcement, occasionally lending a hand. . . .

Not that congressional toadies are the only offenders. A parade of administration officials — some of whom were well respected before their Trumpian tour — have stood by, or pitched in, as the president has denigrated the F.B.I., federal prosecutors, intelligence agencies and the courts. 

. . . They have pushed the limits of the law and human decency to advance Mr. Trump’s draconian immigration agenda.

Most horrifically, Republican leaders have stood by as the president has lied to the public about a pandemic that has already killed more than 220,000 Americans. . . .

Whether out of fear, fealty or willful ignorance, these so-called leaders are complicit in this national tragedy. 

As Republican lawmakers grow increasingly panicked that Mr. Trump will lose re-election — possibly damaging their fortunes as well — some are scrambling to salvage their reputations by pretending they haven’t spent the past four years letting him run amok. In an Oct. 14 call with constituents, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska gave a blistering assessment of the president’s failures and “deficient” values, from his misogyny to his calamitous handling of the pandemic to “the way he kisses dictators’ butts.” Mr. Sasse was less clear about why, the occasional targeted criticism notwithstanding, he has enabled these deficiencies for so long. 

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, locked in his own tight re-election race, recently told the local media that he, too, has disagreed with Mr. Trump on numerous issues, including deficit spending, trade policy and his raiding of the defense budget. Mr. Cornyn said he opted to keep his opposition private rather than get into a public tiff with Mr. Trump “because, as I’ve observed, those usually don’t end too well.” 

Profiles in courage these are not. 

Mr. Trump’s corrosive influence on his party would fill a book. It has, in fact, filled several, as well as a slew of articles, social media posts and op-eds, written by conservatives both heartbroken and incensed over what has become of their party.

But many of these disillusioned Republicans also acknowledge that their team has been descending into white grievance, revanchism and know-nothing populism for decades. Mr. Trump just greased the slide. “He is the logical conclusion of what the Republican Party has become in the last 50 or so years,” the longtime party strategist Stuart Stevens asserts in his new book, “It Was All a Lie.”

–  The New York Times, October 25, 2020

 

 🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘

Republican strategists blame their poor showing on President Bush's record-shattering unpopularity and the financial meltdown that threatens to plunge the world into a new Depression. Therefore, top GOP'sters . . . insist that the Republicans should concentrate on the core principles for which their party is famous.

According to these insiders, Republican success rests on a three-legged stool: Stupid Crap, Dumb Shit, and Utter Rot. Each has a vital role to play in any Republican resurgence, they argue.

Stupid Crap. "Stupid Crap is at the core of what it means to be a Republican," said highly leveraged animal abuser Wilfred M. Romney of Massachusetts Michigan Utah  New Hampshire.

In the category of Stupid Crap Romney . . .  places the economic and fiscal policies that have brought this country to the edge of ruin. "Budget busting tax cuts for the rich, deregulating large corporation so they are free to destroy the global economy and pollute the environment – this is the kind of Stupid Crap that we need to emphasize if we are to return to our rightful status as America's permanent majority party," Romney said.

Dumb Shit.  The popularity of Gov. Sarah Palin demonstrates to influential Republicans that a Dumb Shit [Surely, Dumb Shit? – Ed.] can excite the electorate. In an exclusive interview with the Spy's Ann Colt .45, Gov. Palin expounded: . . . "When you think of Dumb Shit, you think of preventing high schools from teaching contraception while celebrating illicit unprotected sex that leads to bastards being raised by 17-year-old mothers. Dumb Shit? You betcha."

"And let's not forget that abortion thing because it's so important that women should control their own bodies and I'm a woman and I ought to be able to control your body."

Gov. Palin also cited anti-immigrant hysteria, injection of fundamentalist Christian doctrines into public schools, and protecting the rights of mental patients, degenerates, criminals, and wife-beaters to purchase guns no questions asked at "gun shows" as other vital aspects of Republican Dumb Shit.

Utter Rot. Creepy adulterer Rudy Giuliani . . . insists that any Republican revival must be based on Utter Rot.

This category, according to the beloved father and former NYC mayor, includes invading countries we don't like to prove that we can push people around and when that tactic blows up in our faces blaming those who counseled against such military adventures in the first place. "It's important to peddle the Utter Rot that we are this close to victory in Iraq and therefore anything bad that happens after January 20 is the sole fault of radical redistributionist Barack Obama and his adviser Rev. Wright," Giuliani insisted.

Giuliani also urged Republicans to campaign on violating international law and standards of decency by torturing any poor bastard turned over to U.S. forces by anyone claiming that the person had aided an insurgent group and then using specious claims of national security to prevent the American people from learning about U.S.-committed war crimes. . . .

