A time of great distress

Are we in a time of great distress? I was, right after the election for about a month. Then I hit a plateau. But now I see the previous guy doing his farewell tour, and I’m feeling the tension all over again.

Let the record show that I did not consent to this. Yet we are about to have a President:

*whose Cabinet picks are “a lethal combination of corporate bigwigs and military men with plenty of know-nothing about political affairs and diplomacy,” a group the National Council of Churches condemned as “morally inconsistent with Christian principles.”

*whose plan to avoid conflicts of interest is toothless

*who orders ambassadors to yank their kids out of school and come home ASAP in disregard of precedent even as taxpayers are subsiding two households for the Trumps so that their child doesn’t have to move from NYC to DC mid-school year

*who threatens the press for doing its job

*who petulantly taunts Schwarzenegger over Celebrity Apprentice ratings, a program for which he is an executive producer

*who is for sale

*whose DC Hotel has been tagged With $5 Million in Unpaid Worker Liens

*who now asks Congress, not Mexico, to pay for a border wall, but tweets that MX will pay for it eventually – good luck with that

*who has necessitated Internet Archive’s special archive

*who is Like King Henry VIII Revived — Without The Charm

*who is turning America into a Stan

*who prompted California to hire former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for legal counsel

and yet
* who complains that he is being mocked

I guess As We Enter 2017, Keep The Big Picture In Mind, and Here’s how we prepare to be ungovernable in 2017.

FLATUS is the regular target of Lawrence White, especially on the Russia thing.

I choose to think we’ll get through this, we’ll get through this, we’ll get through this…

But I won’t use the Make Your Face Great Again makeup tutorial. Instead of going to the inauguration, I could look at editorial cartoons.

Hey, TCM is airing A Face in the Crowd today at 5:45 p.m. ET- great film! – in honor of Patricia Neal’s birthday. It’s one of the films to get us through his Presidency, according to Chaz Ebert.

But what I REALLY need…

Music!

Seriously. Sara Bareilles imagines what President Obama must have been thinking about this past election and Donald Trump before November 8, but couldn’t say publicly. Leslie Odom, Jr. performs the song.

Rebecca Ferguson said she would have played the inauguration if she could have sung Strange Fruit; other suggestions for inauguration day, made by a coterie of folks:

Who Will Survive America? – Amiri Baraka
Mississippi Goddam – Nina Simone
Go Up Moses – Roberta Flack
You can’t bring me down – Suicidal Tendencies;
Alright -Kendrick Lamar
People Have the Power – Patti Smith
Fortunate Son – CCR
Cult of Personality – Living Color
(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang – Heaven 17
There Goes the Neighborhood – the Busboys

I won’t be boycotting L.L. Bean, but maybe I’ll drink some New Zealand wine for Arthur’s birthday.