8/28/22: Former
Attorney General Bill Barr has finally figured out what
most human beings figured out in the summer of 2015 or early 2016. Or - if they
knew Donald J. Trump personally - long before. The guy is a terrible human
being.
And he’s nuts.
(My wife, for one, rightly pegged Donald as suffering from Narcissistic Personality
Disorder in early 2017.)
Barr, center, also said Trump's "stolen election" claims were "bullshit." He told him so more than once.
Asked recently in an interview about his “most
awkward” moment working for the former president, Barr responded, in apparent
reference to a meeting on June 1, 2020: “The
president was bellowing at a number of his Cabinet secretaries and especially
the military guys, the DoD secretary and chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and
calling all of us ‘f-cking losers’ at the top of his lungs.”
This was around the same time that an unhinged,
vengeful president was asking why he couldn’t call out active duty U.S. troops,
and clear peaceful protesters outside the White House. “Why can’t you just
shoot them, just shoot them in the legs, or something?” he mused.
When rational individuals resisted, President Maniac
lost his sh*t.
Barr took his usual shots at Democrats and
left-wing types in the interview But if we filter out the partisan lines,
we’re left with this. Barr went after his old boss
and gave him the kind of roasting he deserved.
Taking note of the former president’s business
career, Barr expressed surprise. “One would think that an executive would have
a better idea how to operate with people and manage people.” Trump did not.
Barr called him “a poor manager of people,” and his “own worst enemy.”
(This blogger would change
that to “America’s worst enemy”).
Barr told his interviewer that he was “disgusted,”
“mortified,” and “angry” while watching the January 6, 2021, attack on Capitol
Hill. He said Trump was “morally responsible” for the
attack. It was “a shameful episode. It was a shameful
riot,” he continued. “And the president certainly precipitated it.”
“In fact, he’s incorrigible,” Barr said of
Trump. He “doesn’t take advice from
people and he does his own thing, and you’re not going to teach an old dog new
tricks. So I was under no illusion when I went in, but I felt there was a
chance he would rally to the office and be more disciplined in his behavior.”
Barr would not be Barr without attacking the Left,
and accusing those of us who cherish the U.S. Constitution and long feared Trump, of suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
I’d argue that we figured out, starting with
the pussy-grabber tape, if not before, that Donald J. Trump had no business
setting foot in the White House. Not even as visitor. Electing Trump in 2016, was
like electing Bill Clinton in 1992, if he had campaigned on a promise to
force White House interns to provide blow jobs under his desk.
Barr told a reporter that he warned Trump at
the beginning of 2020 that he would lose the election if he failed to “adjust”
his behavior. His words were wasted, and the president “continued to be
self-indulgent and petty, and turned off key constituents [sic] that made the
difference in the election.”
Even worse, Barr claimed, was what Trump was doing
to the Republican Party. “The tactic that Trump is using to
exert this control…is extortion,” he said. “What other
great leader has done this? Telling the party, ‘If it’s not me, I’m going to
ruin your election chances by telling my base to sit home. And I’ll sabotage
whoever you nominate other than me.’ It shows what he’s all about. He’s all
about himself.”
Barr
did have hope. “There’s never been more consistent conservatism within the
Republican Party than there is today,” he said. “The idea that there are RINOs,
people that really don’t support Republican principles, is simply not true. What the
president is defining as RINOs are people who are true-blue Republicans and
conservatives but who just have a problem with Trump personally,” he continued.
“This is all personal to Trump.”
Yeah.
Classic Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Like I said, my wife had that
figured out, and I posted my agreement no later than October
25, 2017.
An interesting fact about Romney and Trump. (See below.)
Year Six: The Orange God of Mar-a-Lago
(Still Lying Every Day)
We pick up here at the beginning of
Ex-President Blubber’s sixth full year in politics. It seems like only
yesterday that he rode down the escalator and started insulting entire groups
of people, as well as individuals, and he has never stopped. (For purposes of
this blog, we lumped those early days of chaos in with 2016.)
The man was lying then. He’s lying still.
Then: I didn’t sleep with any porn star. Now: I won the 2020 election.
And yet, some large fraction of the American
people still loves the pathological liar. It’s baffling.
It’s horrifying.
***
1/21/22: Remember when
your parents told you not to hang around with “that kid” because they’d be a
bad influence? Or the day you told your own kids something similar?
____________________
If “POTUS allows
this to occur…we’re driving a stake in the heart of the federal republic.”
