AG Jeff Sessions Will Appear Before the Senate Intelligence Committee

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has agreed to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday. He will be attempting to clear his name, after former FBI Director James Comey's explosive testimony last week, in which he spoke about the pressure he felt coming from the President to drop the investigation into Mike Flynn. Comey specifically called the President a liar, and also had something to say about Jeff Sessions' possible involvement in the investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 election.

“Our judgment, as I recall, was that [Jeff Sessions] was very close and inevitably going to recuse himself for a variety of reasons. We were also aware of facts that I can’t discuss in an open setting that would make his continued engagement in a Russia-related investigation problematic.”

In his confirmation hearing, Sessions said he had not met with Russian officials during the Trump campaign, when in fact he had met with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. There was enormous Democratic resistance to Sessions' nomination before the truth was revealed, but Democrats were over-ridden. In the hearing, Elizabeth Warren tried to read out part of a letter written thirty years ago by Coretta King, widow of Martin Luther King Jr. It related to Sessions' failed judicial nomination in 1980 because of his racism.

Mitch McConnell shut Elizabeth Warren down, on the grounds that Senate rules prohibit one Senator from bad-mouthing another on the floor, and Republicans voted to support his move. It backfired spectacularly. Firstly it was pointed out that the rule could not apply during a confirmation hearing, and secondly McConnell had said nothing when Ted Cruz had accused him of being a liar. But worse, Elizabeth Warren ended up being heard by a much wider audience. She first tweeted about the incident, triggering off a viral hashtag #LetLizSpeak.

I will not be silent while the Republicans rubber stamp an AG who will never stand up to the @POTUS when he breaks the law.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 8, 2017

Then she read the letter outside the Senate, on camera, and posted the video on her Facebook page. To date, the video has had 12 million views.

“During the debate on whether to make Jeff Sessions the next Attorney General, I tried to read a letter from Coretta Scott King on the floor of the Senate. The letter, from 30 years ago, urged the Senate to reject the nomination of Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship. The Republicans took away my right to read this letter on the floor – so I’m right outside, reading it now.”

In Sessions' confirmation hearings, on the 10th of January, Senator Al Franken asked (at 3:18 in the video), "If there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government during the course of this campaign, what would you do?" Sessions replied, "Senator Franken, I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, but I did not have communications with the Russians."

On the 17th, Senator Leahy asked him; " Several of the President-Elect’s nominees or senior advisers have Russian ties. Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?" Sessions said, "No".

Also on the 17th, Senator Feinstein asked if he would recuse himself "from any FBI or Justice Department investigation into whether Flynn’s communications were permissible under the law, including the Logan Act." Sessions replied "I am not aware of a basis to recuse myself from such matters. "

On the 1st of March, the Washington Post, which had exposed Mike Flynn's dissemination, leading to Trump being forced to fire him, reported that Sessions had spoke twice with Kislyak. At first Sessions dug his heels in, but later, amid Democratic calls to resign, was forced to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Trump was enraged, and called it all a witch hunt of an 'honest man'. But then he thought Mike Flynn was a 'good guy', even after his lies were exposed.

Since his inauguration Trump has been dogged the Russia investigation which, in spite of all his efforts to distract from it, continues to gather momentum. Having gotten his way his whole life, Trump took on the presidency believing it would be business as usual. He took a page from Putin's playbook, attempting to control the narrative and create an alternative to the truth.

But Putin, frightening as he is, is a clever man. Trump is not. So where Putin has succeeded, Trump's considerable efforts are failing miserably. Out of control, he is his own worst enemy. He continues to paint himself into an ever-diminishing corner.

Republicans and Trump supporters consistently insist that there's no there, there. No evidence of collusion. The process of unearthing it is moving along swiftly, the overriding response to Trump supporters being that this president has attacked every person under the sun, practically every world leader. Except Putin. And one after another of his staff, including his own son-in-law, have been exposed as having communications or suspected deals of some sort with Russians, including officials and/or people very close to Putin.

So Sessions' insistence that he didn't know of any activity between Trump campaign officials and Russians, apart from being a blatant lie on his own account, is unlikely to be true with regards to those who have now been exposed. And his recusal from the Russia investigation wasn't water-tight. Subsequently, he did get involved again, potentially violating his recusal pledge. On the 9th of May, Sessions wrote a letter to the president, recommending that Comey be fired.

