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Is Trump A Threat To Democracy?

December 5, 2020

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 3 Comments

Earlier this week, yet another iconic venue of the liberal (’enemy of the people’) media, in this case The New Yorker Magazine, published the umpteenth version of how Trump’s legal and twitter campaigns against election ‘fraud’ represent an assault on our most cherished democratic institutions and “further undermine confidence in the U.S. government.”

The op-ed went on to chastise the “shamelessly craven nature of the Trump-era G.O.P. in Washington,” as compared to local Republicans who have stood up against Trump’s shameless and even dangerous attacks.

I have been listening to this continued drumbeat about the failure of Republican office-holders in D.C. to stand up against the leader of their own party and I must say that my friends on the blue team display some very short memories, when all is said and done. How many members of the Senate or House Democratic caucuses came out and denounced Bill Clinton for getting a pipe job in the Oval Office from a teen-age intern while he was talking on the phone?

Okay, now maybe that behavior didn’t represent a threat to our democratic institutions. So, I’ll give you a better one.

In 1967, just months before the Viet Cong launched the Tet offensive and basically began kicking our asses out of Viet Nam, Johnson asked for an additional increase in the military budget to ‘defend democracy’ in Southeast Asia. After all, Johnson wasn’t going to be the first American President to lose a war.

How many members of the Senate Democratic caucus refused to vote the dough? Exactly two – Ernest Gruening and Wayne Morse.

Want to believe that Trump’s tweets are a greater threat to this country than what we were doing in Viet Nam? Go right ahead.

The United States happens to be the only democratic country in the entire world which has not experienced a single, mass political challenge to its governmental institutions over the last one hundred years. When I went to France to study at the Sorbonne in 1969, the country was still recovering from a combined nationwide student protest and general strike – the May Days – that came within an inch of bringing the de Gaulle government to its knees.

This country has never had a general strike. This country doesn’t have a single union which espouses a Socialist line. This country does not have a single, national political party that calls for resistance to the government from the Right.

Yea, yea, I know about ‘all’ those schmucks armed with their assault rifles who show up at rallies protesting lockdown orders and other limits to our ‘freedoms’ and Constitutional ‘rights.’ I have lived and worked both in Europe and the Near East, and this country is so law-abiding that the idea the Trump is stirring up a massive assault on democratic institutions is a joke.

I don’t think there’s any other country which even understands the concept of getting in line. Don’t believe me? Try jamming your way onto a subway car in Madrid during the rush hour. Or maybe you should try driving around a traffic circle in Rome at any time.

Want a good test for how people respect each other’s space in public places? Watch what happens when a bus pulls up at the Ha Tahana HaMerkazit HaHadasha bus station in Tel Aviv and more than three people are waiting to get on. Have you ever seen what happens when three adults push their way through the entry doors of a bus at exactly the same time?

Let’s cut the bullshit once and for all. Trump’s no threat to democratic institutions. He’s a liar, a racist and a fool. And let’s just remember that there’s a runoff election in Georgia on January 5th and I guarantee you that every, single vote will be counted as carefully as the votes were counted for the election on November 3rd.

Send some money down to Georgia. Send it now: 2020 Georgia Senate Runoff — Donate via ActBlue.    

MAGA Isn’t A Movement. It’s A Cult.

November 23, 2020

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 1 Comment

              By this time next week, most states will have certified their election results and Trump will continue to tweet about the voting ‘fraud.’  The following week, the electors will cast their votes at the Electoral College and Trump will still be tweeting about how he was ‘robbed.’

              Why does Trump keep letting Rudy Giuliani go out there, make an ass of himself by waving a sheaf of papers in the air which allegedly is comprised of ‘thousands’ of affidavits that are ‘evidence’ of ‘massive fraud?’

              I’ll tell you why. Because every time that Trump or one of his creatures stands up and says or tweets something about how the election was a farce, the media reports the pronouncement as if it is news. I’m not talking about alt-right media like Breitbart or Fox. I’m talking about my friends in the so-called ‘responsible,’ mainstream media, a.k.a., The Washington Post and/or The New York Times.

