Tag Archives: Mehmet Oz

What Drives The Election Roller Coaster?

Posted on by under Election 2022, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

The upcoming elections remind me watching a game of tennis, or ping pong … back, forth, left, right, back, forth.  Round and round she goes, where she lands no one knows.  To say that it is stressful is an understatement!  Frank Bruni’s latest column sums it all up fairly nicely …

Live By the Trump, Die By the Trump

By Frank Bruni

8 September 2022

Democrats were doomed. We prediction-mad pundits felt predictable certainty about that. The recent history of midterm elections augured disaster for the party in power. Inflation would make the damage that much worse.

So why are Republicans sweating?

Their overreach on abortion and the subsequent mobilization of women voters explain a great deal but not everything. There’s another prominent plotline. Its protagonist is Donald Trump. And its possible moral is a sweet and overdue pileup of clichés — about reaping what you sow, paying the piper, lying in the bed you’ve made.

Republicans chose to kneel before him. Will he now bring them to their knees?

Thanks in large part to Trump, they’re stuck with Senate candidates — Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Herschel Walker in Georgia, Blake Masters in Arizona — whose ineptness, inanity, immoderation or all three significantly diminish their chances in purple states at a propitious juncture.

Thanks in even larger part to Trump, voters ranked threats to democracy as the most pressing problem facing the country in a recent NBC News poll. That intensifying concern is among the reasons that President Biden went so big and bold last week in his intensely debated speech about extremism in America. He was eyeing the midterms, and he was wagering that Republican leaders’ indulgence of Trump’s foul play and fairy tales might finally cost them.

Trump is also a factor in Republicans’ vulnerability regarding abortion rights. For his own selfish political purposes, he made grand anti-abortion promises. He appointed decidedly anti-abortion judges, including three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. He as much as anyone fired up the anti-abortion movement to the point where Republicans may now get burned.

With two months until Election Day, Republicans want to focus voters’ attention on unaffordable housing, exorbitant grocery bills and the generally high cost of living. They want to instill deeper and broader fear about immigration and crime. They want to portray Democrats as the enemies of the American way.

But that’s more than a little tricky when Trump had America’s secrets strewn throughout the bowels of Mar-a-Loco. When his excuses for mishandling those classified documents change at a dizzying clip, contradict previous ones and often boil down to his typical infantile formula of I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I. When he uses Truth Social, the media penal colony to which Twitter and Facebook sentenced him, for all the old falsehoods plus new ones. When criminal charges against him aren’t out of the question.

The progressive excesses of some Democrats pale beside the madness of this would-be monarch.

Democrats could still have a bad, even brutal, November. That is indeed how the pendulum historically swings, and two months is plenty of time for political dynamics to change yet again. Biden could overplay his hand, a possibility suggested by that speech.

But for the moment, Republicans are spooked. Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, has decided to try to recapture the party’s long-ago Contract-With-America magic by detailing a “Commitment to America” that will no doubt omit what should be the most important commitment of all — to the truth. It also won’t erase the fact that 196 of the 529 Republican nominees running for the House, the Senate, governor, attorney general or secretary had “fully denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election,” according to a chilling FiveThirtyEight analysis of the party’s nominees as of Wednesday.

That morally corrupt position was probably a political asset in their primaries, just as having Trump’s endorsement usually was. But in the general election? As Republican nominees pivot toward that, at least a few of them are realizing that it’s a different ballgame — and that Trump is trouble. They’re taking baby steps away from the world’s biggest baby.

Good luck with that. He’ll never let them go, never muffle himself long enough or behave well enough for there to be a Republican narrative that doesn’t revolve around him. That was clear to Republicans from the start. To hang with him is to hang with him.

