Voter Suppression

The Corruption Of The Supreme Court, With Five Appointees By Presidents Who Lost The Popular Vote!

Ronald 1 Comment

With the likelihood that Amy Coney Barrett will be successfully confirmed to be the replacement of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the Supreme Court, we are about to have a Court with five appointees by Presidents who lost the national popular vote, but still won the Electoral College.

George W. Bush lost the national popular vote to Vice President Al Gore in 2000 by a 540,000 margin, but was able to select Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito in 2005 and 2006.

And now Donald Trump, who lost the national popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016, by a 2.85 million margin, has been able to select Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch in 2017, Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, and now Amy Comey Barrett in 2020.

And even more infuriating is that three of these five appointees helped the George W. Bush campaign in the Bush V Gore Supreme Court case, assisting him winning the case in a majority Republican selected Court in December 2000–specifically, John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Comey Barrett!

And the right wing Federalist Society, which has been on a 40 year campaign to make the federal court system move to the extreme right on such issues as health care, abortion, gay marriage, gun rights, so called freedom of religion, deregulation of the economy and the environment, suppression of voting rights and labor rights, has fully succeeded in its campaign to undermine American democracy and a sense of humanity!

So when one complains from the right side of the political spectrum at the “horror” of Democrats “packing the Court” if they were to add seats to the Supreme Court, one has to say the level of hypocrisy is enormous, when that has been the commitment for four decades of the Right in American politics.

And who can say that if the Republicans were to win control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency, that they would not be willing to promote “packing of the Court’, so that they could add two to four more seats to the Supreme Court, and make the Court not just the 6-3 margin it will now be, but possibly 8-3 or 10-3, if two to four seats were to be added!

And one more point: Two of the six member Republican majority have had sexual misconduct hanging over their heads, although it has not affected their tenure on the Court, speaking specifically of Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh. So the ethical and moral standing of the Court has been damaged irrevocably!

But do the conservatives and the Federalist Society care about this? Not one iota!

Anarchy, Chaos, Mayhem: The Donald Trump Presidency!

Ronald 4 Comments

The best description of the Donald Trump Presidency is that it is a time of anarchy, chaos, mayhem!

The man in office is dangerous, unpredictable, and seems certifiably crazy, and yet the Cabinet and Vice President Mike Pence have gone along with his insanity, and are complicit in his crimes against humanity!

The nightmare is not over, as one cannot be sure that Trump will not find an illegal, unethical manner, with foreign collusion and voter suppression methods, to win a second term, although that seems highly unlikely, more than ever.

But the crisis if Trump loses, and refuses to concede or leave office, then we will have a situation that has never occurred before, as in every close contest and even challenge on the Presidency, including 1876, 2000, and 2016, the result was accepted, even if grudgingly.

But Donald Trump is not Samuel Tilden, Al Gore, or Hillary Clinton, and is sure to create anarchy, chaos, and mayhem even to the last minute of the term, sadly!

Trump’s Constant Use Of Projection Makes Him Look Foolish, And Clearly, He Is A Sociopath And Psychopath!

Ronald 3 Comments

All Presidents and Presidential contenders have faults, shortcomings, negative points about their lives and public records.

There is not even among the great Presidents anyone who cannot be faulted and criticized.

But NEVER have we had a President quite like Donald Trump. He looks foolish regularly, and is the butt of jokes, as he makes himself look ridiculous and clueless as to reality!

He is a constant user of the psychological method known as “Projection”, labeling others and attacking others in every possible manner, but actually everything he utters or puts on Twitter as criticisms or ridicule can be pushed back on him!

He has no shame, or willingness to admit he is wrong, or to take responsibility for his actions.

He stands at the top of the list of President who were racist, nativist, and misogynistic, and yet he claims falsely that he is tolerant and treats others with dignity and respect.

In other words, he is looking in the mirror, so when he says someone is fat, crazy, stupid, and any other long list of verbal and written attacks, it applies to him and tells all of us just how messed up psychologically he is.

Face the facts, Donald Trump is a very sick person, a very unhappy person, a person who is dangerous, sadistic, uncaring, mean, nasty, and a pathological liar!

He has the traits of being a sociopath and a psychopath, and one has to be concerned as when he is rejected by the voters in 102 days, he could lash out in a very dangerous manner, that could unleash a nuclear war or a state of emergency, and cause more deaths than he has already caused by his unwillingness to deal with the CoronaVirus Pandemic.

