My note to Joe

 Some items to go out with a bang.

Call a special session to pass the bipartisan immigration reform and child tax credit bills or make sure that they get passed so Trump can sign them as is.

Pardon all undocumented immigrants for any crimes committed that get in the way of their applying for legal status.

Pardon Hunter. He did not deserve what happened to him or

Have Kamala do it. You know that you can make her the first female president - just by retiring early.

Paperwork crimes of Donald Trump

Was Trump involved in the plot to coerce members of Congress to support his stupidly planned plot? Yes. Did either Smith or the Congress do what was necessary to prove it? No. They went after election interference rather than the link to Russia or the violent plot. Prosecutors take the path of least resistance - and that path can be explained away under dirty tricks - just like the perfect phone call with Zaleski.  The actual crime was obstructing missiles to Ukraine as a flavor to Putin. Now the latter is an official act. The documents that Trump took that were classified will be declassified on January 20th. Preventing these from being used against him was why we had an insurrection and have a documents case. 

Official Washington does not like the idea of criminalizing foreign policy. That has been the unofficial policy since the Louisiana Purchase and the raid on the Barbary Pirates. The Supreme Court merely codified what is current practice and has been for over 200 years. 

Again, the cases against Trump were all about bad and fraudulent paperwork - essentially dirty tricks. If the actual knowledge of the violent plot had been prosecuted and the reasons behind it, the charges going away would be a scandal to dismiss. Plots to do bad political theater - especially when both plots (Ukraine and Stopping the Steal) were unsuccessful and entirely pathetic were not seen as important by the Senate Republicans who did not vote to convict.

I have done much better dirty tricks - ones that actually worked and were never noticed. So have most members of the Senate - on both sides.

Is attempting a dirty trick that had no possible way of working really a crime? Voters did not think so. Trump won this election fair and square by expanding his base. I have seen that done too. My career is based on it.

We're going to Mars and compromising on abortion

A few things Trump will likely do:

Make a deal on abortion that gores the oxen on both sides (compromise is the enemy of fundraising) with fetal hospice after the point that a child can be born - sometime between 6 and 15 weeks - and legal abortion before that. Trump is personally pro-choice and term-limited. A compromise would be a huge win.

Elon Musk will get lots of money, as will any practical solution to very demonstrable global warming. Defense will get less, but defense industries will get a net gain. A permanent lunar colony is the real bonus - as something on the far side of the moon may see the asteroid that could kill us all.

Wall Street will not let the coming recession become a depression - note that Dodd Frank worked during the pandemic's engineered recession. Also, the Republicans don't interfere with the debt limit when they are in charge. Taxes on capital will probably go up, - an asset value added tax is the best method - because if the debt is unacceptably high, this is the only place to find the money.  

Obamacare subsidies and the child tax credit may be made adequate by a subtraction VAT paid by employees - in exchange for scrapping the corporate profits tax. The. minimum wage will be doubled.- or at least raised to $12 per hour, as a reward to the Donnie Bros. They need to ask, however, and do so quickly. Instead of tariffs, do a goods and services tax that is border adjustable. Its the same thing as a tariff, without the retaliation - and it can be paid for by ending income taxes for all income under $110,000 per year.

If you want Trump to be great, share this video with Elon Musk and Joe Rogan.

Loose ends for Joe to do

1. Pardon undocumented migrants for any crimes committed by entering country.

2. Pardon Hunter

3. Call a Special Session to pass immigration and child tax credit compromises.

4. Resign and make Kamala 47th President.

Did Trump (or Vance) catch the car?

Unless one of the states called for Trump is changed to Blue, he is on the way to being 47. Since his side won the Senate,  his AG pick will be confirmed, absent some miracle. Susan Collins owes us one, which means Smith can be fired. The only saving the country is that Judge Chutkan must approve any DOJ motion to end the Trump trial in DC and (once the 11th Circuit puts the case on track) in Florida. 

God help Ukraine. 

Now the question is what to do with Trump as President. The economy Trump created with his tax cuts is still doomed to fail. The Dow is too high and housing prices are about to fall, putting Americans underwater on their mortgages again.

If Trump is found guilty in Florida (and he is dead to rights), he is not legally allowed to be president under the law once convicted of holding classified documents.

Under the 20th Amendment, Vance should still be named acting President if a 14th Amendment objection to Trump is upheld. The Democrats should have worked this out instead of hoping for electoral victory. Oops!