A Long List Of UN-Qualifications

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Election 2022, Environmental Issues, Global Issues, Political commentary, Social commentary

I’ve written before about Herschel Walker, the former footballer who is now running for a seat in the United States Senate from the state of Georgia.  Walker … well, I think he may have taken a few too many hits to the head in his football career, because I swear that every time he opens his mouth, it comes out stupid.  But his take on the well-being of the planet and life here on Planet Earth is simply jaw-dropping.  Back in July, he gave a speech and had a rather convoluted take on air quality and how he thinks it works …

“We in America have some of the cleanest air and cleanest water of anybody in the world. The U.S would spend millions of billions of dollars cleaning our good air up. Since we don’t control the air, our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then now we got to clean that back up, while they’re messing ours up. So what we’re doing is just spending money. Until these other countries can get on board and clean what they got up, it ain’t going to help us to start cleaning our stuff up. We’re already doing it the right way.”

And then on Sunday, in response to the environmental protections built into the newly-signed Inflation Reduction Act, he had this to say …

“They continue to try to fool you that they are helping you out. But they’re not. Because a lot of money, it’s going to trees. Don’t we have enough trees around here?”

I literally grabbed my head and groaned when I read that one.  I think, perhaps, Mr. Walker has already suffered from oxygen deprivation at some point in his life!  No, Herschel, we don’t have enough trees, but what we do have a surplus of is ignorant wanna-be members of Congress!  Please, Georgians, do not send this man to Washington!

There is a complete roster of highly unqualified and improbably candidates on the Republican ticket this year, and Eugene Robinson has done a great job of highlighting the worst of the worst, with the conclusion that while the former guy’s picks have racked up points in the primaries, they may well have brought about the opposite when it comes to November’s election …

Which Republican Senate candidate is worst? There are so many choices!

Eugene Robinson

22 August 2022

The race for the title of most incompetent, least electable Republican candidate for the Senate has become a real competition. Thanks, Donald Trump.

The former president’s endorsements led enough bad Senate nominees to primary victories that the GOP’s hopes of seizing control of the chamber — in what should be a Republican year — are fading. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) acknowledged ruefully last week that “candidate quality” is an issue. The “lack thereof” might have been implied, but his point was obvious.

Former football star Herschel Walker, whom Trump muscled his party into nominating against Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael G. Warnock in Georgia, had an early lead in the contest for hands-down-worst Republican standard-bearer. His across-the-board incoherence remains unmatched. But while Walker trails in the polls, he is actually doing better than some of his Trump-endorsed counterparts in other states.

Take Mehmet Oz, who trails Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman by 7½ points in the RealClearPolitics polling average in the battle for retiring GOP Sen. Patrick J. Toomey’s Pennsylvania seat.

It makes sense that Trump, a former reality television star, backed a reality television physician. But Oz’s supposed media savvy hasn’t made up for his other problems, chief among them, a lack of connection to the state he wants to represent.

Oz, a longtime New Jersey resident, only moved to Pennsylvania two years ago. Fetterman’s campaign has made gleeful, social-media-friendly hay from that fact, pushing for Oz to be nominated to the New Jersey hall of fame and spotlighting the number of Oz’s residences.

It certainly didn’t help last week that a video of Oz going grocery shopping and complaining about inflation went viral. Oz was trying to portray himself as Joe Average. He did not succeed.

In the video, first he gets the name of the store wrong — it was a Redner’s, a well-known Pennsylvania-based chain, not “Wegner’s,” as he called it. He then examines some raw broccoli, asparagus and carrots, and explains, “My wife wants some vegetables for crudités.” Fetterman, a cargo-shorts and hoodie-wearing Joe Average in everything but height, responded: “In PA, we call this a veggie tray” and issued a bumper sticker with the slogan “Let Them Eat Crudité.”

Then there’s Blake Masters. In Arizona, Republicans had high hopes of defeating incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, who looked vulnerable. But Trump pushed the GOP to nominate Masters, a venture capitalist and political novice who has disturbing support from far-right extremists, and who backs Trump’s false claims about the purported illegitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.

