Tag Archives: Big Lie

national news, political news

Considering straight-ticket ballot

For as long as I’ve been voting, and that goes back to 1972, I have resisted the notion of voting for candidates of just one party.

I am rethinking that personal policy as the 2022 midterm election draws closer.

I want to be clear. I won’t punch the straight-ticket slot on my ballot. Hah! I can’t do it anyway, as we no longer have that option in Texas. However, the state of policy in the Republican Party makes it virtually impossible for me to support anyone who endorses the platform set forth by the GOP.

I refer to its hideous criminalization of abortion, its election denial based on The Big Lie fomented by the GOP’s titular head (the immediate past president of the U.S.A.), its refusal to consider legislative remedies to gun violence.

Democrats up and down the ballot are likely to get my vote in 2022. Not all of them, mind you. I might just pass over some of the statewide contests on the ballot; some of the races remain mysteries to me.

I went to a Princeton Independent School District candidate forum recently and heard from a spectator that one of the candidates is the “only suitable Republican” running for one of two seats on the PISD school board. I reminded the young man that the candidates run as non-partisans; they aren’t Democrats or Republicans. That candidate might get my vote, but it doesn’t count as a partisan decision.

The partisan ballot, though, is full of clear choices. My mind is pretty much made up as early voting is about to commence. Still — and this is important — I intend fully to vote on Election Day. I want to hold off on committing my ballot to any candidate early in case the candidate messes up and makes me regret my vote.

The contests for Congress, for key statewide offices appear likely to be one-sided for this voter … if you get my drift.

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national news, political news

Most important election in history? Yep, this is it!

You hear it, without fail, every two years, that “this is the most important, most consequential election in our lifetime, if not in history!

It’s being bellowed and blustered again as the 2022 midterm election approaches. You know what? This one just might fit the bill, given what’s at stake and what could be the fate of the democratic system of government that we all say we cherish.

The importance of this year’s midterm election has its root in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump refused to concede that he lost to Joe Biden. Then came the 1/6 insurrection, the assault on our Capitol Building, the effort to stop the certification of the election results.

Trump continues to foment The Big Lie about “widespread voter fraud.” His lying has spawned a new category of candidates. We call them “election deniers.” They are running for seats in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, for governorships, for secretary of state in many states where they serve as chief election officers.

They are running neck-and-neck in many states with “mainstream” candidates who want them defeated not just to protect their constituents from the lunacy they are promoting, but to protect our democratic system of government.

It’s the closeness of many of these contests including candidates who continue to deny the 2020 election result that simply boggles my noggin. The Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race, the race for Ohio’s U.S. Senate seat, the battle for the Senate seat in Georgia, campaigns for governor in Pennsylvania, Arizona and even in Texas.

The U.S. Senate is divided 50-50, but Democrats hold the edge — for the moment — because they have a vice president who can break tie votes. A swing of a seat or two in either direction means (a) that Republicans will take control and become even more obstructionist for the next two years of President Biden’s term or (b) that Democrats can gain something close to a governing majority and move on important legislation aimed at restoring some sort of balance of power.

It’s being said that a “presidential-year turnout” bodes well for Democratic candidates, and a “normal midterm election turnout” bodes well for Republican candidates.

Me? I am hoping for a huge turnout that rivals what we saw in 2020, with Joe Biden and Donald Trump together polling more than 155 million votes. It was a stunning turnout. It means that democracy is alive and well.

May it continue to show good health and vitality this year, too.

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Donald Trump, legal news, national news

Trump Derangement Syndrome?

Critics of this blog have accused its author — that’s me — of suffering from something called Trump Derangement Syndrome.

I’m not entirely sure I know what it means, other than I gather that critics believe I spend too much time and emotional capital commenting on the actions of the immediate past POTUS.

Please forgive this bit of candor, but a lot of it has to do with Donald J. Trump himself. He keeps thrusting himself into the news. Talking heads keep telling us that Trump is motivated primarily by his insatiable thirst for attention.

That thirst is driving this silly — no, stupid — idea that he will run for president again in 2024. I am not convinced he is going to run but, by golly, he’s going to keep his name in front of our faces for as long as he can. That presence in our national consciousness is going to last until, oh let’s see, when gets indicted, tried and sentenced to time in the slammer.

I don’t know if any of that will happen. I do know, though, that for as long Trump is walking and talking among us — making news along the way — I’ll keep commenting on the things he says and does.

Bear in mind — and perhaps some of you have noticed — that I don’t flail at every single pronouncement that flies out of the former Numbskull in Chief’s trap. I am picking my shots.

Will they still call it Trump Derangement Syndrome? Yeah. Probably.

I’ll stay with it for as long as it matters.