Anonymous
member of the Freedom Caucus
____________________
Based on growing
evidence, Trump is the U.S. government’s “bad kid,” the one who pulled other
bad kids into his orbit. No wonder he might want to be re-elected in 2024. He’s
going to need that pardon power.
Fulton County,
Georgia District Attorney Fani T. Willis is on his trail. She has concluded
that the former president’s conduct related to a call to Georgia Secretary of State
Brad Raffensperger may well have been criminal. In that infamous call, then-President
Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” just enough votes to give him a win in the state
– and gently hand over the state’s sixteen electoral votes.
Add in other
calls and plots, and Trump may be open to multiple felony charges. Those could
include racketeering, solicitation of election fraud, intentional interference
with performance of election duties and conspiracy to commit election fraud.
Other working parts to a solid case might include, but would not be limited to:
A.Trump’s call to
the chief investigator for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, asking her to
find “dishonesty” in the election.
B.Sen. Lindsey
Graham’s call to Raffensperger, asking if all mail-in ballots in counties with
significant rates of ballot signature challenges could be thrown out.
C.Rudolph Giuliani
and other Trump lawyers pressing lawmakers
in seven states to appoint second sets of electors (despite having proven
no significant voter fraud). These electors would vote for Donald, recounts
and dozens of court defeats be damned.
*
IN RELATED NEWS,
the House Select Panel has revealed evidence, indicating that if you witnessed
events on January 6, 2021, you were not alone in despairing for our republican
form of government. An unidentified member of the Freedom Caucus, an ally of
Trump, warned White House Chief of Staff Meadows to tell him not to
pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the electoral vote. If “POTUS
allows this to occur…we’re driving a stake in the heart of the federal
republic.”
Along with
Ivanka Trump and others, Meadows has been subpoenaed. At first, he was
cooperative. Now he says he’s not coming unless a judge drags him up to Capitol
Hill by his ear. Meadows has been held in contempt by the U.S.
House of Representatives – on a mostly partisan vote.
Naturally, Rep.
Jim Jordan, a rubber-stamp Trump apologist, defended Meadows, lashing out at Democrat
colleagues in the House. “Mark Meadows is our former colleague,” Jordan yelped and
yowled. “He is a good man and he is my friend. This is as wrong as it gets. You
all know it. But your lust for power, your lust to get your opponents is so
intense, you don’t care.”
We would be
remiss if we failed to mention that Jordan has also been
subpoenaed.
But the man who supported four investigations into Hillary Clinton’s role in
the Benghazi affair, now has a different take. “Nah. Not feeling like
testifying under oath,” he more or less says.
Roger Stone? He
was also called to testify – and having already been convicted of a felony for
lying to Congress – he decided to show. Then he took the Fifth on every
question he was asked. (See: 12/17/21.)
For bonus fun,
federal prosecutors now allege that members of
the right-wing Oath Keepers brought plenty of weaponry to Washington D.C. on
January 5, in preparation for the attack the following day. That included, at least “three
luggage carts’ worth of gun boxes, rifle cases, and suitcases filled with
ammunition” which they stashed at a Comfort Inn in Northern Virginia. A second
group of four men “kept their rifles ready to go in a vehicle parked in the
hotel lot.”
Two Oath
Keepers, James Dolan and Mark Grods, have already plead guilty in relation to
these charges.
One of the others
charged, Edward Vallejo, allegedly posed in a podcast on the morning of Jan. 6.
“The question is: Is there a shot heard round the world moment? The possibility
definitely exists.”
Vallejo and his
pals were ready and willing to spill a little blood (of their fellow Americans)
to water the tree of liberty. (See: 1/12/22.)
While Team Trump
continues to flail away in an effort to find and prove massive voter fraud – or
even medium-sized voter fraud – state and federal courts continue to hand
individual members of the team stinging defeats. Today, Igor Fruman, associate of
Rudy Giuliani in a supposed effort to “clean up corruption” in Ukraine (by
digging up dirt on Hunter Biden) had his day in court. Fruman had already plead guilty to soliciting
foreign campaign donations and at his sentencing learned he’ll be spending the
rest of 2022 and the first weeks of 2023 in the slammer.
One may assume
that Mr. Fruman has been cooperative. Rudy’s other pal, Lev Parnas, also
accused of soliciting campaign donations from foreigners, is staring down a
sentence of 45 years in prison.
