For Trump, How Many Crimes Does it Take?

By Karen

Now that House Democrats chair committees and have subpoena power, it feels like we’re back to square one, trying to uncover EVERY crime Trump has committed in his life. Why can’t we just wrap up by nailing Trump on some crimes we already know about that would have destroyed any other president?

CNN

Why is there still debate over whether Trump can be indicted? My hair stood up when I read Trump’s peeps say he wants to run for re-election because he thinks it will keep him from being indicted. That means Trump’s got the system fucked up so badly, the country’s highest office is where criminals can find asylum.

Delaying a president’s indictment and arrest puts Trump above the law, giving him free rein to continue committing crimes — as president.

Last week Cohen provided a check Trump wrote — as president — to reimburse Cohen for buying Stormy Daniels’ silence. Cohen pled guilty to a campaign finance felony and is going to prison. Trump’s named as Cohen’s unindicted co-conspirator. Let’s nail Trump on that.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s eerie silence may be the prelude to his investigation’s cataclysmic finish, with indictments flying against Don Jr., Jared, Bannon and anyone else around Trump who has conspired with Russia. But I’m no longer counting on it. Mueller may turn up too little, too late.

Here’s my short list of crimes Trump commits daily, right to our faces…

Kidnapping. Anyone who steals a child from its parents, stashes the kid in an unknown location and has no intention of ever returning it is a kidnapper. Trump has ordered this crime thousands of times at the southern border.

Theft. Every time Trump visits a Trump property, taxpayers pay the tab for the Secret Service who must stay there with him, with profits going directly into Trump’s pocket because he never fully divested himself from his businesses.

Accepting bribes (aka, emoluments). Every time foreign officials or corporate executives stay at Trump properties, most notably Trump’s hotel in D.C. so they can tell him how much they love it when they meet with him, those profits also go directly into Trump’s pocket.

Treason. Trump has sided with Russia, Saudi Arabia and North Korea when they have attacked this country’s elections and killed people Trump swore an oath to protect. Trump aids and praises brutal dictators while discrediting American intelligence agencies. Trump has had meetings with Putin whose purpose he refuses to reveal.

So far, nothing known or proven about Trump’s crimes has been anything other than what it appeared to be. We’ve seen no mastermind’s grand plan; no long-term secret strategy; no sophisticated network of covert operators covering his tracks; no plausible, noncriminal explanations.

Trump’s a simple-minded crook who has always lived as if laws don’t apply to him — lying, cheating, stealing, swindling, defrauding — and he continues to do it in the White House. Why are we still letting it happen? Haven’t two years of being his victims been enough?

I believe the Southern District of New York will end Trump’s life of crime years before Washington ever holds him accountable, and his whole crime family will go down like common gangsters.

The real tragedy is that Trump’s reckoning comes much, much too late. When details of the financial felonies go public, we’ll realize Trump should have been in prison years ago. We could have avoided the past two years of watching him rage and rampage like a senile Tasmanian Devil.

The only positive aspect may be that the longer Republicans willingly gaslight themselves while clinging to delusions of power, they won’t be looking for someone competent to run in 2020. At the very least, charges from SDNY and Mueller could make Trump’s life so impossible that running again becomes out of the question.

Then a Democrat can move back into the White House, get out the mop and start cleaning up after the elephant that left shit all over the place.

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Virginia Always Moves Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

By Karen

As of today, Virginia still has its Democratic governor, Ralph Northam, as well as (in order of succession) our lieutenant governor and attorney general. Here’s an update:

Governor Ralph Northam (white) admitted and apologized for, then denied, his presence in a photo on his medical school yearbook page of a man in blackface with another man in KKK robes. But he did cop to wearing blackface once to moonwalk like Michael Jackson. Then in misguidedly striving for pinpoint historical accuracy, Northam referred to slaves as “indentured servants” during an interview with Gayle King on CBS, which she immediately corrected.

Here’s more video of Northam and Gayle King. He comes across to me more as a country boy than a slick, lying politician, while Gayle seems to be fishing for reasons to be offended.

Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax (black) was accused of sexual assault in 2004 during a hotel room tryst gone bad at the Democratic Convention in Boston. Then a former college classmate piled on and accused him of raping her in 2000 at Duke. (NOTE: This same woman also accused of rape a student athlete who went on to play for the NBA).

Fairfax acknowledges both incidents happened, but denies they were nonconsensual. The General Assembly wants to investigate the charges before they try to impeach him.