And if by some tragic circumstances, through foreign collusion, voter suppression, and federal military being sent to prevent people from voting in person or by mail, Trump is reelected, then the United States is in a situation of intolerable danger!

If Donald Trump loses, even if he does not accept it, at that point, one would hope against hope that Vice President Pence and the majority of the Cabinet would step in and prevent any rash action by Trump, including invoking the 25th Amendment.

This would put Mike Pence in the Presidency for a brief couple of months until the inauguration. While an unpleasant situation, it would make Mike Pence look like a short term hero, saving the country from a disaster of an outgoing President wreaking massive damage on the nation in a innumerable set of possible circumstances.

Donald Trump Ready And Willing To Take American Democracy And The American Heritage Down With Him In His Desperate Attempt To Keep Power!

Ronald 5 Comments

Donald Trump is ready and willing to take American democracy and the American heritage down with him in his desperate attempt to keep power.

He has no limits in what he will do, including promotion of foreign collusion; suppression of votes in minority communities; spreading lies and falsehoods about Joe Biden and his eventual running mate for Vice President; and creating a crisis to try to sway the nation in October, the so called concept of the “October surprise”.

Donald Trump has no ethics, scruples, morals, and has operated as a criminal element for his entire adult life, and he lusts for absolute power and suppression of civil liberties and the Constitution.

We can expect that the last 100 days of this campaign, beginning nine days from now on July 26, will be full of tumult and potential violence, with it being designed to terrify the population to avoid going to the polls by direct threats of violence, and his continued effort to crack down on use of mail ballots.

If America comes through this constitutional crisis with a good result, it will be through widespread efforts to undermine the dictatorial desires of the most evil man ever to be President of the United States!

This is a time to pray for good results, even if not religious!

The Growing Danger Of A Constitutional Crisis After November 3

Ronald 2 Comments

With 162 days until the Presidential Election of 2020, we are on the brink of the most consequential constitutional crisis since the Civil War.

We have a renegade President who has made it clear that he has no intention of giving up his office if he loses on November 3.

It may not matter to him if the election is a landslide, and certainly not if it is close.

We have to expect that the Secret Service, the FBI, and military will intervene to insure a peaceful transition of power.

But the possibility of bloodshed and violence by the one third of the nation which are Trumpites is literally terrifying!

Trump is trying every tactic imaginable, including voter suppression; trying to make mail ballots not acceptable even though many people already vote by mail; foreign collusion; and gerrymandering attempts as methods to fix the election of our next administration.

This is a time to worry that anything is possible, as Donald Trump has authoritarian tendencies, and might be willing to unleash his followers to seize the government by force!

Donald Trump Botched His Last Attempt To Show Concern For The American People, In His Atrocious Reaction To Covid-19 Pandemic!

Ronald 28 Comments

Donald Trump, the extreme narcissist, and mentally very unstable, and more dangerous every day for the nation, botched his last attempt to show concern and empathy for the American people, by his atrocious reaction to the CoronaVirus Pandemic!

Any chance he had to redeem himself to the American people and his historic reputation is lost, as he has refused to promote contact tracing or testing, and is very willing to accept mass loss of life without any guilt or conscience!

All that matters to Donald Trump is to be reelected, with the thought that if somehow, through foreign collusion, voter suppression, or gerrymandering combination, he is reelected, the nightmare we are living through will become much worse!

This is not just about massive loss of life, but also the abuse of power by a reenergized President who will go further in destroying the Constitution and Bill of Rights, setting up a Fascist dictatorship that his Republican Party will abide by. This will be instead of promoting the principles enunciated by Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and other historic Republicans of principle and common decency over the 166 years of the party’s history!

Once we lose our basic civil liberties and civil rights, how can we ever regain them? How can we protect the vulnerable among us, including the disabled, the elderly, the young, and racial and ethnic minorities, which will suffer more than the general population?

That is why, as stated in my History News Network article of April 29, the Election of 2020 is the most significant one since 1940, in that our whole way of life is in danger, as it was in the four previous elections discussed in the article—1860, 1864, 1932, and 1940!

May 7, 1945 And May 7, 2020: The End Of One Crisis And The Growth Of The Worst Threat In 75 Years!

Ronald 18 Comments

Seventy five years ago, World War II in Europe ended with the German surrender, although it was not officially announced to the world until the next day, which, coincidentally, was new President Harry Truman’s 61st birthday, only in office for 26 days, upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945.

