Trump admits he lost the election

The guy who lost the 2020 presidential election just admitted that he lost.  He was denouncing Congress's bi-partisan efforts to clarify the Electoral Count Act of 1887 so that it is indisputable that a Vice President cannot overturn the election results.  And he made the following incriminating statement:

 

"Actually, what they are saying, is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didn't exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!"

 

Repeat - "...he could have overturned the election!".  !!!!!!  Meaning, the Former Guy knew he lost the election and wanted his Vice President to "overturn the election!". 

 

To clarify further, the Former Guy knows that The Big Lie is a lie, just an amazingly stupid and preposterous thing that he made up - that the election was stolen. 

 

To clarify a bit more - he is planning to claim the election in 2024, that he loses, will be "stolen", and he will demand that the Republican States throw out the actual vote count of the 2024 election and send Trump electors to D.C. to actually steal the election.  And, lo and behold, many Republican Legislatures have already set up systems and laws to do just that.  Disgusting.

 

Because, that is how autocrats, fascists, tyrants do things. And make no mistake, the Former Guy is not a Republican; the Former Guy is an autocrat-fascist who has long admired and copied autocrats such as Putin, Erdogan, MBS, Orbon, etc. etc. etc.   Indeed, I have long believed he has been following advice and orders from Putin throughout his presidency and perhaps to this date.

Autocracy Inc. is on a mission to destroy our democracy

 Anne Applebaum has a 30 minute article, "The Bad Guys are Winning", that is worth the time to read.  The short version is that autocrats are destroying democracy around the world, and in America as well - expertly.  Some key quotes:

 

In Belarus, the vicious authoritarian, Lukashenko, was struggling to deal with an uprising of the people.... "At first, Lukashenko seemed to have no plan either. But his neighbors did. On August 18, a plane belonging to the FSB, the Russian security services, flew from Moscow to Minsk. Soon after that, Lukashenko’s tactics underwent a dramatic change... to “more sophisticated, more controlled ways to repress the population.” Belarus became a textbook example of what the journalist William J. Dobson has called “the dictator’s learning curve”: Techniques that had been used successfully in the past to repress crowds in Russia were seamlessly transferred to Belarus, along with personnel who understood how to deploy them. Russian television journalists arrived to replace the Belarusian journalists who had gone on strike, and immediately stepped up the campaign to portray the demonstrations as the work of Americans and other foreign “enemies.” Russian police appear to have supplemented their Belarusian colleagues, or at least given them advice, and a policy of selective arrests began. 

 

As Vladimir Putin figured out a long time ago, mass arrests are unnecessary if you can jail, torture, or possibly murder just a few key people. The rest will be frightened into staying home. Eventually they will become apathetic, because they believe nothing can change...

 

Lukashenko began to act, in other words, as if he were untouchable, both at home and abroad. He began breaking not only the laws and customs of his own country, but also the laws and customs of other countries, and of the international community... 

 

All of us have in our minds a cartoon image of what an autocratic state looks like. There is a bad man at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents.

 

But in the 21st century, that cartoon bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are run not by one bad guy, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, security services (military, police, paramilitary groups, surveillance), and professional propagandists.  The members of these networks are connected not only within a given country, but among many countries. The corrupt, state-controlled companies in one dictatorship do business with corrupt, state-controlled companies in another. The police in one country can arm, equip, and train the police in another. The propagandists share resources—the troll farms that promote one dictator’s propaganda can also be used to promote the propaganda of another—and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America...Nor does the new autocratic alliance have a unifying ideology. Among modern autocrats are people who call themselves communists, nationalists, and theocrats. 

 

No one country leads this group...the members of this group don’t operate like a bloc, but rather like an agglomeration of companies—call it Autocracy Inc. Their links are cemented not by ideals but by deals... 

 

"And how different are we? We Americans? We Europeans? Are we so sure that our institutions, our political parties, our media could never be manipulated in the same way?...in 2016..."Russian trolls operating from St. Petersburg sought to shift the outcome of an American election in much the same way they had done in Central Europe, using fake Facebook pages (sometimes impersonating anti-immigration groups, sometimes impersonating Black activists), fake Twitter accounts, and attempts to infiltrate groups like the National Rifle Association, as well as weaponizing hacked material from the Democratic National Committee. 

