The Screaming Moderate

They may be coming to take me away (ha ha, ho ho)

1/9/2021

I have come around to thinking this entire Trump presidency has been, and is, far more than a grift.

I’m not one who buys into conspiracy theories. And I’ve not seen this one circulate anyway so maybe it’s just the result of five years of focused attention on Donald J. Trump.

I’m beginning to believe, though, that the last four years have not been a rambling, unfocused presidency led by a moron but an ever evolving conspiracy at taking over this country by Trump and other forces.

I doubt the Russians were involved because I don’t think Putin is stupid. But he’s smart enough to go along to watch the damage Trump would do to our institutions and norms. For Putin, that would be more than enough.

But what if you believe that pushing Mark Esper out as defense secretary was necessary to be sure no one would block Trump attempting to stop the National Guard from being deployed during a planned charge against the U.S. Capitol.

Next, then, you can accept that appointing an even flunkier flunky to the job just weeks before the final coup attempt. That way Trump would have an easier time stopping the National Guard from deploying.

How many of the cabinet secretaries are ‘acting’? Therefore easier to get around?

How orchestrated was getting thousands to attend a Stop the Steal rally the day electoral votes were to be counted, especially after for five years you nurtured a cult of followers who would draw their guns to help if you did indeed shot someone on Fifth Avenue?

Did you watch those thugs desecrate the U.S. Capitol with destruction and feces?

Did you see the guy with white zip ties?

Did you hear that criminal calling for the mob to ‘string up’ the Vice President, who was about to betray Trump?

Have you taken in the fact that for at least five years Trump, praised and nurtured white nationalists and egged on right-wing crazies like Q Anon? These were the people most easily recruited to his racist, authoritarian philosophy. They were a mob waiting for a leader.

Rudy Giuliani? He goes along with it as does Michael Flynn and the bizarre Roger Stone, the godfather of conspiracy theorists, the strongest voice that a “deep state” exists among the career federal bureaucracy to destroy a President.

I have a hard time believing this wasn’t far more orchestrated than we think.

And, believe me, I know how that sounds. Like I’ve gone around the next bend or three. But it is not beyond the realm of possibility either. Is it?

It is not hard to imagine, after watching those anarchists attack our U.S. Capitol and look to do more damage than they did, as if the loss of five lives and our country’s global reputation wasn’t enough. I do believe there were potential murderers among that crowd.

Trump won’t resign. He has too much more damage he can do. His “peaceful transition of power” is no more believable than when he said he didn’t sleep with those many women. Or rape many of them. Or that he did not know about a six-figure payment to one to buy her silence.

Plus, he needs to hand out some more pardons before he leaves office to cover his ass for the many misdeeds and crimes he’s committed.

Meantime, I’ll be on the lookout for the men in white jackets and butterfly nets coming after me.

2 Comments

Revolutionary-in-chief

1/7/2021

1 Comment

Yesterday’s display of attempted revolution by Donald J. Trump’s supporters was about the most frightening, disgusting and horrible things we have witnessed in our country.

And that covers a lot of ground.

We should not be surprised though.

Trump, if it wasn’t clear enough before, is a dictator wannabe. He is a narcissist who is never wrong and will never be the worst thing in his limited vocabulary – a L-0-S-E-R.

Indeed, though, that’s what he is and always has been.

Other politicians (hello, Sen. Mitch McConnell) used him to achieve their own ends. Though McConnell gave a true statesman’s address yesterday.

The rats jumping off the Bad Ship Trump are just that, rats. If they couldn’t see what this man was made of before he sent his followers and anarchists to invade Capitol Hill, then they didn’t belong in their jobs of major responsibility in the first place.

Doing the “right” thing two weeks before the Administration ends is hardly heroic.

And good that cabinet members are reportedly discussing the 25th Amendment – that’s the fastest way, if they act literally today, to get this monster out of the Oval Office before he launches a war either against another country or his own fellow citizens.

Just ask Vice President Mike Pence how quickly you can go from loyal solider to enemy in an afternoon.

And they should have invoked the 25th years ago Those cabinet members have seen what he is for years, up close and totally unvarnished. Remember when Secretary of State Tillerson called him a "moron?" Remember when defense secretaries resigned in fear of his approach to foreign policy and defense?

