Farewell Democracy

Adam Schiff was right.  In his summation and plea for the impeachment of Donald Trump, he pleaded with Republican senators, “He has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again. He has compromised our elections, and he will do so again. You will not change him. You cannot constrain him. He is who he is.”

It seems there is ample truth that Schiff was prophetic.

 

What we are witnessing and living through is simply the attempted destruction of our democratic republic.  Yesterday Trump set the stage for his attempt to invalidate our election by intimating that we should postpone the national balloting.  Through all sorts of national crises, we have never postponed an election.  Never in the history of the United States has a President sowed such doubt about the outcome of an election he is clearly in danger of losing.  He will have to blame someone, so of course it’s the election that is at fault.  That is his modus operandi.  Always blame someone or something else for his mistakes and his victimization.

 

He implicitly threatened to foul the electoral results with litigation which he claimed could take years.  He is sowing doubt about the bedrock principle that is the foundation of our democracy—the peaceful transfer of power by citizens at the ballot box.  He sees his defeat at hand and will do anything to invalidate the results if he loses.  This is the man who the Republicans support.

Well, actually, the Republicans in Congress shut him down on his threat to postpone the election, something he has no power to do anyway.  Only Congress could do that, and you can be sure they won’t. 

 

On the other hand, that will not stop Trump’s attempt to corrupt the process.  He has been laying the groundwork by repeatedly decrying the process of mail-in-balloting.  He is fearmongering us by his attempt to scare us with overwhelming fraud---only he supplies no proof that fraudulent absentee balloting has ever occurred.  His lackeys have taken up the mantra—Bill Barr, a variety of Republican senators, his White House aides are all parroting his unsubstantiated claims.  He will go as far as defunding the Post Office to prevent mail-in balloting, so expect that soon.

 

I am constantly amazed at the support from intelligent people that somehow Trump engenders.  What appear to be smart Republican businessmen and local notables are campaigning for Congress here in SW Florida, and the primary qualification they tout is their support of Donald Trump and his policies.  They are apparently blind to the pandemic disaster that he has created, the completely obliterated economy as a result of his failure to develop a plan to combat the wildfire epidemic we are suffering through, and his constant spewing of misinformation to the public about the spread Covid-19.

 

Folks, we are living in a nation of imbeciles.  A huge percentage of our fellow citizens are just plain stupid!  Maybe the answer is to partition off a part of the US and let Trump and all of his supporters just move there and figure out how to survive living by their own warped standards.  They can all walk around without masks, fire their guns in the air or at each other at will, and eventually die off. And of course, they can take their doctor Stella Immanuel and all her colleagues who can start a new medical discipline based on curing ailments with alien DNA and preventing disease by convincing their citizens not to have sex with demons in their dreams.

The Coming Storm....

Finally!  Joe Biden issued a missive two days ago that draws lines in the sand against abuse of our elections by both foreign and domestic sources.  His articulate and forceful warning of how he will treat offenders, both foreign and domestic, who try to foul our electoral process by a variety of means was like a bracingly cool breeze blowing over a parched landscape of suffering humans.  We glimpsed what a real president would be like and we liked it!  We can finally see escape from the fetid Trump-swamp we have been forced to trudge through for the last four years.  The relief I feel is palpable.

In one short declaration of policy and intent, Biden demonstrated leadership and commitment to ideals that all of us, both Democrat and Republican share.  It remains to be seen what the Republicans who have thus far been complicitely sleepwalking through Trump’s presidency will do now .  Hopefully Joe will not stop here.  He should continue laying out his plan for our recovery from the foul path we have been led through by the current resident in the White House.  He should simply project the image of his ascendance without remorse or hesitation.  It will be good for all to see resolve and intelligence from the future President.  There is nothing standing in the way of Joe Biden describing in detail between now and election day in no uncertain terms how he will deconstruct the web of lies and impediments to the free flowing of democracy that is the ideal and purpose of the American experiment. The more he describes his plans in detail, the easier it will be for all of us to see the contours of our return to normalcy and the rule of law.  It doesn’t matter what his base thinks.  His efforts will be to create an image in the minds of those who long for change and relief from our current nightmare.  It will motivate all of us to rise up from our angst and vote!

