He Hasn’t Quit Yet?
(January 1)

Dear God, He’s Still There
(February 12)

The Best Place to Buy Pikes
(March 21)

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There’s something extraordinary about how small Donald Trump is. We’re familiar with his vanity, his narcissism, his neediness, but to grasp his tininess, his nothingness, requires a moment where there’s nothing of him to see, and in full view.

That moment happened Wednesday.

What had happened was that Trump backed down. Shown his weakness. Bragged about owning a Wall-triggered government shutdown, then backed off.

And the jackals came for him.

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We are being told, by people who know much more than we do, not to worry about Friday’s federal-court ruling overturning Obamacare. The judge, a 2007 Bush nominee, was hand-picked for his amenability to the opposition; his ruling contains convoluted reasoning that will surely be overturned by the Fifth Circuit; even the Trump administration is saying it won’t enforce the ruling until appeals are exhausted.

In short, Trust the Process.

We’d like to, but reality jumped that timeline a long time ago. And in this case, there’s a lot that can go haywire.

Because the argument is about the existential nature of something that has no effect.

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The Constitutional standard for impeachment is “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”. Further examples are not provided, but the named crimes suggest the gravity intended — presidents shouldn’t be impeached over a parking ticket.

The standard is suggestive in another way, in that it isn’t a standard at all. Despite the intended similarity, impeachment is not an indictment, and trial in the Senate is not trial in court. Impeachment is a political act dressed in legalism. It originates in the House and is decided in the Senate. They can define it however they want.

All they need are the votes.

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George Bush died Friday.

We remember him now as George H.W. Bush, mainly to distinguish him from the George Bush who fucked the shit out of America and its future, but he was just George Bush: George Bush, former CIA director, supposed man of principle who sold himself as quick as he could to the man he had effectively called a voodoo dingbat months earlier, a man who kicked Geraldine Ferraro’s ass because he was a wimp trying to pass as macho, a man whom nobody loved nor admired and casually used a black man to scare white people into voting for him.

Oh, and a war hero.

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Selections from the Human Health chapter of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, originally scheduled to be released as part of a major science conference in December, but suddenly dropped in the middle of a four-day weekend to provide informed citizens ample time to— haha, who are we kidding, they dumped it on Black Friday! No worries, enjoy the leftovers!

• The health and well-being of Americans are already affected by climate change, with the adverse health consequences projected to worsen with additional climate change. Climate change affects human health by altering exposures to heat waves, floods, droughts, and other extreme events; vector-, food- and waterborne infectious diseases; changes in the quality and safety of air, food, and water; and stresses to mental health and well-being.
• Climate change is expected to alter the geographic range, seasonal distribution, and abundance of disease vectors, exposing more people in North America to ticks that carry Lyme disease or other bacterial and viral agents, and to mosquitoes that transmit West Nile, chikungunya, dengue, and Zika viruses.
• Higher temperatures can lead to an increase in aggressive behaviors, including homicide.

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On September 2, 1974, the Wall came down.

If you were around at the time, you understood the meaning at a glance. Garry Trudeau had drawn the wall in front of the White House, a reference to “stonewalling” on the Nixon tapes. Nixon resigned August 9; three weeks was the quickest a syndicated comic strip could acknowledge the event.

“Our long national nightmare is over,” Jerry Ford had said three weeks earlier, a line that might not have worn well, but felt right at the time. Watergate was consuming, consuming in a way we wouldn’t feel again for more than forty years. You couldn’t escape it.

And then it was past.

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