The time has come to share some of the political cartoons from the past week with you guys. I must say that as much as we are bombarded with political drama, environmental crises, social disruption, it is a boon for the political cartoonists who NEVER have to go digging for a topic these days! Oh, if only I had some artistic talent! But alas … a five-year-old child can draw better than I can! These ‘toons and artists show that we CAN find humour, even in the darkest of times.
Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis – two peas in a pod, right? WRONG. Both are despicable, dangerous, and neither should hold ANY public office, let alone the highest office in the nation, but they are dangerous in completely different ways and for entirely different reasons, though the end result could well be the same if either of them were to gain a foothold in next year’s election.
First, Donald Trump. Contrary to his own assertions, Donald Trump is not particularly intelligent nor well educated, though he is conniving. His Achilles Heel is his ego. He doesn’t particularly care about democracy, about education, about the environment, about healthcare, about our relations with allied nations, or about the people of this country. He cares only about himself, his image, his power and wealth. He will roll over and play dead if it gets him the attention he craves. And he has no values, no morals to guide him, and thus he will play on any team, whichever team is offering him a chance to get attention, power and wealth. He has played on so many teams: Team Putin, Team Kim Jong-un, Team Mohammed bin Salman, Team NRA, Team Fossil Fuel. Yet, he never played on Team America, despite all his flag hugging.
Ron DeSantis, on the other hand, does possess a fair degree of intelligence and education. Like Trump, DeSantis is conniving, but unlike Trump, he doesn’t give a damn whether people think he’s handsome, witty, intelligent or wealthy … just so long as they vote for him. He has assessed the landscape of the nation at present and is playing the song the disgruntled masses have requested. His plan begins with the demonization of ‘other’. Blacks and LGBTQ people are his initial target … an easy target, as it happens. White people are being told that they are rapidly losing their majority status and that frightens them because religious leaders and others tell them it should frighten them. And religious people of all stripes have found their target in the LGBTQ community, claiming that these humans are going against their beliefs, are unnatural, and will bring death and destruction by an angry god if they are not converted or otherwise eradicated. Again, religious leaders know how to play their hand well in every form of bigotry imaginable. You need think no further than how women’s rights have been decimated since the terrible Dobbs decision last June.
The danger with Trump is that he is so easily used and so transparent that Putin and others have used him as a puppet for their own purposes. Stroke his ego and he’ll give you the moon and the stars on a silver platter, even when they are not his to give. Tell him what he wants to hear, and he might even sell you Alaska for a fair price. He has no goals other than his own … doesn’t have a vision for the nation, only for his self-image.
Ron DeSantis, on the other hand, has a specific goal and has mapped out a plan to achieve his goals. First, manipulate people within the education system. Don’t teach about the actual history of this nation which, along with some of the good contributions to humanity also includes a number of horrific events and eras such as slavery, genocide, theft, systemic racism, misogyny, and a variety of human rights abuses. Corral the sheeple, inject them with ignorance and feed their anger. Meanwhile, keep passing more and more laws to disenfranchise people of colour so that they will not have a voice.
If you look at what DeSantis has already managed to accomplish in the state of Florida – dictating what can or cannot be taught in schools, even what words can be spoken, banning books at an alarming rate, and claiming Florida is “where ‘woke’ goes to die” … he has just told us what he would do to this nation if he moved into the Oval Office. In the words of the late Maya Angelou, “When people show you who they are, believe them.”
Both of these ‘men’ are dangerous, neither of them are what I would call “presidential material,” but then I’m from the old school, from a time when decency mattered, when government existed for the people, all the people, not only the wealthy and the greedy.
Nikki Haley has now thrown her hat in the ring, and a number of others are expected to do the same in the coming months. None of them are likely to become front-runners in the race for the presidency in 2024. I fully expect, barring the death or imprisonment of one of them, that Trump and DeSantis will remain at the top of the dung heap on the Republican side until one or the other is nominated in July 2024. It’s gonna be a long 17 months, my friends.
Opinion writer Charles Blow, writing for the New York Times, gives us some historical precedents to the extremism we are seeing today and it makes for an interesting and thought-provoking read.
Extremism Is on the Rise … Again
By Charles M. Blow
02 November 2022
After all this country has been through — from Donald Trump and his election denial, to the insurrection, to what prosecutors call the “politically motivated” attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband — it still appears poised to elect candidates next Tuesday who deny the results of the 2020 election. There are 291 election deniers on the ballot. And Trump — the greatest threat to democracy — may make a comeback in 2024.