Trump has admitted—and subsequently tried to deny—that he fired Comey because the Russia investigation was causing a cloud; it was irritating him.

In his testimony, Comey expressed said the president lied. Trump's response was to double down and accuse Comey of perjury. The problem for Trump is that he is, by his own hand, an established liar, and Comey, in his long career at the FBI, is a known truth-teller. Sessions has also been exposed as a liar. It looks like the chickens have come home to roost for him. It is unknown yet whether he will testify openly or in a closed hearing. 

100 Days of Failure, Broken Promises - And Action

It's been a hundred days since sanity, coherence, joy, optimism, brilliance of mind, sound leadership and dignity vanished from the White House. Since the building symbolized hope and housed a super-qualified, integrity-driven administration. Since the president and first lady and their two daughters were hugely respected round the world, free from even the hint of scandal or abuse. Since the planet was in safe hands and international conflict was under control.

A hundred days only? It feels like years. The six months since the New York Times finally took an unequivocal stand for Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump feel like decades.

Remember the Democratic National Convention, when Hillary Clinton broke a glass ceiling, and after that Barack and Michelle Obama took to the campaign trail with passion and energy that lit up every day. It feels like a lifetime since the world felt like a safe place after eight years of a president who valued diplomacy over war and understood how important it was not to engage in saber-rattling with trigger-happy sociopath leaders. Since hope and optimism were at an all time high for the future of America set firmly on a path of increasing tolerance, good governance and equality.

It seems as if a generation has passed since the most powerful nation in the world was perceived to be a buffer, an insurmountable barrier, against the insurgent far right in Europe. But it's only been one hundred days.

It's been a challenge to keep up with, let alone process, everything that the current president and his shambolic, understaffed, unqualified administration have done in that time to create carnage. Shock and horror prevail and ripple out constantly from the epicenter into the world. Liberals are obliged to keep themselves informed but it's like drinking poison every day. Donald Trump is in the news the whole time and every word written about him is  disheartening, depressing. The way the Republican Party is enabling him because they want the power is almost worse. Reading about it all is like trying to breathe through an oil slick. Rep. Nancy Pelosi tweeted some choice triumphs.

.@realDonaldTrump didn’t seem to think the “100 days” was ridiculous a few months ago. #Trump100Days pic.twitter.com/nrrz5krbfl

— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) April 28, 2017

A hundred days ago, a significant majority of American voters and liberals around the world were in shock that the unimaginable had actually happened. Paradise was paved and replaced with a parking lot.

But if anybody was ever afraid that the majority of Americans would let Trump's bigotry, stupidity, racism, flagrant ignorance and sexism become the new normal, or that the Trump brand would make a fortune out of the presidency before Trump bankrupted the country and walked away scot-free, they can set that fear aside. If anybody thought that the majority of Americans were as easily brainwashed as the average Russian has been by Vladimir Putin, or that the free world would let itself be led into a dark age of intolerance, they'll have to think again.

Yes, it's been one hundred days of travesty, of inhumane campaign and post-campaign promises that fortunately have been broken, of a president who wanders the corridors of the White House in a dressing gown, mindlessly tweeting whatever is running through his seedy brain at three in the morning. A man who clearly has difficulty reading but none in telling a lie.

A hundred days of nepotism, back-biting, infighting, alternative fact spewing, lies and doubling down on lies, contradictions, threats of suing the press, calling it the enemy of the people. Childish attempts to follow Putin's playbook. And failure in everything that's been attempted.

A fragmented Republican Party, driven asunder by its own infighting; the Freedom Caucus pushing to the far right, and moderate Republicans fearing for their seats in 2018 if they give in.

In a normal presidency it would be a disaster. But in this one it's a triumph. It seems the parking lot came with built-in jack-hammers, because these one hundred days have also been a time of massive protests, of Americans going to town hall meetings and putting pressure on their representatives in Congress. Of the liberal media reporting truthfully, the New York Times and the Washington Post in a perpetual bun fight for who can get the biggest truth out first and most often.