Part of Parnas’ problem
may be that he actually did
manage to donate $325,000 to Trump and other GOP campaign operations in 2018. One
illegal donation, for $10,000, was made to Adam Laxalt, a Trump loyalist, who
was running for governor of Nevada at the time. He didn’t win. But as Nevada
Attorney General, Laxalt later filed several lawsuits in an attempt to overturn
the 2020 vote and bestow Nevada’s six electoral votes on Donald J. Trump.
___
1/22/22: The new
president places a call to Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, and they speak for 30 minutes. According to
a call summary released by Mr. Trudeau’s office, the two leaders agreed to meet
next month “to advance the important
work of renewing the deep and enduring friendship between Canada and the United
States.”
The sense of relief felt in Canada by removal
of the international abscess from the White House on January 20, was palpable. (Afterall,
Trump had previously called Trudeau “very dishonest and weak.”) “We have so
much alignment – not just me and President Biden, but Canadians and President
Biden,” Mr. Trudeau had assured reporters at an earlier news conference the
same day.
Roland Paris, Trudeau’s former foreign policy adviser
put it plainly. “Just knowing the occupant of the White House will treat Canada
as a respected friend makes a huge difference.”
Gary Doer, a former Canadian ambassador to
Washington and premier of the Province of Manitoba, was particularly blunt. “There
is actually a special place in hell for Trump,” he said.
___
1/23/22: Right-wing banshee Ann Coulter has turned against the human doughball known as Donald J. Trump.
____________________
“He’s fading faster than Sarah Palin did.”
Ann Coulter
____________________
According to
Coulter, Republicans secretly would like nothing better than for Mar-a-Lago to
break off from the coast, float out to sea – and with the former president pleading
futilely for rescue – sink without a trace. “No one wants Trump,” she wrote in a recent column. “He’s fading
faster than Sarah Palin did — and she was second place on a losing presidential
ticket.”
Coulter has
labeled Trump “a shallow, lazy
ignoramus,”
“a complete moron,” “a blithering
idiot”
and “a lout.” As she sees
it, he “accomplished everything he was ever going to accomplish at 2 a.m.” on
election night in 2016. It would have been better for the Republican Party (and
the country),” she insists, if he had been “vaporized at the moment he was
announcing his victory. Pence would have been afraid to betray Trump’s
supporters,” she grumbles. “Trump wasn’t!”
The surprise if
you’re a liberal, as is Mr. Blogger, is that it took anyone of average
intelligence so long to realize Trump would betray anyone. He betrayed his three
wives in sequence. He betrayed his country, when he put personal interests ahead
of national security in his call to Ukraine. He betrayed us all when he tried
to destroy democracy after he lost the 2020 election.
A rarity: agreeing with Ann Coulter.
___
1/25/22: Of all the gall!
In November, Rep. Rob Wittman, a Republican congressman from Virginia, voted
against the infrastructure plan pushed and passed overwhelmingly by Biden and the
Democrats.
Showing
extraordinary chutzpah, Wittman is now tweet-touting
his success in bringing $70 million to his district, to expand the Port
of Virginia in Norfolk. As part of the infrastructure bill.
When the free
press put Wittman’s spokesperson on the spot, asking about the tweet, Rep.
Whitman decided to delete it and duck and cover.
Rep. Wittman.
As ABC explained, he was not alone in such hypocrisy.
Shortly after voting against the measure
last fall, Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Ala., celebrated its hundreds of millions in
funding for a stalled highway project in Birmingham.
Last week, Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, touted new funding for
a flood control project from the package, which she opposed last year, decrying
it at the time as a “so-called infrastructure bill.”
Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, a freshman
lawmaker who also voted against the infrastructure bill, celebrated new
“game-changing” funding to upgrade locks along the Upper Mississippi River.
Normally, this
would be embarrassing to anyone who had the capacity to feel shame. Sadly, this
is today’s stunted version of the Republican Party.
___
1/26/22: This past
weekend, Sarah Palin, the adamantly unvaxxed former governor of Alaska, tested
positive for COVID-19. It turns out that the night before, the Wicked Witch of
Wasilla dined indoors at a fancy
Manhattan restaurant – despite a local ordinance that requires diners to show
proof of vaccination.
If you sat
nearby or waited on her table, you just had to hope she didn’t cough in your
direction.
Then you might
take the virus home to your immuno-compromised wife, or your elderly
grandfather.
____________________
What are the odds?
____________________
Palin is both
too much of a dunce to get the vaccine and too selfish to stand by her decision.
Don’t want the vaccination? Okay. Then eat fast food in your hotel room after
going through a Wendy’s drive-thru.