And as far as Trump’s threatening to invalidate the electorate’s rejection of him by declaring the election rigged?.....Be assured Mr. Trump, you WILL surrender the office once you are defeated.  We will all make sure of it!  And we will also insure that all your toadies will disappear after you.  Make no mistake, we will physically throw you out if we have to.

Our biggest challenge from now until inauguration day will be to oppose the increasing danger of Trump putting his own federal, illegal police force in the streets of major US cities to ‘protect’ federal buildings.  What a crock!  It is easy to envision his plan to intimidate voters by ‘patrolling the polls during election day’.  We can expect increasing railing and fear mongering about fraud at the polls and a rigged election.   Expect increasing pressure to purge voting rolls and suppress voting by Republican crony Secretaries of State in individual states with Republican sycophantic governors like Kemp in Georgia (remember his actions in 2018?).

No matter how Trump will try to mitigate or distract from his failure to plan for the raging Covid-19 pandemic, we will all remember how much we have suffered, how many we have lost, when we pull the lever or mail the ballot in November.  We will think of the projected 175,000 dead Americans by that time that might have been saved by someone who had a shred of empathy.  We will look out over the horizon at a future with Donald Trump’s heavy authoritarian hand on the wheel of the ship of state, and vote with such force that the quake of our action alone will eject him from the White House.

You think Gore v. Bush was difficult in 2000?---It was a walk in the park compared to what we will see after the November 3^rd election.  We are about to experience perhaps the most intense and dark national tribulation we have ever seen.  Americans must be resolute.  No less than the future of our country and our lives depends on it.

6 Awful Months Ahead?

I am sitting here listening to the Sunday morning shows and wondering what members of our federal leadership can possibly be thinking!  The House of Representatives led by the Democrats, with almost total Republican opposition, passed a bill in May to try to mitigate the awful effects of an accelerating Covid catastrophe. That bill  has been sitting in the Senate with no action for the last 60 days!  Why?  Apparently, Mitch McConnell has unilaterally decided that he is going to make the decisions about the future of America with regard to sickness and death, both of people and the economy.  My claim that the Republican party is the party of DEATH still stands, and this is a perfect example of why. 

To compound the issue, Republicans in Congress simply have rolled over and surrendered any modicum of morality or action.  Do you hear any of them defending use of masks which is so clearly a way to combat community spread of the virus?  Do you hear any of them standing up for the independence of the CDC?  Do you see any of them really concerned about hospitals in their districts being overwhelmed by Covid hospitalizations?  Are any of them concerned about Trump’s demand that all schools be completely opened?  In Florida, with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ incredibly stupid ignorance of what is happening and his subservience to his mentor Donald Trump, the number of new Covid cases every day breaks the record from the day before!  None of them believes in the science behind this pandemic.  All they seem to be worried about is the opening of the economy and their retention of their own power, regardless of how many people are at risk of dying!  Where is the concern for people by these legislators?

If the Republicans maintain this posture through inauguration, the only path for the country over the next 6 months is to suffer mightily and lose more than a hundred thousand lives due to the incompetence and moral turpitude of our supposed representatives of the people.  Rick Scott and Marco Rubio—and the rest of the Republican senators--where the hell is their conscience??  They don’t have one!

Just look at the polls…Trump is an utter failure, and I cannot fathom how people who claim a moral compass can sit by and watch us spiral down into the depths of craven depravity into which Donald Trump is leading all of us.

The administration has decided to ignore the virus as if doesn’t exist.  They are moving to delete or make smaller the funds for testing!  How many of US are ignoring the virus??  I would venture to say that 75% of the country is terrified.  The other 25% are just plain stupid.  They believe Donald Trump, who completely decries the science.