 

Some Americans actively welcomed this intervention, and even sought to take advantage of what they imagined might be broader Russian technical capabilities. “If it’s what you say I love it,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote to an intermediary for a Russian lawyer who he believed had access to damaging information about Hillary Clinton. In 2008, Trump Jr. had told a business conference that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets,” and in 2016, Russia’s long-term investment in the Trump business empire paid off. In the Trump family, the Kremlin had something better than spies: cynical, nihilistic, indebted, long-term allies."...

 

We need, in other words, to make changes to our own system, and that may require overcoming fierce domestic resistance from the business groups that benefit from it. We need to shut down tax havens, enforce money-laundering laws, stop selling security and surveillance technology to autocracies, and divest from the most vicious regimes altogether. “We” here will need to include Europe, especially the U.K., as well as partners elsewhere—and that will require a lot of vigorous diplomacy. (Please note that Trump likely has a long history of laundering money for the Russians, Saudi Arabians too?)...

 

Autocracy, Inc. includes the countries such as Russia, Belarus, China, Venezuela, Myanmar, Syria, Turkey, Afghanistan, and the American MAGA Cult is ready and willing in the wings, plus of course multiple sources of greed, avarice, and violence.

It's not any political ideology. Thoughts that this is limited to Communist Autocracies or Fascist Autocracies are obsolete.  It's just MONEY AND POWER, MONEY AND POWER, MONEY AND POWER.  And democracy gets killed off, and people are deeply harmed as governments are stripped of any power to stop the autocrats.  

 

Remember the most famous line from Reagan? "Government isn't the solution - government is the problem."  I used to believe that, but not any longer.  Democracy needs to win over autocracy.  Fortunately we have a president who knows that.  Unfortunately, we have a former president and his Cult that did and will fight to establish Autocratic rule in America.  Why?  Not for political purposes or political programs, but just MONEY AND POWER.

 

But we in America can win this essential battle.  We can stop it here, and that victory can travel. We are not alone.  We can't stop this domination and autocracy by pretending it doesn't exist. We need to shine a light, and see what is trying to happen, and stop it. 

 

Goodness and Truth are alive in America and in the world, and those who can see the darkness can insist on the Light, and push the darkness back under fetid little rocks where it belongs - prisons, for example.

The MAGA Cult had stored weapons for an escalation of violence on January 6

There is evidence that the Former Guy's MAGA Cult had a phase two planned for the violent coup attempt on January 6, 2021.  They had stored weapons and ammunition close to the Capitol waiting to deploy them in their military style assault on the Capitol.

 

"According to court documents, at least seven Oath Keepers involved in the events of January 6 stockpiled firearms in a northern Virginia hotel for potential use by a “quick reaction force” on behalf of Trump inside DC. Three others discussed participating in that effort, court filings show." 

More and more evidence is coming out about how very close we came to losing our democracy on January 6.  The coup attempt continues today as the Former Guy continues to falsely claim that the election was stolen, and his Cult move to institute election fraud using the false excuse of voter fraud.  Voter fraud is individuals voting illegally - very few instances, proven over a over again by investigation after investigation.  Election fraud is reducing the number of polling places in Democratic districts, placing "Stop the Steal" fanatics in charge of elections, and establishing powers in Republican dominated states to simply throw out the actual vote count and declare victory for the Republican.

 

Fortunately, he was stopped in 2020 and many of the criminals involved in the attempted coup are arrested and convictions are coming.  As time passes and the foundations are being laid with earlier investigations, those higher up in the planning and execution are likely to be deposed and I hope charged and imprisoned.  

 

Coups are not allowed in America.

Republicans kill the Voting Rights bills

 Republicans killed the Voting Rights bills, of course. They did it by pretending to protect the honor and integrity of the Senate by preserving the unconstitutional filibuster. They know they can’t win elections so they came across a brilliant plan and just keep brown and black and yellow and red people from voting, and viola! they get to keep having White Supremacists “win” elections.  And cut taxes for the rich, and....er, ah, cut taxes for the very rich, and...um, cut taxes for Bezos and Musk, and... oh yes, I forgot cut benefits for the poor, and... cut benefits for the middle class, and... let me see, what else are they for?  

