Trump loses his lawyers for the Senate trial

The five lawyers who were going to defend Trump in the Senate after being impeached by the House of Representatives have abandoned him.  Apparently, they refused to offer the defense that he demanded of them - that the election was stolen and what he did was proper.

Why? Because lawyers can be disbarred for knowingly lying in court.  And they know, as we all know, that it is a lie, a classic Big Lie, that Trump lost because the election was stolen from him.  The courts have already ruled in about 60 ludicrous lawsuits Trump already tried that there was no evidence of meaningful fraud in the election, ruled that the election was not stolen from him.

Of course, Trump has decades of experience where he has had others incriminate themselves on his behalf - for example, his long time personal lawyer and intimidator, Michael Cohen, who ended up going to prison for campaign violation for bribing two women during the final months of the 2016 election to keep them quiet about extramarital sex he had had with them. Cohen went to prison, and mused that it was strange that he rather than Trump was in prison since it wasn't Cohen who got the blow job.

The five lawyers who walked out on Trump supposedly were going to offer a defense that it was unconstitutional to try a president for an impeachable offense after he had left office, so the trial should be thrown out.  And, indeed, 45 Republican Senators voted that the trial was unconstitutional and should not happen.  They lost 55 - 45 of course, but let's pause a moment about this vote.

What is or is not constitutional is not a matter to be decided by elected officials influenced by public opinion of voters they are trying to woo for the advancement of their own careers.  Constitutionality is a higher realm of scholarship than political jockeying. 

The impeachment was clearly Constitutional since he was impeached while in office.  The trial does not simply determine whether he be removed from office at the time of a guilty conviction, but it determines whether a person is to be removed from office forever.  Mr. Trump clearly should be on trial to determine whether leading/exhorting/inciting/promoting/causing/intimidating/inspiring a violent insurrection to overthrow an election is cause for removing him from office forever.  Good grief, if trying to overthrow a fair election isn't impeachable, what is?

By the way, weren't the lawyers implicitly conceding that Trump was guilty by going to the only defense available to them - that the trial was "unconstitutional" and should be thrown out?  If you can't defend the innocence I guess the only recourse is to try to dismiss the trial.

It would be especially gratifying to have Trump show up in the Senate trial to defend himself and be able to witness a "Caine Mutiny" type of melt down into paranoia and insanity on the witness stand for all to see.  Who knows, maybe even the Trump Cult would finally see his reality rather than his "Brand" and turn away in disgust and despairing recognition that they have been played.

We did not have a peaceful transfer of power

I am very grateful that we had a peaceful innauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris yesterday, but I just want to remember that we did NOT have a peaceful tranfer of power from the previous administration.  

Trump had his right wing terrorists attack the Capitol on January 6, 2021.  Five people died.  The terrorists attempted to find and hang Vice President Michael Pence for refusing to overturn the votes of the states during the day's Electoral College acceptance of the Electoral College votes certifying Biden as president.

The terrorists also were looking to find and kill the Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

The terrorists came with zip ties to capture and hold hostage members of Congress until they got their way and had the election overturned and their cult leader, Trump, reinstalled as president. What was their plan, to execute them one at a time until they got the election overturned?

The House of Representatives impeached him the next week for incitement of insurrection.  He goes on trial in the Senate soon.  I think he has so threatened and offended the Legislative Branch that there will be the needed 17 Republican Senators to vote to find him guilty.  And he will never again be able to hold public office.  And he will lose his grip on his Trump Cult.  And he will spend the rest of his life defending himself in court for the many crimes of his life, and/or spending much of the rest of his life in well earned prison sentences.

It is not nice to try to kill your Vice President and the Speaker of the House.  Prison please.

It was not a peaceful transfer of power.  It was a violent attempt to overthrow an elected President of the United States of America.  And it failed.

Thank God.

Possibilities

I was moved and inspired by Biden's inauguration. I was especially moved when he was addressing about 1000 people who were joining his administration on Zoom just prior to swearing them in.  He said he had had a private dinner with the leader of China who asked him to define America to him.  He did it in one word - POSSIBILITIES.  

"Xi "asked me in a private dinner, he and I, and we each had an interpreter. He said can you define America for me, and I said yes and I meant it.

"I said I can do it in one word, one word: possibilities. We believe anything's possible if we set our mind to it, unlike any other country in the world."

How wonderful to have a president who sees our wonderful country as a place of hope and .... possibilities.

We are moving out of the toxic nightmare of right wing hate and paranoia.  Thank goodness.