Slate, Mother Jones, Politico, Salon, Vanity Fair, Daily Beast, HuffPost, The New Yorker, Reuters, Alternet, even Teen Vogue, to mention a few, all have their take as politics takes center stage. CNN, SkyNews and BBC anchors and hosts are relentlessly driving truth home. Comedians and cartoonists are having a field day. Twitter and Facebook are red-hot with protest and shared information.

Barack and Michelle Obama, have taken their break and are back in action, not as politicians, but as civilians. So is Hillary Clinton. And Bernie Sanders, is still in the Senate, and plugging away with Tom Perez for the Democratic Party. They all have huge followings.

Democrats in the House and Senate are fighting for all they're worth. Mike Flynn was forced to resign, Jeff Session and Devin Nunes' lies were exposed, forcing them to recuse. The repeal and replace Obamacare fiasco fizzled.  Judges have blocked two attempts at Muslim bans, and at defunding sanctuary cities. Democrats refused to pass a bill that had money in it to fund the wall with Mexico. The major tax overhaul has been limp dick. The economy only grew at 0.7% for these past three months, down from 2.1% in the previous quarter. That would be during Obama's time, the man who ruined the US.

All of Trump's major Make America Great Again campaign promises and most of his 282 all-time promises (tracked by the Washington Post) have come to nothing. Which doesn't, of course, affect his base, but it does everybody else. And they're the ones who will count in 2018 and beyond.

And then there is the Russia probe. The investigations into Russian interference in the election, and into Trump collaboration with them, gain momentum despite all the frantic attempts at distraction. Accusing Obama and then GCHQ of wire-tapping, Devin Nunes' fake-evidence collaboration with Trump which fizzled. The attack on a Syrian airbase that achieved nothing, leaving the runway intact. The MOAB dropped on an ISIS target. North Korea threatened with a possible invasion by an armada, which embarrassingly turned out to be one ship travelling in the opposite direction.

None of it is impacting at all on the forward movement of that pesky Russia probe, which now has four official investigative bodies. And all the investigative functions of the liberal press.

Which is not to say that America, the planet or the rest of the world is safe. There'll be no safety until this administration changes. But the Republican Party, with all the power on paper that it finally has, can't unite to utilize that power effectively. The understaffed, ill-equipped administration is falling apart. And Trump, for all his braggadocio, is visibly losing steam—admitting for the first time yesterday that the job was much harder than he realized that it would be, and pretty much expressing regret. Not surprising, given his approval ratings, and how much he is hated, distrusted, laughed at and scorned.

Paving the way to pull out? Paradise Revisited.

Women's March Organisation Dishonors Hillary Clinton

Hillary and Bill Clinton at the 2017 Inauguration

How could it have happened that the Women's March organization didn't want to have Hillary Clinton at the top of their list of honorees? It's a disgrace that can only be put down to partisanship. Which the march was not about. It was about inclusion, human rights, equality. Hillary Clinton made an enormous contribution to equality throughout her public life and especially throughout her campaign.

She endured terrible, relentless persecution and horrific double standards. She didn't fold in the face of the nightmare lies that were told about her and spread so liberally around the internet. She never gave up, she never gave in, and she never stopped believing that women could achieve equality.

She has always behaved with superhuman dignity in the face of challenges that would floor any of us within a very short period of time. She has worked harder than any of us, been a phenomenal role model. She inspired me hugely. Her example, her inner strength, her willingness to fight for rights that I and so many struggle with, her belief in women's right to total equality, changed how millions of girls and women saw themselves. Changed how I felt about myself; the way I see myself.

I've always felt like an outsider and never knew what it felt like to believe that I belonged in the world, that there really was a place for me. When Hillary Clinton won the primaries and began to campaign against Donald Trump, something shifted in me. Tectonic plates of belief. I began to see that I do have a place.

My grief when she lost the election was overwhelming. The refusal to honor her was as painful for me as if the Women's March organization had thrown acid on a festering wound. And on their home page they say let us Make History! Why not say History Made and add the hashtag for good measure? They have blatantly used the essence of her campaign hashtag, piggy-backed on her achievements and her sacrifices. And they couldn't honor her?

And all the speakers; they didn't want to honor her either? I would like to have seen each of them refuse to speak until she was given her due, and then to talk at length about the incredible role she played, the important place she will always have in history.

