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Just in time for the holidays and oh happy day the referral of criminal charges against him, the shabby carnival barker and future inmate managed to hit yet another implausible new low last week with a "major announcement" that turned out to be the launch of blissfully tacky, $99, grifting-for-his-life Trump digital trading cards celebrating his life and "career" - as ripped Superhero, astronaut, cowboy and presumably now white-collar-except-for- the-orange-makeup-stains-perp. Monday's unanimous referral by the Jan. 6 Committee of four criminal charges - "influencing or impeding an official proceeding of the US government," "conspiring to defraud the US", "unlawfully (making) false statements to the federal government," and "assisting or engaging in insurrection against the United States" - was, of course, the day's big, bad news for the has-been now living a "sad," lame life in his "Barbie Dream House" amidst endless golf games, hapless sycophants and the dutiful applause of dinner guests for a loser who desperately craves it. The decision that it's "time to prosecute" the most flagrant of his boundless crimes could mean the end of all that, an end devoutly to be wished; it could also decisively show, declared Jamie Raskin, that, "Ours is not a system where foot soldiers go to jail, and the masterminds and ringleaders get a free pass."

Still, for all the day's drama and schadenfreude, the Committee's action was long-awaited and somewhat expected. Not expected was Trump's willingness in the preceding days to sink yet one foul rung lower in the Cheap Grifter Department. Awaiting the rumored charges, he was already losing it with a bonkers rant about the "Unselect Committee of Democrats, Misfits and Thugs" going after his "'PEACEFULLY & PATRIOTICLY' speech" on Jan. 6th, which was "mild & loving." Then, tossing any minimal remaining shred of dignity to the wind, he morphed into a gaudy salesman hawking "a series of utterly ridiculous, abominably photoshopped," likely illegal by dint of copyright law NFT imaginary trading cards - think Mickey Mantle without the card - featuring his mug stuck onto multiple, fit, heroic figures with "really terrible to really, really terrible" results - a move even his last five loyal fans declared "one of the cringiest things ever" before incredulously asking, like many of us before them, "Is this a joke?" Nope. After a tacky tease - lasers shooting from his eyes! - proclaiming, "America needs a SUPERHERO," he evidently, astoundingly decided he's (still) it. "Come for the claim Trump was a better president than Washington and Lincoln!" mocked one group. "Stay for the Trump digital trading cards!"

This week marks ten years since a gunman with an AR-15 assault rifle and other guns walked into an elementary school in Newton, Conn., opened fire, and slaughtered a classroom of 20 first-graders, ages six and seven; he also killed six adult educators. Since that then-inconceivable event, there have been occasional, hard-won, agonizingly meager changes aimed at curbing America's apocalyptic gun carnage - changes that over 70% of Americans, even Republicans, support - and yet the assault weapons proliferate and the bloodshed continues. 19 kids in Uvalde, Texas. Buffalo, New York. Club Q in Colorado Springs. In Virginia, a Walmart and U. of V. Today, gun violence remains the leading cause of death for children - far and above cancer - in the land of the free. At least 4,368 American children have been killed by guns in the last two years - a sickening 12 small bodies a day. Since Sandy Hook, Americans have bought at least 150 million more guns, and there have been 948 more school shootings. Note to America: WTF?

America's ghastly numbers come from Sandy Hook Promise, the non-profit advocacy group co-founded by two victims' parents that now runs "know-the signs" violence prevention programs in 23,000 schools nationwide; to date, over 18 million kids have taken part. The stories behind the group are heart-rending: Dylan Hockley loved purple and was "pure unadulterated love and joy"; his friend Daniel Barden was "the caretaker of all living things," bringing carpenter ants back outside; when the first-graders were found, their classroom aide, also killed, held Dylan's body in her arms. Daniel's dad Mark still struggles with "the fact Daniel's gone forever for the rest of my life. I don't think I ever will, nor should I have to, wrap my head around this, nor should anyone else." Dylan's mom Nicole: "Every shooting takes me back, and it probably always will." This week, they posted a remembrance card for people to sign; still, "The holes in our hearts will never be filled."

Days after dictates from their leaders, including President Ebrahim "Butcher of Tehran" Raisi, to show "firmness" by "sending the first rioter to the gallows," Iran has swiftly executed two young prisoners found guilty before a Revolutionary Court - in "proceedings that bore no resemblance to a meaningful trial" - of "enmity against God" and "corruption on earth" by protesting the country's repressive theocracy. Mohsen Shekari, 23, convicted of blocking roads and wounding two paramilitary soldiers, was the first known protester to be executed; he was hanged last week in prison. On Monday Majidreza Rahnavard, also 23, was publicly hanged, probably still alive, from a construction crane as a grisly warning to others; he was convicted, with five others, of stabbing to death two members of the paramilitary. In an already brutal crackdown on protests against the country's repressive theocracy, another 25 people face execution by a "regime (that) has taken justice and freedom to the slaughterhouse."

Despite its alleged devotion to Islam - whose compassionate God in the Qur'an urges Muslims to use "beautiful preaching" to bring people to faith and argues "there is no compulsion in religion" (2:256) - Iran is one of the world's top executioners, invariably in the name of a Holy War, usually by hanging, often with the condemned still alive when it begins. So far this year, Iran has killed over 500 people, the largest number in several years according to Oslo-based Iran Human Rights. Public hangings by crane have been so common, including during Green Movement protests after a disputed 2009 election, that activists have tried to pressure crane companies not to send them there. With 90% of Iranians practising Shi'a Islam, the country's official religion, the extremist Iranian Revolutionary Guard and its allies, the Basij paramilitary force, habitually cite divine injunction to justify their rabid support of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's ruthless rule and their violent repression - now, against protests entering their fourth month after the murder of Mahsa Amini.