It is true that the war against Japan did not end until after the atomic bomb was used in August 1945, with surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945. But the dire threat of Adolf Hitler was over on May 7, 1945.

Now, 75 years later, America is in the worst crisis since World War II, with 33 million people out of 155 million employed before the CoronaVirus Pandemic hit, now unemployed, and many losing their homes, having no food to eat, many in mortal health danger, and we have a President and administration sitting by and doing nothing, only interested in reelection.

And on this day, 75,000 Americans have died in about two months, more than the Vietnam War or the Korean War, and each day now, about as many are died on Pearl Harbor Day (December 7, 1941) or September 11, 2001!

Trump and his cronies in the Republican Party seem to live in an alternate world, where one can kick around the population and yet think they are going to be given power again, to do ever more damage to the American people.

The only way that Trump can be reelected is by foreign government collusion; state governments who promote illegal gerrymandering; and state government purging the voter rolls, promoting voter suppression by other tactics, including fewer voting locations and dates, and denying felons who have completed their debt to society the right to vote as in Florida and a few other states.

The Republicans know that they cannot win honestly, and that the future of their party is dim, but they will engage in any form of corruption to promote nativism, racism, Islamophobia, and gay bashing.

The Democrats have a massive job on their hands to insure a truly fair election, including voting by mail for those who wish to use that method of voting, for any reason!

Vote By Mail Should Be Alternative, And Should Be Offered Everywhere This November For All Elections

Ronald 9 Comments

With the nation in the midst of the CoronaVirus Pandemic, it is essential that all states offer Vote by Mail as an alternative, making it mandatory for all elections!

As it is, about 25 percent of voters vote by mail, including this blogger and author.

People who are older; those who are disabled; those who are in hospitals, nursing homes, and other public institutions; and others who find it inconvenient to stand in lines at polls on Election Day already vote by mail.

If Donald Trump had his way, no one would vote by mail, as he knows that is the only way that a majority of people, not electoral votes, would vote for the Republican party. They make it their mission to make voting harder, and to work to undermine the right to vote for minority groups, and make voter suppression their major effort in office!

Standing online yesterday in Wisconsin, forced on voters by the Republican Party of Wisconsin and the US Supreme Court majority of conservative Republicans, was a total outrage and disgrace!

The right to vote is sacred, and no one needs to prove his residence, as long as he or she has registered to vote with proper identification. Once that has been established, we should follow Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Utah and Hawaii, all enlightened states, that have all of their elections by mail already!

Sixteen other states also have vote by mail allowed, including my state of Florida, but also California and Arizona as major centers of population. allow it.

It is time for such states as New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and particularly Southern states, to spread democracy to all citizens!

Crisis Management And Donald Trump: None!

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Donald Trump is failing miserably in crisis management, as the CoronaVirus Crisis leads to a total national disaster in so many ways, and it is still in its earliest stages.

Without debate, this will be the number one story of 2020, and will have an effect on the Presidential election in so many ways.

The problem of voting will be complicated by the danger of the virus, along with likely foreign collusion and attempts of the Republicans to promote voter suppression.

But, at least in polls, Joe Biden is scoring a major lead over Donald Trump in just about every poll imaginable, even as propagandists argue over his supposed dementia, which is more supposition than reality.

Certainly, Trump’s reckless behavior and rhetoric make it very clear that he IS demented, and a danger daily to American values and national security!

Latinos Future Democratic Base In Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas

Ronald 3 Comments

Donald Trump’s “war” on people of Hispanic ancestry is guaranteeing that the vast majority of Latinos in the future will be supporters of the Democratic Party long term, as they are in California.

When California Governor Pete Wilson promoted Proposition 187 to deny undocumented immigrants basic public services in the state, it backfired on him and the Republican Party, which had been dominant in the state for a few decades, including Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan as Californians who became President.

Proposition 187 was overturned in the courts, but it made the Republican Party the loser, as they rapidly lost any influence over the state, and the number of California Republicans in Congress dwindled down to seven in 2018, after years of great decline.

The same is about to happen in other states with large Latino population, including Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and ultimately, Texas.

And as this begins to happen, some of it in 2020, and more by 2024 and after, it will insure Democratic Congresses in the future, as congressional seats in those states start to fall into the hands of the Democrats.

And the Electoral College will bring a bright future as these four states turn blue, and particularly when Texas does so in the next decade.

So the day of GOP dominance with gerrymandering and voter suppression will come to an end, but the Democrats will have a massive job undoing the damage left by Donald Trump and his party.