Day: July 18, 2020

Donald Trump: George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, Pat Buchanan On Steroids!

President Donald Trump is a true nightmare, as he has brought to ultimate power the viewpoints and policies of Alabama Governor George Wallace, who ran for President on a third party line in 1968, and won 13 percent of the national popular vote, and 46 electoral votes from five Southern states at the height of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s.

Donald Trump has also brought to mind the then South Carolina Governor and later US Senator Strom Thurmond, who won four Southern states and 39 electoral votes in 1948, also on an anti civil rights platform.

Donald Trump reminds us also of Pat Buchanan, journalist, commentator, and advisor to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, who challenged President George H. W. Bush for renomination in 1992, and weakened his reelection campaign in that election year.

All three men were racists, hatemongers, Fascist oriented, and against civil rights.

Additionally, Buchanan was also a big time antisemite, who actually, indirectly, affected the Presidential Election of 2000. Four thousand Jewish voters in Palm Beach County, Florida, were confused by the so called “butterfly” ballot, and punched the hole for Buchanan, rather than Democratic nominee Al Gore, helping to influence the election result, with George W. Bush being declared the winner of Florida’s electoral vote by a margin of 537 popular votes statewide, and winning the Presidency!

All three of these candidates were obnoxious, disgraceful, and reprehensible, but while they all gained popular support to some extent, none was feared or became a dominant factor in leadership of the national government.

But now, we have a President who represents all of the evil and horrors promoted by Wallace, Thurmond, and Buchanan, but he was able to manipulate votes with Russian interference in 2016. Despite losing the national popular vote by a massive nearly three million to Hillary Clinton, he was able to win three states in popular vote combined of 78,000 (Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania) and become President.

He has unleashed one horror and disgraceful action and utterance after another, doing massive damage to American domestic and foreign policy, and attempting to do everything he can to make himself an authoritarian leader on a level unimaginable in American history.

Donald Trump makes George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, and Pat Buchanan look like choir boys by comparison. He raises the historical profile of the President most reviled for his actions and behavior before now—Richard Nixon–to a higher level, with at least Nixon having accomplished some really significant goals that are seen as positive in historical retrospect.

But many of the accomplishments of Nixon are now either gone or being destroyed by this maniac, who if he is somehow reelected by manipulation and fraud, is a clear threat to the Constitution and Bill of Rights!

The “Red State” Governors Presiding Over Major Disaster Because Of Refusal To Enforce Mask And Other Limits: The Downfall Of Trump Strongholds!

What began as a primarily “Blue State” health crisis has now hit Southern and Western states, what are known as “Red States”, as hard, and in many cases, harder than New York and New Jersey and other states that vote Democratic.

The governors of these states, particularly Brian Kemp of Georgia, Ron DeSantis of Florida, Greg Abbott of Texas, and Doug Ducey of Arizona, can be blamed for this by their lax policies on dealing with the CoronaVirus Pandemic.

This is specifically the issue of face masks being mandated, and since they have not been, the disease has spread like wildfire, causing mass loss of life, and alarming increases in cases.

Donald Trump’s refusal to set a national standard is also causing this crisis, which will destroy the Trump reelection bid, but he has refused, as them, to promote a unified approach.

Donald Trump strongholds will see many Trump supporters dying, but sadly, also those who hate Trump and the Republican Party.

But the Republican Party will pay the price in the fall and in the future, as it now seems possible Trump will lose all of these four states, and also Senate and House seats.

People suffering and dying is not a winning strategy for the Republican Party, which could now be called the Party of Death, not of Life!

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Cancer Crisis Raises Alarm For Supreme Court Future

Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been on the Court for 27 years, and is a true icon with millions of fans and supporters of her brilliant liberal perspective on legal matters.

But now, at age 87, she has suffered again a bout with cancer, having survived colon cancer in 1999, pancreatic cancer in 2009, lung cancer in 2018, and pancreatic cancer again in 2019. Now, she is diagnosed with liver cancer, so this is her fifth bout with cancer.

Ginsburg has proved to be a tough lady, doing great sessions with exercise over the past generation, and recovering from conditions most would not have survived.

She is still able to do her job, and is determined to remain, but now, there is fear she might not be able to continue, and could, god forbid, die in office or be forced to resign this fall, giving Donald Trump another appointment to the Court, which would shift it to the far right, a true disaster.

Since Barack Obama was not allowed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party to replace Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016, because it was an election year, by all rights, Trump should not be able to replace Ginsburg. Any appointment should be delayed to 2021. as it was delayed until 2017, when Neil Gorsuch took the Scalia seat, rather than Merrick Garland, the Barack Obama appointee to replace Scalia in 2016.

We must all pray that Ginsburg will, once again, fight and overcome this challenge, and remain on the Court until at least January 4, when the new Congress, hopefully with a Democratic Senate, begins, and the upcoming inauguration, hopefully, of Joe Biden to the Presidency, would occur on January 20, 2021.

Then, we will know that Ginsburg’s Court seat is safely in the hands of a liberal Justice, preserving the legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg!

Death Of Civil Rights Icon John Lewis, A True Inspiration For Nearly 60 Years

This blogger and author woke up today and was shocked to discover that Civil Rights Icon John Lewis, Georgia Congressman since 1987, had passed away at age 80 of pancreatic cancer.

Lewis was a great inspiration to all of us who believe in civil rights and progressive reforms, and he personally paid the price in the early to mid 1960s, leading to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

He was arrested multiple times and bloodied and injured by Ku Klux Klansman all over the South, but he remained committed to nonviolent civil disobedience and basic human rights.

Lewis was the last speaker to survive, among those who spoke at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, and worked closely with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, even though he was just a young man in his mid 20s.

There is a movement on to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama after him, as he was injured on “Bloody Sunday” on March 7, 1965, when marching for voting rights at that site.

Pettus was a Confederate Army General in the Civil War, a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, and a United States Senator from Alabama. It is time to remove his name from that bridge, and rename it after John Lewis.

Lewis will be remembered in the annals of history as a truly great man, and one of the most outstanding members historically of the House of Representatives.