Trump has announced that he will decide who has won the election. He has declared that he will not accept the results of the election. He swore to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, but he’s making every effort to destroy it. Trump has made clear by his refusal to obey the law his inability to take the oath of office.
25 IX 2020: Were they lying four years ago or are they lying now?
Four years ago the Republicans in Congress attested with one accord that there was altogether wrong to select a new Supreme Court justice with an election only six months away. They felt this so strongly that their swineherd, Mr. McConnell would allow Obama’s nominee no hearing at all. [Mitch is an oath-keeper, at least of the oath sworn by Republicans seven years earlier never to cooperate with Pres. Obama.]
But what a difference four years make. Now the national interest, state security, the economy, and all else that is sacred require immediate replacement of Justice Ginsberg. Hence my question: Were the Republicans lying four years in their principled opposition to selection of a Supreme Court justice so close to a coming election? Or are they lying now when they demand nomination and confirmation of a new justice with the election 1.5 months away.
This question really does not require an answer because they lie all the time. They nominated and have blindly supported a compulsive liar because like seeks like.
21 IX 2020: Mask murderers?
I find it amazing that the anti-masker movement is not waning, but seems to be gathering strength. I’m sure it has a lot to do with the coming election. For some, not wearing a mask is like he being marked with the sign of the Beast. Apart from this political advocacy, the only message from the anti-maskers is one of ignorance and apathy, sc., “I’m too stubborn in my invincible ignorance, that nothing anyone can say will convince me that COVID19 is really dangerous. Nor do I really care if it is. Everybody is on his own in America and people cannot expect me to look out for them if I infect others with the virus, that’s their lookout, not mine.”
19 IX 2020: The search for a replacement
Justice Ginsberg’s body was not yet cold before McConnell and Trump began moving to replace her. They know they have to move fast, to get some retrograde jurist, any retrograde jurist, appointed and confirmed before the election, or at least before King Trump leaves office. Of course, they will have to pretend that this situation is wholly, altogether, and completely different from that which followed Justice Scalia’s death. We may have to wait and see if all the Republican senators as ethically challenged as McConnell and willing to support a rightist takeover of the Supreme Court. Trump, of course, is totus corruptus, the complete crook, and would appoint a horse to the Court if he thought it would get him votes. If a McConnell-Trump coup should succeed in placing another reactionary in the Supreme Court, that could be the final nail in the coffin of the United States. If the Court becomes an unembarrassed tool of the right wing, red states will become redder still and blue states will take on a deeper blue, because a Supreme Court gone bad would set in motion a migration from red states to that would eventually lead to the breakup of the United States.
18 IX 2020: Trump and the Triumph of the Will
Trump has overruled the testimony given at a congressional hearing by Robert Redfield, M.D., the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Redfield stated that, given the wait for a tested vaccine and sufficient supply of vaccine, it would take until Fall 2021 for the country to get back to normal. Trump hastened to condemn Dr. Redfield, declaring that the poor old Doc “got the message confused … didn’t understand the question.” What he means is “Dr. Redfield did not give the right answer.” In Trump’s view, a vaccine against COVID19 widely distributed is the elixir that’s going to win the election for him, and Trump’s gut tells him that distribution of the vaccine will begin in October, i.e., before the election. And when Trump’s oracular bowels, or, rather, Trump’s desperate needs have spoken, reason, science, and truth are forbidden. Trump has constantly found that his uninformed surmises and self-centered wishes have nothing to do with reality, and his way of getting around this is to get rid of reality. In his Sixth Satire, the Roman poet Juvenal presents a scene in which a woman of the Roman aristocracy on a whim orders the crucifixion. She sweeps her husband’s reasonable and humane objections aside, and proclaims: “Hoc volo, sic iubeo; sit pro ratione voluntas.” = “This is what I want, this my command; let will take the place of reason.”
17 IX 2020: Barr continues attempted destruction of law
Attorney General William Barr has decided, it seems, to let more than his belly hang out. He’s urging prosecution of the Mayor of Seattle. A report of his speech at Hillsdale College where he was speaking on “the constitutional hurdles for forbidding a church from meeting during Covid-19” reports: “‘You know, putting a national lockdown, stay at home orders, is like house arrest. Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history,’ Barr said as a round of applause came from the crowd.”
That he would be applauded for such pandering at Hillsdale College, a hive of religious and political reactionaries, is not remarkable. But his silliness drew a very different response from Rep. James Clyburn: “You know, I think that that statement by Mr. Barr was the most ridiculous, tone-deaf, God-awful thing I’ve ever heard … It is incredible that (the) chief law enforcement officer in this country would equate human bondage to expert advice to save lives.” It once would have been incredible that the Attorney General would say anything so stupid, but this is William Barr, Trump’s attorney, on a retainer paid by the U.S. Government.