I marched in Cape Town for Hillary Clinton and have celebrated that so many marched around the world. But some part of me feels queasy. I don't trust the foundation on which this movement is built. On the one hand there's Donald Trump and his crew with their blatant lies, which we're all raging about, as we should be. 

On the other hand there's the Women's March being blatantly dishonest in refusing to honor the woman who gave herself throughout her career to improving life for women and children. The first American woman presidential candidate, the first American woman to win the popular vote. The woman who would now be Madam President if there had been no outside interference. The woman who made history for women but was robbed of the triumph of wearing the badge. ]

Women's March organization is saying that woman, Hillary Clinton, isn't important. Doesn't that belong under #AlternativeFacts?

I'm angry, I'm hurt and sickened at the ingratitude and the agenda, whatever it is, but worst of all I'm beyond disappointed. This isn't what women who change the world are about. We're better than this. We're about inclusion, respect for all, especially those who fight on our behalf and do make history. We're also about fierce honesty. Without it, we're no better than Donald Trump.

Trump Train Mows Down American Democracy

Aaaaand, America's Next President… is the one who lost the popular vote by close to 3 million in an election that Russia and fake news directed. A man whose highly inflatable ego inflates his wealth but not, of course, his debt, which he said during the primaries was now non-existent but which motherjones.comhas revealed to be $1.3 billion.

It's the guy who's under investigation for ties with Russia, who has chosen an oil mogul for Secretary of State with enormous economic interests in Russia and who's a friend of Putin's. The man who's chosen a cabinet of far-right, anti-everything-progressives some of whom have zero experience. Who paid $25 million to settle a lawsuit for his fraudulent university, who can’t finish a sentence articulately, and who trashed Hillary Clinton throughout the campaign, whipping up rage in his fans, threatening/promising to jail her when he won, then said the Clintons were good people once he had. 

The guy who lies and cheats and steals and sniffs and whines. The sociopath who exploits fear and ignorance, hates Muslims, Latinos and African Americans, despises the poor, abuses women, stiffs his workers — Ahhh! Enough of the words. Pictures do a better job.

Yip. Classy, huh. That’s the next American president. Unless one of the investigations unearths something criminal, or the petition to the Electoral College electors (which has over 4.8 million signatures and counting) begging them to save America has some effect, or they decide off their own bat that they liked that hashtag #HistoryMade.

And on a final note, I Googled when did Donald Trump… And got this.

Millions of wishful thinkers perhaps? Millions of Trump voters experiencing #TrumpRegret, buyer’s remorse a la Brexiteers? Nothing quite so inspiring. It was one of those fake news sites, which posted that Trump had died, as per the quote below. (I’m not linking to it here in case it carries a virus.)

Donald Trump was pronounced dead today at 11am following what some are describing as a violent heart attack.

The world famous businessman and TV personality was previously treated for minor cardio vascular issues that followed a mild course of antibiotics.

Fans have already taken to social media to express their emotions with hash tags #RIPTRUMP #TRUMPRIP #TRUMP4EVER.

Donald’s family and friends have asked to be left alone by all press and media at this present time.

PLEASE SHARE THIS ARTICLE TO INFORM EVERYONE OF THE SAD LOSS OF DONALD TRUMP.

Snopes’ rather dry comment on it was:

“We’d rather not bother giving such cruel and callous clickbaiters additional publicity (so we’re not linking to anything here), but enough confused readers have asked us about this fake report that we unfortunately need to debunk it here.

Donald Trump is not dead.”

Sigh. No, he’s not. But American Democracy is in danger of its life. Everything that’s good about America is in danger of becoming something of the past.

Missing Hillary Clinton and Mourning the Lost Opportunity

I think I'm never going to get over it, that Hillary Clinton lost to a bigot, a fraud, a man of whom the worst description you can think of wouldn't be strong or comprehensive enough. I miss everything about her and her campaign with Tim Kaine. I miss how I felt, believing that my values would be protected, that the world would be moving forward, with the US taking a stand against bigotry, racism, injustice, inequality and sexism at a time when the far right is gaining momentum everywhere.

Taking a stand for coherence, the importance of truth and unity. I saw #StrongerTogether in continual action through a wide spectrum of communities, across race, gender and economic status. I saw people caring, outraged at the same things that assault me.