Impeachment would be nice, but that’s not gonna happen. Maybe the Senate would even convict him this time.

Anyone who’s been even a casual reader of this blog knows I have been opposed to this man since, literally, he first rolled down that faux gold escalator. That isn’t an “I told you so,” I was far from the biggest Trump critic. Well, I've been pretty big but certainly not the most prominent Trump critic around.

And many of my friends from when I served in Republican administrations have labeled me a traitor or disloyalist. As the kids used to say, “Whatever.” This is a very bad man and I quit the GOP so I wasn't a total hypocrite.

He should be removed from office because now we have proof that he is capable of anything.

Those folks who stormed the Capitol yesterday were led not by merely “supporters” of Trump, but anarchists who have been looking for any excuse to cause havoc, danger and more. If the “average” Trump supporter among them could stand and watch what those people did to the Capitol yesterday, they are accomplices.

As President Trump would say, “and I’m sure there were good people, too.”

But they stood around and watched those penny ante thugs break into the Capitol and desecrate everything they could get their hands on or their asses to sit in.

It was disgusting, and that’s not a strong enough word.

Expect Trump to attend Joe Biden’s inauguration? I doubt it and, honestly, the Secret Service might want to weigh in on what a security risk and potential leader of violence he would be at the inauguration.

1 Comment

A truly consequential 48 hours

1/5/2021

0 Comments

The next 48 hours or so will be the most consequential political hours in the nation’s history.

First, we have the two special elections in Georgia that will determine control of the U.S. Senate and, largely, how successful legislatively President-elect Joe Biden will be.

Then, Wednesday we have the Republican challenge of electoral votes. That challenge will fail to change the election results.

The Georgia election, as they say, is what it is. Who wins is up to the voters in Georgia. And as the state's election officials have demonstrated, they know how to run a fair election.

The Wednesday challenge is in the hands of senators and House members who will debate and vote. There is no way the November vote will be overturned but it will be indicative of what the Republican Party views itself as – at least in the minds of the current elected congresspeople – for years to come.

All the arguments have been presented and I won’t repeat them here. Bottom line, the challenges – while allowed by the Constitution – are frivolous and are seriously damaging our democracy, a democracy whose institutions have held up well in the face of serious challenges over the last four years and, especially, the last couple of months.

Republican senators and congressmen, who claim to be conservatives, aren’t when they challenge the sanctity of the people’s vote. Men and women who have been fierce defenders of the Constitution (this means you Vice President Pence) by challenging certified results from the states, are trying to supplant the will of the people with their own craven ambitions.

I have to believe that at least half and I hope more of those who have signed on to challenging the vote don’t believe they have a leg to stand on, nor do they believe in the argument they'll be making. But they do it for opportunistic political advantage (standing out from the crowd among the Trump base) and to show (as if they haven’t demonstrated it already) fealty to Donald J. Trump and his base of voters.

President Trump appears to have convinced his public self that he really did win. In spite of evidence to the contrary, Trump continues to tout rumors of large numbers of dead citizens voting, illegal votes from out of staters, forged ballots and voting machines that vote the way they're programmed to vote, even though there is no such program or WiFi capability for them to be hacked into.

Trump isn’t going quietly into that good night for, to him, good reasons: his narcissistic ego, the belief he cannot be a loser and the jeopardy he'll be in legally and financially on January 20 at noon.

And leave us not forget the serious potential for violence Wednesday from those who say they are Trump supporters but really are just using him for their own violent purposes. And the President will go to speak to those “supporters” which will only stir them up more as he attacks what will then be going on a mile or so away in the Capitol. A march on the Capitol is likely to follow. Hard to imagine that won't become violent.

These truly are dangerous times with the Proud Boys, a gang of violent folks who are plotting how to sneak guns into the District of Columbia, leading Wednesday's rally. Then again, we have a newly sworn in Republican congresswoman who says she will carry her pistol with her in the Capitol.

Today’s elections will be controlled by the voters in Georgia and what they think is right for their state.

Wednesday’s election challenges will be political warfare over an election that’s been over for weeks – and every one of those congressmen knows it.

