Bad Vibes

 

I woke up Wednesday morning in the same world I woke up in the day before. I wasn't sad, not disappointed or even depressed. I checked my pulse to see if I died or something and considered I might be dissociating or something, but that wasn't it, either. I had wanted to be optimistic and keep a positive face and try to believe that who and what Trump was and did mattered leading up to the election, but I didn't have to do that anymore, and honestly, that part was almost a relief.

He got the popular vote, you guys. This wasn't echoes of 2016 for me, this was echoes of 2004, when I was positive that people might realize the Bush was not a really great president in a lot of ways, and look past all that Swift Boat shit and just...

And then some farkakteh "security moms" who were really, really concerned about terrorism got him a second term. Or so the narrative went. But anyway, John Kerry was basically Jane Fonda and....

Whatever. 

Anyway, the thing that made me feel like Oh shit wasn't the election--it was an SNL skit featuring Tim Kaine. 

Senator Saltine on Diversity

 

JD Vance laments the diversity of New York City ahead of Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally:

“London doesn’t feel fully English to me anymore. Right? New York of course is the classic American city. Over time, I think New York will start to feel less American.” pic.twitter.com/W8p4yXcZQS

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) October 27, 2024

Poor Jimmy Donuts. The swarthy children of the Empire came home to roost in London Town and assorted Caribbeans are trotting through New Amsterdam! It's a multicultural chaos I tell you!

Reminder:

 He knows better. But out loud and in public he's doing a whole different thing:

Here's a Bit of History

 

If your spirits are down, lift them with this thought:

Jimmy Carter lived long enough to vote for Kamala Harris today. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/rODaa8Yzlp

— Steven Senski 🇺🇦 🌈 🥥🌴 (@StevenSenski) October 15, 2024

This is the first president whose inauguration I can remember. Now, if you know my age, you might think that is improbable, but 1976 was a big year in Philadelphia with the Bicentennial and all. And I guess I imbibed political sensibility a bit from my mom. In 1977 I had a turntable, a Kiss album alongside my Sesame Street records and was a fan of Happy Days and watched some documentary about the 25th anniversary of rock and roll on PBS about a dozen times, it felt like. 

I remember the 1970s. I was already me by the time I was a toddler cleaning up shot glasses after parties (the taste of blackberry brandy and the sound of Steppenwolf) and listening to the Midnight Special. when I definitely wasn't supposed to still be awake and turning on the sole tv in the house and was lifting cold pizza out of the fridge. Mom finding me zonked on the floor with the farm report or Chief Halftown on in the morning.

He reminded me of Mr. Rogers then, and that was all right by me. He still does, and I don't have a greater compliment. He cares, and he acts on his sense of caring. It's the best thing you can say anyone ever does. 

The Lies Vance and Trump are Selling

 

The most striking thing that JD Vance has admitted out loud and in public is that even if Haitians are supposed to be here legally, he's still going to call them "illegal aliens". He knows and knew that the "people eating pets" thing was a lie when he spread it. He could easily bother to check whether crime really was up or whether communicable diseases were up, But the point isn't whether he's being honest--he's not. 

It's whether he can induce people to follow up on his story and keep it alive as if it were a big deal. Just like big public lies could induce people to follow up on a land deal in Arkansas, or a lie about a man's honorable service in Viet Nam, or a lie about a fully American man's birth certificate, or an attack on an embassy in Libya by Islamic terrorists, or an email server, or a man's son's laptop, and try to make that into a big deal, whether it really is or not. 

But there is something else in Vance's particular set of lies that is revealing--the idea that if a person can wave a wand over someone and declare them citizens, having a particular office means you can "uncitizen" them.  Or unperson them.

The Things They Say

 

The desperation is hilarious. https://t.co/8OZ0H0y44C pic.twitter.com/Owr6iTAPaO

— Chris D. Jackson (@ChrisDJackson) September 1, 2024

(This post been busted--here's a link adjacent as fuck.) I should have saved the image. 