Masters has also attacked McConnell as being “not good at” legislating and has called for him to be replaced as GOP leader in the Senate. While Kelly’s political skills are seen by Democratic strategists as less than dazzling, a Fox News poll last week found him leading Masters by eight points, 50 percent to 42 percent.

In Ohio, the GOP ought to have had a lock on retiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s seat; Trump won the state by eight points in 2020. But a mid-August poll by Emerson College showed Republican J.D. Vance ahead of Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan by a mere three points, and a string of earlier polls by the nonpartisan Center Street PAC consistently showed Ryan in the lead.

Vance might have gotten rich writing his best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” but Ryan has deep roots in the state’s post-industrial Youngstown area. Vance was stridently anti-Trump before he became stridently pro-Trump, and — like Walker, Oz and Masters — he is a political novice.

Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a MAGA true-believer, trails Democratic challenger Mandela Barnes by four points, 50 percent to 46 percent, in a recent Fox News poll. Even Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida is suddenly running for his political life against his likely challenger, Democratic Rep. Val Demings. The polling averages have Rubio ahead; but the only recent survey, by the University of North Florida, showed Demings with a four-point lead. These races are close. And given polling errors in Democrats’ favor in recent elections, the contests might be even fiercer than these figures indicate.

Still, if the GOP snatches defeat from the jaws of victory and falls short in the Senate, Trump will be to blame. It is not clear what impact the Supreme Court’s decision striking down Roe v. Wade — made possible by the three justices Trump appointed — will have on Democratic turnout. But if voters across the country come out in huge numbers to support abortion rights, as they did in the recent Kansas referendum, then all bets are off.

Could Democrats even keep their majority in the House? Still unlikely. But watch this space, because it looks impossible to overestimate the damage Trump can do to his own party.

Biden and Dems are Getting Stuff Done

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Environmental Issues, Global Issues, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Re-blogs, Social commentary

My blogging buddy Jeff over at On the Fence Voters has found some things to be optimistic about and I like the way he thinks. We all need to remember that amidst the dark terrain of today’s political landscape, things ARE getting done, there IS hope for our future. Thank you, Jeff … I think we all need to remember that we have a president who cares about ALL the people, not only those with money to burn!

On The Fence Voters

Contrary to my pessimism about the midterms post a while back, my attitude is beginning to change. Things are getting better in the United States of America, and we have President Joe Biden and the Democrats to thank for that.

Meanwhile, the corrupt former president awaits his fate from many investigations and probes, and his sycophantic friends in the GOP proudly stand by him. This fact reflects the stark contrast between our two political parties. One party is working for the American people—the other works for one man and a deranged group of his cult followers.

To be sure, you may not like everything Joe Biden and the Democrats are doing. Some might not think the recently passed legislation, The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), goes far enough. Perhaps you believe centrist Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema played too significant a role and whittled down the bill to something far…

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A Bright Spot … Maybe?

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Election 2022, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Social commentary

Could you use a little ray of hope for the upcoming November mid-term elections?  I think we all could.  Dan Pfeiffer was a senior advisor to President Barack Obama for a number of years, and is the author of three books about politics in this new, uncharted “Maga Era”.  His newsletter on Substack is called The Message Box and today’s was an astute assessment of why there is hope for the Democratic Party to maintain a majority in the House and Senate after the mid-terms.  Read on …

Why Dems Could Win This Fall

An uncharacteristically optimistic take on how recent events have upended the midterms

Dan Pfeiffer

Optimism does not come naturally to me. If I had a family crest, “Prepare for the worst, be surprised by the best” would be the motto emblazoned on it. I have tried to avoid telling people what they want to hear about a high stakes midterm election in this absolutely miserable political environment. Up until recently, Democrats were stuck in a doom loop.. That defeatism threatened to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. What activist, donor, or voter wants to sign up for a suicide mission? And to be honest, it’s been hard to make a reasonable, fact-based case that Democrats could upend the historical trends. However, over the last few weeks, the worm has turned. Democrats now have a legitimate shot to outpace expectations dramatically.