The institutions of our democracy will continue to control our democracy.

The potential violence Wednesday, I hope, will be controlled too.

0 Comments

Trump is the proof our Founders were right

12/23/2020

0 Comments

I have a friend who recently lost his father to COVID.

His dad followed all the government guidance. He wore a mask, socially distanced, washed his hands, stayed inside his family pod. Yet, he caught the virus obviously from someone who didn’t follow the guidance and who went about his or her carefree way denying the science and ignoring that part of the guidance is to wear a mask, etc., to protect others from you giving them the virus. As with hundreds of thousands of others, his dad died for no good reason. Government leaders and many fellow citizens have mishandled the virus. And, his dad is dead.

My friend then went through the horrible things you have to do after the unexpected death of a loved one. Plan the funeral, draft a heartfelt and pained eulogy, place an obit he was paying for into a Florida paper that was refusing to run certain lines that criticized the Florida governor for his mishandling the virus. He said to me in a text:

“What’s happened to our country?”

Indeed. Consider:

An innocent air conditioner repairman recently was run off the road on his way to work, the target of a vigilante who was surveilling him for days, paid for by the recently founded Liberty Center for God and Country, funded by a supporter of President Trump and seeking to find the “millions” of votes the President said were missing, costing him the election. Thinking the repairman’s van contained millions of fake ballots, the vigilante crashed his car into the repairman’s truck, got him on the ground, pushed his foot into the man’s back, holding him at gunpoint until a real cop passed by and righted the dangerous and wrong-headed operation.

What was found in the van? Air conditioner repair equipment.

Republican Congressmen (plural) are making noise about objecting to the certification of the Electoral College count by the Congress. They are claiming certain states, some led by Republicans, rigged the election and the Democratic votes should be tossed out, awarding the election to Trump. Normal certification of the electoral vote is routine and mundane. Not this time around. Trump meets with conspiracy theorists to find ways to block the vote. And his vice president, Mike Pence who will chair the session where Congress will certify the votes, has been part of the planning.

The President is bitching that he won an election that he’s lost by seven or eight million votes and, in his own description, a landslide vote in the electoral college.

The President stayed out of negotiations with the Hill over legislation aimed at giving money to millions who need it to pay the rent, buy food, buy medicine and more but who are basically financially wiped out by the virus.

As soon as those negotiations were completed, with the involvement of Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Trump said it wasn’t enough and the payments should be $2,000 a person rather than the $600 negotiated. Personally, I’m fine with the $2,000 but the president rejected that offer months ago.

Now, in an effort to pretend he is the outsider who doesn’t think (his) government is doing enough, he creates a situation where help to those fellow citizens (many of whom are his voters) won’t see any money until a new president is sworn in. Because Trump wants to be seen as the generous man. Instead the self-proclaimed master negotiator stayed out the negotiations and then announced what he wants.

Trump supporters are rallying in states that went for Biden that Trump is imagining went for him. They parade, they chant "Stop the Steal." Meantime where is that majority of voters who elected Biden? Why aren't they marching because President Trump is the one trying to steal the election?

The President completes his term as he started it, refusing to criticize Russia's Vladimir Putin whose government hacked into the computer system of many businesses and the U.S. Government. These hacks are very serious could do long-lasting damage to our country and so far among those who have pointed the finger at the Russians are Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General Wililiam Barr, and the Intelligence Community. Trump though says it was China, China, China.

And that's just a brief list.

Meantime, the virus has gotten worse than ever and Trump doesn't mentioned it at all. Thousands of Americans are dying every day. Our hospitals are pushed to the maximum.

Except for telling reporters they better not give credit for the approved vaccines to President-elect Biden, that is. Trump, as his spokesman said, “oversaw” development of the vaccines as if he was in the lab searching himself for the solution.

Fact is, the rapid discovery of vaccines is partly due to President Trump’s administration putting Operation Warp Speed into place. He should be spending his last few weeks in office promoting that as one of his positive legacies along with other accomplishments (many I disagree with) such as appointing hundreds of conservative judges and three Supreme Court associate justices.

Instead he rails against some of those judges because they are among about 50 who threw out his campaign’s election-rigging lawsuits. Judges said there was no proof introduced into evidence proving the claim.