Finally, he stressed the urgent need to violate the constitutional rights of Americans and assert, contrary to the text of the Constitution and 200-plus years of tradition and jurisprudence, that the Executive has an untrammeled right to do whatever the hell it wants as long as it claims that it is acting in the interest of national security. "That's the absolute core of Utter Rot," Giuliani concluded before leaving to join his former consigliere Bernie Kerik for an "important client meeting" at Scores.

How does the Republican Party choose among Stupid Crap, Dumb Shit, and Utter Rot in planning its comeback? The answer, according to influential Republicans: it doesn't. Although the current outlook is bleak, master political strategist Karl Rove radiates arteriosclerosis [Surely, optimism? – Ed.]: "The Republican Party, if remains true to its core principles of Stupid Crap, Dumb Shit, and Utter Rot, will come back bigger and better than ever. Have I ever steered them wrong?"

– The Massachusetts Spy, December 1, 2008.

Republican Family Values: Where's Mama?

By Emma Goldman
Spy Immigration Correspondent

What happens when a debate is moderated by someone who's smart and not a white man in a suit?  We found out last Thursday, when NBC News's Kristen Welker '98 had the temerity to ask Pres Super Spreader about his policy of yanking babies away from their mother's breasts because mom was legally seeking asylum in the United States.

Her question was perhaps prompted by the revelation that at least 545 of these babies and children had not been reunited with their deported parents because no one in U Bum's regime thought to keep track of which child belonged to which parent.  

545 kidnapped kids are still waiting
to be reunited with mom and dad

 

Instead of moving heaven and earth and the various U.S. bureaucracies to track down these parents and reunite them with their traumatized children, the U Bum regime has in effect outsourced the job to nonprofit agencies who lack the resources (like armed security) to do the job:

The ACLU and others say the effort to locate the still-separated families has been hindered by incomplete government reports as well as conditions on the ground in the children’s native lands, including gang violence, remote villages, and now, the coronavirus pandemic.

With the elections less than two weeks away, the updated numbers ignited fresh outrage about one of the Trump administration’s biggest debacles, and one that sharply divided members of his Republican Party. 

Democrats seized on the new filing to remind voters that the family separations remain unresolved.

“Every day it seems we uncover new horrors perpetrated by President Trump and his administration,” Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic rival, said in a tweet.

It's one thing to work for the ACLU and give up the lush income of a big-firm lawyer (we'll get back to this).  It's another to lay down your life for it in the back woods of El Salvador and other places where human lives can be bought and sold for maybe 100 U.S. dollars. 

The 545 figure by the way is the number of cases the agencies are working on.  The actual number of children ripped from their parents by U Bum's  2018 “zero tolerance” policy is apparently unknowable:

Because of these IT deficiencies, we could not confirm the total number of families DHS separated during the Zero Tolerance period. DHS estimated that Border Patrol agents separated 3,014 children from their families while the policy was in place. DHS also estimated it had completed 2,155 reunifications in response to a court order, although this effort continued for 7 months beyond the July 2018 deadline for reunifying children with their parents. However, we conducted a review of DHS data during the Zero Tolerance period and identified 136 children with potential family relationships who were not accurately recorded by CBP. In a broader analysis of DHS data between the dates of October 1, 2017, to February 14, 2019, we identified an additional 1,233 children with potential family relationships not accurately recorded by CBP.  Without a reliable account of all family relationships, we could not validate the total number of separations, or reunifications.

And that's from that well-known pinko liberal pressure group, the Office of the Inspector General of the, wait for it, Department of Homeland Security.

You might think that a policy of forcible family separation would have been accompanied by a plan to reunite those families, at least in their native countries.  But you'd be overestimating the competence and underestimating the cruelty of the architects of this crime against humanity and the lackeys who carried it out.

Speaking of those mild-mannered functionaries who were only following orders, let's welcome into the dock former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, shown here in his new role as a commentator for CBS News coverage of the space program [Surely, a partner of King & Spalding, a ginormous fancy high-priced law firm? – Ed.]:

 

The indictment against this f**kin' guy requires a little tedious legal background.  To provide a threadbare legal rationale for wrestling nursing babies away from their mothers, the U Bum regime came up with the idea, also known to the Bush Administration, of indicting the parents for the misdemeanor charge of unlawful border crossing (although whether that law applies to those lawfully claiming asylum remains unresolved).

They had to file criminal charges because legally the immigration agencies cannot separate families.  But if mom is subject to arrest and detention in the criminal justice system, even though accused non-violent misdemeanants are usually released before trial in state systems, then mom could be hauled off by the Department of “Justice” while the child vanished into night and fog.

But Federal prosecutors are supposed to consider not only law but justice in making their discretionary charging decisions.  In the case of the babies and their accused misdemeanant parents, here's how it went down, according to The New York Times:

More specifically, Rod Rosenstein turned down prosecutors who had qualms about the selection process:

Rod J. Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney general, went even further in a second call about a week later, telling the five prosecutors that it did not matter how young the children were. He said that government lawyers should not have refused to prosecute two cases simply because the children were barely more than infants.

