Battle hymn of the Republicans

 We are coming, Father Donald, three hundred million strong...Kari Lake, once and future governor of Arizona and Empress of the Southwest, has been among the loudest advocates for the worst criminal in American history.  On Saturday she promised that "if you want to get to President [sic] Trump you are going to have to go through me, and you are going through 75 million Americans just like me.  And I'm going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA..."  When this did not result in Jack Smith apologizing and dropping all charges she revised today:  Now it's up to 300 million Americans.  (There were five million NRA members before the stories broke about Wayne LaPierre living la vida loca and perhaps a million quit.)

Tomorrow night's episode of Tucker Carlson's Barn Dance is supposed to be about the persecution and victimization of Trump but Axios is reporting he got a cease-and-desist letter from Fox News because they can't handle the truth and they hate the First Amendment.  Apparently Tucker's contract, which continues to pay him eye-watering gobs of money, also precludes him from engaging in political broadcasting until December 24, 2024.  (Really?  The contract was signed on Christmas Eve, with eggnog and roast chestnuts and It's a Wonderful Life softly burbling in the background?)  Does a badly framed Twitter post constitute a broadcast?  What if there are guests?  What if Tucker gets Mrs. Tucker to slap some makeup on him so he doesn't look like a corpse?  This could wind up with the Supreme Court.

Speaking of the Court, they have decided not to get involved in North Carolina's decision to stop issuing license plates with the Confederate flag.  The purest example of state's rights, huh?  Also in the -- what is it, the Tar Baby State? -- Mike Pence and Ron DeSantis zeroed in on the most important issue before the voters and assured the Republican Convention that they will shitcan Fort Liberty and restore the name of Fort Bragg to the Fayetteville military base.  (So "woke" means "not racist"?  Finally, a definition that makes sense.)  It seems like DeSantis could name some national guard post after Bragg right now if he wanted to, being the governissimo of greater Florida.  Braxton Bragg was a planter/slaveowner in Louisiana so the North Carolina connection is minimal.  He was also a terrible general, hated by his men, and that works, too.

This just in:  Trump will wipe away every tear that America shed when he was indicted again.  Read it if you like.  As he told Roger Stone -- does every bag of fertilizer have a podcast? -- "Our country has to   protest.  We have plenty of protest to protest.  We've lost everything."  Well I for one have not committed espionage.  I feel fine.  Tears of laughter.

Trump is summoning his MAGAts to Miami tomorrow but Robert Reich and I are not worried.  "Violence is possible but there will be no civil war," he writes today.  "Nations don't go to war over whether they like or hate specific leaders.  They go to war over the ideologies, religions, racism, social classes or economic policies these leaders represent.  But Trump represents nothing other than his own grievance with a system that refused him a second term and is now beginning to hold him accountable for violating the law."  That may be small comfort for Mayor Suarez and his police, but it's a lot more realistic than the phantom armies imagined by a failed Arizona politician.  On some level all the Republicans bellowing their defense of the indefensible know they're posturing for the knuckle-draggers whose money and votes they need.  

Of all the excuses for stashing state secrets in a bathroom, I think my favorite is Squeaker McCarthy's:  "A bathroom door locks."  His time on earth has not been wasted.  Sorry the mean kids are still playing keep-away with the House of Representatives, Kev.