As we look forward to the election, all we see is Trump railing about mail-in balloting as fraudulent…..with no evidence to support it.  We see Trump moving heaven and earth to encourage suppression of voting wherever he can.  We see him making ridiculous false accusations about Joe Biden’s plans to abolish the suburbs, spread far-left violence and bring socialism to America.  Does Trump have any kind of agenda for his re-election?  He hasn’t shown one.  Let's hope he and his toadies are summarily rejected at the polls.

I want to be an optimist.  We are at such a huge inflection point with regard to the failure of our leaders to confront the pandemic, the recognition of systemic racism, and the failure of our representative government to meet the people’s needs with honesty and integrity, that there is actually the possibility of redefining what our society is supposed to be.  When we finally get to the other side of this election (assuming Biden will be elected and there will be a peaceful transfer of power, which is by no means assured!) there will be an opportunity to restructure our government and our society, and rid ourselves of the huge number of horrid people who are currently in charge at all levels.  Until then, however, we must do everything we can personally to keep ourselves and our families safe and ride out this period of danger and treachery.

Danger Everywhere!

I am 100 miles from the epicenter of the Corona virus pandemic.  We are scared.  How could we not be?  Our fear is partially caused by the apprehension of catching the disease, but mostly caused by the danger all of us are exposed to by the egregious incompetence and disregard for our citizens by Donald Trump and his sycophant Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida.

DeSantis, who considers Trump his mentor, has refused to mandate the wearing of masks and is pushing for the continued opening of Florida’s economy.  He is blind to the skyrocketing rates of transmission and deaf to the medical authorities in Miami-Dade County.   Yesterday during a press conference at Jackson Memorial Hospital he was vocally challenged and shamed for not mandating mask usage.  He also is apparently deaf to the Dade County’s Superintendent of Education who fears that there is no safety in bringing children back to school in mid-August given the stats and increasing rates of infection.  Possible transmission to teachers, parents and grandparents??  Nah—who cares!

We feel relatively secure in our house here in Naples (Collier County) and immediate environment because we are locked down.  We don’t go anywhere or see anyone.  All our supplies are delivered and all service and deliveries are not allowed without people wearing masks. 

However, I am having trouble containing my anger and despair that the people in power completely

disregard science and are only concerned with the politics concerning Trump’s election prospects and retaining power.  This pandemic is OUT OF CONTROL because of The federal government’s and our state government’s failure of leadership.  These people do not care about our safety!  We simply must accept that fact.

So, what do we do?  Well, frankly, we are just about powerless to do anything to rid ourselves of these people for now, short of an armed intervention by citizen militias.  But we all know that is not going to happen.  We have to wait for the election in November and hope to God we don’t perish between now and then.  This is a test.  It is a test of our patience and belief that ultimately the arc of justice and intelligence will bend toward what is right and true.

The only course of action now is meditation and patience.  Getting angry is wasted energy.  All efforts must be focused on bringing out the vote in November.  The result of this balloting must be a landslide result bringing Democrats to power.  Republicans have shown that they are incapable of honesty and intelligence and are devoid of any understanding of what this country stands for.  Trump and his devotees who think we are ‘leading the world’ in combatting the Covid-19 are living in fantasy land.  The real world is not apparent to these people.  Frankly, there is no hope of persuading them otherwise, so we need to ignore them and focus on completely overwhelming them at the polls.

There is evil--or stupidity--or both afoot in our land, my friends, and those of us who believe in science and truth must be patient and simply prevail. 

Media Bias

There was an article in the Naples Daily News this morning that caught my eye on the opinion page.  It was written by Byron York, a conservative commentator currently writing for the Washington Examiner.  The article admonished us to not blindly accept the mass media’s analysis of the President’s speech at Mount Rushmore, because it was far more positive than the media portrayed it.  He wanted us to read the text of the speech in its entirety and make our own judgement about the point of view of his speech….

…so I did.