Attorney General Mark Herring (white) out of the blue announced he’d worn blackface while impersonating a rapper nearly 40 years ago in college and has felt guilty about it for years – although it didn’t stop him from immediately calling for Northam to resign for the same offense. WTF?

As the digging continued, also uncovered was that Republican General Assembly Majority Leader Tom Norment (white) helped edit his Virginia Military Institute yearbook, which contained lots of racist photos and text he disavows any responsibility for.

The current session of the General Assembly passed a joint House and Senate resolution acknowledging “with profound regret the existence and acceptance of” – wait for it – LYNCHING. They would like to see reconciliation among all Virginians. Better late than never.

Are you detecting a pattern here?

Out of idle curiosity, I checked to see if my alma mater, the University of Richmond, was racist back in the day. I was forcibly enrolled my freshman year without applying after my father’s job caused a family transfer here from Massachusetts in 1972. I only have the 1973 yearbook because I dropped out in disgust in 1974.

(NOTE: I returned in 1979 to UR’s night school, earned a bachelor’s degree, and have since taught some business writing classes there, so it had a happy ending.)

First, let me set the scene: The University of Richmond is a private college in the city of Richmond. The oldest census I could find was from 2000, when the racial makeup of the city was 57.2% African American, 38.3% white, and the rest other races. Richmond wasn’t any whiter back in 1972.

UR’s undergraduate schools were segregated by gender, with women’s and men’s colleges. There were also night, law and business schools.

In scouring the 294-page yearbook, I found exactly six black students and one Asian. The only dicey photo was of a fraternity I won’t name posing with a Confederate flag. I’ve also blurred the faces in case anybody’s famous now…

In case you’re wondering, here’s me as a freshman. Don’t I look delighted to find myself at a segregated Southern school?

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that the 1980 UR yearbook contained a photo of a black man standing on a table with his head playfully in a noose, surrounded by Klansmen.

Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Until the mass shooting in a South Carolina church by a Confederacy-obsessed punk that caused the whole country to question this ongoing fixation, it seemed a day didn’t go by where there wasn’t some reminder or “late-breaking development” in the Civil War. To be suddenly shocked – SHOCKED! – about all this racist behavior is disingenuous beyond belief. None of it has ever been covert if you paid attention.

But now, some good news.

• The University of Richmond’s current president is Ronald Crutcher, the first black man to hold that position, ushering in a new era of diversity and inclusion.
• Virginia was the only southern state that Hillary Clinton won in the last election.
• Virginia elected Democrats to the top three positions in our government in the last election, and the General Assembly is hanging on to its Republican majority by its toenails.
• Richmond City Council just voted to rename a major thoroughfare after a native son, the late black tennis player Arthur Ashe. The Boulevard will now be Arthur Ashe Boulevard after years of debate and opposition. (NOTE: In 1996, again after years of debate, the city erected a statue of Arthur Ashe on Monument Avenue, amid several statues of losing Confederate generals.)

When I published my last post, I was in a tiny minority saying that Governor Northam should not resign, but public opinion is coming around to my thinking. A recent Washington Post poll showed 58% support for Northam among blacks.

Without a doubt, all this Klan and blackface stuff is thoughtless, shameful and hurtful. But while we have Trump in the White House, an avowed sexual predator whose tweets and inflammatory insults keep racial hatred roiling, we don’t need to be throwing the babies out with the bathwater, especially now that they’ve had their comeuppance.

Trump-Russia Mystery, Not So Mystifying

By Karen

Trump’s involvement with Russia has been obvious all along. We’ve only lost perspective in the confusion roiled by the media and pundits trying to fill 24/7 news cycles with speculation, rather than restating simple facts. Here’s how I see it…

Trump has been flirting with (Miss Universe Pageant – 2013) and accepting boatloads of loans (as Junior & Eric said) and real estate deals (public record) from Russia for years.

But during the campaign, Trump realized Americans – especially the “Ruskie”-hating rubes he courted – take a dim view of hobnobbing with Moscow, so his negotiations for Trump Tower Moscow went on the down-low.

Simultaneously, he told Junior, Jared and his campaign staff it was OK to continue soliciting and accepting whatever help Russia offered, but not to link Trump to it in public.