It’s hard to believe even though it’s happening right in front of our eyes.
In a major speech Wednesday night, President Biden described election denial as “the path to chaos in America.” “It’s unprecedented,” he said. “It’s unlawful. And it’s un-American.” But in truth, the extremism, racism and white nationalism are neither un-American nor unfamiliar.
I am personally fascinated by precedents and historical corollaries, the ways that events find a way of repeating themselves, not because of some strange glitch in the cosmos but because human beings are fundamentally the same, unchanged, stuck in rotation of our failings and frailties.
The presidential election of 1912 offers a few lessons for our current political moment.
William Howard Taft had been elected president in 1908, succeeding the gregarious Theodore Roosevelt, the undisputed leader of the progressive movement of the age, who endorsed Taft’s presidential bid. But Taft was no Teddy. Taft was, as University of Notre Dame professor Peri E. Arnold has written, “a warmhearted and kind man who wanted to be loved as a person and to be respected for his judicial temperament.”
I hear echoes there of the differences between Presidents Barack Obama and Biden.
Progressives at first seemed satisfied with Taft’s election, as they expected him to simply carry Roosevelt’s legacy forward. But they soon grew disaffected, as did Roosevelt.
It wasn’t that Taft was ineffective; he just didn’t do all of what those progressives wanted, much like Biden hasn’t checked the box on all progressive priorities. Riding a wave of progressive anger, Roosevelt challenged Taft in 1912, and when Roosevelt didn’t secure the nomination, he ran as a third-party candidate, taking many of the progressives with him.
That split all but guaranteed that their opponent, Woodrow Wilson, would win, becoming the first president from the South since the Civil War.
Wilson had not been a favorite to win the nomination of his own party — he only secured it on the 46th ballot after quite a bit of deal-making. But once he reached the general election, he sailed to victory over the quarreling liberals. He would go on to campaign on an “America First” platform, which for him was primarily about maintaining America’s neutrality in World War I. But as Sarah Churchwell, author of “Behold, America,” told Vox in 2018, it soon became associated not just with isolationism, but also with the Ku Klux Klan, xenophobia and fascism.
In Wilson’s case, extremists took his language and twisted its meaning into something more sinister. When Trump glommed onto that language over a century later, he started with the sinister and tried to pass it off as benign.
Of course, Wilson was no Trump. Trump is one of the worst presidents — if not the worst — that this country has ever had. Wilson at least, as the University of Virginia’s Miller Center points out, supported “limits on corporate campaign contributions, tariff reductions, new and stronger antitrust laws, banking and currency reform, a federal income tax, direct election of senators, a single term presidency.” He was a progressive Southern Democrat. The newly formed N.A.A.C.P. actually endorsed him.
But there are eerie similarities between him and Trump. Wilson was a racist. He brought the segregationist sensibility of the South, where he had grown up and where Jim Crow was ascendant, into the White House. He allowed segregation to flourish in the federal government on his watch.
And while Wilson didn’t support shutting down all immigration, as long as the immigrants were from Europe, he did embrace ardently xenophobic beliefs. In 1912, he released a statement, saying:
“In the matter of Chinese and Japanese coolie immigration I stand for the national policy of exclusion (or restricted immigration). The whole question is one of assimilation of diverse races. We cannot make a homogeneous population out of people who do not blend with the Caucasian race.”
It was Wilson who screened “The Birth of a Nation” at the White House, a film that pushed the “Lost Cause” narrative and fueled the rebirth of the Klan.
Trump hosted a screening of “2,000 Mules” — a fact-checker-debunked documentary that purported to show widespread voter fraud carried out by “mules” who stuffed ballot boxes with harvested ballots during the last presidential election — at Mar-a-Lago, which Trump has called the Southern White House. That film has helped boost his followers’ belief in his lie about the 2020 election.
Allow me a quick aside to dissect the dehumanizing language of the “mule.” Mules were synonymous with captivity and servitude, and as such, a comparison between them and the enslaved — and later, oppressed — Black people was routine. In fact, in “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Zora Neale Hurston famously wrote that the Black woman is the mule of the world.