As you all know, I am no fan of Donald Trump, and up until I actually read the full text, I simply accepted the media’s interpretation of this speech as being ugly and nefariously divisive and exhibiting the point of view that ‘American Carnage’ was destroying our country from within.  

Well….not so much.

If you read the transcript, you will see that for 80% of the speech he is exalting our heroes on Mt. Rushmore, complete with a recounting of each of those presidents’ accomplishments and efforts to uphold the Constitution and the values that all of us hold dear.  Then he recounted in amazing detail, actually, the accomplishments and contributions of a wide range of America’s most important heroes… Martin Luther King, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Frederick Douglass. He invoked the exploits and contributions of Wild Bill Hickock, Buffalo Bill Cody, the Wright Brothers, the Tuskegee Airmen, Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton, Jesse Owens, General George Patton, Louie Armstrong, Alan Shepard, Elvis Presley, Mohammad Ali, Walt Whitman, the stories of Mark Twain, the songs of Irving Berlin, the voice of Ella Fitzgerald, the style of Frank Sinatra, and the comedy of Bob Hope.  You can see that he was inclusive of a variety of people with a meaningful cross section of backgrounds from white to black.

The speech exalted the American values we all aspire to practice and believe in, and made the claim that America has led the world in promoting those values and representing the best of humanity.  It was actually pretty uplifting in its call to action for all of us to be proud of those accomplishments and aspire to be like all those heroes in everything we do in the name of our country.

He strongly promoted, “ equal opportunity, equal justice, and equal treatment for citizens of every race, background, religion, and creed.  Every child, of every color — born and unborn — is made in the holy image of God.  We want free and open debate, not speech codes and cancel culture.  We embrace tolerance, not prejudice.  We support the courageous men and women of law enforcement.  We will never abolish our police or our great Second Amendment, which gives us the right to keep and bear arms.   We believe that our children should be taught to love their country, honor our history, and respect our great American flag.  We stand tall, we stand proud, and we only kneel to Almighty God.  This is who we are.  This is what we believe.  And these are the values that will guide us as we strive to build an even better and greater future."

Nothing wrong with any of that! 

So, clearly, the rest of the speech was a bit different.  Trump  warned about a ‘culture war’ and the danger that those who promote violence; who strive to teach our children to ‘hate America’; to topple monuments of great men like Washington and Grant, and who are “attempting to tear down the beliefs, culture, and identity that have made America the most vibrant and tolerant society in the history of the Earth.”

Well, considering his fear of all those who he thinks are attempting to bring him down, it is not surprising to see him admonish those in attendance to be on guard for efforts by his perceived enemies to accomplish those aims. His language was at times certainly inflammatory, calling those who protest 'angry mobs', 'engaging in a merciless campaign to destroy our history'.  But we do the same to him, so why is he only to blame for that kind of language.

And yet, the mass media actually painted a much darker interpretation of his speech.  They called it divisive, negative, dragging America backward, racially charged, filled with hate and white supremacy….

Well not really!  I didn’t see those things in his speech.  Paranoia? Fear of losing our values? Fear of our children’s future?  Yes, those things were present, but not in the way the Media wanted us to believe.  

What this has shown me is that we all need to be more careful about accepting blindly the analysis of what major news outlets (who take a decidedly negative view of President Trump) tell me about these kind of events. 

I have my own opinion and must draw my own conclusions about Donald Trump from what I observe myself.  I am terribly fearful of the horrific damage he has done to our democracy, our rule of law, and the foundation of our government, but those are my own perceptions.

Just a word to the wise:  draw your own conclusions about the man based on your own observations.  Don’t accept blindly the opinions of the mass media, whether right or left.

The Plan

There is no plan.  There never was one.