Trump is not getting any healthier. Winning does not add a day to one's life. If he dies before inauguration, the question for JD Vance is what he will do. Maybe he is the  one who caught the car.

About the Senate

Losing Joe Manchin is not a Democratic loss. Losing Sinema to Gallego is a pickup. If John Tester loses, then we are even on the night.

Jack Smith and God still have to vote on Senatorial insurrectionists - although getting rid of Cruz means that Abbott gets to appoint his replacement. Ron Johnson and Rand Paul need to be nervous - and Mitch is still ancient. All three of those Senators have Democratic Governors.

DC statehood would add two Democrats. Sadly, Hawley may win - although I still have hopes that Big Mo will surprise the AP.

Trump's "I can fix it" ad - weird to the end

Probably the most fascist political ad I have ever seen.  I can see why he approved that message.

Dobbs probably cost him the election, although people started souring on him in 2018. In 2020, never-Trump Republicans left President blank and voted down ballot. Some also voted Republican or stayed home in 2022. The antics of electing a Speaker and the resulting crap show, with 60% of the caucus voting with Trump's faction leading to the never Trumpers likely voting down ballot for Democrats this time. The GOP died when they did not vote for Boehner on the first ballot. The writing has been on the wall since then.

There are other reasons besides Dobbs to vote against Trump. Let's list them.

Border crossings are now down, largely due to Biden doing by executive order what the bipartisan compromise would have put into law - but Trump had the GOP walk away from. Immigration is  largely out of White House control and has more to do with Trump not giving aid to the region after hurricanes, as well as the long standing policy of sending convicts back to their home countries - where they destabilized them. The problems at the border and the responses are ground level/bottom up, not top down. The failures are bipartisan and the response is mostly driven by the permanent government at Homeland Security.

Biden is not responsible for sending migrants to New York and other sanctuary cities. That was DeSantis and Abbott, who put people on busses rather than working with the Federal Government to house migrant families in a coordinated manner. BLAME THE GOP for this. The campaign did not bring this up - probably because Dobbs and Trump's emotional dysfunction were lower hanging fruit.

Inflation for the masses came because prices chase the median dollar of income, which is at more than $160,000 per year. If you make less, inflation is hurting. The reason that number is so high is the Trump 2018 tax cuts, not the money given to families during the pandemic. These payments let workers stay away long enough to get better wages and jobs - but plenty did not and are now suffering.  

The rising Dow is a function of the Exchange Traded Funds holding junk assets being bid up before the tax cuts expire at the end of next year.  Because Democrats want to have their cake and eat it too - these arguments were not made. The economy will not crash - and may be crashing even as I write this - but it won't be apparent until next year. The response must be to raise taxes on the wealthy ASAP, not use the slow-down as a reason not keep the Trump cuts in place. Taking money from the Savings Sector is the only way to fix the current economy. Keep Larry Summers away from the White House and we should be OK. Again, the problem is that it is easier to go after the low hanging fruit. Also, most Democratic economists are probably in the dark about what is really happening - which is not a good thing.

The Biden plan was to repeal the Trump cuts in 2021-2022, but Manchin and Sinema sabotaged the bill - so this is truly a Trump economy. It would be worse without the stimulus payments.  Workers are still mostly hurting - but the asset inflation goosing the markets came from Trump, Manchin and Sinema, not Biden. 

Trump did not cause the COVID deaths. Masking did not stop the disease, nor would it have. COVID round one was from people sneezing on their friends and family, thinking it was allergies. The WHO and CDC did not notice. The deaths were on them, not Trump, although a White House staff which focused on more than Trump's image may have caught the error. The Manchin-Pelosi bailout kept the world going, not Trump. He does get credit for supporting vaccine research - by staying out of the way of the NIH. He bumbled his way into success on this. Also, Manchin is a major landlord. The stimulus, with supporting Federal Reserve action, helped him the most.

Blaming Trump for the pandemic is not really true. It is also low hanging fruit, however.

If the GOP establishment had not been taken over by MAGA and Coney-Barrett been appointed to the Court - thus preventing Dobbs - Trump would not have been the nominee and Dobbs would not have been an issue. Haley would likely have been the nominee and the result would be very different next week, although Vice President Harris is an excellent candidate and deserves the upcoming win. Still, if Trump had been trying to destroy the Republican Party from within, he could not have done a better job. 

Lastly, the Ad should not have run in DC Metro. There are no Trump votes in Northern Virginia, suburban Maryland, DC or Delaware. If it is a national ad buy, it will hurt Trump more than help him. Weird to the end.