Simanaitis Says
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LAUGHTER AFTER LAMENT
AS SUGGESTED HERE in SimanaitisSays on Election Day 2020, “A lamentable scenario would be protracted legal hassles, complicated by Republican hypocrisy of Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court appointment, and fueled by Trump’s avowed reluctance to accept results.”
Who would have guessed the depth of Trump’s reluctance? (No hoots, please; a show of hands suffices.)
On the other hand, consider the laughter generated by this post-electoral chaos. Here are tidbits collected from one source or another.
On Trump’s Sullen Actions. Jim Kenney, Philadelphia’s Democratic mayor, said, “I think what the president needs to do is, frankly, put his big boy pants on.”
No hope of this as long as the short-fingered vulgarian-in-chief has his Twitter account.
Stephen Colbert noted of Trump’s UPPER-CASE stream: “That is the digital equivalent of waking up to find Grandpa screaming on the lawn in his underwear. You can’t give a standard mental cognition test because the first question is ‘Who is the president?’ ”
In Kara Swisher’s “The End of Trump’s Reign of Tweet Terror is Near,” The New York Times, November 17, 2020, she wrote, “Watching Mr. Trump’s Twitter odyssey has been disturbing and unsettling. But I am here to tell you that the president’s tenure as troll in chief is at an ignominious end. Mr. Trump’s magic social media wand will soon be powerless.”
Swisher continued, “Instead of the obnoxious feints and ugly insinuations that have worked so well for him on Twitter, driving his detractors nuts, he has been abandoning the implicit for the explicit, thus making statements that are demonstrably untrue.”
Even his daft followers could tire of this.
Swisher writes, “He’s showing not only that the emperor has no clothes, but that he looks pretty bad naked.”
Truth and Trump-Truth. Until recently, Christopher Krebs headed the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which issued a statement saying, “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” and that the 2020 election “was the most secure in American history.”
David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth noted in “Christopher Krebs Hasn’t Been Fired, Yet,” The New York Times, November 13, 2020: “This occurred only hours after Mr. Trump had repeated a baseless report that a voting machine system had ‘deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide.’ ”
“As of Friday night,” Sanger and Perlroth continued, “Mr. Krebs was still employed, and still at his office, and shrugging it all off. As a father of five children, ages 2 through 10, he says he is used to living in chaos.”
However, Krebs had yet to experience real chaos: On November 16, 2020, Trump “terminated” Krebs by a tweet that earned the president another “This Claim… is Disputed” disclaimer from Twitter.
Bruni on Javanka. Frank Bruni is one of my favorite columnists. His “Was It Worth It, Jared and Ivanka?” The New York Times, November 16, 2020, is a delight. Its subtitle sets the mood: “The glossiest grifters become Vuitton vagabonds.”
I encourage you to read Bruni’s article in its entirety. Here are parts worthy of LMAO.
Bruni says Javanka “are the Faustian poster couple of the Trump presidency, the king and queen of the principle-torching prom at which so many danced alongside them, although in less exquisitely tailored attire. They are Mitch McConnell after a makeover, Ted Cruz gone to charm school, Mike Pompeo with a more rigorous fitness regimen,… so entranced by power, so enchanted by perks, so primed for future prizes that they junked values that they once supposedly held and downgraded decency to something ornamental, a sprig of parsley on a fish fillet.”
“Where, geographically, will they alight?” Bruni asks. “Washington won’t work, not even a suite at the Trump International Hotel, because there’s nothing more pathetic than lingering at a party once the music has stopped.”
“Mar-a-Loco makes questionable sense,” Bruni says. “It’s Melania’s sandbox, and she and Ivanka play together about as sweetly as Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio do. New Jersey is where the Kushners have their roots, but Javanka is accustomed to more glitz than that. At this point they’re Aspen, not Asbury Park.”
“I have suggestions,” Bruni says. “North Korea, for one. Ivanka has met its ruler and even been to the Demilitarized Zone. She wouldn’t have to ask for directions. Saudi Arabia. Jared and Prince Mohammed bin Salman are spiritual twins, conjoined by their sense of superiority. Russia. Yes, Russia! It would be the poetic choice, bringing the Trump family’s presidential adventure full circle.”
The good lines keep on coming. I may even miss them after January 20. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2020
Simanaitis Says 
It’s time for the Biden/Harris administration to announce their intent to offer to rehire after the 20th of January any federal employees who, as a matter of conscience, feel forced to resign from their positions in defiance of lame-duck president’s order.
An understandable sentiment, however it’s critical for the federal Civil Service to remain politically neutral and serve all Americans. Rehiring anyone who resigned for objecting to the actions of the past four years would only confirm the wacky allegations of a “Deep State”, even if the folks pushing that conspiracy theory aren’t ever going to change their minds.
Administrations come and go, and that’s just an “occupational hazard” of working for the government. It’s highly competitive to get hired, and many current feds are retirement eligible. So anyone who couldn’t wait and recently bailed out holds a heckuva resume, and may possess a modest pension/401k parachute. Since Uncle Sam gives a slight hiring preference to veterans, and especially disabled veterans, vacancies aren’t always bad news. I’ll bet it beats working at Mar-a-Loco!