              The manner by which these stalwart icons of respectable journalism have aided and abetted what will be Trump’s post-election stance is a disgrace. Not only did they all dutifully assemble in the parking lot across the street from a porno shop to watch Rudy produce his ‘proof’ of how the election was stolen away, they then re-assembled and engaged in the same self-indulgent, nonsensical reporting when Rudy repeated his act at the RNC.

              I don’t really know why my liberal media friends continue to respond like a dog on the leash every time that Trump or one of his minions jerks the chain which tethers them on the other end. And because they will continue to give the Trump noise machine every benefit of every doubt after Joe is sworn in, I can already predict what Trump is planning to do.

              What he’ll do is go after the new Administration in the same way that he believes the Democrats and their Deep State allies tried to de-legitimize his Administration from Day 1. Recall the Million Moms March that took place in DC the day after Trump was sworn in? I guarantee that on January 21, 2021 there will be a ‘spontaneous’ demonstration in D.C. by a ‘Stop the Steal’ bunch hired and organized by the spin-meister Roger Stone.

              For Trump, losing the election gives him an unparalleled opportunity to engage in payback for the Mueller investigation, the impeachment, and the continued drumbeat about how the Putin Gang would love to undercut Biden’s win. And then Trump’s son can run for President in 2024, assuming he recovers from Covid-19.

              Trump’s so-called ‘base’ isn’t just his diehard supporters. It’s a cult. And the reason I call MAGA a cult is because you can get up and say anything at all to a cult-like audience, no matter how crazy, how uninformed, how totally detached from reality, and they’ll believe it because the words came out of your mouth.

              The members of the Branch Davidian cult who followed David Koresh at the Waco Mount Carmel compound believed that Judgement Day was on the way. They believed that David Koresh was a true ‘Lamb of God’ from the Book of Revelation and that he would prepare his flock for the world-ending apocalypse that, was going to occur.

              How different is that nonsense from the nonsense being peddled by Trump, Rudy and the other leaders of the MAGA cult about ‘massive voter fraud.’ Now maybe Sidney Powell went a little too far beyond accepted cult devotionals when she announced that money being used to crate illegal ballots was coming in from ‘Communist states.’ But poor Sydney was probably just demonstrating that her verbal cup had runneth over out of sheer joy.

              I think what Trump needs to do is change the cult’s name from MAGA to MESHUGAH. It’s a Yiddish word which means ‘crazy,’ and that’s what we are dealing with here. The lunatics have clearly and completely taken over the asylum, wouldn’t you agree?

Why Should Trump Concede?

November 20, 2020

mikethegunguy Blogs , Leave a comment

After watching five minutes of Rudy Giuliani’s press conference yesterday at the RNC, I really hope that Trump will never concede. In fact, what would really be great would be if Trump could figure out how to continue pretending to be President after Joe is sworn in on January 20, 2021. And if you have the slightest doubt that Joe isn’t about to become the 46th President of the United States, take a look at the results out of Georgia after the votes were counted again.

The liberal media’s noise about how the lack of a transition from Trump to Biden will create great risks to the country is just so much bunk, that’s all it is. As I pointed out in a previous column (but repetition’s the key to good teaching), the whole point of a transition is to allow the new Administration to figure out how to reward their various supporters and donors with staff appointments in federal agencies; it has nothing to do with how these agencies are actually run.

This morning I listened to Carl Bernstein telling CNN that the roadblock created by Trump has made it impossible for the Biden team to get up to speed with a plan to deal with Covid-19. And what exactly would Biden’s virus task force learn from talking to the Trump virus task force whose main accomplishment seems to have been casting doubt on the expertise of the CDC? I can just hear Trump’s medical expert, Scott Atlas, explaining to the Biden team why herd immunity is the fastest and most successful strategy for bringing infection rates way down.