The same kind of people who think Kamala Harris never saluted also are mad Barack Obama saluted once with a coffee cup or wore a tan suit that one time.  The same kind of people will boldly assert she doesn't know where Arlington Cemetery is, when she knows the route. Someone like Senator Tom Cotton, who wrote a book about Arlington, can say with some confidence that Biden and Harris should have attended an event to which they were not invited on his weekly Sunday chat shot hit. (Yes, weekly, and why? Do people want to see this mook?) He says it with confidence not because it's true, but because he doesn't expect to be thrown out on his ear. 

This is the guy who wrote the letter ages ago that recommended we back out of the JCPOA, and it was literally one of the dumbest foreign policy decisions ever. He's an open partisan whose opinions aren't to be trusted--ergo, he's on tv every week. 

Apparently, the media just exists to air opinions without context. 

Which One, Sweetie?

 

Tulsi Gabbard was everywhere today, and it turns out, she isn't just on the short list for Trump's running mate, she's got a book! With Regnery! What is fun to me is, her Tweet about the book has the above title, and the Amazon picture has a different title:

The difference between "Why I Left the Democratic Party" and "Leave the Democrat Party Behind" is actually pretty unsubtle. The first suggests a personal decision and calls the party the preferred name: Democratic Party. The second version uses "Leave the Democrat Party". This is phrased like a command and a slight--Hey, you! Leave those Democrats. 

I do believe, and have believed, that Gabbard is a mess. But her "For Love of Country" so stimulates me: Which one? Syria? Russia? She says she left the Democratic party behind--and I am assuming it was because someone made a better offer. A better person than her once quipped that he didn't leave the Democratic Party behind, it left him. But has the Democratic Party changed at all--with respects to civil rights, to diversity and equality and LGBT rights--since she tried to run for the presidential nomination in 2020? 

Tucker Carlson is Trying to Be "Useful"

 

Sad propaganda ronin Tucker Carlson has attached himself to the Russian shogun in the hopes of being viewed as valid, important, and not a fucking parasite in one of the most parasitical moves imaginable. He is going to serve us an interview of Vladimir Putin as if he were a western journalist who would do an even marginally tough job. 

We know what has happened to Russian journalists who challenge Putin (look at the date of her death--see anything?). We know what can happen with legitimate western journalists. Tucker Carlson, however, is mostly safe (even if he broke with the desired narrative for the moment--of course western journalists want to interview Putin, but Carlson won an HONOR!) Actually, Russia media love Tucker Carlson so much.  He's essential!  He shows that even in the West, Putin is respected. And in return, Carlson carries Putin's message to Americans, who are, frankly, easily impressed and dumb as hell. 

Hillary Clinton, who isn't brand new to any of this, calls Carlson what he rightly is: a "useful idiot." But she also delivers a fairly chilling coda:

It’s really quite sad that not just somebody like Tucker Carlson who has, as I said, been fired so many times because he seems unable to correlate his reporting with the truth, but also because it is a sign that there are people in this country right now who are like a fifth column from Vladimir Putin.

...

“There is a yearning for leaders who can kill and imprison their opponents, destroy the press, lead a life that is one of impunity and bound by any laws,” she continued. “There’s a yearning among certain people in our country for that kind of leadership. And I find that absolutely gobsmacking terrifying.”

Hillary Clinton and the Uncomfortable Truth

 

“So many of those extremists, those MAGA extremists, take their marching orders from Donald Trump,” @HillaryClinton tells me. “There needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members” in the GOP, she adds in our EXCLUSIVE conversation. pic.twitter.com/ImpYIBuQ5j

— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) October 6, 2023

The right-wing is a bit up in arms with Hillary Clinton's statement that Trump's people are in a cult and need to be deprogrammed. Now, for the record, to me this is as benign a statement as calling some portion of the Trump supporters "deplorable"--he literally attracts militia folks and Klan members. If you aren't down with calling out would-be Timothy McVeigh's and the goddamn Klan as "deplorable"--I'm not sure what your standards are, but they sure as hell aren't mine. (Looking at Steve Scalise and Josh Hawley in their whole damn faces.) You either understand civil terrorism is kind of fucked up or GTFO. I'll say John Brown and Weather Underground weren't exactly doing it right--your turn? 