Behind the scenes, staff briefed Trump in person (no paper trail) and he directed their efforts because he’s a known micromanager. Trump was only forced to get involved when Junior muffed everything about the Trump Tower meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya and Trump himself had to concoct a lie to conceal its purpose.

This strategy is hardly new. Remember Chris Christie and Bridgegate in New Jersey? I have no doubt Christie instructed his team to “Get back at that guy, this way, and leave me out of it.” Now he’s doing talk shows flogging his new book, Let Me Finish, calling the convicted aides who followed his orders low-level underlings who went rogue unbeknownst to him. Yeah, right.

Similarly, Trump claims he had NO CLUE his minions had at least 100 verifiable contacts with Russians.

In the end, Russia’s interference helped get Trump into the White House. A downside was that Trump has to shelve his Moscow tower temporarily. But he got a YUGE compensation prize…

As president, there’s no more need to hide. Trump believes he can conspire openly with Russia because talking to foreign leaders is what presidents do. Trump thinks he can hang with Putin as much as he wants – and he does.

Trump just has to hide what they discuss because the Ruskie-haters might freak out if they hear he’s selling out the country for his own profit. But he has a simple fix…

Don’t let another American listen in when he and Putin are chillin’.

Trump has done it five or six times so far (I’m losing count, since the Financial Times just revealed a previously unknown convo at the G20 in Buenos Aires in November 2018).

Trump’s bro time with Putin is more than previous presidents have felt compelled to have with any Russian leader – EVER.

The only rational explanation for Trump’s secrecy is that Trump is betraying the U.S. for his own enrichment, not that he and Putie are swapping pictures of the grandkids instead of talking business.

If Trump were really being tough on Russia (as he claims) and gaining the upper hand, he’d have The New York Times, Washington Post and every major network’s cameras covering it.

Meanwhile, just like Chris Christie, Trump lets his underlings get indicted for shielding him and he feigns total ignorance. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has yet to reveal how much they’ve confessed about Trump’s actual involvement, which will be eyeball-deep. Mark my words.

That’s the Russia situation in a nutshell. As it stands today, Donald Trump openly conspires with Putin for personal profit while concealing from the American people what degradation of our government he promises to Putin in return.

In doing so, the awe-inspiring vista of Trump’s stupidity is revealed. While creating no CYA documentation for himself, Trump allows Putin to record and film everything. Putin can use it against Trump whenever he chooses. And if the truth of Trump’s treason isn’t damning enough, Putin can Photoshop it until it is. We’ll never know the difference, thanks to Trump.

Trump has literally dropped the U.S. government into Putin lap. Putin now has the power to disgrace us and make us the pariah of the planet so he can pick up the pieces and try to make Russia the world’s dominant power.

What’s a thoroughly screwed country to do?

Optimally, we’d arrest Trump TODAY on suspicion of treason and he’d sit in prison while we assess the damage. But that won’t happen as long as Russian tools like Mitch McConnell are in the Senate protecting Trump.

The NSA could bug all of Trump’s phones – if they haven’t already.

Twitter could close Trump’s account, like they would any other Russian bot disseminating propaganda.

If any souls left in Trump’s White House aren’t co-traitors, they could see that Trump is never again alone with Putin, hiding behind the drapes with a recording device, if necessary.

The media can air all Trump comments and speeches on delay and edit out any praise or pleas for help Trump may make to Putin, like: “Russia, if you’re listening…”

The bottom line is that we need to quarantine the president of the United States from all contact with Russia. If Trump refuses and continues to seek out Putin, he reveals his criminal intent and makes indictment, conviction and impeachment the only recourse.

Tide is Finally Turning on Trump

By Karen

Before a tsunami hits, the low tide before it recedes an unnatural distance, exposing acres of beach never seen before. People come out to marvel at it, to play on land that just hours earlier was deep under water.

The tide’s been going out since Trump’s inauguration, pushed back with his and his enablers’ incessant barrage of boasts, lies and denials. His emboldened family, cabinet members and other enablers have been playing on the newly exposed beach — running roughshod over the rule of law, naively believing Trump and his almighty tweets will keep the tide back forever and they’ll always own the beach.

They don’t hear the growing roar just beyond the horizon. The tide is turning and gathering strength.

For the first two years of Trump, the roar was little more than the muttering of the disenfranchised majority of voters who got Trump against their wishes.

Discontent grew until the November 2018 mid-terms, when Democrats achieved the unthinkable: their votes swamped Republican gerrymandering, voter suppression and intimidation and outright cheating to reclaim the House.

