Day of the Icon, 2nd of Summer, 525 M.E. (Deneb): It's still raining outside. I missed my alternating-day walk on Sunday, and now I'm missing it again today. For the record, it rained yesterday, too, and it's currently forecast to rain for the next three days.

We live is such brazenly corrupt times. Today, it was reported that Trump pardoned a convicted tax cheater after his mother attended a $1-million-per-person fund-raising dinner last month at the tacky Mar-a-Lago golf hotel. There wasn't even an attempt to hide the quid pro quo: the pardon application cited the mother’s support for the president, including raising millions of dollars and a connection to a plot to publicize Ashley Biden's addiction diary.  

The convicted felon that Trump pardoned was found guilty of tax fraud for withholding more than $10 million from the paychecks of nurses, doctors and others who worked at his Florida nursing-home facility under the pretext of using it for their Social Security, Medicare and federal income taxes. Instead, he used the money to buy a $2 million yacht and to pay for travel and purchases at high-end retailers, including Bergdorf Goodman and Cartier. A nepo baby, he had joined his mother’s nursing-home business after dropping out of college, eventually becoming chief executive. After she sold the company in 2007, they invested $18 million in a new nursing home venture in South Florida, where they lived a luxurious lifestyle.

The other convicted felon, the one who issued the presidential pardon, invited the mother to the Mar-a-Lago fundraiser after receiving the application for a presidential pardon. The invitation billed it as an intimate “candlelight dinner” sponsored by the MAGA Inc. PAC, with “very limited” space available to people who paid $1 million each. After the pardon, the tax cheater celebrated with his mother and family while wearing a red MAGA hat. 

Trump defenders have tried to justify the pardon based on Biden's pardon of his son, Hunter. However, Hunter Biden, despite wild conspiratorial claims by the far right, was never convicted of embezzling millions of dollars, and his pardon was not instigated by donations to his father's campaign.

Meanwhile, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a non-millionaire Salvadoran, remains in a notoriously hellish El Salvador mega-prison without any due process for the "crime" of being mistaken for a gang member. despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation.

I'm sorry, but I can't even recognize this country as the America I once knew. We're a corrupt, spiritually bankrupt Banana Republic now, a kleptocracy ruled by oligarchs.