In the meantime,
this poor blogger has argued endlessly with conservative Facebook friends the
few still left – who insist the coronavirus isn’t that bad. Masks are for sheep.
The first hoof down a meadow path to tyranny. What next? Will Biden order us to
wear earmuffs when we go outside in winter? They claim that if they do get
vaccinated, they will become magnetized or die hideous deaths.
If male, their
gonads will swell to the size of basketballs first.
They really
believe this crap.
*
Twenty-one times greater odds.
I KEEP PROVIDING evidence to show that the odds
are greatly in their favor, if they want to stay healthy, and help keep others
safe, if they decide to get the shots. I keep checking for facts. I taught
history. I love facts. The more the better. So, once again, I spent part of my
day compiling evidence, starting with Ohio, where I live.
I’m fairly good with math and I’m not a
science-averse dolt like the former Governor of Alaska. So I can look at that second block and see 8 into 168 goes 21 times. Put another
way, an unvaccinated Ohioan, with the same health issues and the same age as
me, has just under twenty-one times as great a chance of dying as I would if I
caught COVID (in my case, again). I have to puzzle it out a moment, but without
using a calculator, I see chances of getting hospitalized are about seventeen
times greater if you’re unvaxxed. I like facts. I decide to keep checking.
*
WASHINGTON STATE health officials report the same kinds of figures: 12-34-year-olds, 5 times more likely to be
hospitalized if infected if not vaccinated; 35-64-year-olds, 7 times as likely;
65-years-old or above, 7 times more likely to end up in a hospital bed, and 11
times more likely to end up in the morgue.
I give Texas a
shot. I know my conservative friends think if you quote CDC numbers, those
numbers must be fake and bogus and rigged.
Plus they want
to hang Dr. Fauci.
The Texas State
Department of Health Services reported on December
24, that the
unvaccinated Texan was 16 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than the smarter,
not-Palin-kind of Texan, who had shots.
I try another
red state. South Carolina reported on December 15 that 74% of all South
Carolinians who died from COVID-19 in the previous month had been the
unvaccinated style.
Red State #3:
The Alabama Department of Public Health reported that 15 out of every 16 people
who died in that state from coronavirus (April to mid-August) were unvaccinated.
To be exact:
94.1%.
*
“Patients are dying in our
hospitals who really don’t need to die.”
OKAY, HOW ABOUT Oregon?
My daughter and her husband work for the Oregon Health and Science University.
From March thru December of last year, 693 Oregonians who had been vaccinated
died from COVID-19 (see page six of the linked report). That compared
with 3,413 individuals who had not had shots.
Roughly 7-to-1
odds in favor of getting what the anti-vaxxers like to refer to as the “jab,”
or the “jabby-jabby.”
In Pennsylvania, recently, Gerald Maloney,
chief medical officer for hospital services at Geisinger Health warned: “Every
day, there are patients dying in our hospitals who really don’t need to die.
But by the time they come to the hospital, it’s too late for a vaccine, and
that’s the tragedy.” Across the Geisinger system, which operates nine hospitals
in the state, 90% of those hospitalized are unvaccinated. Another 8% are not
fully vaccinated. WellSpan hospitals put the number of unvaccinated vs.
vaccinated filling their beds at 90%, and 95% of those on ventilators. At
Lehigh Valley Health Network, 75% to 85% are unvaccinated, with the proportion
in ICU even higher.
At Penn State
Health, interim hospital medicine chief Fahad Khalid walked through the
intensive care unit at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center on Thursday. Inside
were 33 COVID-19 patients. All were unvaccinated.
“We continue
to struggle,” Khalid said at a virtual briefing.
On January 7, almost 6,400 Pennsylvanians were
hospitalized with the fast-spreading Omicron variant.
And the moral of the story?
Donald Yealy, chief medical officer at
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center couldn’t have made it any simpler.
“Many of those people will be seriously ill. That will disproportionately be
people who have chosen not to get vaccinated,” he said. “So, again, the
message: Please get vaccinated [emphasis added]”
I kept digging for
facts. Last October, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services put the number
of deaths in that state, among those vaccinated, at 1.3 per 100,000. That
compared to 24.5 per 100,000 who refused to get the shots (or couldn’t afford
them). Or: 19 to 1 odds, in your favor,
if you had shots.
A few days ago,
new figures were released. By now, if you’ve haven’t had the shots and the
booster, your odds of being hospitalized or dying compared to those who have had
both are 60 times greater.