They even called it the Blue Wave.

Mike Segar | Reuters

That was the moment the tide turned. I’ve considered Nancy Pelosi a ditz, but as Speaker of the House again, she’s Trump’s worst nightmare.

Not only did Nancy refuse to give Trump a penny for his wall, she and Chuck Schumer baited Trump into bragging he’d own the ensuing government shutdown. On TV, so even the dimmest MAGA moron can’t refute it.

The shutdown allowed Nancy to yank what Trump lives for — an opportunity to spout his State of the Union litany of lies in the Capitol before Congress, the Supreme Court and a TV audience of millions.

On another front, Michael Cohen’s been subpoenaed to testify before Congress about Trump’s criminal conduct over the years.

On a third front, Trump’s long-time friend Roger Stone finally got arrested. His indictment quotes Stone’s texts and emails about conspiring with Wikileaks. And don’t overlook that Trump’s hand-picked toady, acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, didn’t stop the FBI from hauling Stone in.

Fourth, Paul Manafort, already rotting in prison watching his hair dye fade, got summoned to court to face another possible 10 years in jail, on top of the 7-10 already in play. Mueller’s lawyers advised the judge NOT to let Manafort’s cooperation influence her sentencing decision.

Fifth, Rudy Giuliani has been on TV digging Trump’s hole even deeper by saying Trump was negotiating with Moscow for his tower right up to Election Day.

Meanwhile, Trump let the government shutdown grind on until it endangered air travel and airport security. After bringing the country to the brink of economic standstill, he agreed to reopen the government for three weeks — and got no concessions or wall financing in return.

Some tough negotiator.

Trump compelled six Republican senators to join Democrats on reopening the government. It’s a cooling stream of defections, now that Trump’s looking isolated and impotent. His approval rating is around 36-37 percent. So, roughly six in 10 people think Trump’s a chump.

Sixth, House committees, now headed by Democrats, are poised to let subpoenas flow, armed with power to get serious about Trump’s crimes.

You can tell Trump’s increasingly unhinged by his repeated babbling about South American women being kidnapped and restrained with duct, electrical or blue tape (he varies) and smuggled en masse across the border by drivers who turn left, no right, no left, to cross into the country illegally.

Nobody knows what he’s talking about. He told the story again during his January 25 speech to reopen the government. Here’s another instance (I cut to it at 8:45)…

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling change in the air. The government has reopened, but Trump’s State of the Union is still unscheduled.

I hope Trump doesn’t think he’ll take the government hostage again just as the employees are shoveling through their work backlogs and piles of overdue personal bills he created. If he tries, I believe Congress will kick Mitch McConnell in the nuts and come together to stop Trump. Enough’s enough.

Pelosi will let Trump use shutdowns as his “I’ll hold my breath until you give me what I want!” when Hell’s covered with icebergs.

And Mueller hasn’t even shown his hand yet.

For the first time since the plague of Trump descended, I feel fresh ocean breezes. When all the waves converge and the tsunami of justice hits Trump, Nancy Pelosi and Robert Mueller will be riding its crest. And finally, the fetid stench of Donald Trump will be washed away, and his bloated orange carcass will be tossed onto the ash heap with history’s other failed dictators.

Belated Bombshell: Trump is Working for Russia!

By Karen

Well, Da! Since The New York Times report last week that the FBI launched an investigation into Trump’s relationship with Russia after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, my déjà vu has been off the charts. Every time I see TV pundits picking over Trump’s multitude of pro-Russian statements and actions as if they’re seeing them for the first time, I go into a meltdown.

Why? Because any person over 12 who’s been paying the slightest bit of attention knows Trump’s allegiance to Russia has always been sincere and all-consuming.

“I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 [Hillary Clinton] emails that are missing.”

On Russian meddling in the election: “I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia.

I could go on and on. These and many other outrageous statements the media reported with insufficient push-back left many of us thinking, “Holy shit! Why isn’t somebody stopping him?”

Right after Trump fired Comey, he invited Russians into the Oval Office to gloat with them about it. We found out from Russian photographs because Trump allowed no American witnesses.

And then we heard about the two-hour private tête-à-tête with Putin in Helsinki, to which Trump allowed no American witnesses save an interpreter, whose notes he later confiscated and probably destroyed. Afterward, Putin bounded before reporters, smiling like he’d just gotten the world’s best blow job, with lumbering Trump looking like he’d been forced at gunpoint to swallow.