“Those two cases should not have been declined,” John Bash, the departing U.S. attorney in western Texas, wrote to his staff immediately after the call. Mr. Bash had declined the cases, but Mr. Rosenstein had overruled him. “Per the A.G.’s policy, we should NOT be categorically declining immigration prosecutions of adults in family units because of the age of a child.”

It must be such a thrill for clients of King & Spalding like Xerox, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, Delta Air Lines and other blue-chippers to know that they can be represented by a man who committed actionable crimes against humanity while in government service.

How did we get here?  Surprisingly for us, we've got bipartisan blame to hand out, although of course President Tiny Toadstool and his Trumpublican enablers bear sole responsibility for the bestial family-separation policy itself and the shambolic cruelty with which it was carried out.

But we should pause to remember that outrageous human rights violations and the Republican Party go together like Dick Cheney and waterboarding, even if the only ones punished were clueless low-level troops who had to administer the fun:

The Republicans got away scot-free with torture under the Bush Administration.  Why then should Ron J. Rosenstein worry about a little child stealing?  Especially when the Obama Administration decided in a spirit of unreciprocated amity not to prosecute high-level Bush hacks for their crimes.

And speaking of the Obama Administration, when Pres PAB tried to deflect the blame for his monstrous child abuse policy by noting that the cages in which the newly-created orphans were held had been installed by his predecessor, he was – right.  It had nothing to do with child kidnapping, but according to real journalists at The Washington Post, on the question of who built the cages:

The article goes on to describe how the cages were actually used to subdivide portions of a warehouse used to detain different types of immigrants while allowing for ventilation.  And why were immigrants chucked into some warehouse to begin with?

The Obama administration responded to the outrage by rushing to expand its capacity to handle the new migration wave at the border, to adapt an infrastructure build to handle single adult men, not families and children.

That's not really the complete answer. The Obama Administration could have released these folks with notices to appear in Immigration Court and GPS bracelets but instead chose to immure them in an excellently-ventilated warehouse.

Why?  Supposedly to discourage others desperate to flee violence and persecution:

And even that's not the full story.  The point of the cages was not to deter other immigrants so much as it was to deter attacks on Democrats as “soft” on undocumented immigrants before the 2014 elections (which the Dems lost big-time) and somehow to gain Republican support for bipartisan immigration reform.  That worked out about as well as you would expect.

What have we learned from this sorry tale?  A few things:

1.  Letting Republicans get away with torture and other human rights abuses doesn't lead to kum-bay-yah.  It only provides them with incentives to try other horrible deeds on the theory that they will be able to get away with them and then make millions from the corner office of a fancy law firm.

2.  Turning over immigration policies to supposed centrists and moderates who built the body-snatching apparatus we have today is not a political winner for Democrats.  It only comes back to Biden you on the ass when you need the support of every Latinx voter you can get.

3.  Even by the standards of huge law firms, King & Spalding has terrible taste in partners.

After the bunker scene

 

 

By Nellie Bly
Spy Washington Bureau with
Roscoe Arbuckle, Motion Picture Correspondent

Last week we described the excitement in Washington as the Republicans built toward their big bunker scene.  So far the rage and the sense of doom attendant thereto have not disappointed the most jaded connoisseur of political Götterdammerung.  How dare a reporter question President U Bum's decision to retweet insane conspiracy theories!  That's even worse than waiting for hours at Franklin's and then finding out they are totally out of brisket!

But as entertaining as the bunker scene is, let's not forget that the end of the credits roll doesn't mean there won't be anything left to watch, as we intimated last week.  After the bunker scene, remain seated for the spectacle of the Republican zombies rising from their graves as they return to devour us and our democracy.

Even as we enjoy watching shameless Republican former toadies and now traitors to Pres PAB like Sen. Ben Sasse escaping the bunker and running through the street of Nebraska, the thought of the sequel is giving us the chills.

Republicans are beginning to realize

they may need a little Wiederaufbau

after the election

You remember Ben Sasse, don't you, or, as he is better known to discriminating critics of the political scene, that f***in' guy?  He was the supposedly moderate reasonable intellectual who despite his moderation, reasonableness and intellectual gravitas faithfully supported Pres PAB by increasing production of wonder weapons by slave labor year after year [Surely, by voting to take away health care and to put a credibly accused sex offender on the Supreme Court? – Ed.].

Now that he's survived his Republican primary (as even the primitive reptilian brain of the Grifter-in-Chief was quick to note),

 

this f***in' guy has turned to rubbishing the demented grifter whose sagging bronze ass he'd been kissing for years:

Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska unleashed on Mr. Trump in a telephone town hall event with constituents on Wednesday, eviscerating the president’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and accusing him of “flirting” with dictators and white supremacists and alienating voters so broadly that he might cause a “Republican blood bath” in the Senate. 

