Will He Have the Guts?

The President and his groveling Attorney General, Bill Barr, have nominated a number of cities across the country as “anarchist cities” and are trying to use that label as an excuse with which to withhold federal funding from them. The only thing anarchistic here is the way Trump treats the law which mandates where the federal money is to be spent.

As for New York City, one of those identified by the Liar in the White House as anarchistic, maybe the Prez should take a look at the reality. NYC’s crime rate is a mere fraction of what it was in the 90’s when Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was mayor. Yeah, that’s the same Rudy Giuliani that keeps babbling about how the city has gone to the dogs. Rudy is so full of crap he no longer knows whether he’s lying or telling the truth.

But while we’re talking about federal money and where it should be spent, it’s imperative that we look at the $1 billion fund that Congress gave the Pentagon in March to rebuild the country’s supplies of medical equipment and which the Pentagon went on to squander on unnecessary military supplies purchased from contractors famous for lining the pockets of Pentagon allocation executives. The money was supposed to go to battle the Coronavirus by funding manufacturers that made the kinds of supplies needed to prevent shortages that had become apparent during the battle against the virus. Instead they were allocated to firms making items like drone parts and dress uniforms.

It’s this kind of sleazy spending that supports the contention that the entire Pentagon funding program needs a complete overhaul and that heads must roll.

Military spending has long been the biggest item in our national budget.  It’s way past time to stop that, especially considering the drain the pandemic has put on our abilities to fund programs that sustain American life and are needed to continue that sustenance. Is it more important that we maintain our supply of fresh dress uniforms or that we feed the children of our poor? Or maybe we need someone running the Pentagon uniform program that considers sending soiled uniforms to the cleaners instead of replacing them.

The Pentagon has a history of waste that goes back to WWII. It was Ike Eisenhower who back in the ‘50s identified the whole mess as the “Military/Industrial Complex” and accused it of being a huge drain on our economy because its only goal was to sustain its own growth and enrich of its individual components. Nothing has changed. In fact it has gotten worse and if this nation ever hopes to drag itself out of the financial hole the pandemic has forced it into, it will have to take out the sword, carve great huge hunks of money out of that Pentagon budget and use that money to support aspects of our national economy that are currently hopelessly under water.

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Donald Trump has spent the last couple of weeks raving about rigged elections, and why not. If there is anyone who knows about rigging elections it’s certainly Donald Trump. All that nonsense that went on between him and the Russians in 2016 has clearly defined that successful attempt at rigging.  I mean, how else did he win that one?

On a number of occasions in the last two weeks, Trump has refused to state that if he loses the election he will accept the results.

By taking that stance he has isolated himself from all the previous presidents in U.S. history. In addition, he has on several occasions, spoken about winning this election and then continuing on in office for additional terms. It’s obvious that Trump, a great admirer of Putin, Kim, Erdogan and other dictators, sees himself in their mold.  It should be clear to anyone with the ability to read or even just watch TV that Trump has moved past the confines of democracy and is looking to establish himself as our first dictator… and he isn’t going to let anything as mundane as an annoying little “Constitution” get in his way.

But regardless of his stance on leaving office and the idiocy he spews out to his COVID denying crowds of worshipers, it’s apparent that Trump has realized he can’t beat Joe Biden so he has decided to run against Hillary Clinton. He has already, with the help of the Russians, beaten her once. Why not give it another shot? That can be the only explanation of his constant attacks on Hillary at his super spreader rallies. She has no relevance to this election but he just loves leading “lock her up” cheers and burying his nose in her already decaying emails.

Look, Trump knows he is about to get his ass kicked and he also knows that there will be a truckload of subpoenas waiting for him as he steps out of the White House. He’s a criminal. He thinks like a criminal, so he looks for the twisted plan to save his butt.

Would he actually try to physically hold the White House in the event of a loss? I really don’t think he has the guts. I also don’t think he has the ammunition. Yes, Bill Barr will stick with him in a vain attempt to save their would-be dictatorship. Barr has been a pretty good pick for him, maybe his only one. Barr has turned into his Roy Cohn. But whereas Barr may have Cohn’s intelligence, lack of morals and seeming distain for the constitution, he doesn’t begin to possess Cohn’s criminal cunning and he’s not as effective a bully. He also doesn’t have the ammunition to get Trump over the hump.

And then there’s another problem; polls this week show Trump and Biden tied in Texas and Georgia with Biden leading in Iowa and Ohio. Are you kidding me? These are four states that the GOP should be winning by over ten points apiece. They would be if they didn’t have “Trump the anchor” dragging them down.

So it looks like Biden will get the votes but will that mean that Trump refuses to leave and tries for a coup? I just don’t think so. For one, he would need more guts than he has, and for another he would need the support of the military and I don’t think he will get it. I know! He is the commander-in-chief of the military, but if Biden has the most votes it won’t make much difference how much Trump contends that the election was rigged. Because of the vote, the military will be free to support Biden.

Also to that point; a number of high ranking Republicans who up to now have supported Trump because they looked to him to be a source of power will have either lost their seats in congress or finally understand what jeopardy Trump has put them in and will abandon him. We can already see that in Moscow Mitch McConnell who is in grave danger of losing his Senate seat in Kentucky. This crooked punk who has already acted in contravention to the Constitution on so many issues has finally reached a point where he sees that his loyalty to Trump is actually killing him. He now states that Trump will have to leave peacefully if he loses the vote. Sure McConnell’s just trying to save his ass but he finally sees that blindly following Trump isn’t going to do it anymore, not for him or for any of the slime that have ignored their duty to the nation and followed a path that has led formally to personal enrichment but now to disaster.

It’s encouraging how vast numbers of former GOP officials have publicly announced that they will be supporting Biden. It will be interesting to see what happens to them when the election is over and Biden wins. My money is not on them starting a new party but on them going back to the GOP once Trump is gone and taking it over. Without Trump around to bully his own party members with primary challenges, they could make up a strong conservative base that might even understand the advantages of bi-partisan interaction with the Democrats. That would be a good thing for a country that has gotten nothing out of congress in a decade.