Anyway, Hillary Clinton is by far not the only one to notice that Trump mega-MAGA fan behavior is cultish. They signify via their unique clothing. They silo their sources of information. They believe what their cult leader says to the exclusion of what they might even see with their own eyes. Their religion, their associations, their concept of acceptable speech: all file in line with TrumpThink. 

When comedians and journalists alike do "man on the street" type interviews with MAGA, they sound like people from the Manchurian Candidate talking about Raymond Shaw.: 

“Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”

TWGB: We're Never Leaving 2016, Right?

 

Hammered Junior interrupts Michael Flynn to riff on the allegations of his dad getting golden showers from Russian prostitutes. pic.twitter.com/2TyiLBQrW5

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 25, 2023

Heh, yes, the takeaway of the Steel Dossier is DEFINITELY the golden showers part. Jesus.  See, this is the ridiculousness of the Real Housewives of TrumpWorld that keeps me hanging on. Junior always looks like he wanders into rooms vaguely hoping someone cares enough about his ass to stage an intervention (they don't). Mike Flynn should have been x'd from a professional political campaign over fake news shit in 2016, but went on to be pardoned for lying to the FBI by the Trump Administration because my god. He's a Russian-influenced quisling practicing psyops on the US population, but he's their Russian-influenced quisling practicing psyops on the US population. 

They're bringing up the Steele Dossier because it didn't actually start the investigation into Russian interference and no one heard anything about pee tapes before Trump was already in office, but most people don't remember things linearly. It still scratches a very specific itch--the desire of Trump to exorcise the "Russia, Russia, Russia" demon with his own specific and frankly amusingly stupid counter narrative. 

Ukraine are the bad guys who helped Hillary Clinton by framing Russia and no they didn't, and despite all the obvious RIGGING! like in California, where Trump could have definitely won! um. Trump won in 2016 anyway. He had his little bullshit election fraud commission that found nothing and disbanded. Why does he need to pretend he was wronged? He had his opportunity. He fucked up COVID. He lost more jobs than like, Hoover. He got impeached twice! Why is he still here?

Why are we all still here in 2016? 

TWGB: The Tale of the Tape

 

"I just found, isn't that amazing? This totally wins my case you know.... Except it is like, highly confidential."

That's a quote from the tape CNN played last night as an exclusive. It's Trump, at Bedminster, talking about one of the documents that proves his case. What case--does it absolve him of the Russia Hoax or the first impeachment? 

Nah. Just a pissing contest he's having in his own mind with chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, FGen Mark Milley. 

That audio comes from open pissing and moaning about, among other things, Trump's need to be right, and a discussion about how, supposedly, Hillary Clinton handled secret documents. "Please print" was a joke between Trump and a suck-up aide of his that can be heard on the tape. Irony of ironies: he knows having this stuff printed out is wrong, and here he is, with the actual paper in his hand.

Would I Call it Weaponization?

 

Somewhere, deep down, I feel like nothing is ever over with Republicans. Forget Benghazi or tan suits. They are going to get weird and bring up Chappaquiddick or Alger Hiss or Robert Byrd's Klan connections out of the blue.  So what do I think when Jim Jordan thinks maybe he'll target Hillary Clinton with a new investigation?

If Hunter Biden wasn't already done to death, why would the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy turning their lonely eyes to Hillary Clinton again hit any different?  I mean, Kevin McCarthy, the current and obviously temporary Speaker of the House explained out loud where people could hear that the email investigation hurt Clinton intentionally. And current crank James Comer admitted in the same vein that the investigation into President Biden's family members is supposed to help Trump. 

