IT'S EVEN WORSE THAN IT LOOKS

The Orange Grover Cleveland’s return to the White House could be a bumpy ride because he has not pledged to avoid conflicts of interest, among other ethical concerns, while in office.

The New York Times reports the transition team missed the October 1 deadline to submit an ethics plan in accordance with the Presidential Transition Act passed after he had demonstrated over the first two years of his first time ururping the White House that he intended to flout all the rules. The Times also reports his assembled transition team has refused to participate in the established transition process, despite Biden ordering the administration to do all they can to facilitate the transition.

The team also missed several deadlines for signing agreements that are required in order for them to participate in national security meetings and to gain access to federal agencies.

He was reason Congress amended the Presidential Transition Act law in 2019, after he failed to voluntarily put his private assets out of his control in a blind trust. The amendment to the act requires that candidates post an ethics plan with “information on how eligible presidential candidates will address their own conflicts of interest during a presidential term.”

Although the transition leadership has drafted an ethics code and statement to govern the staff, the Times reports that a plan for The Walking Ethics Violation was not included. This is not surprising.

We have to face the fact that he will be a monster unleashed next year; so far as an ethics plan required by law is concerned, since he has no intention of adhering to any laws or rules, why would he worry about this, since no one can make him do anything. No one will get any quarter. The corruption that oozes from his every pore will destroy this once-great nation in ways that cannot be imagined, as he violates every aspect of our values and traditions. Do no be surprised when this spreads in all directions, since the collection of puppets he’s bringing into government are in their own ways more damaged than he is, that they follow him.

Reports have him down at Mar-A-Looney, where he obsesses over every pick for top administration positions in order to start brutalizing the entire country starting on Day 1. His silence is actually much to be expected.

The fact that the only break in the silence was to post a denial of rumors he intended to offer Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo senior positions in the administration should put to rest the braindead bleatings of Christina Greer, who said on Stephanie Ruhle’s show Friday night how much she hoped “responsible Republicans” would put aside their differences with him and join the administration “for the good of the country.” Sorry for the bummer here, Ms. Greer, but it is now clear no “responsible” anyone will be allowed to mess up his plans for chaos and revenge; plus, there is no evidence that any “responsible Republicans” still exist. Stop searching for unicorns, ma’am. He has opted for retribution over unity. Nd the fact that ppost probably surprised you is why you are now irrelevant. Ms. Greer. Don’t lose that professorship.

Tom Mann's and Norm Ornstein's column, “The Gop Has Become an Insurgent Outlier in American Politics,” published in the Washington Post in 2012 is only more true today: “It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition." The book that came from this column - "It's Even Worse Than It Looks" - now seems almost quaint. Twelve years later, the party is worse than we could imagine then; and yet it is still "even worse than it looks."

Roger Stone, who has remained a close Trump confidant, singled out Haley and Pompeo as the “most egregious examples of the type of person who should be excluded in the administration” in a blog post on Friday, going on to claim that Pompeo undermined Trump’s America First agenda while Secretary ofSstate and that Haley too often opted to criticize rather than uplift him. Thinking about the kind of people who would satisfy Roger Stone makes me want to run to the restroom to worship the Golden Throne.

In a famous 1941 Harper’s Magazine article, well-known correspondent Dorothy Thompson “got” both Donald Trump and JD Vance in her descriptions of the “born Nazi” (Trump) and the “already a Nazi” Vance

First, dear leader:

“I think young D over there is the only born Nazi in the room. Young D is the spoiled only son of a doting mother. He has never been crossed in his life. He spends his time at the game of seeing what he can get away with. He is constantly arrested for speeding and his mother pays the fines. He has been ruthless toward two wives and his mother pays the alimony. His life is spent in sensation-seeking and theatricality. He is utterly inconsiderate of everybody. He is very good-looking, in a vacuous, cavalier way, and inordinately vain. He would certainly fancy himself in a uniform that gave him a chance to swagger and lord it over others.”

She even describes his red-white-blue uniform.

And now, Corporal Couchfuck:

“The saturnine man over there talking with a lovely French emigree is already a Nazi. Mr. C is a brilliant and embittered intellectual. He was a poor white-trash Southern boy, a scholarship student at two universities where he took all the scholastic honors but was never invited to join a fraternity. His brilliant gifts won for him successively government positions, partnership in a prominent law firm, and eventually a highly paid job as a Wall Street adviser. He has always moved among important people and always been socially on the periphery. . .

“He is a snob, loathing his own snobbery. He despises the men about him. . . But his contempt is inextricably mingled with envy. Even more than he hates the class into which he has insecurely risen, does he hate the people from whom he came. . . .

“Pity he has utterly erased from his nature, and joy he has never known. He has an ambition, bitter and burning. It is to rise to such an eminence that no one can ever again humiliate him. Not to rule but to be the secret ruler, pulling the strings of puppets created by his brains. Already some of them are talking his language—though they have never met him.

“There he sits: he talks awkwardly rather than glibly; he is courteous. He commands a distant and cold respect. But he is a very dangerous man. Were he primitive and brutal he would be a criminal—a murderer. But he is subtle and cruel. He would rise high in a Nazi regime. It would need men just like him—intellectual and ruthless. But Mr. C is not a born Nazi. He is the product of a democracy hypocritically preaching social equality and practicing a carelessly brutal snobbery. He is a sensitive, gifted man who has been humiliated into nihilism. He would laugh to see heads roll.”

Then there is the standard Republican:

“Mr. B has risen beyond his real abilities by virtue of health, good looks, and being a good mixer. He married for money and he has done lots of other things for money. His code is not his own; it is that of his class - no worse, no better, He fits easily into whatever pattern is successful. That is his sole measure of value -success. Nazism as a minority movement would not attract him. As a movement likely to attain power, it would.”

“Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi,” she assures us. “Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi.” One hopes that truth still holds.

What’s the Greek word for “rule by spineless scum?”

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