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crime news, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, legal news, national news, national security, political news

Will Trumpism outlive its founder?

It has been said by more than one commentator that the movement Donald J. Trump spawned will live long past the time he no longer is a political factor.

Pardon the skepticism, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case.

I’ll start with this notion: I have doubt that Donald Trump is (a) going to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 and (b) that the GOP has gone totally braindead to nominate him if he does enter the fray.

The Republican Party has shown itself in the past, oh, six years to be a party full of gullible numbskulls who are willing to swallow the swill delivered by Trump. They ignore the threat he continues to pose to our democratic process; they give him a pass on the idiocy that flies out of his mouth; they proclaim a desire to “defund the FBI” after the feds find top-secret documents squirreled away in his Florida home.

So, what is going to happen to Trump’s movement — his cult — once he’s no longer a political player. The way I see it, and I’ll admit it is from the cheap seats, whatever “movement” that Trump has stoked will disappear. Why keep telling The Big Lie about a “stolen election” if the Main Man is no longer calling the shots?

I am going to hold tightly onto my own hope that the law’s lengthy arm is going to corral The Donald sometime soon. The Justice Department is examining whether Trump broke the law in taking those classified documents from the White House; the House select 1/6 committee is considering whether to ask for indictment related to the insurrection that Trump clearly incited; the Fulton County (Ga.) district attorney is looking into whether Trump broke state election laws by demanding that officials “find” enough votes to overturn that state’s 2020 presidential election result.

Oh, and the New York attorney general already has filed a $250 million lawsuit against the Trump Organization for allegedly falsifying its worth to obtain favorable loans.

We have, as they said in a movie, “a target-rich environment.”

The cult leader, it appears to me, is going down in flames. May the fire consume what is left of the movement that bears his name.

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media news, national news

Dumbasses rule GOP

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I don’t know how to broach this subject with any sort of delicate treatment, so I’ll just say what’s in my gut and then we discuss it further.

The Republican Party of this country has been taken over by dumbasses, individuals who can barely string coherent thoughts together and who have bought into the rubbish being espoused by the Dumbass in Chief.

I am at a loss as to how this once-great party allowed itself to be kneaded, molded and re-cast into a party of gullible sycophants. They believe in The Big Lie, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from the Dumbass in Chief. They nominate individuals who, if elected this fall, vow to overturn the results of the next presidential election if the results don’t elect a Republican.

The party nominated someone for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, Hershel Walker, who actually said out loud, “If man came from apes, why are there still apes?”

These dumbasses buy into that theory called QAnon, the mysterious notion that promotes the idea that Democrats are trafficking children into porn films. A QAnon dumbass, Rep. Lauren Boebert, confused “wanton violence” with a kind of Asian soup, saying she didn’t know what “wonton violence” is.

At one level, perhaps I should be glad to see the GOP taken hostage by the dumbass cabal. Except that the base that nominates these losers is might energized.  The task now falls on other Americans, those who use their noggins to actually think, to ensure we keep the dumbasses out of public office.

If the dumbass cabal gets elected in, oh, about 48 days, then we’re in deeper trouble than I ever imagined.

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national news, political news

Democrats playing with fire

I remain concerned, but not yet frightened, over the prospect of Democrats working overtly to help nominate MAGA-loving, election-denying, fruitcake Republicans to high public office.

It’s going on all across the country, with Democrats contributing actual cash money and casting actual votes for Republicans believing that nominating the weakest candidates guarantees a victory for Democrats this fall.

Not so fast, folks.

This is a game fraught with peril.

What in the world is going to happen if voters actually elect these election deniers to, say, governorships? There are individuals on some state ballots who promise to overturn the results of the 2024 presidential election if the “wrong” candidate wins. These are the folks Democrats are helping win their party’s nomination. Holy cow!

This kind of electoral tomfoolery can work. It also can backfire.

It’s the kind of act that makes me nervous.

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crime news, national news, political news

Election deniers win now .. but rejection is in order

All those wacky Republican election deniers appear to be winning their primary election battles, setting them up for contests against serious political candidates in the fall.

The task now falls on responsible voters in states such as Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, Nevada and the Dakotas to toss them out on their ear and elect individuals who haven’t swilled The Big Lie concoction being offered by Donald J. Trump and his cabal of cultists.

I am going to endorse the notion — admittedly with an abundance of caution — the idea that the election deniers’ presence on the fall midterm election ballot is tailor-made for Democrats wishing to put the Big Liars in their place.

My caution isn’t because I dispute their notion. It is because I am not sure that American voters necessarily are smart enough to rise up against these threats to our democratic process.