I saw tremendous triumph through adversity in Hillary Clinton herself, and I saw how many people liked, admired, and loved her. And I had faith that Barack Obama's incredible legacy would live on, that he and Michelle Obama would be honored for the dignity, grace, wisdom and sheer exuberance they've brought to the White House. 

There was everything to look forward to. The US going from strength to strength, a bastion against the far-right that's gaining ground everywhere.

I looked forward to opening up the New York Times every day for breakfast, and also reading the New Yorker, Politico, Mother Jones, Salon, Vanity Fair, Washington Post, Huffpost as the transition took place, and then as the next four years unfolded. I even hoped that inroads would be made into GOP power in Congress and that Obama's pick for the Supreme Court would go through. I knew Hillary Clinton would be in for a tough fight against Republicans but I had faith that she'd prevail, as Obama has.

I craved an end to the mindless, relentless exposure of a stupid man. I never found him entertaining, I couldn't stand him from the minute I first saw him years ago on his horrible reality show. He's a nasty piece of work through and through. Revolting to look at, revolting inside and out. How I looked forward to the day he was out of the limelight. Gone!

I saw Oprah interview Maya Angelou once, and ask if the pain of her child's death had gotten any easier with time. Maya said why would I want it to? I could relate to that. I gave my beautiful son up for adoption when I was in my twenties and it was the hardest and most awful thing I've ever done. The most painful, definitely. I don't want to let go of the pain. Why would I? So I can feel better? I wouldn't be feeling better, I'd be numb.

This isn't like that, of course. Nothing will ever be like that. But there are some things that are similar. I don't want to move on. I don't want to try and find some good in what's happened. Because there is nothing good. I revile the man who won, and the means by which he did. My intelligence and my soul are assaulted every day by him, as he turns America into a banana republic.

I mourn Hillary Clinton's loss and what it means for the Obamas, for the President's legacy. For the world, for my world. As I said, I don't see myself feeling any better any time soon.

Dark Days As US Democracy Sinks Into The Swamp

Photo and Art by Jennifer Stewart

It’s nearly a month since the world feel apart for me and millions like me in a presidential election of allegedly the greatest democracy on earth.

Where the odds stacked against Hillary Clinton went from massive double standards, Russian interference and Julian Assange  gimmicks— is there any difference? — to an FBI director, to fake news, to a populace that sucks up any misinformation so long as it creates a justification for their bigotry, sexism, racism, you name it, to GOP policies skewed towards disenfranchising minorities.

In hindsight, it seems clear that Clinton never stood a chance of winning playing by the rules. Although those recounts are happening...

Every day I read of new travesties, and watch how the liberal media also sinks deeper and deeper into the swamp, either selectively reporting or flat out misconstruing what’s been said by the president-elect and his crew. Normalizing him and them in ways that make a mockery of the word liberal.

Every day I scour that media, desperately searching for the clarion call, for the voice of pure outrage. I seldom find it.

I think we’ve been here before. How long did it take the liberal media to get off the fence and take a stand to unequivocally endorse Hillary Clinton? I and I presume all NYT subscribers received an email asking what we wanted to read. My response was that I wanted to see unequivocal condemnation of Trump and for the NYT to be the leader in it. I presume I was one of many, because the NYT gave us what we wanted. Too late to be the leader of the liberal media, though. And it was too little too late to save the election.

Then as soon as the election results were called, Hillary Clinton disappeared off everybody’s radar and every single damn headline was about the president-elect. But was it, is it, real investigative reporting? Not all of it, no. Some of it was bland comment often, or writing about him as if he was a normal human being, or taking what he or one of his right wing minions said out of context.

It’s all very civilized. The excuse I hear everywhere is that the liberal media is facing extinction and can’t afford real investigative journalism.

I don’t buy it. Real investigation into what was wrong with this election, passionate reporting and continued unequivocal condemnation of Trump would draw readers, including Trump supporters.

Because it’s dramatic and that’s what people lust for. Charles M. Blow, NYT columnist, dashed off a piece in response to Trump’s meeting with the NYT, entitled “No Trump, We Can’t Just Get Along”. It’s outright condemnatory of Trump and received 2310 comments, which collectively got about 80,000 likes.