I am not devolving into a sunny guy. This is not a prediction. It is not an admonition against bedwetting. I think the odds are still against Democrats. We have an eternity till Election Day. The future looked quite dire three weeks ago, and may look just as dire in three weeks. But as we sit here today, one can make a credible bull case for Democrats.

Reason 1 for Optimism: Success

All political analysis should begin with the fact that America has a growing, diverse, pro-truth, pro-democracy, anti-MAGA majority. Now, of course, this majority is not evenly distributed geographically, which is why the GOP often has an advantage in the Senate and Electoral College. But the bulk of the races this cycle will be conducted in states Joe Biden won in 2020. Simply reconstructing the Biden coalition in composition and turnout will be sufficient to win. Our major problem to date has been disillusion and disappointment among our base and the Independent voters who favor Biden. Less than a month ago, Democrats seemed headed for a legislative disaster. During this period, Jonathan Chait wrote in New York Magazine:

By realistic or even minimal standards of performance, this two-year term, almost certain to be the last period of Democratic-controlled government for the foreseeable future, has been a failure. The ramifications of this defeat — political, economic, and ecological — will reverberate.

And then everything changed.

In rapid succession, Democrats passed legislation on guns, microchips, veterans’ benefits, and the historic Inflation Reduction Act. Democrats now have reasons to be happy, and Independents have reasons to reconsider supporting Republicans. More specifically, the climate change provisions are an opportunity to re-engage young voters. Last week, after the Manchin-Schumer deal was announced, I wrote:

No group of our core Democratic constituency has become more disillusioned or disengaged than younger voters. Passing the most ambitious climate change bill in history creates an opportunity to re-engage this group. People won’t vote this time if they think their last vote didn’t matter. Passing a serious climate change package is proof that every door knocked, text sent, and vote cast in 2020 mattered a whole helluva lot.

Democrats now have a powerful case to convince their voters to keep them in the majority.

Reason 2: Improving Political Environment

Despite this newsletter and other strategy, tactics, and message-focused sources, the biggest factors in political success are often far outside the control of the candidates and campaign operatives. The driving force in this election is inflation — and specifically, the price of gas and groceries. In most polling, 80 to 90 percent of voters listed inflation as a top concern. Most gave Biden (and Democrats more broadly) abysmal marks for their handling of the issue. As gas prices went up, President Biden’s approval rating went down. While the near-term picture on inflation is cloudy, gas prices have been steadily declining for more than a month.

Costs are still elevated, and families still feel financial pressure, but the trajectory is good. The Biden Administration continues their valiant efforts to focus the public’s attention on the steady decline. Voters are historically forward-looking. They are willing to give politicians credit for progress even if the present is still suboptimal. If gas prices continue to drop, it’s more likely that the electorate will give the Democrats credit for the historic number of jobs created since Biden took office.

Reason 3: Backlash Towards GOP Policies

Presidents usually get shellacked in their first midterm. Reagan, Bush #41, Clinton, Obama, and Trump all lost many seats. The primary theory for this occurrence is called the “Thermostatic Model,” which Andrew Prokop described in Vox as follows:

This theory holds that the public functions essentially like a thermostat, kicking in when it’s either too hot or too cold to restore the preferred temperature. Voters could conclude things are too conservative under a Republican regime and elect a new Democratic president. But then they could quickly conclude things have become too liberal, and swing back toward Republicans in the midterms. Then after Republicans regain some power, perhaps opinion will swing back toward Democrats and get the president reelected. (The Obama and Clinton presidencies both followed this trajectory.)

Under this theory, the Republican Wave of 2010 was a response to large-scale Obama initiatives like the stimulus plan and Obamacare. Both of these bills were underwater in the Fall of 2010. Obama’s numbers bounced back when the public saw the dangerous extremism of the new Republican majority.

