I’m back with just a few more short snippets … it seems that in the time it takes me to make a cup of coffee, there are at least five ‘breaking news’ events!  How I long for peace.

Time Magazine Announces …

Time Magazine has just announced their 2020 Person of the Year!

Except … it’s actually two people … President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris!  Time‘s choice to name Biden and Harris over Trump, who was also on the short list, marks the first time a president-elect and vice president-elect have appeared together on a Person of the Year cover.

According to Edward Felsenthal, Time’s Editor-in-chief …

“If Donald Trump was a force for disruption and division over the past four years, Biden and Harris show where the nation is heading: a blend of ethnicities, lived experiences and worldviews that must find a way forward together if the American experiment is to survive.”

Jobs for useless people

With only forty days left of his term, Trump is handing out jobs like they were candy.  The one that first caught my eye was Kellyanne Conway, his right-hand bootlicker until she resigned in January.  She will now serve on the board of visitors of the U.S. Air Force Academy.  I’m not sure what that entails, or what the pay is, and I suspect it’s more of an honorary thing, like most of the rest of the jobs he’s handing out.

Ol’ Elaine Chao, wife of obstructionist Mitch McConnell and outgoing Transportation Secretary, was also given a job as a member of the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, along with Lynn Friess, the wife of Republican megadonor Foster Friess.  Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union and a major bootlicker of Trump’s is to be named to the Library of Congress Trust Fund Board.

There are more than two dozen such relatively meaningless appointments including Pamela DeVos, the sister-in-law of outgoing Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos who will also serve on the Kennedy Center board of trustees.  The DeVos family made more than $14 million in donations to Trump and the Republican Party in the run up to the 2016 election.  The DeVos family, by the way, has a net worth of $5.6 billion … yes, that’s $5,600,000,000 … an obscene amount of money by any measure.

I have no idea why any of these people, all independently wealthy, even wanted these jobs, or why Trump is doling them out willy-nilly, but my best guess is simply to prove he can.  It might have been nice if he had spent as much time, and paid as much attention, to the approximately 3,000 deaths per day we are now registering as a result of the coronavirus, or if he had worked with his cabinet members to ensure a smooth transition for Biden and his team on January 20^th.  In other words, if he had done any of the work for which we are still paying him.

An addendum to this morning’s post …

The case I mentioned earlier today, filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to ‘throw out’ ballots cast for Joe Biden and hand the election to Donald Trump seeks to throw out more than ten million votes!  Ten million of the people in those four states stand to have their votes negated if Paxton’s suit should see the light of day.  Fingers crossed that it won’t, but just the fact that it is a possibility should fill you with rage.  Ten million people stand to have their constitutional rights taken from them … and why?  To salve the ego of the ‘man’ who cannot stand to lose, even though he’s been losing all his life in the game of humanity.

A question I hadn’t considered, but that was mentioned in the comments is … if the Court were to order those votes to be thrown out, wouldn’t that include the other votes on the ballot … those for candidates for the House of Representatives, Senate, and state and local offices?  Talk about mass chaos!

The attorneys general for the four states involved have denounced Republican efforts to subvert the election and asked the Supreme Court to reject the lawsuit that seeks to overturn the victories in those states by President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., calling the audacious effort an affront to democracy and the rule of law.

“The court should not abide this seditious [emphasis added] abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated.  Let us be clear, Texas invites this court to overthrow the votes of the American people and choose the next president of the United States. That Faustian invitation must be firmly rejected.”

Even though Ohio is not one of the states named in the lawsuit, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a republican, expressed his concern, saying that “The Constitution means today what it meant a month ago.”

Earlier this year, Trump told supporters that if he lost the election, he would leave the country.  Well, Donnie boy … you lost, now GO!  Bye-Bye Donnie!  Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out!

In case you missed it …

In other news, the U.S. government was due to shut down at midnight tonight.  Normally, this story would have dominated the headlines for the past several weeks, but instead has barely received a page 36 below-the-fold mention!  But never fear …