Then came the invention of the “drug mule,” a phrase that first appeared in this newspaper in 1993. Later, the media would often use it to describe Hispanic women.
Now we have ballot mules, an extensive cabal of liberal actors bent on stealing elections.
Once you animalize people, you have, by definition, dehumanized them, and that person is no longer worthy of being treated humanely.
I say all this to demonstrate that we have been here before. We have seen extremism rise before in this country, multiple times, and it often follows a familiar pattern: One party loses steam, focus and cohesion; liberals become exhausted, disillusioned or fractured, allowing racists and nativist conservatives to rise. Those leaders then tap into a darkness in the public, one that periodically goes dormant until it erupts once more.
I fear that too many liberals are once again caught up in the cycle, embracing apathy. My message to all of them going into Election Day: Wake up!
Did you watch the televised hearings, probably the last one, on Thursday afternoon? In case you missed it, you can still see it here. Dan Rather’s assessment of the proceedings is well stated, so rather than attempt to re-invent the wheel (mine would no doubt turn out square), I turn you over to Dan & Elliot from their newsletter on Thursday evening following the hearings.
Breaking The Republic
January 6 wasn’t an accident
Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner
(Photo by Brent Stirton/Getty Images)
“That, my fellow citizens, breaks the republic.”
This was the chilling conclusion of Liz Cheney today at the January 6 hearings over what would have happened if the guardrails of our democracy, exposed for their frailty in 2020, had buckled to an autocrat determined to hold onto power. And the danger remains. “Without accountability, it all becomes normal, and it will recur,” Cheney warned.
Cheney’s statement is striking in its simplicity and its power. Her audience is her “fellow citizens,” the ones who will be going to the polls in less than a month to decide who should lead this nation going forward. Her fellow Republicans have cast Cheney as a pariah for having the courage to state the truth: that their leader wanted to destroy America as we know it.
What the committee presented today shed a spotlight on the authorship of this historic tragedy. It is Trump who is the playwright, conjuring and casting the roles of those who would act out his destructive intentions. It was he who dreamt up and directed a frontal attack on American democracy. But he couldn’t have done it without his willing accomplices.
Today, we saw footage of members of Congress grappling in real time with a deteriorating situation on January 6 that could have ended with more bloodshed and the decimation of governmental order. We could feel a visceral fear in their actions and words, not only for their own personal safety but for the safety of the nation they had sworn an oath to serve. Those who could have intervened, starting with the president but including his top aides inside the White House, were absent. And that is just as the president wanted it. We heard today evidence that Trump knew he had lost, and he didn’t care what it would take to retain power.
This man who shamelessly pounds his chest with protestations of patriotism, who literally wraps himself in the American flag, who demonizes his political opponents as haters of America is really the one who views our imperfect experiment in self-governance with disgust. Elections. The rule of law. Peaceful transfers of power. The will of the people. These are the pillars of our nation’s foundation. But for Trump, that’s all just for suckers. He had the presidency, and he didn’t plan on relinquishing it, no matter what the voters or the Constitution said.
January 6 wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t a rally that spun out of control. It was a dangerous and violent storm threatening our nation’s core principles and our whole system of representative democracy. Stop and ponder that. Then remember that it should have been no surprise. The committee has made clear that the plan had been on the radar for weeks. There was plenty of evidence in advance that Trump and his cronies were planning to disregard the verdict of the election if it went against him.
But details and evidence uncovered since have been stunning, including documentary footage of longtime Trump loyalist Roger Stone played today. Here is what Stone had to say even before Election Day (excuse the language, please): “I say fuck the voting, let’s get right to the violence.” Was what we saw on January 6 a Plan B, or really a Plan A?
One of the great attributes of this committee is expert storytelling, laying out, with gripping detail, a narrative — a true story — about the attempted destruction of our democratic order. They have carefully traced the origins of this horror to before the election. They have shown the rising danger and threats of violence. They have identified villainy, led by the president. They have explained with breathtaking intimacy what took place on January 6. And they have made very clear that that day’s actions, while dramatic, were not a denouement. How this story ends is currently unknowable. We will have a better sense after the midterm elections and with the Department of Justice’s decision if, how, and whom to prosecute.
There is a lot about what we heard today, and in the previous hearings, that is infuriating. It also is hard not to feel a deep sadness about the precariousness of our democracy. But we can find hope in the service of this committee. They are saying to all of us, “This happened. Let us not let it happen again. And let us hold those responsible, accountable.”