Like every other recent president, Joe Biden’s numbers took a big hit. His approval rating is now at or below where Donald Trump’s was at the same time. This is not great. Trump is sort of the “Mendoza Line” for Presidents. What’s unique about Biden’s political challenges is that they are not a response to his policy agenda. Every one of his major initiatives was popular when it passed and remains so today. The initial polling on the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS bills show broad, bipartisan support. To the extent policy backlash exists in this election, it’s a response to the extremist policy agenda of MAGA Republicans embodied by the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dobbs case. A Supreme Court rigged by Republicans ripping a constitutional right from millions of Americans combined with a series of Orwellian Republican laws like book bans have put the GOP on defense. The public is concerned about overreach from Republicans, not Democrats. We saw the power of abortion as an issue in the recent Kansas referendum. The anti-abortion side lost by double digits in a state Trump won by 15 points. Most notably, 100,000 Independents who could not vote in the party primaries turned out to vote on the abortion initiative.

Reason 4: Candidate Quality

With the help of Donald Trump, Republicans nominated a uniquely vulnerable slate of candidates. This group of criminal, incompetent carnival barkers give Democrats a slight advantage in states they would lose under more normal circumstances. The Republican gubernatorial nominees in Pennsylvania and Michigan were active parts of the insurrection. The Republican nominee for Attorney General in Arizona is an actual member of the Oath Keepers — a Right Wing terror group. Herschel Walker’s Georgia Senate campaign has been one disaster after another. This recent (and devastating) ad shows Walker’s unique vulnerability:

Dr. Oz has flopped so badly that the Republican Party is exploring ways to replace him on the Pennsylvania ballot. J.D. Vance in Ohio is such an obvious fraud that he is in danger of losing Ohio — a state Trump won by more than 10 points twice. I could go on and on, but you get the point. Being a great candidate is rarely enough to win in a tough year, but a bad candidate can lose in the best year.

So You’re Saying There’s a Chance…?

Look, we have miles to travel between now and Election Day. The political environment changed dramatically once and could change again. To that point, the FBI raided Mar-A-Lago in the three hours since I finished the last draft of this piece.

If gas prices tick back up or President Biden’s approval ratings don’t rise with his fortunes, Dems could still be in heaps of trouble. The House is A LOT tougher than the Senate, but this election is now winnable if, and only if, we all dig in and double down on the hard work that delivered us the House, Senate, and White House in the last two elections.

The GOP — It Ain’t What It Used To Be

Posted on by under Election 2022, Election 2024, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

One of the columnists I most respect is Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post.  I bookmarked his column from Thursday to further peruse and upon doing so, I thought it well worth sharing with you.  We the People can still salvage the democratic foundations from under the ashes of conservative cultism, but … we don’t have many chances left, which is why it is so imperative that we make sure everyone votes this November and in November 2024 … it may be the last best hope for the survival of the United States.

State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Franklin), the Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, gestures to the crowd during his primary night election party in Chambersburg, Pa., on May 17. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Cult or a conspiracy? The GOP sure isn’t a normal political party.

By Eugene Robinson

May 19, 2022

Is today’s Republican Party primarily a cult of personality or a seditious conspiracy? I can argue either side of that question. But it is clear that the GOP is no longer a political organization or movement in the traditional sense. And if Republican cultists and conspirators win power in November, voters have only ourselves to blame.

It’s not as if we can’t see the dangers that lie ahead. As Bob Dylan once sang, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

The object of the GOP’s cultish devotion is, of course, former president Donald Trump. I have my doubts whether Trump will actually run for the White House again in 2024 (and risk losing twice, whether he acknowledges either loss publicly), but for now he is the unchallenged egomaniacal leader of the party he seized in 2016.

Tuesday’s primary results in Pennsylvania prove Trump’s primacy. As the party’s nominee for governor, GOP voters chose Trump’s preferred pick, a state senator named Doug Mastriano who trumpets the “big lie” about the 2020 election being stolen; was present at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 (though he says he left before the insurrectionary portion of the events); and appeared at an event associated with the hallucinatory QAnon conspiracy theory about the nation somehow being run by a cabal of pedophiles.