He still hasn't found what he's looking for, of course. The GOP can't keep track of their whistleblowers. To the extent they exist they are being paid by Trump insider Kash Patel who is a witness in the Mar-A-Lago document scandal and the first impeachment over the Ukraine president's being extorted. So that's not obviously sleazy as hell, right? 

But in the funny old round world kind of way, it comes out just now that the Trump DOJ was already investigating the Clintons via the Clinton Foundation, and they had nothing. See, unlike Trump's slush fund that he called a charitable enterprise which had to be shut down, and his kids had to go to mandatory don't run a charity as a slush fund school? The Clinton Foundation has been on the up and up. 

So--see how that seems like weaponization? And the thing where Trump get tried in courts and actually has done stuff is not weaponization? And how Durham had nothing, and most Republicans seem to be kind of distracting from 1/6 or the documents scandal by deflecting and whatabouting to other stuff? 

It's like they want to pretend "both sides" are equally as bad and they really aren't. And I would through very gritted teeth like to suggest the media report it that way, because sometimes, there are not two sides to everything (sorry current CNN management!) but one side is actually very bad, even seditious. And even undermines the very concept of rule of law via extreme partisanship. 

And what I mean by that isn't hard at all to see or hear if you're paying attention. 

TWGB: Just the Mob, Russia, Echoes of 2016 and 1776

 

Depicted above is Donald Trump, former president, with Skinny Joey Merlino, formerly, to the best of my knowledge, of the Philadelphia mafia, if that's a thing, about which I have little to say. Anyhow, Trump very recently crowed that he had information about every person who came down to Mar-A-Lago and should know who Merlino is and so I would be astonished if this was accidental. Please--he doesn't care. He didn't care about Nick Fuentes, and he doesn't care about Joey Merlino--he needs all the friends he can get. He has long depended upon the kindness of strange people. 

Why is this my lead-in into today's TrumpWorld Grab-Bag? Because this is a long and strange journey spurred by an echo of the 2016 campaign: a former head of FBI counter-intelligence in the NY office was arrested for taking money from a Russian oligarch with ties to the Trump Russia probe.  This is the outcome of an interesting story that gives us a little more about McGonigal back when this was in the grand jury stage. 

The federal scrutiny of McGonigal is especially striking given his work at the FBI. Before his retirement in 2018, McGonigal led the WikiLeaks investigation into Chelsea Manning, busted Bill Clinton's national security advisor Sandy Berger for removing classified material from a National Archives reading room, and led the search for a Chinese mole inside the CIA. In 2016, when reports surfaced that Russia had hacked the email system of the Democratic National Committee, McGonigal was serving as chief of the cybercrimes section at FBI headquarters in Washington. In that capacity, he was one of the first officials to learn that a Trump campaign official had bragged that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton, sparking the investigation known as Operation Crossfire Hurricane. Later that year, FBI Director James Comey promoted McGonigal to oversee counterintelligence operations in New York. 

Pretty flipping fascinating, no? Anyway, the NY office was described back in 2016 as TrumpLand and definitely leaked info regarding Anthony Weiner's laptop to various people, prompting James Comey's announcement of the reopening of the Clinton email case, which a lot of folks are pretty sure sank the election for her. And I don't know this for a fact and don't want to impugn the NYT's reporters on this, but even though the CI investigation of Trump in 2016 was based in DC, I would not be surprised if the front page news that the FBI found no connection to Russia in 2016 was leaked from that office. Funny how the folks not looking for it weren't finding it. 

