So this is depravity

 In a December 21 article for the New York Review of Books Sherrilyn Ifill wrote:  "Even as I speak, tens of millions of Americans are fully prepared to elect again as president a man of such degraded moral character, a man so void of a spirit of public service, a man so fundamentally inclined toward theft, mendacity, cruelty, and criminality that we can scarcely absorb the breadth of his transgressions.  His supporters embrace him with religious zeal."  Professor, you don't know the half of it.

The first week of 2024 has seen historic levels of cruelty, criminality and plain stupidity even for Trump, as he dreams of winning Iowa by a Putinesque 99.9 percent.  (New Hampshire is more problematic.)  He trotted out some old favorites, including a nasty attack on John McCain (dead since 2018) who "for some reason couldn't get his arm up that day."  (Subtext:  McCain was a sucker and a loser who let himself be tortured and disabled instead of paying a doctor to say his bunions made him 4F.)  His vagrant brain possibly triggered by thoughts of naval aviation, Trump displayed his mastery of catapults on carriers (he's a steam man):  "All I know about magnets is this, give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that's the end of the magnets."  This makes no sense but Mason City ate it up.  Then it was back to the magical power of negotiation to solve all problems, including the little dust-up in the 1860s:  "If you negotiated it, you probably wouldn't even know who Abraham Lincoln was...that would've been OK."  

This is Ahmir Jolliff celebrating his eleventh birthday, the last he would have before a 17-year-old murdered him at Perry High School.  Seven other people were wounded.  Trump's response a few miles away:  "It's just horrible -- so surprising to see it here.  But we have to get over it.  We have to move forward."  Only Trump is still surprised when someone shoots up a school, and ready to move on before Ahmir Jolliff had even been buried.  I've watched this monster for nearly a decade and I was shaken.  I admit it.  I can still be surprised.

What more did you expect from the anointed one?  Spare yourself two minutes and forty-four seconds followed by a half hour of retching and read all about it:  "And on June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, 'I need a caretaker,' so God gave us Trump," it begins.  If it is a put-on by, say, John Oliver's writers, Trump didn't get the joke before re-posting it on his nearly-bankrupt platform.  Satire doesn't work anymore.  The Messenger suggests the ad was plagiarized from a speech Paul Harvey made in 1978 about farmers and a DeSantis ad from only two years ago.  But as Professor Ifill noted above, Trumpanzees won't care.

Something like a hundred Israelis and Americans have been in the hands of Hamas since October 7, and the anguish of their families and friends cannot be imagined, but that didn't stop Trump from applying the word and the situation to thugs in the DC jail who followed his orders to storm the Capitol and threaten the vice president, the Speaker and members of Congress:  "Release the hostages, Joe," he demanded, echoed by his new sycophant-in-chief Elise Stefanik.  Margie Greene and the others who declared them "political prisoners" must be kicking themselves that they didn't think of this much more disgusting lie.  Stefanik is also getting in early on election denial.  Asked by Kristen Welker if she will vote to certify the results of the 2024 election, Stefanik responded, "We will see if this is a legal and valid election."  In other words, not if Biden wins.

Remember those emoluments that the Flying Alitos declined to rule about because Trump had already been forced to vacate the presidency?   Before Jamie Comer seized control of the House Oversight Committee the Democrats were already accumulating the receipts and, woudja look here, the generous folks at Industrial and Commercial Bank of China managed to transfer $5.6 million to China's implacable foe by renting space in Trump Tower between 2017 and 2021.  I guess it was enough for him to forgive their trade practices and the "China flu" because, well, money talks.  Other dubious foreign countries made their diplomats and lobbyists take rooms in his hotels, bedbugs be damned.  An Era of Good Stealing for sure.

Joe Biden's speech in Valley Forge was stirring, but we need more of what the Lincoln Project puts out.