Oh yes, how could I forget? Make America Great AGAIN!  Again like it was in the ‘50s, and ‘30s, and you know, back when blacks knew their place, and browns knew their place, and yellows knew their place, and reds knew their place, and women knew their place, and gays knew their place —— their proper places beneath their superiors, White Men, those most noble and revered of Men, the rightful masters of all those inferior races and sexes.  You know, Real Men who have lots of guns, and camouflage clothes, and body armor, and can scare people and threaten people and, er, um, you know, be really SCARY. top of the heap, kings of the hill, ready to kill.  

Yup.

Really disgusts me.

Democrats should now break up the voting rights into separate, individual bills and force every Senator to vote on each.  Because each has majority support amongst us, the voters. Let’s get this done. 

If Russia invades Ukraine, will China use the distraction to invade Taiwan?

There has long been a danger that the United States could have an armed conflict with either Russia or China.  And the potential for catastrophic escalation would be very real with all sides being nuclear powers.  

 

Russia is making all kinds of false pretenses for invading Ukraine pretending that it is defending itself against a dangerous and aggressive military force of NATO.  Of course NATO was always about defending against Soviet and now Russian invasion, not about invading Russia.  But Putin and his oligarchs are trying to re-establish the Balkan states as part of Russian dominance, just as they were part of the defunct Soviet Union.

 

I have every hope that Russia will see that an invasion would be too costly and turn away, but counting on Putin to soften or act wisely is not a safe bet.

 

But, if Russia invades, will China see that as a sufficient distraction to finally invade and crush Taiwan and officially make it part of China?  Russia has always seen Ukraine as part of Russia and China has always seen Taiwan as part of China.  As I recall, way back in 1960 Kennedy and Nixon debated what to do about defending Formosa (now Taiwan) against Communist Chinese attack.  

 

We have enough on our hands with an uncooperative public about protecting us against COVID and the MAGA cult of violent extremists.  And both Russia and China may be seeing this as an opportune time to take over a neighboring country by force.

 

I hope and pray that they do not try that.

The battle for the Soul of the Nation

Thank you, Mr. President, for your clear and determined speech on this terrible anniversary of the attempted violent overthrow of the 2020 presidential election.  The president made it very clear that the lie that the election was stolen started long before election day (because the Former Guy already knew he would likely lose and the only thing he ever does is make excuses and blame others) and that the lie that the election was stolen continues today. The astonishing thing is that his Cult believes the lie, or at least pretends that they believe the lie.

 

The Biden statement that stands out to me is that he said this is a battle for the Soul of the Nation - whether we are to continue to be a democracy that is run by the rule of law, or an autocracy that is run by the whim of an autocrat.  He campaigned on restoring America's Soul, and that battle continues today as the Former Guy's Cult continues their assault on democracy, assault on decency, and assault on truth.

 

The wonderful historian Jon Meacham wrote an excellent history about the long battle for the Soul of America - "The Soul of America: the Battle for Our Better Angels".  A pivotal event was the creation of the myth of the Lost Cause after the Confederate States lost the Civil War.  Edward Pollard wrote a toxic book in 1866 - "The Lost Cause: A New History of the War of the Confederates".  In it he expressed the fundamental cause of the attempted secession - white supremacy.  

 

"The war, he wrote. "did not decide negro equality; it did not decide negro suffrage; it did not decide State Rights...And these things which the war did not decide, the Southern people will still cling to, and assert them in their rights and views...The question was no longer slavery, but white supremacy, which Pollard described as the "true cause of the war" and the "true hope of the South."...An article of faith of the Lost Cause creed was that the North had not outfought or out-generalled the South...rather, because  of the North's overwhelming advantages in manpower and industrial strength...They had resisted Northern forces in battle; now they would defy Northern authority in peace"

 

In other words, like the former president, the ruling whites during the Jim Crow South, and too much of the Republican Party of the South and across the country to this day are entrenched in white supremacy lies - the lie that whites are superior to people of color.  The Lost Cause was and is the Big Lie believed by those who lost the Civil War, and the Stolen Election is the Big Lie believed by those who lost the 2020 presidential election.  

 

The Big Lie Republicans are doing everything they can to suppress the votes of people of color, and setting up election officials that can overturn the votes of their states and send electors chosen by them to install a Republican candidate as president.  Completely undemocratic.  Disgusting.

 

Dangerous times, but I believe in the Soul of America.  I believe that truth will prevail in the face of this latest Big Lie by a loser who never takes responsibility but only blames and makes excuses.  I believe that America is better than the authoritarian depravity of the former president and his violent cult.