Alas, that is because there is no proof that the election was rigged. Anywhere.

The President of the United States has attacked every democratic institution we have – the Congress, the Courts, the military leadership, the intelligence community, a free press and more – because he sees himself as a victim of those institutions.

In fact Trump is the proof that the founders of cur country did a good job of drafting our Constitution. The Constitution created institutions that protect the country from someone who tries to rule as the tyrants they ran from in England.

The institutions held as they were intended.

0 Comments

70 is the new...whatever

12/17/2020

2 Comments

I’m not all that old. I mean, I turned 70 on my last birthday and in the crazy year that is 2020, they tell me 70 is like the new 50 or some nonsense. Fact is, I am 70.

Heck, couple of weeks ago my 26-year-old grandson and his partner had a baby making me a great-grandfather. At 70.

How can that be, you ask? I’ll tell you: I had kids when I was young and my kids had kids when they were younger. My oldest daughter made me a grandfather at 45 and, proving karma lives, her son turned her into a grandma at 45.

(When I first heard my grandson was going to be a father, I said to him, "Lord, you're making me the father of a grandmother!" My wife, ever helpful, quickly reminded me, "and you, a great-grandfather!" Thank you, dear.)

Thus, great-grandchild (she’s beautiful if you hadn’t guessed).

I’m beginning to get all the things those of us of a certain age get. Little maladies, little issues to deal with; doctors with specialties I never before needed are now regular appointments. Comes with the territory, from what I’m learning, for most of us.

But today, today is what drove home my age. It’s snowing here in Massachusetts. Now, I’ve had a couple of strokes (the last one 15 years ago, so I'm back to the same risk of having one anyone is, thank goodness) so my wife doesn’t let me do anything too taxing. (Some of those things I really could do, but I like to do what my wife tells me.)

Today, though, by about 9 a.m. we had maybe 4 or 5 inches of snow on the ground and the cars. So I headed out before my wife to begin shoveling a path to the driveway and, importantly, to where we keep our trash container because, after all, tomorrow is trash day and I need a clear path to the street.

Before I lifted the first shovel of snow, I heard a voice behind me saying, “You shouldn’t be doing that.” No, not the gods. My obviously very nice neighbor across the street was standing there, shovel in hand and, like the Energizer Bunny, was scooping up snow at a pace I could never have matched. And I’m guessing he’s in his 50s.

Thus, the realization hit: I have become the old man across the street who kind people "look in on."

Oy.

2 Comments

The grifter-in-chief

12/8/2020

0 Comments

As President Trump’s term ends, let’s talk just for a moment about one of the two things that drives him. No, not ego…that’s the other thing. This thing is money.

Trump is leading the grifter’s dream right now. Since mid-October he has raised nearly $500 million. Since he lost the election, he has raised more than $200 million of that for his “defense fund.”

But there is no defense going on.

His people are going around the country screaming “fixed election,” but so far they have gotten traction exactly … well, nowhere, including states run by Republicans who voted for him. Those folks, I doubt, were even thinking about rigging the election because they took oaths to follow the law.

President Trump swore an oath to the Constitution, too. That mattered not to him. For one, he lies. And, two, he has broken his oath of office repeatedly.

He said he’d donate his salary to charity and his office has, steadfastly, announced each quarter (except for this year, so far) his targeted fund. His targets, though, instead of charities have become departments in the federal government.

Now, there is a law that federal agencies can’t accept donations but Trump’s spokesman says that he has donated the money. I don't know if that's true because I can’t stop thinking about that charity foundation he had before he was President and the court ordering it to cease because the money was being used for personal purposes, not the no-tax reasons it stated publicly.

Then again maybe he is donating his salary to the government because he never met a law he couldn't break.

That money he’s been raising since the election, if you read the small print, can be used by him for his future political endeavors or to fund his private lifestyle.

This is the grifter part.

His supporters literally are throwing money at the grifter-in-chief because they believe him when he says that the election was rigged against him. Apparently they forget that it is their family, friends and neighbors who count the votes and could, if it were true, reveal the dastardly deed. A couple of folks have testified but, if you’ve seen them on TV, their credibility is, at best, questionable. (Although that lady last week made for great Saturday Night Live fodder because the writers just had to use her actual testimony to be funny.)