The same old American sin

America just keeps committing the same old sin, over and over and over – white supremacy. Slavery morphed into the Jim Crow South, which recently morphed into the Supreme Court sanctioned Republican suppression of votes by eliminating polling places, demanding hard for some to get voter IDs without providing free or cheap IDs in black and brown neighborhoods, interfering with registration drives, preventing motor-voter automatic voter registration, etc. etc. etc. – anything the Republicans can think of to suppress and reduce voting by non-whites.

White Supremacy - America’s endless sin.  I am really tired of it.  On this day after the Martin Luther King holiday (not honored by much of America) it is time to see what incredible damage this empty and mistaken myth of white supremacy has caused.

Of course, the main effect of white supremacy was and is to do everything possible to crush people of color and guarantee white rule in America.  That attempt to crush and diminish people of color has only grown stronger under the presidency of the racist president, Donald Trump.

One of the destructive ways this played out was for the South to insist on making all the states in early America’s expansion to the West, from Kansas onward, to become slave states.  The Abolitionists would not allow that. In the 1856 debates Lincoln outed Illinois Senator Douglas as one who opposed slavery on moral grounds even though he spoke of protecting slavery in the South, and in the election of 1860 the pro-slavery vote split between Douglas and the Southern Breckinridge, and Lincoln was elected president in 1860.  South Carolina and six other states succeeded from the Union before Lincoln was even sworn in.  Nearly 700,000 died in that Civil War. 

So, the slaves were freed by the Civil War and the 13^th and 14^th Amendments to the Constitution.   

And then the election of 1876 happened and the Republican candidate, Hayes,  bargained away black freedom by agreeing to pull troops out of the South, which were necessary to enforce the Reconstruction laws, in order to win the election. And the KKK South ruled with Jim Crow terror of blacks for nearly a century. 

So, slavery, the Jim Crow South, and modern suppression of black and brown votes are the obvious damages the American sin of white supremacy has and continue to have on America.

Anything else?  I think yes.  I think the deliberate unfairness of the Electoral College, and the deliberate unfairness of representation in the Senate, are other damages of white supremacy.  

In order to form the United States of America, the free states had to bribe the slave states by allowing two bodies of the legislature – the House of Representatives which is populated according to the population of each state, and the Senate which has two Senators from each state regardless of population.  And then, the Electoral College for each state has its number of votes to match the number of Senators (2) and number of Representatives it has.  So, the Electoral College over-represents small states.  

And, of course, the Senate preposterously over-represents smaller states, whereby the largest state, California, has 2 Senators despite a population of 40 million people, and Wyoming also has two Senators which has only a little over half a million people.

Whites, by the way, are not superior to people of color.  The more obvious that becomes (as for example when blacks, browns, yellows, reds, women, gays, etc move more competently and excellently and more into prominent roles in science, arts, government, military, judiciary, law enforcement, etc) the white supremacists become more insecure, frightened, and hysterical and do amazingly foolish things like elect a mentally ill TV reality star whose only real claim to fame is racism and false hype of marginal to non-existent business success.

White Europeans (including primarily the English in early America) conquered the world by force because of the geographical accident of living on the land that first spawned agriculture and thus first spawned the technology of ships, guns, and diseases that allowed them to conquer the world.  And of course, they had to be cruel enough to think that killing, crushing, and exploiting the less technologically advanced peoples was just a fine thing to do – and they actually quoted the bible to justify their cruelty and inhumanity. Good grief!

So, I am really sick and tired of America’s sin of believing in the false notion of white supremacy being repeated over and over and over.  The time has come to wave goodbye to it and leave it behind in the “dustbin of history”.

Lack of Good Faith Law needed

Never in my long lifetime have I seen such a lack of good faith on the part of an outgoing administration during a transition to a new administration.  Trump and his people initially refused to cooperate in the transition turnovers and have been making personnel assignments and foreign policy decisions with the express purpose of harming the incoming administration.  This outgoing administration’s only restriction is illegality, with no consideration for respect or honor.  It is the honorable duty of outgoing administrations to graciously turn over the reins, but any form of honor, graciousness, cooperation, or morality is completely missing in Trump and his cultish henchmen.

I hope that the Biden Administration and the new Congress write an enforceable law that says that any decisions, laws, personnel appointments, treaties, breaking of treaties, sanctions against countries, etc. – anything at all that the outgoing administration does – can be overturned with a simple Executive Order by the new Administration with no input from Congress required.  Anything the country would need to do during the transition could be done by the outgoing Administration in consultation and approval of the incoming Administration, so those agreed to actions would not be overturned.

I would call it the Bad Faith Transition law. 