Because there is no plan, the United States is being pitied by the rest of the world.  Our response to the pandemic has been a consummate embarrassment—Trump simply surrendered to the virus.  We have a President and governors and mayors who pledge their sycophancy to Trump and are responsible for the sickness and death all around us now.  6 months into this pandemic we are having PPE shortages, hospitals with no capacity for all the sick people, medical supplies in short supply or non-existent, shortage of testing material and supplies, impossibly long waits for testing, results for testing sometimes taking as much as 10 days(which makes testing essentially useless)….all because there was never a plan.

We have a President who decries mask wearing while his supplicants cry, “ Mask wearing is unconstitutional!”.  Trump never had a plan, in fact he has turned into an ‘ally’ of the virus.  He pushed re-opening our economies too soon; he is now pushing opening our schools in spite of the danger to our children and to those they will come in contact with—our teachers, their parents, their grandparents.  He still says, “It’ll simply go away, I hope.”  

He conducts rallies with his supplicants in closed spaces with no masks.  He constantly is telling us how he has flattened the curve.  Well, I have eyes—when I look at the curve, it is anything but flat….  Just ask the people who are in hospitals (if a bed can even be found for them) in Texas, Arizona, Florida, California, South Carolina, Georgia if they feel like the curve has flattened.

What is his plan for a second term?  There is no plan.  He has none.  He only wants to turn American against American.  What is his platform----elevate the Confederacy again?  Stop teachers from “teaching our children to hate America”?  Make voting more difficult for people?  Defund the Post Office?  He is distracting us from his failure to lead.

This man has done more to injure America’s democracy than any other human in our country’s history.  He has destroyed relationships with most of our allies; withdrawn us from all meaningful global treaties and agreements, endangered our national security by encouraging foreign governments to play havoc with our electoral process, made us the laughing stock of global diplomatic circles, purged our government of career professionals in the State Department, the Intelligence Community, the Department of Homeland Security, and every other department where he attempts to increase his personal aggrandizement.  He has moved to oppose voting by mail and absentee balloting with false cries of ‘fraud’ to try to inhibit voting.  He does not care that people might have to risk their lives by forcing them to physically go to the polls because of the pandemic that he has done nothing to diminish.  Oh Yeah, let's withdraw from the World Health Organization--that's a good idea!

Unfortunately for Trump, his utter failure at creating national leadership against the pandemic is visible for ALL to see.  He can’t hide it, even as he tries to distract us with superfluous issues like 'putting pressure on states to open the schools’.  The people of America can read the graphs and see the numbers.  Even more, they feel the pain in all their families because of the strictures we all are suffering every day as well as the loved ones we are losing.  He can’t hide behind his plan, because….there never was a plan.  Even now while the scientific and medical community unanimously promotes mask wearing because it could possibly save as many as 40,000 lives between now and November, he says, “not necessary—we’re open now and all will be fine.  We’ll learn to live with the virus.”  

No---many of us (130,000 of us to date) will die with the virus.  He has no conscience….doesn’t really care.

This is a lying, lawless man who, if re-elected, will spell the doom of the American experiment.  The damage done to date on our institutions is pervasive.  The effect on our children for the past 4 years has been morally corrupting.  Lying has been made acceptable.  Breaking the law is ‘de rigueur’. 

If Trump somehow manages to successfully win 4 more years, many of us will consider moving to a safer, freer place I am afraid.  It will be the proof that the lunatics will have taken over the asylum….  And you can depend on the fact that he will have won by cheating. 

Expect the further inexorable decline of America, our America, the country so many died for and sacrificed for.  Makes me want to cry…..  I may have to start taking Prozac again.

The End Game....

This morning as I listened to the news, I became aware of a new article published today in Newsweek written by Timothy Wirth, former US Senator from Colorado and Tom Rogers, editor at large for Newsweek.  They describe a scenario that is chilling.  It would mean the end of the United States as we know it.  The result will be a dictatorship that would in all probability have frightening consequences and provoke armed insurrection and a new American Revolution.  You can find this article at:

https://www.newsweek.com/how-trump-could-lose-election-still-remain-president-opinion-1513975

Here is an excerpt:

Something like the following scenario is not just possible but increasingly probable because it is clear Trump will do anything to avoid the moniker he hates more than any other: "loser."

