The Widdershins

As sure as orange is the color of prison jumpsuits, these days monumental events fall prey to the 140-charactered immaculate misconceptions of POTUS (Putrefaction of the Umber Scrotum). As the King of Siam said, “So let it be written. So let it be done.” The Umber Scrotum took this to heart and added his dribbling drivel of, “I only regret that I have but 140 characters to tweet for my country.”

In the list of shortest reigns, at 84-days the “Persimmon Putintate” is fast approaching the record of Emperor Pertinax of Rome. Pertinax lasted 86-days before being beaten to death by the Praetorian Guards. His passing was fortuitous since shortly thereafter the Praetorians separated his head from his body, placed it upon a pike, and led a parade with it.

These tangerine-hued 84-days have not been without palace intrigue. Much to the chagrin of all ground beef-faced Americans, it appears Steve Bannon’s sell-by date has come and gone. Even his dead-eyed mini-me, Steve Miller, has broken pucker and in true remora fish symbiosis firmly attached himself to the Kingdom of Kushner.

Many progressives believe the devolution of Bannon into yogurt is positive. Color me unconvinced. Dolt 45, while not yet starting a war, is liable to leave devastation just as formidable in his wake.

Let’s review. If Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is beating the nativist tribal drums, while Scott Pruitt is figuring out how to incorporate asbestos and pesticides into our diets, with Budget Director Dick Mick Mulvaney proclaiming a goal of high inequality, and Gary Cohn running the economy as an asterisk to the Goldman Sachs balance sheet, the Dolt 45 administration is a conservative Cialis-palooza.

For instance, Granny Sessions, a man who was too racist to be confirmed as federal judge 30-years ago, has in the last few weeks:

Indicated a desire to roll back civil rights oversight of abusive police departments, stampeded over states’ objections to immigration enforcement raids at courthouses, dropped efforts to improve forensic science, directed federal prosecutors to dedicate a larger share of their resources to deporting immigrants, launched a new crackdown on high-tech guest worker visas, and indicated a desire to bring back old-school “war on drugs” policies, including a stepped-up federal crackdown on marijuana use.

Or let’s look at the influence of Goldman Sachs. Here’s the picture of the Mar-a-Lago ersatz Situation Room last weekend surrounding the Syrian deserted airfield cafeteria bombing.

In this picture, not counting the soldier at the door, there are fourteen people. Of those fourteen, eight have either worked for or borrowed money from Goldman Sachs.

These things alone will not add Dolt 45 to the Emperor Pertinax list. It will be the cold hard reality of numbers. Since I have trouble counting to 21 with my shoes on, here’s a picture.

Now for some perspective – in the United States there might be 12,200 lobbyists nationwide. We have a better idea of foreign agents since by law they must register. By a recent count, there were about 1,700 registered foreign agents.

So in a country of 320 Million souls, the odds of running into a free-range lobbyist are really slim, like 0.00004. The odds of running into a registered foreign agent on the hoof are even slimmer, 0.000005.

By their own admission, the OrangeCursed campaign had only about 40 key staffers and barely 100 advisers. The question becomes:  How did the campaign have, not one, but two retroactively registered foreign agents? And how, out of 320 Million people, did eleven putrid peons with ties to Putin’s Russia find their way to Trump Tower just in time for this hootenanny?

In their conclusory paragraph on Russian collusion in the 2016 election, The Guardian says:

One source suggested the official investigation was making progress. “They now have specific concrete and corroborative evidence of collusion,” the source said. “This is between people in the Trump campaign and agents of [Russian] influence relating to the use of hacked material.”

So let it be written. So let it be done.

What’s on your mind today?