Think of what might happen. A GOP candidate for Pennsylvania governor could appoint a secretary of state and have that individual actually reject the outcome of the 2024 election if it happens to go in Democrats’ favor. Same thing could happen in Arizona.

The task now is for voters in several key states to deny them the power to enact such craven policies. I won’t surrender to their political idiocy. Neither should anyone else.

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crime news, national news, national security, political news

MAGAites churn my stomach

Reaction to President Biden’s speech in defense of the “soul of America” from the MAGA cabal of kooks has been, to say the least, more than a bit unsettling.

The treasonous cultists who adhere to the phony philosophy that seeks to Make America Great Again now are ascribing to President Biden the very characteristics we all have seen exhibited in real time by Donald J. Trump.

They are pissed off because they allege Biden has declared war on “half the country.” How do I say this clearly? No, he is not! Biden has sought to wage rhetorical warfare against a shrinking element of the MAGA base that continues to buy into The Big Lie about alleged widespread voter fraud … that does not exist.

Think for a moment about the cultists who buy into one thing their “esteemed leader” said this week: Trump said that if hell freezes over and he is returned as president that he will give “serious thought” to issuing blanket pardons for those who took part in the 1/6 attack on our government. (Actually, the “hell freezes over” reference is mine, not Trump’s … as if you didn’t know.)

My point is that nothing makes my blood boil more at this moment than the notion of the traitorous mob being pardoned for their assault on our democratic process, when they smashed through windows, threatened to “Hang Mike Pence!” and crapped on the floor of our Capitol Building.

Biden made several points with crystal clarity. The one that stands out for me was when he declared that you “cannot support our democracy only when you win.” 

The Big Lie believers cannot accept that the Big Liar in Chief lost the 2020 election. Nor can they accept the righteous and deserved scolding they received from the man who defeated their cult hero.

Yes, they pose a threat to our democracy. The rest of us must — and I use this term metaphorically — put them down.

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national news

Vote fraud? Yes, but …

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The purveyors of The Big Lie keep insisting that the 2020 presidential election is the result of “widespread vote fraud,” of millions of dead people casting ballots, nations using orbiting satellites to manipulate votes.

Am I going to deny the existence of some voter fraud? No. I cannot possibly make that denial with a straight face. Nor can I presume that election deniers have anything credible to assert the “widespread” of the fraud they insist occurred in November 2020.

The “Big Liar in Chief,” Donald J. Trump, keeps leading the chorus of deniers. The cultists who hang on his every lying word hang on them as if they are gospel. They continue to foment The Big Lie and continue to insist they’re going to end it.

End … what? Precisely?

This is the ultimate frustration for those of us who happen to maintain reasonable trust in the local election officials who do a great job of protecting the sanctity of our cherished freedom to vote for the candidates of our choice.

I am more than willing to acknowledge that individuals here and there occasionally try to pull some funny stuff at the ballot box. They are caught and they are prosecuted. The conspiracy theorists out there will not be satisfied as long as they can cling to The Big Lie and pretend it is true.

They call themselves “patriots.” They are traitors.

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Uncategorized

Ga. probe looms as major Trump threat

If I was a betting man — and I have to stipulate that I am nothing of the sort — I would wager that Donald J. Trump’s gravest threat to his future looms in the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney’s office.

The former president is under investigation in many venues: Congress, the Justice Department, Manhattan (N.Y.) and Fulton County.

It’s the Georgia matter that, to my way of thinking, presents Trump with his most serious threat. Why? Because the whole world has heard Trump’s own voice demand that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger “find” enough votes to swing the state from Joe Biden’s column to Trump’s.

Where I come from, I believe that amounts to a clear-cut, no-questions-need-asking, tried-and-true case of election tampering.

Oh, and there’s more to that recorded conversation. You might recall that Trump actually threatened Raffensberger with criminal prosecution if he didn’t do what the president wanted him to do.

I have been wondering ever since I heard about this: If this doesn’t constitute a crime, then what in the world qualifies?

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is pursuing this probe with all appropriate vigor. Indeed, I have thought all along that this case presented Trump with his most daunting set of allegations. What’s more — thanks to Raffensberger, who thought to record the phone conversation — we can hear the POTUS in his own voice pressuring the election official to, shall we say, “steal the 2020 presidential election.”

The House select committee that is pursuing the insurrection also is piling up a mountain of evidence that suggests criminality within the White House. The Manhattan probe, though, appears to be losing steam. The Justice Department probe? Well, Attorney General Merrick Garland has made it abundantly clear that “no one is above the law” and by “no one,” the AG means, well … no one.

If I were Donald Trump — and I am so glad that I ain’t — I would be sweatin’ bullets over what might be coming his way from Deep in the Heart of Dixie.

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