Trump actually tweeted on June 22: "Rigged 2020 election: millions of mail-in ballots will be printed by foreign countries, and others. It will be the scandal of our times!" With this, Trump has begun to lay the groundwork for the step-by-step process by which he holds on to the presidency after he has clearly lost the election:

1.    Biden wins the popular vote, and carries the key swing states of Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by decent but not overwhelming margins.

2.    Trump immediately declares that the voting was rigged, that there was mail-in ballot fraud and that the Chinese were behind a plan to provide fraudulent mail-in ballots and other "election hacking" throughout the four key swing states that gave Biden his victory.

3.    Having railed against the Chinese throughout the campaign, calling Biden "soft on China," Trump delivers his narrative claiming the Chinese have interfered in the U.S. election.

4.    Trump indicates this is a major national security issue, and he invokes emergency powers, directing the Justice Department to investigate the alleged activity in the swing states. The legal justification for the presidential powers he invokes has already been developed and issued by Barr.

5.    The investigation is intended to tick down the clock toward December 14, the deadline when each state's Electoral College electors must be appointed. This is the very issue that the Supreme Court harped on in Bush v. Gore in ruling that the election process had to be brought to a close, thus forbidding the further counting of Florida ballots.

6.    All four swing states have Republican control of both their upper and lower houses of their state legislatures. Those state legislatures refuse to allow any Electoral College slate to be certified until the "national security" investigation is complete.

7.    The Democrats will have begun a legal action to certify the results in those four states, and the appointment of the Biden slate of electors, arguing that Trump has manufactured a national security emergency in order to create the ensuing chaos.

8.    The issue goes up to the Supreme Court, which unlike the 2000 election does not decide the election in favor of the Republicans. However, it indicates again that the December 14 Electoral College deadline must be met; that the president's national security powers legally authorize him to investigate potential foreign country intrusion into the national election; and if no Electoral College slate can be certified by any state by December 14, the Electoral College must meet anyway and cast its votes.

9.    The Electoral College meets, and without the electors from those four states being represented, neither Biden nor Trump has sufficient votes to get an Electoral College majority.

10. The election is thrown into the House of Representatives, pursuant to the Constitution. Under the relevant constitutional process, the vote in the House is by state delegation, where each delegation casts one vote, which is determined by the majority of the representatives in that state.

11. Currently, there are 26 states that have a majority Republican House delegation. 23 states have a majority Democratic delegation. There is one state, Pennsylvania, that has an evenly split delegation. Even if the Democrats were to pick up seats in Pennsylvania and hold all their 2018 House gains, the Republicans would have a 26 to 24 delegation majority.

12. This vote would enable Trump to retain the presidency.

                        I print this as an admonition to be wary and ready.

Traitor

For at least 4 months, President Trump has been aware of a Russian bounty on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan.  And yet he kowtowed to the architect of that despicable plan, trying to ingratiate himself with Putin while making at least 4-5 phone calls knowing soldiers he was responsible for were being hunted. 

Over the past 4 months he has pushed policy that was decidedly advantageous to the Russians: extracting our troops from Germany; weakening Nato by insulting and demeaning the role of our allies; unilaterally withdrawing from Afghanistan; inviting Putin to the US and lobbying with allies to re-instate Russia to the G8; and the list goes on.  Even now, after all his lame excuses that he ‘didn’t know about it’ or ‘wasn’t briefed’, or insists now that ‘ it is a hoax’--he still does nothing.  He still has no rage or anger.  He repeatedly does nothing to intervene or to protect our troops on the ground in harms way.  He is clearly guilty of dereliction of duty as Commander in Chief; and tries to do things only to serve the interests of Putin.

There is only one definition for someone who serves the interests a mortal enemy over the interests of the country he says he loves…..Traitor.   And what is the penalty for treason?

                                                                        Nuff said.