And let’s not overlook Trump’s ever-growing mountain of tweets professing love for all things Russian. Out the other side of his face he claims he’s been harder on Russia than any president, ever — even as he tries to relieve Putin’s oligarch henchman and Paul Manafort BFF, Oleg Deripaska, of American sanctions.

For three years, the media has asked, “What could POSSIBLY be going on?” when it’s been obvious all along.

Trump’s Russia fixation is all about money. Back in 2008, (I’m quoting Vox) Donald Trump Jr. said, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.” In 2014, Eric Trump said, “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”

Over many years, Trump has done a high volume of all-cash real estate deals at his properties in New York and Florida with Russians worth hundreds of millions.

U.S. banks refuse to lend to Trump because he’s a notorious bad risk, and Trump’s burning bridges with other countries now. I believe he naively thinks that if he presents Putin with the smoldering ruins of the United States on a platter (with the Statue of Liberty’s head on the side), Trump will be ensured wealth beyond his wildest dreams forever — including a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Where Trump miscalculates bigly is that his life post-White House will be anything but business as usual, happily ever after. Trump and, apparently, the 25-30 percent of racist morons who still support him are the only ones who fail to see he’s heading to prison. The feds and New York state have so many felonies to nail on Trump, he’ll look like a used piñata by the time they’re finished with him.

Tax evasion, money laundering, fraud, misuse of funds, conspiring with a hostile power, emoluments violations, campaign finance violations, obstruction of justice. Those are just his greatest hits. Even with plea deals, Trump at 72 faces what’s left of his life behind bars. Special Counsel Robert Mueller is assembling and fleshing out the pieces with hard evidence that will be gift-wrapped and shoved down the throats of every Trump voter and enabler in Congress.

On January 14, in response to the NYT article, Trump uttered the words destined to be carved on his tombstone…

Trump will be pressed on that point, and we know his first response will be, “I never said that.”

When confronted with the video, he’ll say…

“I have never received a paycheck from Russia. When you work for somebody, they have to give you a paycheck, right? Do you think Putin would ever give me a paycheck? What have I ever done for Putin? I hardly know the guy. I don’t get paychecks from Putin. I’ve never even been to Russia.”

What we’re seeing is quid pro quo in action. On the promise of future riches, Putin provides Trump’s marching orders (“Pull your troops out of Syria,” “Pull your troops out of Iraq,” “Destroy NATO,” “Give Deripaska a break,” etc.), and Trump will do as ordered until Congress stops him, one way or another.

Donald Trump is a liar, a thief and a traitor. He’s lurching blindly toward the worst possible end. It can’t come soon enough.

Three Christmas Wishes for Trump

By Karen

Evidence of the Trump gang’s corruption is gushing in such a torrent, I feel like I’m being waterboarded with it. And Special Counsel Robert Mueller hasn’t even shared his festering treasure trove of crimes uncovered.

The stench of Trump’s desperation is pervasive as he tries to keep such chaos churned up that we give him a pass because we can’t comprehend the sheer volume of his vileness.

But I think the best approach is to let the subpoenas fly. First, arrest and indict everyone who enabled Trump and lied about it — Stone, Kushner and Don Jr. for starters.

With them should be Trump himself. His orange slime is oozing through every tentacle of this whole mess. He incessantly confesses to it on Twitter by projecting his own guilt onto everyone around him.

Trump has fans who would still like to paint those who have flipped — Cohen, Manafort, Flynn and others — as liars. But they probably wouldn’t have flipped if Mueller hadn’t shown them solid paper trails documenting the felonies they’d committed on Trump’s behalf.

As Mueller assembles this 100,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of greed, corruption and treason, you can see Trump flailing as if he feels Mueller is the one building a wall, methodically entombing Trump behind it, brick by brick, layer by layer.

Mexico will be laughing its ass off at the irony.

This country was founded on rebellion against an unstable, unjust king. Yet we’re sliding into dictatorship while debating whether a common crook can be indicted because —through our quirky voting process, not because he earned the most votes — he lucked into a job title he’s proven himself incompetent to fulfill.

Besides, Trump’s a tax evader — he bragged it proves he’s “smart.” A fraud — Trump University. A thief — stiffing suppliers and contractors. A money launderer — Russian and Saudi grossly overpriced real estate deals.