Comeuppance

 

When your day started out like:

New York Attorney General Tish James announces a civil lawsuit against Donald Trump, the Trump Organization, and his three adult children for alleged fraud and misrepresentation. https://t.co/CQT6q6yZEY https://t.co/Cb3nAnqKOe

— POLITICO (@politico) September 21, 2022

(And she said it like, "SDNY, Manhattan DA, DOJ, you follow?")

and then the Eleventh Circuit went:

BREAKING: Appeals Court panel *grants* DOJ request for a stay of parts of Judge Cannon’s ruling. pic.twitter.com/dx2aGZGjDU

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 21, 2022

(I mean they cut Judge Cannon up over jurisdiction and the declassification canard and the whole shebang. Turns out, when national security is at stake, the concerns of the USG are more important than the ego of a former president.) 

And now you're sitting on Hannity's show like:

Oh my God!

Trump says that there doesn't have to be any process in declassifying documents. In fact, he can do it just by thinking about it!

Then he wonders if the FBI was looking for Hillary's emails when they raided Mar-a-Lago. pic.twitter.com/vmmVnYI309

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) September 22, 2022

(2016 was six years ago. The FBI was finished with Hillary Clinton's emails six years ago. There are more important things Trump was hoarding in #Docugate or whatever we are calling this scandal.) 

That's a bad fucking day. Absolutely no notes required.

Speaking Ill of the Ill-Starred Dead

 

There are people who find themselves appointed to unpleasant tasks and are called upon to serve, even in difficult circumstances, with zealous attention and exacting rectitude, to achieve a necessary goal with persistence and above all, honor. Ken Starr was not that guy.  And while one shouldn't speak ill specifically of the dead, I am not sure why I should stop a necessary conversation started while he was yet living.

He was, charitably, a nasty piece of work. 

He's most famous for dogging President Clinton and family and associates up until he came across an affair and dragged both the president and the 25-year-old intern through the most salacious interpretations of human interaction imaginable for partisan reasons. But he also defended Prop 8 and Jeffrey Epstein and ignored rape allegations at Baylor when he was president of the University.  He unironically defended Trump against impeachment in a way about as hypocritical as former impeachment manager Lindsey Graham. 

It's hard to imagine a person who took up for more horrendous things and yet (obviously) retained the respect of the larval creeps who managed to do stuff like get on the SCOTUS bench with his tutelage.  You know, like Brett Kavanaugh. 

If any of that sounds disrespectful to the dead, you should have heard what I would have said about him, alive. Probably even to his face with the appropriate lubrication. He had the opportunity to do an awful lot, and what he did was, well, awful. And a lot. 

TWGB: The Best Plans

 

You know, I had forgotten all about the RICO case Trump wanted to make of Jim Comey and Peter Stzrok and Hillary Clinton and all the wild cast of characters Trump wanted to say schemed against him in 2016 and spoiled his precious presidency.  It got tossed, because it was hopelessly dumb.  The full tossing of this meandering paranoid rant was a thing of beauty owing to it's entirely giving of no fucks about not just pointing out that it isn't really a crime for people to say bad things about someone if they are true or just opinions, but that the complainant got his term in office and in no way was materially harmed by an investigation that had a legitimate basis. 

It also holds open the question of whether Trump's lawyers should be sanctioned for bringing such a case forward as if they were overindulging a toddler to his own detriment (as I think this case would have been uncomfortably revelatory of what Trump lawyer should not, for the interests of their client, want pursued. So what's the plan? 

Alina Habba, an attorney for Trump, said Trump will "immediately move to appeal this decision." 

"We vehemently disagree with the opinion issued by the Court today," Habba told CNN in a statement. "Not only is it rife with erroneous applications of the law, it disregards the numerous independent governmental investigations which substantiate our claim that the defendants conspired to falsely implicate our client and undermine the 2016 Presidential election."

