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

11/23/2020

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.

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The Clown Car is unloading everything

11/20/2020

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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.

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If Trump lost, why am I sad?

11/10/2020

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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.

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Things that make me go hmmmm

11/9/2020

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When CNN announced that Joe Biden was the projected winner of the presidential race Saturday something changed in the universe. Some people said they exhaled. Some said the sun got brighter. Me? I felt lighter, relieved. All of a sudden certain things didn’t matter as much as they did 10 minutes before.

For example, I didn’t go rushing to check Twitter to see what President Trump said. I really didn’t care. Other thoughts went through my head:

Nero fiddled. Trump was playing golf when resolution of his re-election attempt was announced.

Of course you knew that when Trump’s campaign announced it would fight for every last legal vote and against illegal votes, you also knew the emails asking for money for his defense fund were right behind. (By the way, half the money from the legal defense fund can be moved to the retire-the-campaign debt fund. That would be the fund that Trump said he’d likely lend money to when it ran low. There was about enough chance of that as there was for Mexico paying for the wall.)

Rudy Giuliani, in doing his due diligence for lawsuits claiming the election was stolen, tweeted out, “Tweet me your guess, while I go prove it in court.“ This is the President’s personal lawyer alleging election fraud against the President-elect and he is asking folks to “tweet me your guess.” And he’ll take that to court. Which is apparently what he did because so far every judge has thrown out his suits for lack of any evidence. Thus, America's Mayor, facts aren't evidence.

Which may explain holding the press conference about the “fraud” being held at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, a truly great landmark for the history books on this one. Such serious events require a serious location. Appomattox, Gettysburg, Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York is free=er to pursue any investigations it may be working on. Uh, whatever those may be.

I will not miss Rudy Giuliani, but I will miss Kate McKinnon playing him.

While I always thought the only candidate Donald Trump could beat was Hillary Clinton, the only candidate who could beat Donald Trump was probably Joe Biden.

President-elect Biden’s speech Saturday night was about us, not him.

I won’t miss Donald Trump Jr. either. Saturday night he tweeted, “70 million pissed off Republicans and not one city burned to the ground.” You can read that a couple of ways.

Kamala Harris, a black woman who is Indian American and the daughter of immigrants, is the vice president-elect.

Donald Trump is leaving the White House but he isn’t going to go away. The first part of that sentence is good enough for me.

Each presidential candidate received more than 70 million votes, an astonishing number especially in the middle of a pandemic. It’s a demonstration that democracy works and we should look for ways to make it easier, not harder for people to vote in the future.

Within the first 24 hours of news organizations projecting a winner in the presidential race, the President of the United States had played golf twice and has yet to speak a word publicly. Joe Biden gave a national speech in his first official effort to unite the country and visited the grave of his son.

Trump’s supporters, who would have grabbed the win if any news organization called the election for Trump argued news organizations don’t pick presidents. But I do recall them accepting the news organizations calls four years ago.

I worry about the next two months if Trump continues behaving as Trump behaves.

I do feel much lighter, though!

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It's all over but the whining

11/6/2020

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President Trump’s performance from the White House briefing room last night was … well, I’m not sure I have the appropriate word for it. Atrocious. Mind-bending. Crazed. Crazy. Beyond the pale. Out of control.

I’d like to say I’ve come to expect it of him but this time – I literally couldn’t go to sleep after watching him. He sullied this country's standing as a model of democracy. He not only stepped on the Constitution, he stomped it into oblivion. The same Constitution he took an oath to defend and protect. One more lie from Donald J. Trump.

I know, I know. But the judges. As our next President likes to sway, “C’mon, man.” No policy agreement overtakes respect and following the Constitution. And to my friends who disagree, I have nothing more I can say to convince you. I'm not even going to try anymore.

When I joined the Republican Party way back when, it stood for honoring the Constitution, lower deficits, lower taxes, free and fair trade, honesty. None of those values exist in this president. He does whatever suits him. He has no such set of values or beliefs. None other than whatever benefits him is good.

I know, I know, but the regulations! C’mon, man! He doesn’t care about those either. He cut them with no regard for the protections some did provide. None. If this was a movie, I’d figure he was on the take to do things because, well, he has no soul. None. He only asks “what’s in it for me.”

Remember “suckers” and “losers” and why did they die on the battlefield?

Going to the White House briefing room to whine, lie and lie some more. I mean, really? Can’t you even leave office with dignity?

At some point in the next 24 hours, I expect Joe Biden will be called as the winner of the election by the various entities that do such calling.

I’ve had friends from my active GOP days ask me why I’m “such a turncoat,” how I could be so disloyal to the party. Well, my friends, I thought of that four years ago which is why, the day after Trump won enough primary votes to secure the nomination that I left the party. I’ve been a hypocrite before in my life, but I couldn’t be that much of a hypocrite.

In May 2016, the day after he won the primary that gave him the votes to be the GOP nominee I left the party. I wrote here at that time, “I cannot be a member of a party whose presumed nominee is ignorant of the Constitution … He will not all of a sudden become presidential – it’s not in the head of a narcissist to change who he is.”

Today, I am, in Massachusetts registration parlance, “unaffiliated.”

I decided then that I wouldn’t be a hypocrite over him. I also decided that staying in the party to fight for what I thought was right wasn’t the answer either. That party is gone.

