10/28/20: Six days until the election and
more than 66 million Americans have voted early, in person, or by mailing ballots.
Polls indicate that President Trump has a narrow path to
victory; but he may triumph again and have a chance to ruin the country.
____________________
“Joe Biden may not be the president we want, but in 2020 he is the
president we desperately need.”
New
Hampshire Union Leader, endorsing a Democrat for the first time in a hundred
years.
____________________
*
THE APTLY NAMED James Blight, of Haines City, Florida, decides
he might widen the president’s path, at least in his hometown. First
step: Drink all afternoon. Second: Steal a front-end loader with a backhoe arm.
Third: Drive through town digging up people’s Biden/Harris signs
and vandalizing their properties.
Bright’s foray into politics ends almost as suddenly as it
began. As NBC News explained earlier this week:
James Blight, 26, was arrested and charged Saturday with grand
theft auto and trespassing [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted], with
additional charges possible, Mike Ferguson, public information officer for the
Haines City Police, said in an email Monday.
“Blight told police that he had been drinking whiskey all day
and did not remember most of the day,” Ferguson wrote. “He said that he
couldn’t help but hit the Joe Biden signs and acknowledged to taking down a
fence in the process. Blight said he did not know how to operate the equipment.”
Ferguson said that investigators learned that “Blight took out a
private chain-link fence and several political signs” and a “city-owned speed
limit sign.”
“It’s absurd that a grown man could think he had the right to
destroy someone else’s property based on a difference in political opinion. The
fact that he was driving this heavy equipment, that he did not know how to
operate, down busy roads could have been disastrous. We’re thankful that no one
was hurt in this matter,” Haines City police Chief Jim Elensky said.
One witness described the slow-motion front-end loader chase
that ensued, with cars backed up behind the slow-moving getaway vehicle.
“I jumped
into my truck and called 911 and followed him along, and the whole time he’s
riding down the road, he’s yelling at people, cussing them out,” Marion
continued, alleging that the suspect told one person at an intersection, “I’m
going to run you over.”
*
BLIGHT’S EFFORTS to help the president were negated when, for the
first time in more than a century, the conservative newspaper, the New Hampshire
Union Leader, endorsed a Democrat for president.
Union Leader editors explained:
We were hopeful with Trump’s win
that he might change, that the weight and responsibility of the Oval Office
might mold a more respectful and presidential man. We have watched with the
rest of the world as the mantle of the presidency has done very little to
change Trump while the country and world have changed significantly.
President Trump is not always
100 percent wrong, but he is 100 percent wrong for America.
They cite, for example, the “7 TRILLION in new debt,” the
president and his GOP enablers have rolled up in just four years.
They go on:
Donald Trump did not create the
social-media-driven political landscape we now live in, but he has weaponized
it. He is a consummate linguistic takedown artist, ripping apart all comers to
the delight of his fanbase but at the expense of the nation. America faces many
challenges and needs a president to build this country up. This appears to be
outside of Mr. Trump’s skill set.
Building this country up sits
squarely within the skill set of Joseph Biden. We have found Mr. Biden to be a
caring, compassionate and professional public servant. He has repeatedly
expressed his desire to be a president for all of America, and we take him at
his word. Joe Biden may not be the president we want, but in 2020 he is the
president we desperately need. He will be a president to bring people together
and right the ship of state.
*
“A threat to the rule of law in our country.”
TWENTY FORMER U.S. ATTORNEYS, all Republicans, sign a letter
Tuesday, warning, in a way, that this blogger has
been right from day one of this blog. President Trump, they say, is “a threat
to the rule of law in our country.”
“The President has clearly
conveyed that he expects his Justice Department appointees and prosecutors to
serve his personal and political interests,” said the former prosecutors in an
open letter. They accused Trump of taking “action against those who have stood
up for the interests of justice.”
“He has politicized the
Justice Department, dictating its priorities along political lines and breaking
down the barrier that prior administrations had maintained between political
and prosecutorial decision-making,”
Greg Brower, a former U.S. attorney for Nevada, served
during the first years of the Trump administration as the F.B.I.’s assistant
director for congressional affairs. He explained why he added his signature to
the letter. “I had a up-close view of how the President and the White House
dealt with the Justice Department in recent years,” he told a reporter. “It’s
clear that President Trump views the Justice Department and the FBI as his
own personal law firm and investigative agency,” Brower added. “He made
that clear privately – and publicly.”
POSTSCRIPT: A federal judge has admonished the Department of Justice for a
plan to defend Trump, in a defamation case filed against him in state courts by
a woman named E. Jean Carroll.
Ms. Carroll has accused the president of raping her in a department
store dressing room, in the mid-90s, long before he was elected.
Attorney General William Barr perused the case, and decided DOJ
should protect Trump as a “federal employee,” even though, when the alleged
crime occurred, he was a douchebag businessman in New York City.
In a 61-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan
rejected DOJ’s request for permission to defend the alleged rapist. “The
president of the United States is not an ‘employee of the government’ within
the meaning of the relevant statutes,” Kaplan ruled. “Even if he were such an ‘employee,’
President Trump’s allegedly defamatory statements concerning Ms. Carroll would
not have been within the scope of his employment.”
Trump’s comments, Kaplan explained, concerned an alleged
sexual assault that predated his time in office, and the allegations against
him had “no relationship to the official business of the United States.”
In other words, the president could hire a lawyer his own
damn self and not try to stick taxpayers with the cost of his defense.
