Four years ago Donald Trump asked black voters, “What the hell do you have to lose?” Well, he certainly showed us: your job, your healthcare, your education potential, your homes and even your life.
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Trump is out on the road again but it sure in hell doesn’t look like the action he generated in 2016. It appears the Tulsa rally, to which almost no one came and was responsible for infecting many of those who did, was the killer. Trump lackeys told us they had a million requests but only around six thousand showed up, mask less and crowded in the first few rows. That was bad but the next one in New Hampshire was worse. So bad, in fact that they had to cancel it because it looked like no one was going to show.
But Trump is a man of habit and one whose ego demands adulation on an hourly basis, so they had two rallies this weekend, one in Pennsylvania and one in Wisconsin. Of course they were in airplane hangers and just so they didn’t have to face the no-shows, they were by invitation only. This kind of clown show may salve Trump’s ego, but they are anything but cost effective.
Despite all the polling, Trump’s message is “The only way we can lose this election is if it’s rigged.” Translated from Trumpspeak that means, “We’re getting the shit kicked out of us.”
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So the Democrats started their convention on Monday and it was different. I’ve always thought that conventions were a huge waste of time and money. They’re great for those who want to get stoned and laid but I’d just as soon have what they had this week.
I thought Bernie and Michelle gave great speeches and the one interview with Senator Booker was really interesting. I’m a big Amy Klobachar fan but she had nothing to say that moved the cause. The most important thing was that the Democrats started laying out their case against Trump. They should keep doing that, pound home what an incompetent loser he is, but at some point they had to do the one thing that Trump can’t do for them. They had to sell Joe Biden and they finally did that on the second night, which became Joe Biden good guy night in which his character, his empathy and his ability to listen were almost beaten to death. But it was necessary and it seemed to work. Listening to the speakers the contrast they drew between Trump and Biden was startling and what was even more important, it was true.
Then with two days left they had to lay out a course of action for the next four years that would show the American public that they get it; that they want to solve the problems, and that they have the background and knowledge to be successful at it.
This was not easy. They are up against a clown who has accomplished nothing in four years and has failed at every task that has been set before him and who goes out every day seemingly with the mission to do something that day that will further prove what a stupid, blundering moron he really is. He inherited a robust economy and sailed along on it, claiming it to be his until it crashed due to his incompetent handling of the pandemic. He has failed in every negotiation he undertook. When finally confronted by a significant problem, the pandemic, he refused to acknowledge its existence and allowed it to mushroom into a far worse health crisis than it should have been. His failure to correctly handle the pandemic destroyed our, Obama created and built economy, and now he has no idea as to how to handle the chaos he caused. This is a four-year-old child trying to deal with adult problems… and failing.
On the other hand Biden was part of the team that inherited an economy that had been destroyed by the bad policies of Bush/Cheney and built it into the roaring success that Trump found when he walked into office. It seems that destroying our economy is becoming a Republican legacy. Just about anyone who talks about Trump, including many Republicans, will tell you all this and more. So it was time time to let the nation know what they will get with Joe Biden. How it starts with a man who understands what it means to be presidential, something about which gutter punk Trump has never had a clue. But that’s just the beginning. Biden is a man who tells the truth, has the ability to feel for, not just give lip service to, those who need support. He has an understanding of what’s wrong with this country and how to fix it on both the domestic and foreign stages.
So it was very important for the conventioneers to speak as much as possible about Joe Biden and what he plans to do for this country. They did that in the last two days and then Joe stepped up and absolutely nailed a speech that many thought he didn’t have in him. He showed a command of his subjects that Donald Trump has never had. He showed a focus that Trump has never even thought of and he showed a presidential manner that we have tragically missed in the last three and three quarters years. But the Democrats will have to continue doing more. After the convention, Donald Trump will take up most of the air because it’s time for the GOP convention and also because it’s just his nature. But by taking up all the air Trump will be creating new opportunities to screw up over and over because that too is just who he is.
So having laid out some of the basics of the way he will deal with our national problems the whole campaign will now have to continue to expand how each goal will be accomplished.
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Not since the Civil War has our country been so divided. Donald Trump’s time in office has split our citizens into two camps filled with hatred of each other. Trump’s degenerate campaign to divide the country may have left us only one short step away from having the most bi-lateral nation in decades. But Trump’s hate mongering, absence of character, and gross incompetence has caused amazing numbers of Republicans to abandon their party and strike out on their own. No they haven’t formed a third party which in itself leads this writer to believe that once Trump is gone and the cowards that blindly follow him are left on their own, the GOP defectors may be able to organize the stragglers back into some kind of respectable Republican Party that has some sense of moral right and elected duty.
