UPDATED 2/20/23
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 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.
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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.
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