Several books, published and soon to be published, have reported how Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, fought a full time battle after Trump lost the election to keep him from using the military to attack Americans and even start a war with Iran to stay in power.  Even thought Milley hasn’t publicly confirmed this story, enough journalists have, including Susan Glasser of The New Yorker who independently confirmed what others have reported.  This story gave me chills down my spine.

Despite his supporters’ delusions and continued support of Trump’s Big Lie, the rest of us have to make sure that he never comes near the White House again.

Rightwing extremists who continue to support the insurrectionists arrested in the aftermath of the attack on the US government at the Capitol on January 6th are organizing a “rally” at the Capitol for tomorrow to protest the arrests, charges, and detention of hundreds of criminals who destroyed property, assaulted police, and attempted to stop the Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote.  To publicize their rally, they’re spreading the hashtag #JusticeforJ6 all over social media.  Ironically, supporters of insurrectionists are calling these criminals “political prisoners”.  Worse, The Former Guy took a break from golf and commentating at cheesy boxing matches to publicly support the insurrectionists and the rally.  Yesterday, still banned from social media, he issued a statement saying:

“Our hearts and minds are with the people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest concerning the Rigged Presidential Election.  In addition to everything else, it has proven conclusively that we are a two-tiered system of justice. In the end, however, JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL!”

So, the guy who incited the riot and attack on the US Capitol is STILL fomenting violence against the US, the country he’s trying to take over again for his own benefit.  The Great Unwashed Brainwashed white supremacists are beyond redemption, believing they are in the right and following a dangerous ideology where they actually the “patriots” when they are actually the problem.  The fact that the police and national guard are being called on to reinstall the perimeter fence around the Capitol with HD cameras and 24 hour patrols should tell normal people everything they need to know about the danger of disinformation and hate.

Trumpists are using #JusticeforJ6 for publicity. I say that’s fine as long as you add #JusticeforJ65to20 to represent the prison sentences they should receive. I’ve got another idea, also; in June, Facebook banned Trump for 2 years with reinstatement conditioned on him changing his behavior.  They should modify the ban by extending it for 2 years from the date of his latest self-serving, anti-government rant.  That should do it.

#JusticeforJ65t020

Yesterday, notable public figures paid their respects at solemn ceremonies at Ground Zero, Shanksville PA, and the Pentagon to mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11.  At ground zero, the Bidens, Obamas, and the Clintons were all present plus Schumer, Pelosi, Bloomberg and other well known public figures.  Bruce Springsteen even played and sang at the ceremony.  GWB & Laura, along with Harris attended the Shanksville ceremony, and Biden later stopped there and laid a wreath at the Pentagon late in the afternoon.

The glaring absence? Trump.  A spokesperson for the 9/11 Museum and Memorial confirmed to the NY Times that all former presidents were provided the same information about the ceremony, but Trump mercifully didn’t show.  How did he spend his day remembering 9/11?  Indeed he was also in New York, but he spent his day releasing statements attacking Biden about Afghanistan and playing some of his greatest Oldies, then visited a NYPD precinct and a firehouse, where he continue talking about himself and Rudy Giuliani and attacking Biden.

After, Trump was scheduled to address a religious rally virtually on the National Mall in DC called Let Us Worship led by religious nut and anti-government activist Sean Feucht, whose security team has included at least one of the insurrectionists charged in the January 6th attack on the Capitol as his security team.  I haven’t heard how that went, and actually don’t care.

Keeping it classy to the end, Trump finished his day commemorating 9/11 by…wait for it… guest hosting a Pay Per View boxing event with Jr. at a casino in Hollywood Florida hired by Triller, a social media competitor to TikTok.  The fight night included a “professional match” between 58 year old Evander Hollyfield and some mixed martial fighter. Oscar De La Hoya had been scheduled to fight, but is hospitalized with COVID.  Hollyfield was a last minute addition, and the results were as you might expect.  The event really wasn’t a fight night, it was really a publicity stunt by Trump for Trump, as the crowd at the casino was waving printed signs saying “Bring Back Trump” and “Trump Won”.  Watchers also participated in a live chat where viewers floated QAnon conspiracy theories, insults about Hunter Biden, etc, etc.  Since the entire evening was the cheesiest of cheesy, Trump, the King of Tacky, was right at home commemorating one of the most solemn days in modern US history.

Right-wingers and Trump’s media loudmouths are howling after the Biden administration ousted 18 Trump appointees from service academy boards, calling the ouster a “power grab” and “politicizing the service academies”.  Well, it’s just the opposite.  What most media is not reporting is that Biden’s move is part of his effort to clean up the open sewer Trump left behind when he finally vacated office on January 20th.

The rest of this story is this – after Trump lost the election, his acting secretary of defense, Christopher Miller (you know, the guy who refused to send the national guard to the Capitol on January 6th), ousted dozens of academy and other board members and replaced them with Trump loyalists.  He packed the boards of at least 3 service academies as well as the Defense Business Board and added HUNDREDS of Trump appointees to boards within the DOD on 42 boards in all.  To contain the damage, new defense secretary Lloyd Austin suspended all board activities to do a “zero based review” of all the boards that Trump polluted with partisan, cronies, and loyalists. Biden’s move to oust 18 Trump appointees is just a part of the massive cleanup underway at DOD and other departments Trump infested.

Now you know the rest of the story.

For time and immemorial, the standard playbook for dealing with a disgraced former leader has been the same. You let them ride off into the sunset and everyone forgets about him or her. This even includes the criminals. I have always been taught and always believed that criminalizing political behavior would lead to bad ends. The last guy has taught those of us in that camp that we shouldn’t politicize criminal behavior.

Polling data indicate that he’s gaining for 2024. No, he would not win an election if it were held today, but it’s certainly close enough to make people nervous. What seems more outrageous historically is that he is in front of the entire GOP pool. What’s more, when someone loses by eight million votes the normal course is for all of the next candidates to fall over themselves convincing us that they aren’t that guy. Except, every blasted one of them is doing the exact opposite.

I’d say things will change once the indictments start rolling in, but I think it will take him actually wearing an orange jumpsuit for there to be a dent. Even then, it would just be a dent. I don’t know how many times I can say the word “normally” before we all realize that normal will just be one of those quaint words we don’t use anymore. They will convince themselves that it’s all a sham like my mother in law who convinced herself that Joe Biden was resigning. This one is going to take a few election cycles to clear.

The post election audit Clown Show of Maricopa County ballots has been a complete disaster from the first moment it was conceived.  Ordered by Senate Republicans in March, said 60 day audit is now going on 6 months and has probably set the state GOP back, oh, say to the Reagan era.  Everyone associated with the “audit” have made fools of themselves in front of the entire nation, and Trump has happily led them down this primrose path dropping hints of “they can’t believe what they’re finding” when in fact they’ve found nothing.  In the process, God knows how much damage they’ve done, and the elections commission for the county has already said they’ll have to replace all the voting machines after they were compromised by the “auditors”.

To pour gasoline on the fire of incompetence, the report of the results of this months long fiasco has been once again delayed because…wait for it…the CEO of Cyber Ninjas and some of his key staff are “quite ill” with COVID.  Dollar to a donut that none of these idiots were vaccinated because, well, they’re idiots, and Karen Fann, the Arizona Senate President didn’t answer the question if they had been vaccinated.

You just can’t make this up.