This is the best strip mall shingle across from your golf club lawyering a man can probably eventually pay for. (Or not.) There are no governmental investigations that find that Hillary Clinton and Jim Comey conspired to make Donald Trump look like he was colluding with Russia by shoving a hand up his ass puppetlike and making him say "Russia, if you are listening?" and so on. The Steele Dossier and the pee tape nonsense came out once he was already president and didn't harm him anymore than, say, Mike Flynn being on the payroll of Russia and Turkey did, or Trump's own firing of Jim Comey and then telling anyone who would listen he did it to end the Russia investigation did. The idea of appealing is just a dopey way to keep whether or not Trump was a puppet of Russia in the spotlight which is the dumbest thing imaginable when Russia is not really popular at the moment if anyone noticed and goddamn, Streisand effect, anyone?  Compounded by why has he taken secret documents out of the White House?

Fox Mushroom Farm Has Really Been Spreading That Fertilizer

 

The things you will see on Fox News! (I have called them the mushroom farm which is terribly unfair to actual mushroom farmers and I still like my analogy.)  Apparently, Barr's appointed US counsel in charge of making the Russia investigation look like it wasn't great (despite the multi-volume Senate intelligence report on same) has filed a thing that isn't actually shocking--someone related to the Clinton campaign mentioned to a government agency that a thing they noticed should be looked into, and they never explicitly pointed out that they might be tangentially associated with that campaign, which was over at the time of their being asked. The thing was DNS traffic, and my god, anyone hyping it should have to spell out what they think analyzing DNS traffic means. Because it is actually really boring, and not actually spying or wiretapping. 

The October 2016 news story was so dull I called it "too good to be true" at the time and I'm an obsessive re: Trump/Russia. That's how not a big deal it was. But that doesn't stop the premier propaganda cable news network from bolstering Trump's claims that pointing out a fairly nerdy and easily dismissible propinquity regarding Trump Tower and a Russian bank based on web traffic should result in the electric chair. 

Like, look up things that are publicly available and render an unfavorable conclusion and apparently, that is way too much for our society to bear. That is what this mishigas is about. Someone noticed something in the Trump milieux and not realizing His Nibs was sacrosanct, mentioned it. This got enlarged to supposedly spying on the Trump Administration, and no--the period involving White House traffic was the Obama Administration. Like, maybe Obama can get wee-weed up about it, if he was the type. But I think not. And this is in no way analogous to Trump being "wiretapped!" 

They've Got To Be Carefully Taught

 

When I was a kid, we got taught about the Golden Rule, and it was a pretty good rule as they go: Do unto Others as you would have them do unto You. You don't hit other kids or call them names or pick on them for being different or any of that, because if that happened to you, you would feel bad. You had to stop and think--is this how I would want to be treated? Would I want to be picked on for being different? Would I want to be teased if I was clumsy, or talked slow, or was fat or didn't have nice clothes? 

It was simple, and direct. It was about respecting others and the basis for good citizenship in the classroom and anywhere else. It wasn't new-fangled jargon, but time-tested and ancient religion-approved. 

Did I learn this concept found in scripture in a church--no. Your blogger never wandered into a formal religious setting before the age of ten or eleven. I learned it in public school, in kindergarten. Was I indoctrinated at the tender age of five to some startling multicultural program (I mean, my school was desegregated and I understood after this simple precept how racism was wrong because obviously--how would I want to be treated?) I still absorbed a lot of my culture's dumbfuck attitudes and I'm going to be sorting out the headtrip that whiteness is for a while, yet. I wouldn't say I was indoctrinated. 

Surely, not everyone who was in the same kindergarten class as me has come to my POV. We are individuals, not blank slates. We're not human Silly Putty pulling up cartoons from the Sunday funnies.

TWGB: Trump Reads Marks and Angles

 

I keep saying Trump is basically a con-artist because his mode is definitely not that of a legitimate business man. He's business as performance art. The hair! The tan! The offensively not tailored suits! The third world dictator gilded glitz of his Trump Tower penthouse, and the marble and tile of his Winter White House, Mar-a-Lago. His rallies that cheer all his weird pronouncements, even his peculiar idea of dancing (and Ellen should sue, also she is a better dancer). 