And why the sudden 11th hour revelation?  Tell us, Catie Edmundson of The New York Times:

But now, facing grim polling numbers and a flood of Democratic money and enthusiasm that has imperiled their majority in the Senate, Republicans on Capitol Hill are beginning to publicly distance themselves from the president. The shift, less than three weeks before the election, indicates that many Republicans have concluded that Mr. Trump is heading for a loss in November. And they are grasping to save themselves and rushing to re-establish their reputations for a coming struggle for their party’s identity.

A “coming struggle for their party's identity?”  What tf does that mean?  We'll take a wild guess: it means they want to save their own ass for future elections.  Now this f***in' guy from Nebraska failed to draw a strong Democratic opponent so Cornholers [Surely, Cornhuskers? – Ed.] are likely to return him for another six years to reinvent himself as other than a degraded spineless toady.

We're not finished with him yet, but for the moment let's just note he's one of the lucky few who aren't done after the bunker scene.

Not so for the tenth rate hacks who populate the U Bum Administration, sadly:

Have we heard the last of
Kellyanne Conway?

“Quiet conversations in Gmail are more active now than would be expected a month before an election,” said a senior Republican strategist who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. “I have a buddy in the administration who is starting to quietly move his resume around, and he’s noticed people who he thought would be quicker to respond to inquiries have been less so. He called it ‘the Trump stink. How much Trump stink is on my resume right now?'” 

Trump stink? It almost sings, doesn't it? 

Basically, U Bum stooges have two alternatives: burrow their way into the civil service (we'll talk about that someday), or seek employment in the private sector, as did the flacks, shills, and plug-uglies in the George W. Bush Administration.

How did it turn out for them?  Depends if you ask smooth operators like Josh Bolten (raking in millions as a corporate lobbyist), or less-smooth mouthpieces like Fredo Gonzales (banished to the tumbleweeds of Texas without a sweet corporate-law gig).

But as any movie fan knows, just because zombies are six feet under doesn't mean they won't come springing back to life to ruin prom.  You'll be shocked to learn that two of cable news's brightest and most sententious lights served respectively as a hack Republican Congressman representing Florida's Redneck Riviera who impeached a duly elected President for lying about pootie (6 a.m. Eastern), and a flack for clueless lying war criminal George W. Bush, going so far as to smear his opponent John Kerry as “anti-fetus” (5 p.m. Eastern).  

If they can rise again, surely there's hope for down-home super spreader Mark Meadows or even Kellyanne Conway, who already looks like a walking zombie.

Our prediction is that the return of the Republican walking dead will be ever scarier than the current ranting and raving from the bunker, because one thing we know about Republicans: they have an insatiable appetite for devouring human lives (218,000 so far this year).

Let's go back to this f***in' guy, double-crossing Ben Sasse.  We were going to tell you that the real reason Sasse is trash-talking the leader he followed right up to the steel bunker door, but Ben Mathis-Lilley at Slate already did the hard work so let's just plagiarize him:

 

Yeah, that's it.  It's not that he and his fellow Republican toadies disagreed with President Super Spreader's evil policies.  They didn't.  They just don't want those horrible polices – tax cuts for the rich, no health care for the poor, denying the reality of climate change, tormenting LGBTQ persons, ripping babies out of the arms of their refugee mothers, inserting their mitts into women's genitalia – among others to perish in the ruins of the bunker:

Sasse occupied a crucial position in the Trump-era Republican Party as someone who was respected by movement insiders and outsiders alike. Like New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, Sasse gets liberals to treat his message seriously by demonstrating that he is well-read . . . .  Also like Douthat [Another f***in' guy – Ed.], the society he envisions in its place would be radically different and more primitive than the one that most Americans want.

Sasse believes—and has shown, with his votes and his words—that the government should have almost no role in guaranteeing citizens a basic quality of life, because the job is better done by “the Rotary Club and the PTA, the synagogues and the churches, the small businesses and local town meetings.”

And by Justice Handmaid telling you that your unwanted pregnancy is your punishment for being a fallen woman.  For some reason, that's always part of the libertarian utopia.

The blood-curdling premise of the sequel to the bunker scene is that the Republican zombies will rise from the wreckage to push once again the same horrible ideas that the Tangerine-Faced Grifter had advanced for years, with their help.  We actually warned you about this two years ago.

But here's a chilling thought: even if Democrats prevail this year, if either they are too craven to unwind the institutional biases that have cemented reactionary Republican control for generations (just ask Supreme Court Justice and future D.C. Senator Merrick Garland) or the Democratic base fails to turn out in 2022 (as they failed in 2010 and 2014), the Republican zombies fleeing the bunker today will be back.

And they'll be out for blood.