The North
Carolina Department of Health reported in December that 91% of all deaths from COVID in
that state in 2021 had been unvaxxed individuals. Out of 11,066 deaths in North
Carolina, only 993 had had shots.
*
It’s
really that simple.
I DECIDED to look
up other countries for variety. The pattern held. The Office of National
Statistics, for Britain, points out that mortality rates, adjusted for
those vaccinated vs. unvaccinated, were lower for the vaccinated by 99% in
February 2021. The figure was 78% in October.
In Israel, 17%
of the population – the unvaxxed portion – accounts for
65% of all serious COVID cases. Health Ministry statistics show that for every
Israeli over age 60, who has died, the unvaxxed are as 15 to 1, compared to
those who’ve had the shots.
Knowing that
four times as many Israelis are vaccinated as are not, it would seem the
chances of death for those not protected, and over age 60, are sixty times
worse. So if you don’t get vaccinated – and you carry the virus home to older
relatives – also unvaccinated – you put them at much greater risk.
It’s really that
simple.
In Canada, since
the start of the national vaccination campaign, there have been 8,903 deaths among those
unvaxxed, or not completely vaxxed, vs. 1,253 persons fully vaccinated. That
would be 7-to-1 odds.
I tried a few
more. In Spain the unvaccinated elderly (ages 60 to 80) were 25 times more likely to die. In
France, those who dodged the shots, or perhaps had medical reasons to avoid
them, were 9 times as likely to be hospitalized or end up dead. In Russia,
where the government is adept at covering up bad numbers, the Moscow Times
reports that “excess deaths,” the number of deaths reported compared to
previous years, since the pandemic began, may be as high as 900,000.
Even Vladimir
Putin seemed frustrated, as the death toll
climbed.
“We have a reliable and efficient
vaccine. The vaccine really reduces the risks of illness, grave complications
and death,” he added.
(Okay. I don’t
trust that scumbag.)
In Germany, health
officials have warned that 90% of patients in ICU are unvaccinated. With
infections, hospitalizations and deaths spiking, as the Omicron
variant took hold, Markus Söder, the governor of Bavaria, warned, “We have two
viruses in the country.” One was the coronavirus. The other was “this poison,
which is being spread on a massive scale,” misinformation about vaccines.
*
The “sick and dying are the
unvaccinated.”
ANYWAY, I like
facts. I went back to checking states and local statistics. The Minnesota
Department of Health reported that
unvaxxed individuals, age 65+ were fifteen times as likely to be hospitalized as the vaccinated.
Those who had not had shots, in the 50-64 age group, were “only” 9.5 times more
likely to end up in hospital beds. Death rates among the unvaxxed and infected
were more than fourteen times higher, 65+, and nine times higher, 50-64.
When you look at the population hospitalized
with COVID-19, “Without a doubt, it’s unvaccinated people,” said Dr. Joshua
Huelster, a critical care/intensivist at Allina’s Abbott Northwestern
Hospital.
The median age of Minnesotans who died unvaxxed
has been 69. For those who died despite having been vaccinated, the median age
was 83.
The Washoe
County Health Department in Nevada reported that out of more than
1,000 COVID deaths, only 68 persons who died in that county had been fully
vaccinated. Only two patients who had been vaccinated and received boosters,
both women in their 90s, had died.
In September Chief Medical Officer Dr. William
Hathaway of the Mission Health system in Asheville, N.C., reported that none of
the 415 COVID-19 deaths reported at Mission Hospital had been vaccinated. “The
patients who are in the hospital who are sick and dying are the unvaccinated,
not the vaccinated,” he said. “We have not seen a vaccinated patient die.”
Hathaway later amended his statement to indicate that yes, some vaccinated persons
had still died.
He said the number was: 2.
*
This
isn’t about semantics.
STILL, ON
JANUARY 10, Peter Doocy, reporting for Fox
News, tried to get
in a shot on President Biden, after the president said that what we were facing
in this country was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
Doocy asked
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki how that could be true. He noted that he
had had the shots, and been boosted. He caught the virus. He pointed out that
Psaki had been vaccinated and boosted. She got COVID too.
She could have
been rude and responded that at Fox, everyone was
required to have shots – although almost all the hosts continue to make it sound
like vaccinations are only for sheep and commies.
She did explain,
as if to an adult-size toddler, that, yes, Peter, she had been infected. She
had “minor symptoms.” She went on to add that if you were unvaccinated and got
sick your chances of being hospitalized were seventeen times greater, and your
chances of dying were twenty times as great.
Those were the
figures from the Centers for Disease Control. Pretty much what everyone else
has said.