Barr rivals Trump and his minions in the spread of misinformation, always with a sanctimonious tone that makes him the darling of the religious right. Indeed, on Sept. 23 Barr is to receive an award at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast for “Exemplary, Selfless and Steadfast Service in the Lord’s Vineyard.” Really? I thought Bill the Hangman had been smashing the grapes. The National Catholic Prayer Breakfast is an annual reactionary binge where people who are more authoritarian than Catholic gather to celebrate their loyalty to the extreme right-wing. Barr’s receiving an award at the Breakfast is as unsurprising and as disgusting as his receiving a big round of applause at Hillsdale.
13 IX 2020: Predictions
I’ve been musing about what might happen if Trump loses the election.
Here are some random predictions:
Even if Biden were to have a landslide lead over Trump, the Trumpists will be yelling for years to come “We was robbed!”
In the interim period between the election and Trump leaving office:
Trumpists’ slogans will be “take the money and run” and “burn it down.”
Government money will flood into Trump properties..
Efforts will be made by legislators and Trumpist judges to make permanent the current distribution of wealth.
Deportation of immigrants of color will be expanded and speeded up.
William Barr will be hired by a posh law firm or become a lobbyist or defect to Russia or be appointed to the Supreme Court.
Trump will organize the largest ever legal defense fund and team to be ready to delay his being sent to jail.
Peace-criminals like Stephen Miller will find refuge in right-wing “think” tanks.
Racist gun-nuts will come out of the woodwork and parade in the cities to menace non-Nazis.
Large numbers of Trump’s minions and of his supporters in Congress will begin declaring they never really liked Trump.
Evangelical clergy who have supported Trump will begin, with crocodile tears, to confess “We have sinned,” and go on as usual.
5 IX 2020: Lions, and tigers, and racial sensitivity training, Oh my!
Well, the Trumpists have patched together a new straw man to burn publicly before his drooling adherents. Someone told him about racial sensitivity training and he immediately recognized it as “divisive, anti-American propaganda.” As always, Trump criticizes others for the very faults of which he is most guilty.
He’s has started this witch-hunt — oops, he’s the only victim of witch hunts. He has started this endeavor through Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget and a graduate of Wheaton College where the Bible is worshipped. Clearly Trump and his Gang are trying to find something that will really spook his uneducated and racist supporters. “Anti-American” Please define. Can’t, because it cannot be defined, and that’s intended. “Anti-American” just sounds inconceivably bad to a certain class of people, as bad as “boys and girls matriculating together at the state university!”
The same is true, I think, of the term “socialist.” Republicans cannot call their opponents “communists” as in years gone by, so they have settled on “socialist.” I don’t think these people would know a real socialist if one walked up and offered them free health care. “Socialist” is dog-whistle for “doesn’t believe in private property” (“Oh my hard-inherited wealth!”) or “believes taxes should be increased so that the government can do what governments are supposed to do” (“Class warfare!”), or “elitists who know what needs to be done telling me what to do!” (“Now that’s really anti-American!)”
4 IX 2020: Imitation the sincerest flattery
Marjorie Taylor Greene is the Republican candidate for Congress in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. She is certain to be elected because her district is pathologically Republican. She is a sucker for wacky conspiracy theories, she’s a racist, a world-class bigot, and she has, of course, been endorsed by Trump. So she’s got no end of appeal for Georgia voters.
Today I saw a photo of Ms Greene cradling an assault rifle in her arms, the rifle aimed at photos of the women of the left-wing “Squad” in the House of Representatives, this in support of her contention: “We need strong conservative Christians to go on the offense against these socialists who want to rip our country apart.” What really struck me, however, is her minute-man pose which brought Mark McKloskey immediately to mind. I bet Marjorie would stand side-by-side with Mark and Patty and blow those n*****s away.
3 IX 2020: Finding heroes for the rightwing
The Rightwing sometimes has to scrape its shoes to find its heroes. That was clearly the case with the McKloskeys whose apotheosis was staged at the Republican pep rally. The marketing boys and makeup people did quite a job on Get-off-my-lawn Mark and Pistol-packin’ Patty and managed to turn local laughing-stocks into gun-junky poster children. The Missouri Attorney General has tried to squelch local prosecution of the McKloskeys and the Governor of Missouri announced that he would pardon them if they should be found guilty. If these officials knew the law they would not be so anxious, because in the freedom-loving State of Missouri there is no law against being an ass.
Then there’s the other emerging hero of the right, Little Kylie Rittenhouse, who murdered some demonstrators. President Trump spread a little of his very own excrement on Kyle and now all the men in the Trump base who doubt their virility have hastened to embrace this woefully stupid and terminally misguided punk.