Small and venal

 The first debate is a little more than twenty-four hours away and one contestant is sweating off his orange clown makeup.  He probably had that dream where you have to take an exam and you've never been to class or opened the book.  And Joe Shapiro isn't available to take it for you.

For a start, Trump still thinks mental competence can be created chemically, as in the movie Charly:  "I will be strongly demanding a Drug Test of Sleepy Joe Biden prior to, or after, the Debate on Tuesday night.  Naturally, I will agree to take one also."  Ask your doctor if Cerebroslam is right for you.  Meanwhile he invented a bigly new word:  "forgivetisnessen."  Biden may be in trouble if Trump plans to conduct the debate in Finnegans Wake meta-English.  Meanwhile a Biden campaign spokesperson, who deserves to be known by name, replied, "Vice President Biden intends to deliver his debate answers in words.  If the president thinks his best case is made in urine he can have at it.  We'd expect nothing less from Donald Trump, who pissed away the chance to protect the lives of 200,000 Americans when he didn't make a plan to stop Covid-19."  Ouch.

Trump's plan is said to be attacking Hunter Biden in order to reduce his father to a stuttering, twitching wreck.  That's it.  When you play golf and promote pandemic instead of doing your homework, the options are limited.  The moderator, Chris Wallace of Fox News, can only help you so much, by steering the conversation away from the catastrophic revelations in the New York Times, which managed to obtain Trump's tax records when prosecutors, attorneys general and members of Congress could not.  "A pitifully inept businessman and a serial tax avoider," said his old nemesis CNN, sounding almost sorry for him.  More typical was the response of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:  "In 2016 and '17 I paid thousands of dollars a year in taxes as a bartender.  Trump paid $750."

The politics are ugly enough, but over at Bloomberg they follow the money.   It's their opinion that "Trump represents a profound national security threat -- a threat that will only escalate if he's re-elected."   His enormous debts are payable in the next four years to lenders in Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and shifty institutions like Deutsche Bank.  It's not hard to imagine who might have to die to keep the bill collectors from escorting Junior and Eric to an abandoned pier.  I'm imagining it right now.  He can't afford the First Escort's pre-nup but managed to pay Ivanka "consulting fees" of $747,622, the precise amount he wrote off for hotel projects in Hawaii and Vancouver.  It was the least he could do after being talked out of making Princess his running mate in 2016.  As god is my waitress, it's right here.  By the way, we still haven't got an accounting of all the inaugural costs and campaign contributions.  If I were Sheldon Adelson I wouldn't take his calls.

Trump has one campaign manager in prison, one under indictment, and now one under a 72-hour psychiatric hold.  Brad Parscale's wife called police because he was armed and threatening to kill himself; she had bruises on her arms.  He was canned after the disastrous Tulsa rally last June.  I believe Roseanne Barr is currently running the campaign.  She needs to get everyone on the same page:  Trump just announced that the US is "rounding the corner" on the pandemic, moments after Mike Pence said, "The American people should anticipate that cases will rise in the days ahead."  I am reminded of the Vietnam War, in which victory was only months away.

I don't know if you've noticed but war has broken out in the Caucasus between Azerbaijan and Armenia.  What makes it interesting is Turkey throwing in on the side of Azerbaijan.  They can really carry a grudge, can't they?

Jacob Blake is still partially paralyzed but Rusten Sheskey, the pride of the Kenosha police, has come up with an excuse for making him that way:  He thought Blake was kidnapping a child.  Charges have not been filed against Sheskey, who is being paid to sit at home.   Protests over the shooting have produced  another Rightzi hero, Kyle Rittenhouse, who had his mom drive him over from Illinois to kill two people and wound a third in defense of Kenosha's endangered retail sector, just like a Minuteman in 1775.  They were probably armed with soup.

I don't know if you've noticed but war has broken out between Dr. Robert Redfield of the CDC and Scott Atlas, the Fox News contributor and professional X-ray reader who tells Trump what he wants to hear.  "Everything he says is false," Redfield said in a phone conversation he later denied.  Deborah Birx had bigger balls.  Meanwhile, over 204,000 Americans are dead.    

 Just last Friday Nancy Pelosi was advising Biden to skip the debates because Trump "has no fidelity to fact or truth...[or] to the Constitution of the United States."  But that was before the Times dropped its tax bomb.  Now I think it might be fun.