They believe that most Americans cherish our self-governance, our stability, and our rule of law. They believe that if we know the truth, that we will do everything in our power, as a people, as a nation, to protect against its recurrence.
Does that belief still hold? Or are we now so divided that we can no longer be sure? This is the overriding question as our beloved America evolves in the first quarter of the 21st century.
Can She Really Be So Stupid???
Liz Truss, the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who replaced bumbling Boris Johnson, has proven in a relatively short time that she is a damned fool. She is leading the UK down a path to economic disaster and not only that, but she wants all other western nations to follow her down that pathway to nowhere. In a recent interview, echoing Donald Trump, she said …
“We do have to take difficult decisions to get our economy right. We have to look at our tax rates. So corporation tax needs to be competitive with other countries so that we can attract that investment.”
And so, for the sake of Ms. Truss, the good citizens of the United Kingdom, and as a reminder to the people of the United States, I am reprising a portion of my 2017 post here, explaining why and how ‘trickle down’ economics is a myth … a fool’s errand. I have cut some of the original post out because the post was lengthy (over 1600 words) and a part of it was about Trump at that time (2017) and his proposals, now irrelevant. But somebody please pass this on to Ms. Truss so that perhaps she can gain a smidge of understanding about how the real world works and so that the UK doesn’t have to follow the U.S. down that damned disastrous pathway!
Trickle-down economics is a theory that says benefits for the wealthy trickle down to everyone else. It is a theory that makes sense … on paper. In reality, it has been tried more than once and proven that it does not work. Repeat after me: Trickle-down economics does not work. It does not trickle down, but rather pools in the bank accounts and investment portfolios of those who already own most of the nation’s wealth.
The theory is that if the government provides substantial tax cuts, industry de-regulations, and negotiates trade agreements that favour the big businesses of the nation, those big businesses will earn higher profit margins, and will therefore use their additional wealth to build more factories, hire more people, create more jobs, increase workers’ wages and benefits. The workers will have more money to spend, will buy more ‘things’, thereby increasing the profits of the big businesses who will use that additional profit to … well, you get the picture, right? Sounds about right, don’t you think? Yes, it sounds good, looks good on paper or white boards in boardrooms and congressional offices around the nation … but it does not work in reality.
Ronald Reagan tried it in the 1980s, thus leading to some calling it ‘Reaganomics’. It did not work. The U.S. economy was in a slump when Reagan took office in 1981, so he did two things: lowered taxes and increased government spending. Now, at this juncture I want to take a minute to let you know that I do not intend to provide a lesson in economics. I am savvy enough, but I am not an economist, and I typically leave these discussions to fellow-blogger Erik Hare over at Barataria. But Erik sometimes goes into more depth than is needed, as he IS an economist. Since I am not, I will put what little explanation I deem necessary in layman’s terms. So, using an over-simplification to explain what happened under Reagan …
Think of it on a personal level. You decide you want to enjoy life more, so you cut back your hours, thereby reducing the income from your job. At the same time, since you want to enjoy life more, you spend more money on such things as dining out, travel and household goods & clothing. For a while, perhaps, life is great, but then … the homeowner’s insurance comes due, there is a huge auto repair, and your daughter starts college. Uh-oh … it just caught up with you and now you must take out … loans. Go further into debt.
This is what happened under Reagan. He decreased the federal revenue by cutting taxes, increased federal spending in order to stimulate the economy, and for a while there was the illusion that it was working. People had more money, and spent more, and they were happy. But … time came to pay the piper and the money wasn’t in the treasury, so our federal debt tripled from $997 billion in 1981 when Reagan took office to $2.85 trillion in 1989 when he left office. Money is a finite resource. If you rob from Peter to pay Paul, as the saying goes, then soon you will need to rob from somebody else to pay Peter back. And remember that debt is not free. Take out a loan for that new car, and you will pay approximately 4.5% in interest. The federal government must also pay interest on its debt.
Then in 2001, George W. Bush tried the theory once again, cutting income taxes in an effort to stimulate the economy. Which it did … temporarily, until unemployment began to rise. So in 2003, he further cut taxes on business. According to the theory, the tax cuts should have helped people in all income levels. In fact, the opposite occurred. Income inequality worsened. Household income rose 6 percent for the bottom fifth. And 80 percent for the top 1 percent who saw their income triple. Instead of trickling down, it appears that prosperity trickled up.