Anyway, he could scream “fake news” about all this but he as admitted to Lesley Stahl of CBS before the election that he does that “to discredit you all (the media) and demean you so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.”

And, that strategy has worked. A big portion of the country now shouts and threatens reporters attending events related (and some not) to him.

It’s true, though, that he lives out loud.

His “me-me” personality is showing very clearly right now – ostensibly he is raising money to contest an election that was handled fairly and properly, while thousands of Americans die every day because of the mismanagement of the coronavirus by his Administration. Even his lawyers in court don't argue there was fraud because to do that would put their law licenses at risk because, well, the widespread fraud claim is just not true.

In Donald Trump’s mind, though, there’s never a bad time to grift.
After all, this is the biggest bully pulpit he will ever have. The presidency is the dream of any grifter – a big audience and lots of money to pilfer.

One thing he could have done was use that biggest pulpit in the world to ask for people to wear masks, wash their hands and stay socially distant to control the disease. He then honestly would have saved thousands of lives. Instead he used it to circulate one of his biggest lies -- to play down (as he also admitted) the virus so as “not to cause a panic.”

It’s a tie for his biggest lie. He also is lying about the election being rigged against him. It wasn’t. He earned that defeat all on his own.

Through it all, though, he continues to grift.

0 Comments

Things that make you go hmmm.

12/2/2020

0 Comments

It isn’t only Trump coming up with ideas that seem crazy to most of us over the last four years. I mean, creating a Schedule F to get rid of career employees you don’t want or who represent the "Deep State," or to cripple the Biden Administration when it comes in and finds fewer experts on the payroll? Trust me, Donald J. Trump didn’t come up with that. But …. who did?

Trump’s future plans are … what? I’m not sure he knows, or should know, at this juncture. He could run in 2024. He could create or buy or join a cable network to have a platform for the next four, or 20, years. He does like attention. And he’s sure gotten it. For a guy who impersonated his own spokesman when he was in the private sector just to plant gossip items in New York City tabloids extolling the virtues of himself, to a guy who commanded the world stage just by waking up … it will be hard to settle for something in between. So, running in 2024 or not – he will be heard, as he likes to say, "strongly."

And you get a pardon, and you get a pardon … Trump has not been bashful about taking care of “friends” via the pardon process or trying to leverage pardons for his personal political gain. He’s probably used it fewer times than his predecessors but he definitely has used it more for friends and loyalists, or people he wants to stay loyal to him. There’s the predictable rumor that he is considering pardons for most of his adult children and himself, and I expect we’ll see those. Maybe not for himself though it would “stay” potential charges against him while the constitutionality of pardoning oneself is battled out. A pardon for Rudy Giuliani? Strong possibility. He certainly has been a loyal foot soldier, especially post-election as he floats, unabashedly, idiotic claims of voter fraud.

Will he concede? I can’t imagine Trump conceding to President-elect Joe Biden nor can I imagine him attending Biden’s inauguration. I mean, sit by idly while someone else gets all the attention? Especially someone he knows defeated him at the polls and made him a (shh) "loser."? It just isn’t in his psyche to do that. Imagine the faces he’d make with his arms crossed in front of him as Biden takes the oath of office? Not a good look.

‘No way Biden got 80 million votes´ is the claim being made by Trump and his male adult sons. Well, Biden did. My guess is his total was that high for various reasons -- partly because of the virus giving millions of folks nothing to do but wait in line to vote, or no excuse to avoid mailing in or delivering a ballot to town halls and other official drops. Plus, a motivation by folks to get out and vote and not allow a close election like 2016, or avoiding third party candidates because they experienced that doing only harm in 2016. Plus, Trump got 74 million votes … a record for a sitting president, for sure, and probably for similar reasons – his supporters are all very loyal believers who saw his reign threatened so they made sure to vote, in person. Again, they had plenty of time to wait in line. Plus, they were apparently less concerned about the virus than Biden supporters.

