A message from your King…..if you haven’t seen Hamilton you won’t get it…so…
If you’re not following historian Heather Cox Richardson on Twitter, you’re missing some of the most insightful writings on the net….
“Yesterday evening, Trump’s disgraced former National Security Advisor, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn– whom Trump recently pardoned after he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak before Trump took office– retweeted a news release from a right-wing Ohio group called “We the People Convention.” That release contained a petition asking Trump to declare martial law, suspend the Constitution, silence the media, and have the military “oversee a national re-vote.”
The petition ends with a threat of violence, calling on Trump “to boldly act to save our nation…. We will also have no other choice but to take matters into our own hands, and defend our rights on our own, if you do not act within your powers to defend us.”
University of Texas School of Law Professor Steve Vladeck pointed out that “The Uniform Code of Military Justice defines as ‘sedition’ one who, ‘with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of lawful civil authority, creates, in concert with any other person, revolt, violence, or other disturbance against that authority.’…”
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley today pointedly distanced the military from talk of a coup. “Our military is very very capable… we are determined to defend the US Constitution,” he said. “No one should doubt that.” A defense official told Military Times that the idea of Trump declaring martial law and having the military re-do the election is “insane in a year that we didn’t think could get anymore insane.”
He spoke too soon. This afternoon the president released a video of himself making a speech he said was “maybe the most important speech I’ve ever made.” It was a 46-minute rant insisting, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he won the 2020 election. While he has lost virtually every court challenge he has mounted and his own Attorney General, William Barr, has said there was no evidence of fraud that would change the outcome of the election, Trump continues to insist that there was “massive” voter fraud, and called on the Supreme Court to “do what’s right for our country” including throwing out hundreds of thousands of Democratic votes so “I very easily win in all states.”
Joe Biden leads Trump in the popular vote with 80.9 million votes to Trump’s 74 million. Biden has won the Electoral College by 306 votes to Trump’s 232. These results are not close.
Let me take a step back here for a minute to emphasize that this is dangerous, unprecedented… and crazy. The president of the United States is trying to undermine an election for which there is no evidence there was any irregularity, in order to stay in power. He might be doing so for the money — he has raised $170 million so far on promises to challenge this election — or because he is worried about the lawsuits he can expect as soon as he is not protected by the presidential office.
Or, perhaps, he is simply escalating his rhetoric to continue to grab headlines as he feels the focus of the world slipping away from him and he cannot stand it. For the focus of the world is indeed slipping away from him.
The president has largely ceased to govern, nursing his grievances in the White House and emerging only to golf.
The coronavirus pandemic is burning out of control. A new estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes that deaths from Covid-19 are likely much higher than official numbers suggest. Deaths in the United States were 19% higher from March to November of this year than normal. More than 345,000 people than normal have died in that period. This number includes deaths from other causes—drug overdoses, for example—but suggests that the pandemic has exacerbated death rates aside from those caused by Covid-19.
Today we hit a grim milestone, with at least 2,760 new deaths today from Covid. This is the highest daily death toll in America so far, passing the spring high-water mark. Coronavirus hospitalizations also reached a new high with more than 100,000 people admitted.
Democrats made a huge concession in their efforts to combat the pandemic recession today, dropping their call for a $2 trillion coronavirus package and accepting the new bipartisan $908 billion package as the starting point for negotiations with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The new plan calls for $300 a week in federal unemployment benefits from December 1 to at least March; $240 billion in Paycheck Protection Program assistance for small businesses (this will be touchy because we learned today that most of the money from the original PPP went to big businesses, including a number of chains); $160 billion for state and local governments; $51 billion in money for vaccines and healthcare; and a temporary liability provision to shield businesses from lawsuits related to coronavirus.
McConnell has already rejected this bipartisan measure, but Senator John Thune (R-SD), part of the Republican leadership, called the Democrats’ willingness to come so far down “progress.” For his part, Biden today agreed with Americans talking about the recession in a virtual roundtable that Congress must “pass a robust package of relief to address your urgent needs now,” but reminded them: “my ability to get you help immediately does not exist. I’m not even in office for another 50 days. And then I have to get legislation passed through the United States Congress to get things done.”
Still, for all that Trump’s posturing seems like a sign that he sees power slipping away from him as the country confronts the pandemic and the recession without him, his words are a deadly assault on our democracy by the man who swore an oath to defend it. This attack cannot be dismissed as Trump being Trump. It strikes at the very heart of who we are.
For all that attacking the election might be reality television for Trump, his supporters take it very seriously indeed. At a rally in Georgia, Trump’s ally, lawyer Lin Wood, insisted he had seen the “real” results of the election, and that Trump won “over 410” electoral votes. “He damn near won every state including California!” The crowd blamed Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican, for the fact that the state’s recount did not go to Trump. “Lock him up!” they chanted.
Today, the Supervisor of Elections in Pasco County, Florida, Republican Brian E. Corley, said he felt compelled to speak out against those attacking the election. “Facts are stubborn things,” he wrote in a statement. It is a lie to say the election was fraudulent, he said, and “[w]ith every deep state conspiracy and illegitimate claim of fraud our democracy sinks deeper and deeper into divisiveness. As the world looks on, the greatest democracy in the world dares to risk the peaceful and orderly transition of power in favor of propagating unfounded claims of ‘rigged elections.’” “The people have spoken, and… the election is over.”
Tonight, the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office tweeted that their elections team was “threatened with execution by firing squad.” It said, “This has to stop. The wild, unfounded accusations amplified by [Trump] need to stop.”