In other words,
it’s long past time to quit quibbling over the phrasing President Biden uses.
On the day Doocy asked about the wording, 130,000 Americans were
hospitalized with some variant of the coronavirus, including 22,715 in
intensive care.
And the numbers
were trending up. Four days later, new infections in the U.S. peaked (we hope)
at a seven-day average of almost
800,000. Two weeks later, this nation would be losing, on average, 2,166 people to the
virus daily.
The isn’t about semantics.
This is about tragedy for the sick, the dying,
and the bereaved families, unnecessarily left behind.
___
1/28/22:
President Biden heads to Pittsburgh, the “City of Bridges,” to discuss the
nation’s crumbling infrastructure.
____________________
“It is not our role to lend legitimacy to such transparent and untimely efforts to subvert the will of Pennsylvania voters.”
Justice David Wecht, Pennsylvania Supreme Court
____________________
There were 450 bridges in Pittsburgh when the
president scheduled his visit. As of 6:45 a.m. this morning there are 449. A
four-lane structure on Forbes Avenue collapses. Reasons unknown. Fortunately,
schools were delayed due to heavy snow and traffic was unusually light. Ten
people were injured, including four who went to the hospital, but no one was
killed.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene blamed “Sleepy Joe”
for the collapse and claimed he used his “Death Stare” power to melt the
girders.
Rejected-President Trump, asked to comment,
insisted, “Everyone knows I won the last election, and when I get back in
office, I’m going to pardon every one of my supporters who has committed a
crime in the last fifty years. Starting with all my kids, except the normal
ones, Tiffany and Barron.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell told reporters the
collapse proved we need ginormous tax cuts for billionaires.
Pittsburgh bridge collapses.
*
IN OTHER NEWS, Trumplicans are thrilled to have
won a court battle at last. They were 0 for 2020, and 0 for 2021, until
this big, big win! Acting on a challenge by 14 Pennsylvania lawmakers who
claimed Act 77, which established no-excuse mail-in balloting in the state, was
unconstitutional, the Commonwealth Court ruled, 3-2, in their favor. Any change
to voting procedures requires a change to the state constitution. So, the fourteen
were in essence challenging their own wins.
Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt, a Republican who
joined the majority, said that voting “requires the physical presence of the
elector.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying, for two years,”
Loser Donald exploded – forgetting that he voted by mail in Florida, himself.
Before Republicans could pop the champaign
corks, Pennsylvania’s Democratic attorney general filed an appeal to the state
Supreme Court. That court had previously ruled that any challenge to Act 77 was
too late. Both houses of the legislature had voted for the act in 2019. Both were
controlled by Republicans – and Trump-loving lawmakers only got mad when the
Orange God of Mar-a-Lago got thumped in the 2020 election. Justice David Wecht,
of the Pennsylvania high court, had been clear in the earlier case, explaining
the court’s decision:
Unsatisfied
with the results of that wager [on new election rules, Republican lawmakers]
would now flip over the table, scattering to the shadows the votes of millions
of Pennsylvanians. It is not our role to lend legitimacy to such transparent
and untimely efforts to subvert the will of Pennsylvania voters. Courts should
not decide elections when the will of the voters is clear.
Asked to comment on how they managed to win
their own elections, the fourteen lawmakers who had challenged Act 77 again,
claimed divine providence. They insisted no one on their side would ever cheat
when it came to voting.
“We’d just riot,” one explained.
Neo-Nazi-leaning Trump aide Stephen Miller told
reporters that this newest court decision proved his boss was still the real
president, and Joe Biden would be expected to vacate the White House within 24
hours. Miller added that the Founding Fathers had it right in 1789, when they
ratified the U.S. Constitution and allowed states to limit voting to white men
who could meet certain property qualifications. “They didn’t vote by mail in
those days,” he said with a leer.
“They were too busy whipping slaves.”
Miller also suggested it was time to bring back
the 3/5th’s clause, which would drastically reduce the Democrats’
advantage when it came to African American voters.
(I may be joking above, but the Founding
Fathers did restrict voting in dramatic fashion. Trump did vote by mail, as did
millions of other Floridians, in a state Loser Donald won. Somehow that was
cool. As for Mr. Miller, he has repeatedly flirted with the neo-Nazi brand.)
BLOGGER’S NOTE: Well, that didn’t last long. Team
Trump takes another legal rap on the knuckles when the Pennsylvania Supreme
Court upholds Act 77. Mail-in balloting shall continue in forthcoming
elections.