Damage to our democracy has been done. The only question is, can we repair it? Open question. While Joe Biden will be providing a less dramatic and more stable leadership, Trump will still be out there tweeting and sitting on his own or someone’s TV network bloviating. And with 70-plus million supporters in this election, there will be people paying attention to him. His supporters are going nowhere and will be willing opponents of a Biden Administration.

Sen. Marco Rubio is making an early play to anoint himself the heir to Trump’s throne. Not likely. One, Trump won’t be ceding his role … ever. So there’s no vacuum to be filled. Plus, the ambitious Rubio doesn’t have the gumption Trump has nor his instincts. His first shot was tweeting of Biden’s Cabinet nominees, “Biden’s cabinet picks went to Ivy League schools, have strong resumes, attend all the right conferences & will be polite & orderly caretakers of America’s decline.” One, that ignores that Trump’s Cabinet, and Trump himself, are products of the Ivy League. And, two, not exactly pithy like, “Liberate Michigan!”

Fill the coffers while you can seems to be, and always has been, the Trump life goal. While Giuliani and others are out there falsely yelling “fraud” in the election Trump is sending out hundreds of emails calling for donations to his voter fraud defense fund. As has been pointed out, though, the small print of those emails states the first 75 percent of every contribution goes to a new political action committee Trump set up in mid-November which can be used to fund his political activities going forward, including staff and travel. The other 25 percent goes to the Republican National Committee. So far, he’s approaching $200 million in fund raising from what many of us would see as annoyingly too many requests.

(Tangent: I was on a trip with President Reagan’s Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige years ago. We stayed a night at the working ranch of a friend of his in Colorado. After dinner the friend’s father proudly pulled out a pile of letters he received “From President Reagan” seeking donations. He said he’d given $5 or $10 when he could afford it. Baldrige said to him, “the President appreciates your support and he told me before I came out to let you know that you’ve given enough and you may still get letters but please don’t contribute.” People do believe the claims in those letters. And have for many years. Tangent over)

The Biden Administration. I have to confess, as the President-elect has been announcing his appointees, he's had me tearing up. He’s been appointing to senior positions men, women, Blacks, Whites, Browns, South Asian, out gays and lesbians, offspring of immigrants, of single mothers and people who are products of broken homes and single mothers, who were on public assistance of some kind. I’ve never reacted that way watching a President make his nominations. But, while the special interest groups still aren’t satisfied that enough of their own have been appointed – and no doubt more will be – I have never seen a Cabinet and sub-Cabinet that so looks like America, the real America. It honestly not only reflects the coalition that elected Biden but, more importantly, makes a huge difference in assuring more views are at the table while making policy.

0 Comments

Who can break the news to Trump? No one needs to

11/23/2020

0 Comments

Since Election Day, since the world’s population minus one, has known the result of the presidential election, reporters and pundits keep writing, “Who has the standing to tell President Trump that it’s time to concede?”

I’m going to assume they were serious when they wrote those articles and columns but, as we’ve gotten to know, the real Donald Trump is what we’ve seen.

Meaning, if his favorite president, Andrew Jackson, came back to life leading a delegation of Abraham Lincoln, Marlin Luther King and John F. Kennedy, he would not listen to them.

So, quit kidding about “if only Sen. Mitch McConnell” would go to the White House and deliver the news,” and stop arguing about who is today’s Barry Goldwater who can march down and deliver the news. There is no one Donald J. Trump would listen to save, maybe, for his father coming to him.

Nobody.

And, by the way, President Trump knows it’s over. He’s not stupid. And he certainly doesn’t believe that millions of votes were changed by voting machines or illegal mail-in ballots came in that gave the election to Joe Biden. Please, he may be far from the best president we’ve ever had but he is not a stupid man. He just does stupid things.

I don’t know why he’s following this “strategy” of challenging everything rather than conceding. Maybe he's: 1) demonstrating to his base that he will fight for them against all odds; 2) maintaining the persona he’s used for five years so he can run again four years from now; or, 3), just doing what Donald Trump has always done when backed into a corner – sue, sue sue.

Who knows?

You have to hand it to President-elect Biden though. He didn’t take Trump’s bait during the campaign and he’s not taking it now. He is just moving on putting together an administration. Whenever the General Services Administration head Emily Murphy “ascertains” the vote, whether Donald Trump ever concedes, the certain thing is that Biden will be sworn in on January 20.