His Democratic opponent, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, should be able to win that race handily by simply keeping his rhetoric and positions within the bounds of reality as we know it — if, and only if, enough Democrats, independents and still-sane Republicans bother to vote in November.

The race for the Republican nomination for Pennsylvania’s contested U.S. Senate seat is, as of this writing, a virtual tie between Trump’s choice, television celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, and hedge fund titan David McCormick. Far-right political commentator Kathy Barnette faded to third after Trump declared her too extreme even for his liking.

But look again at that lineup of candidates. None has any of the experience in elective office that used to be expected of a candidate for the Senate. And the campaign consisted mostly of all three professing their undying fealty to Trump and their faith in his infallibility.

The Democratic candidate in that November contest — Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who won his primary easily, despite suffering a stroke Friday, and is on the mend — has a good chance of winning, which could increase the Democrats’ tenuous Senate majority if they can hold other seats.

In North Carolina, GOP Rep. Ted Budd, another Trump endorsee, won the primary for that state’s open Senate seat; Budd is another “big lie” espouser who voted against certifying the 2020 electoral vote, even after the Jan. 6 rioters had sacked the Capitol. One Trump-endorsed N.C. Republican, Rep. Madison Cawthorn, did lose his primary. But Cawthorn’s antics and transgressions were such that not even Trump’s lukewarm pitch for “a second chance” for the troubled young politician could save him.

The dominant pattern of the Republican primaries thus far is clear: It is very, very hard to win a statewide nomination without Trump’s support, or at least his amity; and it is impossible to win Trump’s backing if you reject his lie about the supposedly “stolen” election. How is that anything but cultlike?

This is the most dangerous aspect of the GOP’s devolution from party to personality cult: Devotion to Trump requires a willingness to betray democracy. Much of Trump’s attention is focused on states, such as Pennsylvania, where he falsely claims he was victimized by voter fraud. If Mastriano were to win the governor’s race, his handpicked secretary of state could refuse to certify 2024 election results that Trump did not like.

Vote-counting in the Pennsylvania Senate primary is not yet finished, but Trump has already called on Oz — who has a tiny, tentative lead over McCormick — to preemptively “declare victory.”

This is where the question of seditious conspiracy comes in. The Republican Party is shaping itself in Trump’s image, and Trump has shown nothing but contempt for the traditions of fair play and good will that allow our democracy to function. Refusing to accept the will of the voters is authoritarianism. Today’s GOP, increasingly, is just fine with that.

All is not lost, however. Turnout in midterm elections is traditionally much lower than in presidential years. Voters who are appalled at what the GOP has become can send a powerful and definitive message by abandoning their traditional nonchalance and voting in huge numbers. We can reject Trumpism, both for its cultishness and for its proto-fascism. We can take a stand.

It’s up to us what kind of country we want to live in. We had better speak our minds with our votes — while we still can.

Don’t Wait ‘Til It’s Too Late!!!

Posted on by under education, Election 2022, Election 2024, Law and justice, Political commentary, voting rights

In conversations with friends, I have often said that the only way to ensure that the former guy cannot take over the nation following the 2024 presidential election is to ensure that he cannot be on the ballot.  There are only two ways to do that:  his death, or his imprisonment.  If we fail to keep the name “Trump” off the ballot, this nation will no longer be a democratic republic.  Full stop.  Robert Reich agrees, only he states it far better than I could …

Why it must happen soon: The United States vs. Donald J. Trump

Merrick Garland must do it now, before it’s too late

Robert Reich, 18 April 2022

On Friday, Trump endorsed J.D. Vance in the Ohio Senate Republican primary. This follows his endorsement of Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania’s Senate Republican primary and Herschel Walker in the Georgia Senate race. The press has framed these endorsements as long-shot bets that “could put [Trump’s] desired image as a kingmaker at risk.” But this misses the point. What’s really at stake for Trump is the selling of Trump and his big lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

To be endorsed by Trump, candidates apparently must fulfill three prerequisites: 1) They have to be running in swing states whose primaries and general elections will attract lots of media attention. 2) They must be totally committed to Trump and his big lie. And 3) they must have shown themselves capable of promoting Trump and his lie with the kind of celebrity pizzaz that sells well on television.