Also, I see no need for such a long period between the election and the certification of the election, nor between the certification of the election and the swearing in of the new Administration.  The bad faith of this outgoing Administration shows us that malicious intent can harm the incoming administration, thwart the judgment of the voters, and harm the country.

It seems our Founding Fathers, despite their best efforts to have checks upon bad faith tyrants, missed the harm that can be done by a malicious losing president and his administration after his loss and before the swearing in of his replacement.

What is one to do?

Let’s pretend for a moment that you are a bully, and have been a bully for over half a century, and you have mostly gotten away with it because you could hire the meanest lawyers to attack and destroy all that oppose you.

Let’s pretend for a moment that you know you can get away with anything because if you’re a celebrity they let you do it – whatever “it” is.

Let’s pretend for a moment that you lose, once again, something that you want to win, but because you’re a bully and because you’re a celebrity you think you can get away with it like you always did.

Let’s pretend for a moment that this time, you can’t.  You can’t bully your way out of it.  You can’t get away with it just because you’re a celebrity.

Let’s pretend for a moment that you try something monumentally stupid, like forcefully overthrowing an election, thinking that you will get your way because, well, you always do.

And you don’t.  You don’t get your way.

What do you do? You don’t know what to do.  This is where you normally declare bankruptcy, steal as much as you can, walk away, and let others have their lives destroyed as you go on to the next corrupt  thing.

But you can’t.

Let’s pretend for a moment that you have spent decades deeply entrenched in a life of crime – from money laundering for foreign oligarchs, or bank fraud, to tax evasion, to stealing from you own charities, to rigging elections, to……

And, let’s pretend for a moment that you, with an entire lifetime of corruption to hide, decide to make a run to be the most famous person on the planet. 

And, let’s pretend as you do this you do everything you can do to insult and attack those institutions whose profession is to find things out – like the U.S Intelligence Services and the U.S. and World Media.

And, let’s pretend for a moment that you are caught, over and over and over again, but because you held such a powerful political office, and because you had a voting base that thought you were a god of some sort, you thought you would get away with it forever.

But, you were wrong.

Oops.  A lifetime finally catches up with you.  And, you know what? A lot of the people that you terrified into supporting you actually never liked you  - they just used you, or couldn’t say and do what they wanted to to you, or were just waiting for you to finally go away.

And now, you have gone away.  And you are going to face the consequences of decades of greed, corruption, cruelty, and stupidity, because that is a that you are – a summary of greed, corruption, cruelty, and stupidity.

Welcome to the rest of your life, Mr. ex-President.

Trump impeached, again

Trump's basic strategy was to spew a firehose of lies, disinformation, corruption, crimes, assaults, constitutional offenses etc. day after day after day, on the hope that no one would have the time to pick any one of them and hold him accoutable.  The idea being that there had been so many other atrocities after the one that is chosen that it seemed too minor to just prosecute the one.  And that worked pretty well for him because he had a Trump Cult base that just thought he was the cat's meow.  Appalling, but I guess that is just the way cults are.

Well, guess what? When he called for riotous crowds to arrive on January 6,2021 to disrupt and overturn the the recording of certified Electoral College votes in the Capitol, and then went before his mob in the morning and exhorted them to be very brave and change the count, he actually did something that has never happened in the history of American democracy - he not only refused to accept the vote, but he sent a mob to overturn the vote, and to overturn it with violence.

Well, it turns out the when the Senators and Congresspeople have their lives threatened for simply accepting the results of an election, they aren't happy about it.  The House of Representatives voted today, including 10 Repiublicans, to impeach Donald J Trump.  Again.

Mitch McConnell in his last, and again disgraceful act, as head of the Senate announced he will not hold an emergency trial in the Senate.  OK, so what?  The impeachment will go to the Senate later and the president will likely be found guilty of inciting violence to overturn an election, and he will be the only president ever impeached and found guilty.  So he will never be able to hold Federal Office again.  And, wonder of wonders, his power to control his cult and to bully elected Republicans will just shrink away, like the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz, and we can all watch his pathetic orange self collapse and whine "I'm shrinking, I'm shrinking!"

Ta da.

When you make a deal with the devil you may or may not get the deal but you always will get the devil

Early in the Trump rise to political power in the Republican Party I wrote that conservatives should know that making deals with the devil never works out because though you may or may not get the deal you will always get the devil (called a Faustian Bargain).  That is where the Republicans are today – they are stuck with the “devil” – Trump.  He has only had one priority in his entire life – himself – and he did and will destroy everyone who was foolish enough to align with him as his fantasy world collapses and he plunges into ruin.