I’m not proud that I was proven correct. I wish he was different. But he’s not. He’s who he is. A man who takes an oath and then marches all over that oath, because oaths mean nothing to him. The GOP means nothing to him. It was an act of convenience that he joined it to run for President, never expecting to win. But he did.

And that didn’t change him either other than, I think, after a few months in the job, realizing that he didn’t have to change his ways at all and that he wasn’t overwhelmed by the office. He wasn’t overwhelmed because, to this day, he doesn’t understand what the job really is. He has no idea the responsibility he holds to protect the American people and the Constitution. Neither means anything to him.

He listened to his gut in the private sector, leading to bankruptcy after bankruptcy, and he listens to his gut as President, leading to, well, leading to what we have today.

He has claimed voter fraud with no proof. How can he even think there’s fraud when there’s no evidence? Because Donald Trump projects on others what he believes of himself. He knows that if he could cheat to win, he would. He’s trying right now, in fact.

He’s also in for a rude awakening, if he knows what that is. He is relying not only on the courts but “his” Supreme Court to call the election for him. But you need proof for that to happen, even his three appointees need proof. And there is none. They won’t save him. They can’t and be true to their oaths of office. And if they do, this country is gone.

He will complain after that, if it happens, that his court appointees double-crossed him just as Jeff Sessions did as “his” attorney general.

He points fingers at the media for being “fake news” and then points to the media for evidence of his voter fraud claims. He tweeted, “plenty of proof. Just check out the Media. WE WILL WIN! AMERICA FIRST!”

Maybe the right wing media he reads on line has “proof’ but no legitimate media outlet has any. How do I know? Because if they did it would be a fabulous story and they’d run it, despite Trump’s sometime belief that the media are against him. The mainstream media just love a good story – one they can prove.

Two pieces of “good news” from the election. One, even former GOP Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania could be seen deflating on air after the President’s press room performance. He couldn’t and wouldn’t defend it. He did predict GOP elected officials would raise the same complaints. So far, not so much.

Second, the American people voted. It’s what they do in a democracy. They said time to remove Trump but they also said keep the Senate a Republican majority and the House a Democratic majority.

And let’s try that.

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Ding, dong the warlock is (almost) dead

11/2/2020

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While the huge crowds President Trump continues to draw say his supporters are enthusiastic and will turn out to vote, he has done nothing during his four years to expand his base. It’s hard for me to believe he can win with just his base, no matter how they turn out.

So, I believe former Vice President Joe Biden will win this election and it won’t be close. We likely won’t know that result for a while, not because the exit polls will be wrong but because this year not only will there be patience in waiting for states to count their votes but because Trump will never concede. Never.

In fact, he will sue. He’s already said he’ll go to court, before any vote is counted. That’s what he does when he doesn’t get his way. He will sue to try to have votes tossed out or to claim political bias by “Democratic governors” or whatever other reasons he can come up with.

If we haven’t learned by now, failure is never his fault.

At some point in the time between Election Day and Inauguration Day, when Trump isn’t focused on mucking up the federal government more than he has, he may even resign. Why? So that when Vice President Pence takes over, Pence can pardon Trump from any federal crimes he may have committed. Also, I cannot picture Donald Trump sitting and smiling while Biden takes the oath of office. If Trump isn’t the focus of attention, then how can he attend someone else’s inauguration?

You can read the pundits, experts and academicians on the why and how Trump wins – I’m not that expert at the specifics. But I don’t think there’s another surprise for Trump, who never expected to be elected the first time. He didn’t realize he was up against the only candidate he could have beaten then, though.

Also, Trump will scream and cry that certain votes shouldn’t be counted because we must know the results tomorrow. But the fact is that no election is officially decided on Election Day.

Trump, who gets any and all of his information from watching TV, may think that the election is decided Election Day because in the past networks also projected each state’s outcome almost immediately after the polls close. Mr. President, that is not how it’s done. Each of the 50 states counts its own votes. It will take longer this year in many states because of the overwhelming number of mail-in ballots.

During that time Trump may think he can sue everybody but it’s hard to sue a state before that state even counts its vote. Indeed, Mr. President, there are rules and laws as to how elections are conducted. Those laws, by the Constitution, are set by the states.

And those rules are, day to day, overseen by local Democratic and Republican election officers. Folks who are very good at their jobs.

The fact that we head into Election Day and Georgia is in play as is Arizona has to say something about how this election is breaking. While those and other states were expected to, thanks to changing demographics, at some point go Democrat, Trump has sped up that process.

In any event, there’s no reason not to believe that the aftermath of this election will be every bit as ugly and chaotic as have been the last four years.

It’s also likely that Democrats will pick up at least 7 to 12 seats in the House and will take over the Senate.

If I’m right, it means the Republican Party has a lot of thinking to do when this is over. Republicans have bowed at the feet of Trump, given up their decades-long values and principles and, after this election, will be trying to figure out how to come back.

And that will be with Trump sniping from the outside because he’s not about to give up the cult of followers he has created for himself. These are not Republicans, they are Trumpists. The GOP will need to find itself again if it is to survive. Whether it can break away from Trump will tell the story though.

In the meantime, I imagine millions of Americans will be toasting the new President-elect, celebrating that the warlock is dead and looking forward to a government that will control the pandemic and bring back calm.

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

The Clown Car is unloading everything

If Trump lost, why am I sad?

Things that make me go hmmmm

It's all over but the whining

Ding, dong the warlock is (almost) dead

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