Then we have brazen obstruction of justice and witness tampering, well-documented in interviews and on social media. Not to mention treason — violating his oath of office by approving of Russia’s and Saudi Arabia’s aggressive attacks to destabilize the U.S.

Every day, Trump’s businesses profit from foreign governments openly patronizing his properties to bribe him.

I could go on and on, but you get the picture. Trump is a walking crime against humanity.

Trump rightfully should have been behind bars years ago. If he hadn’t wandered into the White House and hit greater scrutiny because of his misuse of power, he and his idiot kids probably could have gone on cheating and swindling people indefinitely.

If anything, the law should apply to Donald Trump harder and swifter BECAUSE he’s the president. And because he’s disgraced the office by gleefully spitting on his responsibility to model honesty, integrity and morality.

It’s time to throw Trump on the pyre of evidence against him and light the match.

Once Trump is behind bars for life, removing him from office through impeachment becomes moot, a no-brainer. Congress can rubber-stamp it.

My three wishes for Donald Trump for Christmas are: indictment, conviction and impeachment.

Feeling Some Post-Mid-Term Blues

By Karen

The mid-term election yesterday was supposed to reject Trump’s first two years of mocking and dismantling every constructive thing this country has ever achieved. I expected decent, disgusted people of all political stripes, women, millennials, new voters, LGBTQ and minorities to turn out in droves and tell the GOP loud and clear that “treason” is not the new word for “policy.”

WTF happened? Yes, the numbers were up, but what’s with the tepid results? Democrats won only 28 seats in the House and actually lost ground in the Senate.

Today, Dems should be able to tell Trump and his spineless enablers in Congress to “STFU. We’re back in charge. We’ve had enough of your bullshit. Don’t even try pushing through any more. Ain’t gonna happen.” But they can’t. And Republicans are gloating.

One bright spot happened in my neck of Virginia. Senator Tim Kaine (Hillary’s running mate) beat Corey Stewart by 16 points. Stewart’s a Minnesota-born Trump Mini-me who brands himself a Confederate neo-Nazi and promised to run a “vicious” campaign. In this victory speech, Kaine said voters had sent a message of “good over evil, light over darkness, understanding over ignorance.”

Amen.

In my congressional district, VA-7, Democrat Abigail Spanberger beat Dave Brat, a Trump-loving, misogynistic tea party darling, in a satisfying upset. True to his name, Brat refused to concede, probably hoping for divine intervention from Putin.

And in New York, 29-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. But the district she won is already heavily Democratic. Whereas on nearby Long Island, racist misogynist Republican Pete King won his 14^th term.

It was also gratifying to see Wisconsin voters finally kick their scheming, lying scumbag of a governor, Scott Walker, to the curb.

But in Montana, Republican Congressman Greg Gianforte who body-slammed a Guardian reporter, and who Trump proclaimed “his guy,” kept his seat.

In Florida, sharp, classy, articulate Democrat Andrew Gillum lost the governor’s race to Ron DeSantis, a bigot who urged voters not to “monkey up” the election by voting for a black man.

In Georgia, Democrat Stacey Abrams should have easily buried Brian Kemp to become the country’s first black female governor. Kemp refused to stop overseeing the election he was a candidate in because he was too busy rigging it to disenfranchise minority voters every which way he could — and now the results are too close to call.

And probably the most stomach-turning result came in Texas, when that sleazy hypocrite everyone loves to hate, Ted Cruz, managed to beat Beto O’Rourke by 3 points and keep his Senate seat.

Whenever California manages to drag in its results, Democrats will probably pick up a few more seats, but not enough to assuage my disappointment with the bottom line.

I really, REALLY believed this country had enough good people to slam the lid on the Pandora’s box Trump has opened with his celebration of greed, ignorance, hatred and oppression, but it simply didn’t happen.

Either too many reasonable people stayed home in the mid-terms, or we really are eyeballs-deep in stupid, backward-looking racists who think their best interests are served by a con man who preys on rubes while he runs the country into a ditch to enrich himself.

The Senate is still poised to rubber-stamp whatever acts of treason Trump proposes. I hope that when the House committees investigating Trump’s myriad crimes switch to Democratic control (buh-bye, Devin Nunes!) they will crank up the heat to full-blast, get the subpoenas flying, and stoke Trump’s fears about spending the rest of his life jail until resigning seems a safer alternative to running for re-election.

And then there’s always Robert Mueller. Our last hope.