Okay, so we see that it does not work, but why? I could point you to any number of studies with lots of graphs and charts to show inverse correlations, etc., but we would all be bored. The bottom line, I firmly believe is multi-fold. First, tax cuts reduce the revenue of the federal government, meaning that, since our government will almost never cut military spending, it will instead cut funding for social welfare programs, meaning the lowest income families will actually have less spending power. Second, federal debt will have to increase to cover the deficiencies caused by the tax cuts. And … here is, perhaps, the biggest reason: GREED. Big businesses that benefit from tax cuts are typically corporations who owe their very existence to their stockholders. They will keep those stockholders happy with higher annual dividends before they consider paying their employees higher wages or increasing benefits, let alone hiring additional staff. Purchasing additional factories? Perhaps, but that is not likely to increase jobs significantly, especially with today’s rapidly growing technological advances cutting jobs in many fields.
The bottom line is that if you give the wealthy more money, they will NOT share it with ANYBODY … they will hoard it. We have had a federal minimum wage rate of $7.25 since 2009 … 13 years … while the CPI (Consumer Price Index) has risen during that period by 27%. Corporate profits have increased dramatically during that same period. No, my friends, one last time …
Wake up, Ms. Truss.
It seems I keep finding things to snark about. I have tried to clear my mind of the detritus, tried lying in the yard watching the grass grow to find some peace of mind, but some of the blades of grass began looking like politicians after a while. I threw myself into housework … for all of ten minutes … and then I was tired, so I went back to reading the news. So, letting loose the snark here on ye olde blog seems to be the only way to evict it from my head!
Punished for doing the right thing
Okay, my friends … I’m going there again … ‘there’ being the place I try very hard to stay away from: religion. Well, not religion per se, but rather certain religious ‘leaders’ who have flown repeatedly onto my radar, almost as if they are begging me to swat them down. Sigh. I really don’t like delving into the realm, for I understand that in this area, I am a minority and my views have little or no value to the majority. However …
Greg Locke, pastor of the Global Vision Bible Church in Nashville, Tennessee, is not a nice man. He has floated across my radar numerous times, but until recently I swished him away, pooh-poohed him as just another foolish evangelical. Until recently, that is, when he actually had the unmitigated gall to tell his congregation that if they wore a mask, they would be thrown out of church!
“If you start showing up [with] all these masks and all this nonsense, I will ask you to leave. I am not playing these Democrat games up in this church.”
‘Democrat games???’ Who’s playing games now, Greg? What’s next for Mr. Locke? Will he throw out parishioners who have been vaccinated? What about those who eat healthy and exercise regularly … are they to be given the boot? Folks, this is not about whether one chooses to believe in a higher being or not … this is about life and death, about personal choices, about our health. Mr. Locke has just mandated that his congregation must engage in dangerous, life-threatening behaviour in order to have the dubious ‘privilege’ of hearing him opine on that of which he is proven ignorant.
This isn’t Locke’s first foray into the unconscionable. Previously he insisted President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected and claimed only “crack-smoking” leftists would think he beat Donald Trump to the White House. He has falsely accused the State of Tennessee of building ‘quarantine camps’ to house the unvaccinated, and last September he published a book titled, This Means War: We Will Not Surrender Through Silence (Pastor Greg Locke: Spiritual Warfare Series).
What a joke he is … I wonder how many people will die because they listened to him?
And on the subject of masks …
Do you ever look around, read the news, and just wonder if the whole damn world has lost its collective marbles???
On Tuesday night, a meeting of the school board was held in Williamson County, Tennessee, the wealthiest in the state and one of the 20 wealthiest counties in the country. The purpose of the meeting was to decided whether or not there would be a mask mandate in place when children return to school next week. Unlike some other states, there is no ban on mask mandates in Tennessee and the decision is left up to each school district.
The meeting was so chaotic that it ended up taking four hours to decide that yes, they would mandate masks for teachers and students at the elementary school level. Masks will be optional at the junior high and high school levels where most students are over 12 years of age and thus eligible for vaccination. Angry parents showed up, almost none wearing a mask, and frequently disrupted the meeting, expressing their fury that their child might be ordered to wear a mask. One person became so violent that he had to be escorted out by county deputies.