So lick those stamps, folks, the court ruled
5-2.
___
1/29/22:
New evidence reveals that in seven states, Trumplicans joined in a plot to
submit fake electoral votes – and send them in by mail. Real voter fraud
at last. And one of those states was Pennsylvania, where Republican consider
voting by mail to be the work of Satanist pedophiles! (See: 1/28/22.)
The plot involved several semi-legal or illegal
steps. First, Trumplican forces would ignore the results of multiple recounts,
which showed the Orange God had lost in Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, and
Michigan. They would ignore dozens of court rulings, all of which made that outcome
clear. Then Vice President Pence – at a key moment on January 6 – would throw
out the electoral votes submitted in those states and three others. Namely:
Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and Nevada.
Finally, Mr. Pence would announce the winner of
the 2020 election, like a host at the Grammys, but without the designer gown.
The House Select Panel investigating the events
of Jan. 6, has now subpoenaed two of the fake electors from each of the seven
states, to appear before Congress, and discuss details of the plot.
No wonder everyone is pleading the Fifth.
___
1/30/22:
We keep trying to leave Loser Don in the rearview mirror of history – but Loser
Don keeps creeping up behind, like Jeffrey Dahmer hungering for a snack.
____________________
If you’d like to hear a man suborn election fraud, by virtue of “finding” a few thousand votes, give the call a listen.
____________________
In no particular order, a few bits of news. In
Georgia, a special grand jury will be impaneled on May 2, to look into possible election fraud crimes committed by…Donald J. Trump. This would be
quite humorous, save for the fact that Trump was asking a top election official
in that state to shatter the law.
Mr. Blogger has asked friends and relatives if
they’ve heard Trump’s January 2, 2021, call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad
Raffensperger.
So far, none have listened.
I urge you, then, if you’d like to hear a man
suborn election fraud, by virtue of “finding” a few thousand votes, give it a
shot.
Speaking of crimes, Loser Don is already talking
about who he’d like to pardon if we’re dumb enough to elect him again.
Saturday, at another one of his “Save America” rallies, he told fans, “If I run and I win, we will treat those people from
January 6 fairly. We will treat them fairly, and if it requires pardons, we
will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.”
Here, we should probably stop a moment, and
remind ourselves erHr that as president, he has already
said he had “an absolute right to pardon himself.”
Even longtime GOP Sen. Charles Grassley, who
has at least some of his principles intact, scoffed at that idea – although
then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders refused to rule out the idea.
“If I were President of the United States, and I had a lawyer who told me I
could pardon myself,” Grassley explained to a reporter, “I think I’d hire a new
lawyer.” He pivoted suddenly and walked away in disgust.
*
HOW ABOUT Joe Biden? How’s he doing? Okay, he’s
down in the polls. Still, the economy grew by 5.7% in 2021. That’s the best performance since
1984.
Wait, Mr. Blogger, do you mean “Sleepy Joe” did
better in his first year than Trump did in any of his four? And did it without
giving fat tax cuts to fat cats – like Trump gave himself?
I do.
*
IF MR. BLOGGER has said this once, he has said
it enough times to annoy all his friends. Not all politicians are alike.
The Biden administration, for example, believes
climate change is real, unlike the dolts who steered the ship of
state under Loser Don. Did you know, for example, that we now have a “global
climate envoy?”
And can you name him or her? Don’t kid yourself.
You can’t. Neither could Mr. Blogger until he saw a recent story. That envoy is
Sarah Palin.
No, no, no! I jest. It’s John Kerry, who, in a
recent virtual meeting, warned the world’s most prolific polluting nations, “We
must all move faster” to head off disaster for humanity.
He was even more pointed when he spoke at an
event sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “We’re in trouble,” Kerry told his audience. “I hope everyone
can understand that. Not trouble we can’t get out of. But we’re not on a good
track.”
Who else is
worried? Scientists.
Scientists at
NASA.
They report that
2021 finished as the sixth hottest year
on record.
Since 1988, when James Hansen first warned that NASA data indicated the planet
was warming, temperatures have continued to climb.
Today, 1988
ranks as the 28th warmest year. The nine years during which Mr.
Blogger’s first grandchild has been alive, 2013-2021, rank in the top ten
hottest ever.
The oceans of
the world (which have luckily sopped up much of the excess heat generated since
the dawn of the Industrial Revolution) were hotter in 2021 than
ever before. That marked the sixth consecutive annual record for
“hottest ever” waters.