Vance — celebrity author of “Hillbilly Elegy” — was originally appalled by Trump and his lie, and said so. But now that he’s running for the Senate, Vance has become one of the most forceful promoters of Trump and articulate peddlers of his big lie. As Trump noted about Vance, “he gets it now.”

Oz is a celebrity television doctor who has over the years come under fire for bogus on-air medical advice, which makes him perfect for promoting Trump and his big lie, too. Trump admires Oz’s television bona fides: “They liked him for a long time,” Trump said of Oz at a rally in Pennsylvania last week. “That’s like a poll. You know, when you’re in television for 18 years, that’s like a poll. That means people like you.”

Walker fits the criteria, as well. He was both a college and NFL star.

Trump couldn’t care less whether he’s viewed as a “kingmaker” by the press and politicians inside the Beltway. He cares only about his narcissistic need to delegitimize the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. And he has a knack for recognizing ambitious, unprincipled, television-savvy hucksters who will help him.

Let me pause here to emphasize two things that are too easily forgotten. First, no one to this day has produced even a shred of evidence that fraud affected the results of the 2020 election. Sixty federal judges, along with Trump’s own departments of justice and homeland security, have concluded that Biden won fair and square.

Second, the lynchpin of democracy is the peaceful transition of power from those who lose elections to those who win them. Yet it’s been over a year and half since Trump has refused to concede — continuously spreading his big lie that the election was stolen, pushing public officials at all levels of government to overturn the election, and instigating an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on the day Congress was to certify the election results. As Federal District Court Judge David Carter stated in a recent opinion, “[T]he Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”

Trump is already well on the way to rebuilding the Republican Party around his big lie. He is purging the GOP of his critics and installing loyalists in key state positions. And he is inspiring GOP-state legislatures to enact election sabotage laws that will give Trump and his supporters opportunities to rig congressional election results. The upcoming 2022 congressional elections will serve as proving grounds for his attempt to steal the 2024 presidential election.

Trump is a growing menace to our system of self-government. The longer he goes without being held accountable for what he has done, the more danger he poses.

The critical question, then, is whether Attorney General Merrick Garland will bring criminal charges against him — and when. The window of opportunity is closing fast. The House Select Committee on January 6 will be holding public hearings in a few weeks and report its findings thereafter. (The committee has already collected nearly 10,000 documents and conducted more than 860 depositions and interviews, including with Trump family members and his close associates.) If Republicans take over the House in the midterm elections, they are sure to close down the inquiry.

Moreover, immediately after the midterm elections, America will be in the gravitational pull of the 2024 presidential primaries — in which Trump will almost certainly play a leading role, unless he is indicted and convicted. He has already amassed a campaign chest of more than $120 million, more than double that of the Republican National Committee. During the last six months of 2021, his PAC raised more money online than the GOP every day but two. And once he is a declared candidate, it will be impossible for Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms to stop him from engulfing them with his lies.

Some say Garland should not bring criminal charges against Trump because criminal charges have never before been brought against a former president. This is a specious argument because no former president has ever before attempted to overthrow a duly elected President — the first attempted coup in the 233-year history of the United States government.

Others worry that criminal charges against Trump — along with a trial and possible imprisonment — would only deepen the fierce partisan divide that’s already drained trust out of much of American democracy. This is a legitimate concern. But failure to hold Trump accountable for what he has done would pose a far greater risk for American democracy — permanently entrenching distrust in our election system and legitimizing future battles over every contest, possibly provoking repeated rounds of violence.