Watching the Democratic Convention Tuesday night I was astounded by the numbers of former or current Republicans who are going to vote for Biden and who are encouraging others to do the same. I’m an old man and I have never seen so many defectors from the party in power who openly are willing to follow the other party’s candidate. I mean there are a group of important and powerful Republicans who have actually formed an anti-Trump group called the Lincoln Project. Their beef is not about policy but their disgust with the character of a president who lies on a moment-to-moment basis, who is a racist, a misogynist, a back stabber and just too egotistical and stupid to hold the office. These defectors along with a number of journalists and media stars have made the transition. It is not incomprehensible that those who are working together to beat Trump would be open to getting together with those middle grounders from the other party to move the nation ahead?
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The revelations by the bi-partisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigating Russian interference into the 2916 election are truly explosive. They offer us one thousand pages of damning information that shows President Trump used the head of his campaign committee, Paul Manafort, to collude with a Russian intelligence agent while he was employed by the administration. It also reveals that Trump has lied to previous investigative bodies. This should at the very least put a nail in Trump lackey Bill Barr’s phony investigations into supposed illegal actions by Democrats trying to unearth the very details revealed by the Senate Committee. The fact is, Trump in his uncontrolled rush to power, broke almost every law that deals with treasonous actions with a foreign government.
There is no way for us to look to the equally guilty Bill Barr to do his job simply because he doesn’t see being the Attorney General for the people as his role. He is Trump’s lawyer, so he has to go as fast as possible, and the way for us tp achieve that end is simply to vote Trump out of office.
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There are some people in life that you just don’t believe no matter what they say. It got that way because you have caught them in lies too many times. Donald Trump is just such a man. But there are also people in life that you believe no matter how far fetched the things they may say simply because your life experience has been that they have always told you the truth. Ted Koppel is such a man.
This Sunday Ted Koppel told us about something called PEADs, Presidential Emergency Action Documents. This sounded so far-fetched you just had to go, “No way”. They are purported to be documents that appear to give the president sole power to declare a national emergency and then act in an unconstitutional manner in order to solve a problem that in his judgment brought about said emergency. Donald Trump has already declared seven national emergencies. It seems all it takes for the Fat Liar in the White House to declare a national emergency is for him to miss a putt on one of his golf outings.
This is a damn serious problem for a man that many of us think is certifiably insane.
Koppel thought this was pretty serious so he asked around in Washington. It seems no one admits to knowing anything about PEADs except former Justice Department Official, John Yoo, and he won’t say anything except that they exist. But putting the kind of power these documents represent into the hands of an already power-mad sociopath is like putting a chimp in front of the nuclear launch button. With Trump already babbling about powers he has that we don’t know about, and with him facing an election in which it appears he will get his brains beat out, we appear to be hovering on the verge of civil war. We can’t just ignore this because no one seems to be aware of it, not with the Mad Hairer already babbling about it. It will be too late when he pulls it out of his funny hat. Someone in Congress must have some information about this and even though, as Yoo states, it’s classified; this has to see the light of day immediately. The possible existence of these documents is the greatest challenge to our democratic system of government in the entire history of the nation. If these documents exist and are not somehow made available to congress, they represent imminent dictatorship.
With all the important stuff going on right now, this seems to be far and away the most important because the man in charge of putting it all in motion is the United States Attorney General, William Barr and we all know he is nothing but a Trump lackey.
Now you can call this a conspiracy theory but when a man like Ted Koppel says it on CBS Sunday Morning, attention must be paid.
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And guess who got himself arrested today? That’s right, Steve Bannon, the Brietbart hack who promoted himself into a big job in Trump’s White House, was nabbed for fraud and laundering involving a charity that he was running that had as its goal, the construction of Trump’s Wall. It appears ole Steve wanted the wall but not enough to keep from stealing the money to build it.
Is there anybody left who has had anything to do with Donald Trump that hasn’t been indicted? Of course anyone with even a modicum of intelligence understands that crooks hang out together. “Birds of a feather?” I mean that’s where the Rico Indictment came from. You can be arrested for hanging out with known criminals because if you do it enough we can assume you are involved in some criminal activity.
My God, how many of Trump’s buddies have to be arrested, indicted or jailed before his fan base gets the point that he is the biggest crook of all?