It's a con. Things that give him some kind of brand and play up his schtick are a con. Trump University was a con.  Trump's supposed charitable foundation was a big con. The wall was a con. His business model is a con. This is a con--and Trump knows it. 

But cons sometimes work, kids. Don't forget that. And if you get away with a con once, what really stops you from trying it again? Conscience? Morality? Of course not! This is TrumpWorld. So, if "But her emails..." worked once (they weren't even her emails, but Podesta's, for crying out loud!) then why wouldn't "But Hunter Biden's emails..." do the same job? 

(Not that Team Trump has given up on Hillary Clinton's emails even still. At this point, they have to be considered some kind of completists.)

Rudy Giuliani Repeats Himself

On Fox & Friends, Rudy Giuliani says Joe Biden "has dementia. There's no doubt about it. I've talked to doctors. ... The president's quite right to say maybe he's taken adderall." The hosts get visibly uncomfortable. pic.twitter.com/2Ma7DKNBpS

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) September 29, 2020

There's something very familiar about what Rudy Giuliani is doing here regarding former Vice-President Biden's mental health--because he was doing the same exact thing four years ago regarding Hillary Clinton. It's just as specious now as it was then, it's just as weird regarding setting expectations for Trump's debate now as it was then. (And FWIW, Giuliani himself looks like a damn shipwreck.)

Is it wishful thinking? It seems to me that Giuliani liked lying about Clinton in part because of resentment re: her winning what he figured should be his senate seat. And of course, it was from the supposedly not-so-nimble mind of Joe Biden that the withering "A noun, a verb, 9/11" came from. I'm sure Giuliani haaaaaates that. Anyway, in short, screw Rudy Giuliani, he's a sad liar.

More Than Satisfied

Biden/Harris clicks for me in a satisfying way as a balanced ticket, and all too many think pieces are going to run down the list of identities that show the contrast between these candidates. You know, he's the white male party elder and she's the younger woman of color, etc. But I want to talk about the energy, the synergy, the chemistry--these are two people who care about good government and show great empathy for others. 

I was pissed off in December 2019 when Kamala Harris dropped out of the Democratic 2020 primary. To me, she represented the energy we needed, but I never did gather my thoughts about my disappointment as they probably constituted not a blogpost, but a twenty-volume leather bound special print edition that goes on at length about matters such as "Yeah but the 1990s", "Why the hell Iowa, though?",  "Did the lady smile enough for you?" and "Do racists actually care where brown people are from before they do a racism?" I refrained because I do not have twenty-volume leather bound time and space. 

But damn I thought about all of it. I feel ready to have her back in a journey where she's going to get the kind of press Hillary Clinton got, because that machine never stops. And I know even the plusses of her record are going to be treated as possible strikes against her.

She has taken on the banks and worked for the environment. She has walked a line where she has tried to do justice to the victims of crimes and the accused. She has been a supporter of civil rights and LGBTQ rights. She is not perfect, and no one is. She walked with BLM and marched in Pride. She made Bill Barr uncomfortable during his confirmation hearing and she made Brett Kavanaugh uncomfortable during his. I welcome people who want to say anything about that being wrong--don't make me love her more, you bastards!

I am more than satisfied. I am energized. I see the mutual respect and admiration between Biden and Harris, that one moment aside. (Or maybe magnified, in how they mutually understood it for what it was.) I think they on the whole are complementary and can accomplish big things--like cleaning out the Augean Stables of the Trump government.  

And for what it's worth, Trump's talk about "nastiness" and the GOP talking points about being "fake" are weak. She's both considered one of the most progressive candidates, but is also a "cop"? She dares to be more complex than any talking points? Maybe the problem is they really don't know how to do talking points about her that don't address the bad things Trump isn't supposed to say, but says anyway.  Because that will obviously be a great look (/sarcasm). And maybe that's why he seems shook. Or sedated. But I guess mostly shook.