Will Trump attend the inauguration? Highly unlikely. Will he counter program it with a rally of his own? Who knows?

But we do know that on January 20 at 12:05 p.m. the country’s problems and challenges will fall to Joe Biden to solve. Lock, stock and coronavirus.

0 Comments

The Clown Car is unloading everything

11/20/2020

0 Comments

The clown car is emptying to give one last theater of the absurd performance.

Lawyers for the President of the Red States of America held, well, I’m not sure what they held yesterday. They said it was a press conference but it played more as a not-the-situation comedy.

Putting aside Rudy Giuliani’s hair dye cascading down his face, because that’s just too easy a laugh line to use (oh, sorry), the big claim by Attorney Sidney Powell was so convoluted, it is difficult to reproduce here. Let’s just say it involved a voting machine manufacturer, George Soros and Joe Biden (among others) and millions of election workers across the country conspiring to defeat President Donald Trump.

Even Tucker Carlson didn’t believe it.

That’s because Powell produced no evidence. Giuliani said, “Give us an opportunity to prove it in court and we will!”

He neglected to say Trump’s lawyers have been in many courts since the election and failed every time, and, by the way, produced no evidence of fraud. Remember, if a lawyer produces “evidence” that he knows is false before a judge he or she can lose their licenses to practice. That’s why Rudy, the lead keystone cop in this endeavor, makes all kinds of claims in alleged press conferences but has nothing to produce in court.

Giuliani also said, “I can prove to you that (Trump) won Pennsylvania by 300,000 votes. I can prove to you he won Michigan by probably 50,000 votes. When I went to bed on Election Night, he was ahead in all those states.” I guess his earlyl-to-bed schedule is evidence of Trump winning.

Of course, that’s before the mail-in votes were counted because of rules set by the GOP-controlled legislatures in those states. And, remember that Trump spent months imploring his supporters to avoid mail-in ballots and go to the polls on Election Day.

And, don’t forget that in Arizona on election night, Biden had a lead of more than 130,000 votes with 750,000 paper ballots to be counted. There, though, the remaining votes leaned Republican so by the time all votes were counted, Biden’s lead had fallen to just 10,000.

I haven’t heard Trump’s lawyers asking to throw out the mail ballots in Arizona.

Among the dumbest, though so far they are all dumb, allegations being made is, according to Giuliani, “Joe Biden told us a few days before the election that he had the best voter fraud team in the world.”

Of course that isn’t true. The former mayor of America referred to a manipulated video that started with a tweet from a Republican National Committee official, spread by First Son Eric Trump, White House Press Secretary/Advisor to the Trump Campaign Kayleigh McEnany and others. What Biden actually said was his campaign had a strong effort to fight against voter intimidation, not an organization to commit voter fraud.

But, what- the-hey, facts do not matter in this post-election effort by Trump to steal the 2020 election.

Oh, and then there’s Rudy’s, “They made significant mistakes, like all crooks do. And we caught them. One of them was pushing out Republican inspectors.”

Judges in Pennsylvania and Michigan rejected this claim and Trump’s own lawyers said in court that his campaign was granted access and observed the process. They also admitted, it may have been Rudy himself (I forget), that they were not alleging fraud in the court case in Pennsylvania.

Today, like the mob boss he wants to be, the President has summoned to the White House (to use all the intimidation he can) Michigan Republican elected officials, to try to strong arm them into ensure the Michigan results – those would be voters’ votes – are not certified as he tries to get the election results put in the hands of politicians to upend. Trump’s press secretary responded when asked about this meeting that the President meets with state legislators all the time.

Trump’s press secretary, who also is a formal advisor to the campaign in an apparent effort to do an end-around the Hatch Act, was asked government questions when she was on campaign business and referred those to the White House. Just now, in her first press briefing since Oct. 1, she referred a campaign question to the campaign. Ping. Pong.

She also: said no instructions have been given to political appointees not to have conversations with the Biden transition team and took an obviously pre-planned question from an OAN (Very Trump Friendly) “reporter” to end her press conference on another one of her partisan rants so she can make points, walk off, and face no question on her diatribe.