Every waking moment I have to fight against a wave of helplessness and hopelessness that washes over me as the US moves inexorably towards a government characterized by the worst in humanity, led back to pre Civil Rights Movement days by a con-man who has the animal instincts of a serial predator but no real intelligence, no intellectual capacity.

A fool utterly devoid of ethic. So pathetically needy that anybody can suck up to him and he’ll give them a position of power.

These are dark days.

Fifty Years After the Civil Rights Era, Evil Prevails Again

Civil rights demonstrator attacked by a police dog on May 3, 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama

Stephanie McCurry, Professor of History at Columbia University, taught History of the Slave South on Coursera a few years ago. In her conclusion she said: 

"The Confederate States of America was transformed by war, and the Confederate political project was undone … when the 4 million African Americans born enslaved in the United States seized the opening history offered.

When they rose on the plantations. When they grabbed up their children and poured into Union lines. When they insisted that the Union reformulate policy to account for their historic mission of emancipation. When men, women, and children alike, risked all to turn the war in the right direction. When they made slaveholders ask for the first time, what do the slaves want? …

And given the pro slavery, white supremacist and anti democratic aspirations of that nation, there was a certain justice, I think, in that."   

A certain justice, but not enough to exorcise the racism ingrained in so many that less than 50 years after the Civil Rights era, white supremacists are on the ascendancy again and the alt-right has dictated the next American president, who is now choosing racists, bigots and warmongers for his crew. Salon.com has an excellent piece on Senator Sessions, Trump's choice for AG. And as Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-IL) said of him:

"If you have nostalgia for the days when blacks kept quiet, gays were in the closet, immigrants were invisible and women stayed in the kitchen, Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is your man. No Senator has fought harder against the hopes and aspirations of Latinos, immigrants, and people of color than Sen. Sessions... He ran for the Senate because he was deemed by the Senate Judiciary Committee as too racist to serve as a federal judge. He is the kind of person who will set back law enforcement, civil rights, the courts, and increase America’s mass incarceration industry and erase 50 years of progress."

Divisions in American society run terribly deep, and hard as people have tried to believe that America, with all its diversity is at heart homogeneous in spirit, it's wishful thinking, and usually on the part of liberals.

Abusers, in politics and even in relationships, get away with a lot as their generous-spirited victims give them chance after chance after chance, desperately holding onto the belief that everybody is intrinsically good if you just give them understanding. Finally there comes a point when the victims face reality. Understanding sometimes does nothing more than enable more abuse.

And so abusive spouses face divorce, abusive friends find themselves friendless, revolutions get rid of dictators. But still, even as history teaches us at a personal and societal level that early warning signals, if ignored, always lead to dangerous eruptions, liberals try to make peace with bigots and racists in the name of democracy and inclusiveness. But liberalism is intrinsically about ensuring that everybody has equal rights. When those who oppose that idea act out their beliefs and in doing so strip others of their rights, they give up some of their own. Basic human rights come with moral accountability. 

It's how society operates and stays moderately functional. So when millions of people vote in a deeply racist demagogue who has whipped up hatred and fomented intolerance until manifestations of it start returning America to pre-Civil Rights days, the last thing liberals need is to try and make peace with those voters.

The alt-right rationale is that their anger has its roots in being excluded. Have they been excluded? No they haven't. They got a superlative president who, more than any Republican president before him, truly believed in his heart of hearts that his presidential responsibility was to everybody, not just those who voted for him. But he wasn't white and those conservatives voted in a GOP Congress who made it impossible for the president to help them in the way that he wanted to.

So no, I don't buy the idea that middle America has been excluded. Middle America has excluded itself. If you want to be part of the human race dialogue and you want to benefit from others' desire for equality, you have to want it yourself and fight against that which thwarts it, not vote it into office.

When good people do nothing, evil prevails. Trying to make friends with supporters of Donald Trump is the equivalent of doing nothing. And we need to face it; evil is prevailing right now. It's not something that might happen next month or next week. It's happening now. And anybody who does anything other than help to strengthen Democrats in this time of crisis is adding to the problem.

The Worst of Times: America's Dark Days, From a Superlative President to an Abhorrence

As a whole lot of TV news anchors and hosts with their panels crawl like flies over a pile of horseshit, backtracking from positions they almost took about Trump or even actually did, I stare in horror. What happened? Was there suddenly a discount on lobotomies? Have one and get one free for a colleague?  