And if you think that Rudy’s out there all by his lonesome performing on behalf of the Trump campaign, take a quick listen to what another member of the Giuliani gang, attorney Sidney Powell had to say. You can hear her claims about money coming into the Biden campaign from Communist countries like China and Venezuela, except her bizarre statements were challenged by Tucker Carlson! When was the last time that Fox’s chief liberal basher criticized anything said by anyone connected in any way to Trump?

So, this is what the Trump Presidency is reduced to – using up its increasingly smaller amount of credibility, as if Trump ever had any real credibility, by using the same, totally discredited PR script again and again.

I also watched bits and pieces of Joe’s ZOOM meetings with the Covid-19 experts, the economic planners, and the gaggle of red and blue state Governors. The meetings were professional, the discussions serious and sustained, based on hard data and facts. But these presentations were boring as hell.

I want to be entertained, particularly because I am spending so much time at home. Which is why I only hope that Trump can figure out a way to extend his Presidency even though he won’t actually hold the title legally after January 20, 2021.

I got it. The way they do it in Europe is that the country is run by a Prime Minister, elected by the party in Parliament that controls the most seats. Then there’s also a President, who does all those ceremonial things. He or she cuts ribbons when a new supermarket opens up, meets foreign dignitaries at the airport, reads books to 3rd-graders and always visits the sick and the lame stuck in hospitals or at home.

Trump could do these tasks perfectly. Know why? Because he’s had plenty of practice over the last four years.

You think he’s actually gotten anything done? Oh yea, his wife spruced up the Rose Garden so they could hold a big event that spread Covid-19 all over the place.

Now the last thing we need is to figure out a title for this new position which Trump will use after Joe is sworn in.

I got it! We’ll call him MAGA-in-Chief and he can continue to sell his MAGA hats. After all, isn’t making a few bucks for himself and his friends what his Administration has been all about?

Why Does Trump Keep Challenging The Results?

November 17, 2020

mikethegunguy Blogs , , Leave a comment

              If anyone thought I was using yesterday’s column to overstate the degree to which Trump is using this ‘rigged election’ nonsense to build his MAGA brand, I suggest you take a look at this article in yesterday’s WaPo [thanks Paula] which lays out in detail how the Trump campaign is shutting down.

              Want to know why Trump’s campaign is closing up shop? It’s not because he’s lost every, single legal challenge that he brought against the Biden campaign [Thanks again Paula.] It’s because the campaign is broke.

              The Federal Election Commission has just posted financial data that ruins through October 31st. We’ll have to wait another month to get the final numbers for the 2019-2020 campaign expenditures and receipts, but he current data goes far enough.

              How much money did the Biden campaign receive beginning in 2019? Try $952,259,368, of which $720 million and change came from individual contributions, the other $229 mill from various committees (i.e., all those PACS.)

              How much did Trump pull in during the same period of time? A whole, big $533,843,893, of which $317 million was individually donated, with another $214 million sent over by the PACS and other groups.

              Trump received 5.5 million individual contributions and many people donated to his campaign more than once. Know how many individual donations Joe and Kammie received? Try 8.6 million donations, okay?

              In other words, an incumbent President who ran around the country appearing at more than 75 large public rallies and events during the first three years of his Administration, pulled in half as much money as the challenger raised, and only 40% of the funds that accounted for individual donations to the Biden campaign.

              Now let’s look at one other number and compare the two campaigns. As of October 31st, the total debt of the Biden campaign was a big, fat zero. For all the talk about how Democrats like to spend money they don’t have, that certainly wasn’t how Joe ran his campaign. On the other hand, the Trump campaign owed $1.2 million as of October 31st, and if he wants to continue contesting the election results, the debt will only increase.

              Trump has demanded recounts in a number of battleground states but there’s only one little problem. Want to get the votes counted again? Pay for the privilege. To recount in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan would cost the Trump campaign millions of bucks. They don’t have millions of bucks. They have gurnisht, a Yiddish word which means zero as in zilch.