People are dying and the Trump White House is still saying they “saved lives because they originally were told two million people would die” from the virus. McEnany said..

This entire cartoon show is ludicrous.

Ladies and gentlemen, Trump is not a mob boss. He is a public servant elected by the voters four years ago, and un-elected this month.

Our democracy is not one to be put in the hands of partisans to resolve, other than partisan voters who have that power in this country. And those voters have spoken.

0 Comments

If Trump lost, why am I sad?

11/10/2020

0 Comments

The election results are sadder than I thought they’d be but not for the reason I thought they’d be. And it’s not totally President Trump’s fault. Not entirely anyway.

Trump’s true supporters are nothing but loyal. Yesterday I posted on my Facebook page an article reporting that a sex offender attended Rudy Giuliani’s, the President’s personal attorney, press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia.

I posted no comment, just the article. At least two folks posted comments claiming it was fake news, pointing out that was Hunter Biden next to the President-elect at his acceptance speech, the “ever chaste” Vice President-elect Kamala Harris at the microphone and “Joe the guy who can’t think or speak straight.”

Where to begin? Not that I thought the election would end the vileness that our political process has become. But I had hoped things might begin to get more civil. Just a little bit.

But this apparently is the state of our nation for the foreseeable future.

It can be calmed a bit, I hope, in time. President-elect Biden is trying to do his part, so far. And, so far the right-wing media isn’t buying it. The leading conservative site Town Hall ran this headline today, “Biden is Hitler and needs to be impeached.” I guess maybe that’s a supportive headline for Biden because to be impeached in this context, you must be President.

But I digress, maybe.

The Trump Administration may be within the law by refusing to recognize Biden as the winner of the election because results aren't yet certified but that also opens the country up to major national security risks. What better time for terrorists to attack again? I guess the only better time would be if the Secretary of Defense also was fired. What? Oh.

By refusing to agree to a transition, the Administration seriously slows down and blocks a “peaceful transition” by not allowing Biden transition team members access to briefings about the agencies Biden’s people are going to be running in January. It also keeps Biden from seeing the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) that goes to the President, even if the current President refuses, reportedly, to read it. That close-hold document informs those authorized to read it the hot spots in the world.

Back when President Nixon couldn’t read the writing on the wall that he had to resign as President, Republican leaders from the Congress visited him and delivered the news it was time.

We are seeing stories now in major publications that basically ask, “Who will tell Trump it’s over.” Well, first, he knows because he is a major consumer of cable news and, despite claiming he doesn’t read the “Amazon-owned Washington Post” or the ”failing New York Times,” that he is their biggest consumer. So he knows it’s “time.”

What the stories are saying, I guess, is who will tell him that it truly is time and your support in the Congress is dissipating. Instead, GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, who knows better, is backing up the President’s false claims. Loyalty to a man cannot go farther than loyalty to country.

How do I know there is no proof to Trump claims that voting was fraudulent? Because no proof has been presented by Trump’s people. None. You can’t just wish it was there any more than you can wish away the coronavirus pandemic. What? Oh.

Also if the Democrats are so smart that they can fix a national election, why aren’t they smart enough to steal themselves a bigger majority in the House of Representatives or a majority in the Senate?

I can’t let the “chaste Kamala Harris” comment go either. American Spectator ran an article this summer headlined “Why It Should Matter To Women that Kamala Harris Slept Her Way to the Top.” I mean, really? In 2020?

And, of course, whatever the right-wing media publishes becomes a talking point for Trump supporters, true or not.

Uniting the country doesn’t mean everyone has to agree with what a president wants to do, it means accepting that democracy, so far, still works and we respect the results of an election, just as we have for centuries.

So, while I’d hoped I’d be happy if Trump lost, I’m quite sad that our country doesn’t seem to want to be healed.

0 Comments

<<Previous

They may be coming to take me away (ha ha, ho ho)

Revolutionary-in-chief

A truly consequential 48 hours

Trump is the proof our Founders were right

70 is the new...whatever

The grifter-in-chief

Things that make you go hmmm.

Who can break the news to Trump? No one needs to

The Clown Car is unloading everything

If Trump lost, why am I sad?

Archives

B. Jay Cooper

powered by bjaycooper.com