As David Remnick said on Fareed Zakaria's GPS, "I think I'm hallucinating".

You'd never know from any of it that Trump is a conspiracy theory nut, the man who in 2011, when he was mulling over running for president, launched his birther conspiracy theory persecution against Obama and didn't drop it even when Obama produced his certificate. Who then did, glibly drop the story and accuse Hillary Clinton of starting it all. [She didn't.]

A clod who can't finish sentences, who talks about penises in the presidential primaries, whose own campaign people had to take his Twitter account away from him to stop him being an abusive idiot at 3 in the morning.

A businessman who vastly overestimates his wealth, avoids taxes, who has gone bankrupt with properties countless times and with some casinos made a profit through the bankruptcy whilst the small businesses who built the buildings went broke. An employer who cheats and stiffs his workers. A fraud who is facing a big lawsuit over his fraudulent 'university, a demagogue who has shady dealings with and something of a crush on Putin. Whose own business life started with a small million dollar loan from his father—and that would be the guy who made a fortune in Stalin's Russia—which he squandered and went on to several bankruptcies. A fool who wants to dismantle NATO and bomb the hell out of the Middle East. Yeah!

A man who mocked the disabled at a rally, insulted the parents of a Gold Star Muslim soldier who died in action, who lies anything from a score to 70 times a day, calls women pigs, calls Mexicans rapists and murderers and promotes hate against Muslims and Jews.

Who is celebrated by the KKK and white supremacists. Who talked in sexual terms about his baby daughter and later, when she was all grown up, said that she was so hot he would date her if she wasn't his daughter. Who was caught on tape acknowledging that he gropes women and loves the entitlement he has to do it. Who has threatened to destroy the women he abused and who had the courage to finally tell the truth. A serial abuser who is facing a lawsuit for child rape and who wants to close Planned Parenthood and punish women for having abortions.

A greedy, corrupt wanna-be mogul who paid off Scottish local politicians and the police so he could destroy a community and vast tracts of pristine and ecologically precious land in Scotland for his golf course. Who said of the poorer people who lived in houses that his guests would be able to see from his golf course hotel that they were disgusting. "Who lives like that?" Trump said, his face twisted grotesquely. He wanted to get rid of them.

That's the guy who will be sworn in as America's next president. I keep trying to hit replay and edit; it's beyond belief. I experience shock and grief a thousand times a day.

Hillary Clinton, introduced in a moving attribute to her and her campaign by her running mate Tim Kaine, gave a graceful and dignified concession speech, in which she said, "Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead. Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power." Yes indeed, and the rest of her speech was a rousing call to action, to not let bigotry prevail. Understandably, her Twitter account has gone silent for a while, as has her daughter's and husband's.

But I miss them and Tim Kaine. I miss their optimism, their grace and intelligence, their decency, their message of preserving everything that's good, of unity and the importance of equality and tolerance.

I miss the hope I had, the faith that good prevails and it's all going to be okay. I miss knowing that Obama's legacy will be honored. I miss the ads!

Barack Obama met with Trump in the White House. It was an assault to see the man of such tremendous stature sitting with the stinking bigot, although I got a savage satisfaction from seeing how Mr. White guy the racist had to sit between an African American president and the bust of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Obama said they had an excellent meeting, and that "My number one priority in the next two months is to try to facilitate a transition that ensures our president-elect is successful." He did it because he's a responsible guy and it comes with the job.

It doesn't mean that he suddenly thinks Trump has changed or that he wants everybody to forgive and forget although he's been quoted by the slavering media as if he did. Representative John Lewis tweeted what the President can't, yet. Not until he's out of the Oval Office, anyway.

What a terrible blow. It's bad enough to see the end of an era that was too short, to say goodbye to a President and First Lady who have led America out of the gates of hell, who have not a single tiny teeny blemish on them, who truly madly deeply care, who have worked diligently to improve equality and lay the foundation for a healthy society. Who have gained the respect of everybody around the world, and even that impossible to please American public, who have moved us, inspired us, led us, even entertained us. Certainly touched our hearts and souls in ways that we'll never forget.

Yes, it's hard enough to see them go; my world feels empty at the thought of it. But to have them followed by this. It's a travesty. Of epic proportions.