So, evangelicals got their judges, but have branded themselves with the most corrupt and vile political personality in my long lifetime.  The oligarchy got their tax breaks and environmental and financial regulations rolled back, but they have created a monster that has ruined the American brand across the world.

The Republican Party may never recover from this monster – part of the party will always be in the Trump Cult, which means that it will not be in a reality based universe, and part of the party will try to become reality based and try to rejoin the world of politics and reject the world of revolution and overthrow.  I think they may go the way of the Whigs, irreconcilably divided between fantasy and reality.

When you make a deal with the devil, what you get is the devil.  They made the deal, and it is fitting that his insanity and bile is taking them down along with himself.

See the difference?

Trump lost the 2020 presidential election by a Electoral College result of 306 for Biden to 232 for Trump.  He lost the popular vote 46.96% vs 51.33%.

Trump won the 2016 presidential election by the same electoral college result but lost the popular vote by getting 46.1% vs 48.1% for Hillary Clinton.

The losing sides for each was shocked and dismayed.  How did each respond?  Take a look.

2016 - the million womens' march poured hundreds and hundreds of thousands of women, many wearing "pink pussy hats", into the streets of DC and every city across the nation and many around the world.  See photos below.

2020 - at Trump's instigation, about thirty or forty thousand rioters showed up in DC and stormed the Capitol and breached the defenses to force the cessation of the Senators and Congress members from tallying the winning Electoral College votes that certified Biden's win.  This is the first such breach of the Capitol since the British invasion of 1812.  See photos below.

Trump eventually told his cult to go home, but only after telling them that he loved them and declaring that he had won a landslide victory.

This is Trump's legacy, right next to his incompetent response to the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in the loss of about 200,000 people who would have lived had he led a national response to the disease.  

These are his final images.  Images of eternal disgracce, a disgrace shared by the horrible Senators, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, who decided to contest the results of two states who voted for Biden.  They forced Congress to debate the meritless claims of voting fraud.  They did it as a fundraising ploy for their planned presidential runs in 2024.  By the way, four people died in the melee yesterday.  Disgusting.

 

 

2016

 

2020

By the way, I am really getting tired of looking at the traitorous Confederate flag.

Without Nazis, Hitler was just a nutcase screaming on a corner somewhere

Hitler didn't invent Nazis, he mobilized them, he gave them permission to dominate, recruit, terrorize, rule, and kill.  

Same with Trump.  I know there are only a very small percentage of people who identify as Nazis with swastika tattoos, etc.  But there are many more who self identify as white supremacists and racists.  And even more who don't think of themselves as racists but who are.  At any rate, Trump mobilized them to be elected in 2016 and gave them permission to come out of hiding and strut their maliciousness in public, and to vote for him in 2020.

So now, we have an amazingly high number of Republicans who are so tuned into Trump's delusional madness that they say they think the election was stolen from their worshipped leader.  Hard to comprehend - that claim was made by Trump in about 60 lawsuites, all but one of which failed due to lack of any basis in reality.

So now, 11 Republican Senators and about 140 Republican Congress members say they will contest the Electoral College votes validated by each state when they convene on January 6 to certify the Biden victory.  Why?  To appease the "Nazis" of the Republican base (Nazi being a metaphorical term referencing the nut case authoritarian, racist base of the party)

This has never happened before (1876 doesn't count since it was from a time of deep corruption that ended in a "deal" that ended Reconstruction and established the terror of Jim Crow in the South for over a century)

All of this is just a Republican Kabuki Theater on January 6, of course, and the election will not be overturned, and Biden will be confirmed.  But it has two purposes - the first is for politicians to show their "Nazi" base that they are on the same side, and second to try their best to sabotage the Biden presidency with an historical vote of no confidence before he is even sworn in.

I expect Biden, and the team of experts he brings with him, will manage just fine.  But the real issue is whether this little show will destroy the Republican Party.

Going forward, there will be Republican office seekers forced to campaign to the delusional wing of the Party, convinced that Trump's victory was stolen even though all evidence proves that is wasn't.  There is a lot of delusion being fed to that wing of the Party, from climate change denial, to the fantasy that COVID-19 is harmless, to masks and social distancing as a plot to subjugate the freedom of real men and real patriots, etc... just a series of ludicrous delusions.

But, there actually is a real world, and there will have to be Republican office seekers who will try to run reality based campaigns.  

The Republican Party is in the process of going the way of the Whigs when is destroyed itself by being both pro-slavery to the South and anti-slavery to the North.  The Republicans will go down with the toxic, delusional ship of Donald Trump.  I don't see how the Party can survive if it is not reality based.