___
1/31/22:
In a recent poll 44% of Republicans said they did not want Trump to run again
in 2024.
____________________
Mitt Romney got a higher percentage of the popular vote.
____________________
According to one GOP pollster, President Biden currently
has a favorable rating of 46%, and an unfavorable rating of 52%.
Not good. But when asked if people had a
favorable or unfavorable opinion of Trump, the numbers were worse: 40% to 57%.
Right now, two thirds of Americans hope neither
Trump nor Biden will run in 2024 and that’s with Biden running into serious
problems. If they did run, however, by 47% to 43% they’d pick Biden.
Just for fun, Mr. Blogger likes to point out
that Mitt Romney got a higher percentage of the popular vote in 2012 than Trump
did in 2016 or 20202. Partly because, if you disagreed with Romney on positions
(remember when he was touting investing in Chinese business), he was at least a
decent human being.
If you have any brains at all, you should be able to figure out why you don't want the military involved in settling elections.
*
“Debating…unconstitutional schemes in the White House.”
WE SHOULD ALL HOPE that Trump never runs again
because he might win and destroy democracy once and for all.
The New York Times has evidence that in December 2020, President Trump
was well aware of, and actively supporting, a plan to seize the voting machines
in several states that he lost. His closest, craziest advisors, including Gen.
Michael T. Flynn, had been pushing for the seizure. In fact, Mr. Trump asked Rudy Giuliani to call the Department of
Homeland Security and tell them to seize the machines, arguing that there was massive evidence of
tampering to justify the move.
(No such evidence has been
found since.)
We also know that this was not the first time
the president had considered the idea of grabbing the machines. In November, shortly
after the election, Mr. Trump asked the Justice Department to snatch the
machines.
Attorney General Bill Barr demurred. Indeed, he
told the president plainly that there was no evidence to justify such a
move.
Not to be denied by legalities, or oaths to
uphold the Constitution, the dream kept percolating in Trump’s head. At a White
House meeting, on December 18, the idea of ordering U.S. troops to seize the machines
was broached. Gen. Flynn was all for it. So was lawyer Sidney Powell. So was former
Col. Phil Waldron, Flynn’s nutty pal.
Even Rudy expressed opposition this time –
proving how really crazy the military-will-do-it option was. Waldron did a new
draft of his plan, dropping the military, giving the job to the Department of
Homeland Security. The call went out to Ken Cuccinelli, head of DHS, but he,
too, made clear he had no authority to grab the machines.
And, we hope, no desire.
How terrible was this plot? Even Howard Kurtz
of Fox News had enough command of his senses to smell a surfeit of skunks once they sprayed the Oval Office. Commenting
on the Times report, he said,
The gist is that Trump explored having the Pentagon, Justice
Department or Homeland Security seize voting machines in disputed states based
on a complete lack of evidence that they had been tampered with. The voting
machine theories, promoted by fringe characters around Trump, were the wackiest
of all, said to include machinations involving Venezuela and Hugo Chavez.
Think, for a moment, of the reaction if the leader of another
country had ordered the confiscation of voting machines in a disputed election,
and how that would play here.
“You might say the system worked,” Kurtz added,
“but the fact the president was openly debating these unconstitutional schemes
in the White House is rather chilling. You can support Donald Trump, you can
believe there was election fraud, but there’s no getting around the craziness
of this particular plot.”
The gaping holes in Kurtz’s analysis were clear.
First, even Trump’s own attorney general had told them there was no evidence
the election was stolen. So “you can believe there was election fraud,” would
be like telling your college-age kid that he could continue to believe Santa
Claus came down the chimney and brought all the presents. Had Trump been able
to find a willing participant to order the seizure, it would have
occurred. Then it wouldn’t have been an “unconstitutional scheme.”
It wouldn’t have been “rather chilling.”
It would have been a coup, conducted by Trump,
with help of whatever portion of the U.S. military would have been willing to
go along.
*
THE SECOND-RANKING Republican in the U.S.
Senate, John Thune, was frank when asked to comment on the Times report. He praised those, like
Mr. Cuccinelli, who stood up to Trump and his team. “I’m just glad
that there were people in the right places and that the system worked,” he told
reporters. “People who had positions of responsibility held their ground even
when being asked to do things that they knew they shouldn’t do. Things may have
bent a little bit, but they didn’t break.”
What bent a
little?
The U.S.
Constitution.
And who tried
not only to bend it but to break it?
Trump and his
pals.
No one who genuinely
loves this country should ignore these facts.