              It turns out the good news for Trump is that he can use money that is donated to his campaign to cover these and other legal costs any way he chooses to use the dough. Last week Trump and his minions began asking supporters to donate money to something called the ‘election defense fund.’ The purpose of this fund is to pay the costs of ‘defending the integrity’ of the election, so it is said.

              Except if you read the fine print of these solicitations, it turns out that half of any monies received will go to pay down the campaign’s debt. Do you know anyone who ever reads the fine print? I don’t, and that includes me.

              Want the really good news? The word is now out that Joe doesn’t want to see any post-election investigations of Trump. He doesn’t want the federal investigation of Trump’s tax returns to go forward, ditto any investigations of how or why Trump grants legal immunity to members of his staff. The official story is that Joe feels that such activity would further divide the country. Fine.

              Here’s the real reason that Joe’s thinking enough is enough.  Because if the government leaves Trump alone, then he can sit on his rear end in Mar-a-Lago, tweet to his heart’s content and nobody will pay attention to him at all. Can you imagine a world in which the liberal media has to actually go out, dig up and report real news?

Why Don’t We Let Them Go?

November 8, 2020

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 1 Comment

              Yesterday’s New York Times ran a gossipy article about an ardent Trump supporter in Massachusetts who is trying to figure out what comes next now that his champion will not be spending the next four years making everything great.

              The 27-year old kid ends up raising the possibility that maybe MAGA Nation should go out and form a country of their own. After all, there’s little to be gained by living in a country run by the likes of Communists like Kammie and Joe.

              This idea about seceding from the Union isn’t new. It was first tried in 1860, and for the life of me, I don’t know why we took those 11 slave states back. What did we get from ‘one nation under God?’ Tobacco? Militarism? Urban ghettos? Oh – I forgot. We got jazz!

              The secession idea stayed in limbo until it was resurrected by that idiot in Texas, Rick Perry, who floated the idea (he claimed it was a joke) in 2009, but then shut up when he found himself begging the Obama Administration for funds to help deal with swine flu.

              Now the idea is back again, prompted before the election by comments made by Trump, which are now being echoed by dumb kids like the kid in Massachusetts profiled above.

              Know what? I really hope that all the Trump supporters who feel the United States no longer represents what and who they really are, will pack up and leave. They can have states like Montana and Idaho, where there’s plenty of open land. We’ll throw in a couple of deep-South states like Mississippi and Alabama, as long as Black and some White residents in those states are allowed to move into states that remain part of the U.S.A.

              When the map is redrawn and we have two countries instead of one, the schmucks who really believe they’d be better off outside of the Union than within, can sit down and figure out what it’s going to cost them to live in a country run by Donald Trump or one of his sons.

              Ever drive across Montana or one of those other red Western states? If you do, you’ll discover that there’s hardly a single farm out there which doesn’t receive generous subsidies from the United States Department of Agriculture, a.k.a., the Soil Bank. And when these rock-ribbed patriots load the meat from all those slaughtered cows into refrigerated box cars, what are they going to do? Ship the meat to China or India instead of to Chicago and points East?

              Want to relinquish being part of the United States? What do you think it would cost the residents of the newly-independent state of Texas to pay for roads, schools, clean drinking water, weather reports, medical care and all the other things that we enjoy courtesy of the federal fisc?

              Guess which states run the highest, per-capita deficit of taxes paid to the Federal Government versus money sent back to be spent for programs within those states? Try New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, Minnesota, and Illinois – all those Commie states. Know which states receive the highest amounts of per-capita federal revenues versus taxes paid to D.C? Try West Virginia and Mississippi, two states that gave Trump more than 60% of their votes.

              In other words, those pro-Trump diehards who want to secede and form their own country would quickly find themselves either paying four or five times’ higher taxes or they would have to do without the services which we all receive whether we want them or not.

              Of course, maybe MAGA Nation really believes that their children don’t really need to go to school. They certainly don’t need to be immunized, right?

              All the more reason we should let the red states go their own way. Think how quickly and easily we would get rid of the virus if we only had to treat people who don’t think it’s unpatriotic to wear a mask.

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