But it was what came afterward that makes me think our nation is devolving into something cruel and inhumane. As the meeting broke up, hundreds of protestors were waiting outside. The meeting had included health care professionals who attested to the value of wearing a mask during this time when the Delta variant of the coronavirus is running rampant. Upon leaving the building, the health care professionals were surrounded by protestors chanting and issuing threats such as “We know who you are,” and “We will find you.”
If this is what it means to be an American, then I want no part of it! These people are loons! Doctors and nurses, trying to keep the children of these loons safe and alive, are threatened for doing so. PEOPLE! WAKE UP! This is not how rational human beings behave!!! Or is it? Are people completely losing the ability to disagree in a civilized manner?
Something to ponder
Our friend Jerry, aka Grumpy1180, left a comment on my post about Andrew Cuomo’s resignation that I found very astute …
I’ve had several epiphanies since leaving the Republican Party. Here’s one of them: When a Republican “leader” gets caught with his or her hand in the cookie jar–or his or her pants down, or choose your cliche–Republican followers turn on the accusers, the law enforcers, the court system, the media, and anyone else who would dare to question the integrity of their hero. They side with the person over the principle. When a Democrat leader gets caught violating a law or an important social norm, Democrat voters say, essentially, “Sorry, _____. I liked you, but principles come first. Time for you to move on and be replaced by someone who understands the importance of upholding crucial, society-sustaining principles.”
Think about that for a minute … he’s right! Did you hear a single Republican call for Trump’s resignation in light of his many proven sexual harassment accusations, his lies, his corruption? He even admitted to some of them, yet not a whisper was heard from Republicans in or out of Congress. When confirmation hearings were being held for Brett Kavanaugh to occupy a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, and a highly credible woman accused him of sexual assault, who did Republicans turn on? The woman, not Kavanaugh. And more recently … have you heard a single Republican call for Representative Matt Gaetz, who is being investigated on sex trafficking charges, to step down?
Think about it … which party has shown integrity? Jerry is right … it damn sure ain’t the Republican Party!
Last week, we found out that the former guy had instructed then-acting-attorney general Jeffrey Rosen to “Just say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R congressmen.” I saw this headline in numerous news sites that I visit daily, and like most of the rest of you, I growled a bit, called him a few choice names, then moved on to other stories. But as Robert Reich points out … that was the wrong move. This is THE story that is most important in its implications. I’ll let Mr. Reich explain …
A Trump bombshell quietly dropped last week. And it should shock us all
Robert Reich
A newly released memo shows that Trump told the acting attorney general: ‘Just say the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me and the [Republican] congressmen’
We’ve become so inured to Donald Trump’s proto-fascism that we barely blink an eye when we learn that he tried to manipulate the 2020 election. Yet the most recent revelation should frighten every American to their core.
On Friday, the House oversight committee released notes of a 27 December telephone call from Trump to then acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen, in which Trump told Rosen: “Just say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R congressmen.” The notes were taken by Richard Donoghue, Rosen’s deputy, who was also on the call.
The release of these notes has barely made a stir. The weekend news was filled with more immediate things – infrastructure! The Delta strain! Inflation! Wildfires! In light of everything else going on, Trump’s bizarre efforts in the last weeks of his presidency seem wearily irrelevant. Didn’t we already know how desperate he was?
In a word, no. This revelation is hugely important.
Rosen obviously rejected Trump’s request. But what if Rosen had obeyed Trump and said to the American public that the election was corrupt – and then “left the rest” to Trump and the Republican congressmen? What would Trump’s and the Republicans’ next moves have been? And which Republican congressmen were in cahoots with Trump in this attempted coup d’état?
Make no mistake: this was an attempted coup.
Trump knew it. Just weeks earlier, then attorney general William Barr said the justice department had found no evidence of widespread fraud that could have overturned the results.
And a few days after Trump’s call to Rosen – on 2 January – Trump told Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, to “find” votes to change the election outcome. He berated Raffensperger for not doing more to overturn the election.
Emails released last month also show that Trump and his allies in the last weeks of his presidency pressured the justice department to investigate totally unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud – forwarding them conspiracy theories and even a draft legal brief they hoped would be filed with the supreme court.
Some people, especially Republican officeholders, believe we should simply forget these sordid details. We must not.