Trump’s indictment and conviction must occur as quickly as possible. The upcoming midterm elections won’t simply be a battle between Republicans and Democrats. They will be a battle between Trump acolytes and fair election supporters over protecting the integrity of our elections and our democracy. The sooner Trump is held accountable for his criminality, the safer American democracy will be.

A Few Grumblings & Grousings

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Election 2022, Global Issues, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

My motivation is skating on thin ice the last day or two, probably because I’m not sleeping well and thus not feeling at the top of my game.  But a few snippets came to me yesterday that I thought to share …

France’s very own Trumpian figure …

Marine LePen is back.  In case you’ve forgotten, she was the right-wing populist candidate who ran for president of France back in 2017 and lost to Emmanuel Macron, gaining only 33.9% of the vote.  LePen is much like other populist candidates including Trump … she talks a good talk, says what she believes people want to hear, but has no plan of action and much of what she promises is simply un-doable in a democracy.  Just as when Trump was defeated in the 2020 election and I expected (hoped) he would disappear into oblivioun, I hoped the same for LePen after the 2017 French election.  But, like Trump, like a bad penny, she has stuck around and is now … yep, you guessed it … running against Macron yet again this year.

I’ve heard the populist agenda so much that I could almost write the script:  harsh restrictions on immigration, nationalism (“America” or “France” First), tax cuts, increases to people’s pensions, etc.  The reality is that none of this is simple, much of it is both undesirable and counter-productive.  This IS a global world now, not one where individual nations can safely or productively stand alone as LePen, Bolsonaro (Brazil) or Trump would like to portray it.

The election in France is being held today, and the likelihood is that there will be no clear winner, meaning a run-off election will be held on April 24th.  Currently, most pollsters project Macron to win at that time, albeit by a slim margin that seems to get slimmer day-by-day.  For the sake of the people of France, but also for the sake of the larger world, I hope Ms. LePen is trounced once and for all and goes back into whatever hole she crawled out of!

Back here in the U.S. …

Of late, a number of highly unqualified people have run for congressional seats … some have even won, like Margie Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Madison Cawthorn.  In the upcoming mid-term elections, there are at least two that stand out like sore thumbs:  “Dr.” Oz, and J.D. Vance.  Let’s follow the yellow brick road and start with Oz …

Dr. Mehmet Oz is a board-certified cardiothoracic surgeon.  That said, his days of practicing serious medicine in order to save lives are long since forgotten.  In the days since, he has pushed misleading, science-free and unproven alternative therapies such as homeopathy, as well as fad diets, detoxes and cleanses. Some of these things have been potentially harmful, including hydroxychloroquine, which he once touted would be beneficial in the treatment or prevention of COVID.  He has become a joke, a laughingstock, a media circus clown.  And now … he wants a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Oz is running as a Republican for Pennsylvania’s open US Senate seat.  What qualifications does he bring to the table?  None.  But then, this is 2022 when ‘qualifications’ are deemed irrelevant and persona is the test that must be passed to lure the voters.  Please, Pennsylvania … do not vote for this circus clown!

J.D. Vance is not a doctor, but rather a published author of exactly one book:  Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.  Not having read the book (and having no intention of doing so) I cannot critique his literary work, but I can address his run for the seat in the U.S. Senate being vacated by Ohio Senator Rob Portman.  His platform speaks for itself, including such things as ending women’s rights, ‘protecting’ second amendment ‘rights’, an “America First” foreign policy platform, and stiff restrictions on voting rights.

Handing Oz and Vance seats in the U.S. Senate would no doubt turn the Senate into as much of a clown show as the House of Representatives is today.  There was a time when I would have laughed, knowing that these two bozos weren’t going to get within 50 miles of the U.S. Capitol, but the populace of this nation has proven me wrong, has proven that the goofier, more outspoken and outrageous a candidate is, the more appealing he is to the uninformed masses.

And that’s it for now, folks, but I thought you might enjoy this clip from a very old … OLD … television show, What’s My Line, that Dan Rather sent in his daily email yesterday …