For the first time in the history of the United States we did not have a peaceful transition of power. For the first time in American history, a president refused – still refuses – to concede, and continues to claim, with no basis in fact, that the election was “stolen” from him. For the first time in history, a president actively plotted a coup.
It would have been bad enough were Trump a mere crackpot acting on his own pathetic stage – a would-be dictator who accidentally became president and then, when he lost re-election, went bonkers – after which he was swept into the dustbin of history.
We might then merely regret this temporary lapse in American presidential history. At best, Trump would be seen as a fool and the whole affair an embarrassment to the country.
But Trump was no accident and he’s not in any dustbin. He has turned one of America’s two major parties into his own cult. He has cast the major political division in the US as a clash between those who believe him about the 2020 election and those who do not. He has emboldened state Republicans to execute the most brazen attack on voting rights since Jim Crow. Most Republican senators and representatives dare not cross him. Some of his followers continue to threaten violence against the government. By all accounts, he is running for president again in 2024.
Donald Trump’s proto-fascism poses the largest internal threat to American democracy since the civil war.
What to do about it? Fight it, and the sooner the better.
This final revelation – Trump’s 27 December call to the acting attorney general in which he pleads “Just say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me” – should trigger section 3 of the 14th amendment, which bars anyone from holding office who “engaged in insurrection” against the US. The current attorney general of the United States, Merrick Garland, should issue an advisory opinion clearly stating this. If Trump wants to take it to the supreme court, fine.
As always, our friend Jeff over at On the Fence Voters is spot on … take a look for yourselves! Thanks, Jeff! As always, you da man!
Boorish, idiotic, and rude behavior didn’t begin with the election of the disgraced former 45th president. In my nearly six decades on this earth, I’ve run across several of these types — present company excluded. However, what we see these days when it comes to a lack of basic decency and etiquette, I will lay a considerable, if not primary, blame at the feet of the failed blogger/president. When historians take a look back at his failed presidency, surely this will stand near the top of his already disastrous legacy.
Ever since the infamous ride down the golden escalator, we’ve been subjected to his insults, lies, and politically incorrect behavior. His command of the daily narrative, usually starting early in the morning before most of us had started sipping our coffee, ruled the media throughout his four years in office. They, and many in public, couldn’t wait to hear what he’d…
View original post 928 more words
Keith has expressed my own views, only so much better than I typically do. Thank you, Keith!
The following are the views of a former Republican and now Independent voter. I did not vote for the former president either time and remain puzzled why people would vote for such a well-documented untruthful, egomaniacal bully.
On Friday, I read that Senator Mitch McConnell would support the seditious former president if he were the 2024 presidential nominee. Note, this is after McConnell denounced the former president for his role in the insurrection against a branch of government, which of course, put McConnell and his colleagues in danger. And, unsurprisingly, Mr. McConnell chose not to vote to convict the former president before he admitted said person was guilty.
This is a disgusting lack of leadership in a country that needs this party to help offer some form leadership. But, as of this writing, people who voted as leaders to impeach or convict the seditious former president, have been vilified, censured…
View original post 236 more words
Many of us have opined about the impeachment trial, the likelihood that the senate republicans will fail to do their duty to We the People, and more. But, just when I thought I’d heard it all, I came across Annie’s post last night and … my jaw dropped. Trump apparently believes that he is still president, has set himself up with an office, staff, and claims his office will address “… official activities to advance the interests of the United States and to carry on the agenda of the Trump administration …” All the more reason that he must be convicted, his lies must be paid for, he must be forced into irrelevancy. Thank you, Annie, for this thoughtful post!
I’ve had various gastrointestinal problems over the years: I come from a family of “gut” people, and there’s lots of scientific evidence about our gut-brain connection. But it took me about a week to realize that a lot of my annoying symptoms had dissipated.
I no longer had to make daily shakes with the fattening avocado I dislike to keep my weight stable, and I was eating things I’d abandoned in misery—like hummus. (OK, not thrilling, but when peanut butter on apples is the only lunch that sits right, a little diversity is most welcome.)
When I saw my gastro Monday morning, I told him how much better I was feeling. And the light bulb had gone off. My GI system almost instantaneously expressed its enormous gratitude and relief when Joe Biden replaced Donald Trump in the Oval Office. “You’re not the…
View original post 1,585 more words
Filosofa's Word 