But much of Republican Party leadership is not denouncing Trump’s behavior. Leaders are staying silent, although they are sidling away from him. It is noticeable that Vice President Mike Pence has been silent about Trump’s reelection accusations — he was on the ticket, too, after all — and although Trump has made it clear he intends to run again in 2024, Trump’s hand-picked Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel has invited about a dozen potential 2024 candidates to a meeting in January, signaling that she is not wedded to another Trump candidacy.
Meanwhile, Trump’s former lawyer Sidney Powell illustrated the growing divide between Trump supporters and the Republican Party when, after insisting that Trump lost in Georgia because the voting machines there are not secure, she urged voters to boycott January’s runoff Senate elections in the state. Those elections will determine which party controls the US. Senate.
While today’s Republicans are looking the other way as their president undermines our democracy, it has not always been this way. On this date in 1954, the Senate voted 67 to 22 to condemn the behavior of Senator Joe McCarthy, who lied and bullied and blustered to stay in power until finally, in televised hearings, lawyer Joseph Nye Welsh shook his head at McCarthy’s recklessness and cruelty and asked: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
I’ve been away in COVID19 quarantine for the last 10 days. I was a lucky one…the only symptoms were loss of taste and smell. If you’re battling more severe symtoms…try and stay positive. Hang in there and hope to see you on the other side.
This from Rob Demovsky….
Quotes Of The Day
A Thom Hartman Twitter thread lays it out
1/ The GOP has been running a con job and grift on the American people for 40 years, and now Trump has added his own new and very profitable twist to it. He’s not going to let go of it any day soon.
2/ The Washington Post headline reads: “Trump raises $495 million since mid-October, including a massive haul fueled by misleading appeals about election.” He’s raised over $140 million just since he lost the election!
3/ The headline over at Raw Story today reads: “A mysterious company created 9 months ago is the RNC’s highest paid vendor of the 2020 election.” Nobody knows who the company is, what they do, or who owns it, but it took $49 million from donors to the RNC.
4/ Trump raised about twice as much money for his inaugural in 2017 as Obama did in 2009 and spent only a fraction of it; nobody knows where the rest of the money went, and Bill Barr’s Department of Justice doesn’t seem to have much interest in it.
5/ Meanwhile, Trump’s top fundraiser and Jared Kushner‘s lawyer are under investigation together for a scheme to bribe Trump in exchange for a pardon, and Kushner got over $1 Billion from an investment fund heavily reliant on Middle Eastern petrobillionaires.
6/ I’m getting anywhere from 5 to 15 emails a day from Donald, Eric, Don Jr., Mike Pence, Newt Gingrich, and even the My Pillow guy all begging for more money for the Trump Family‘s new “It’s All Ours“ PAC.
7/ Trump has been a grifter and smalltime criminal his entire life and since his business failures in the 1990s has brought his kids into the grift. Kushner‘s father went to prison for being a grifter, and it looks like his son is following in his footsteps.
8/ Many of the people who surrounded Trump when he first came in the office have been sent to prison, charged with major crimes up to and including Michael Flynn‘s treason, or are under investigation.
9/ There’s no way Trump and his crime-addicted children and buddies are going to stop this grift. It’s easier and produces more cash than money-laundering for foreign oligarchs.
10/ The big question right now is what it’s going to do to the future of the republican party. Will the party completely reinvent itself in trumps image as nothing more than a grift?
11/ It’s been at least half-a-scam since Reagan started his “Supply Side“ and “Two Santa Clauses“ (spend like a drunken sailor when in office; scream about the debt when Democrats take the White House) grifts in 1980.
12/ Or will the GOP fade away and be replaced by something new, like the Whigs were in the 1850s?
13/ The GOP is it a turning point: the grift it started running 40 years has now gutted the American middle class, while four years of Trump’s herd immunity grift has led to over a quarter million dead Americans.
14/ How much more damage will the Republican Party do to America before it either reforms, flips into totally embracing fascism, or Americans wake the hell up and utterly reject it nationwide?
“Are self-pardons OK? How about unlimited preemptive pardons? The 2 Qs may seem distinct, but they’re not. Presidents who know they can pardon any & all federal crimes they may have committed while in office will know FROM THE MOMENT THEY TAKE THE OATH that they’re above the law.”-Lawrence Tribe
Imagine being so corrupt that it’s not enough to pardon your criminal friends and attorneys, BUT you also have to pardon your own KIDS? #TrumpCrimeFamily
“The election is over, and rather than accept that his candidate has lost, plaintiff seeks the largest disenfranchisement in Georgia since the abolition of the poll tax and the vestiges of Jim Crow.” —Ga.’s lawyer on Lin Wood’s bid, shot down by a district and 3 circuit judges
NEW: “The RNC paid a mystery company $42 million this year. The untraceable company, Digital Consulting Group, went from nonexistent to the GOP’s highest-paid vendor of the election in just 8 months, receiving 3 of the RNC’s top 10 payments ever.”-Roger Sollenberger
“There is a level of cynical chickenshittery in today’s GOP that is truly incredible to behold. “-Charles Hughes
“Nearly 90 percent of Republicans in Congress will not admit Biden won, report says._Rolling Stone
“222 cowards. That’s today’s GOP. Pathetic, sociopathic cowards willing to flip the country into fascism and destroy the America my dad went to WWII to defend, just to hang onto their own privilege and power (and the access to cash their position brings).”Thom Hartman
“Republicans in congress will never face the appropriate level of repercussions for the game they’re playing right now in the middle of a generational national health emergency. And they act this way because they know it.”-Schooley
“Because nothing says national security like Corey Lewandowski in a Pentagon post “-Ben Rhodes
“With inhabitants of Fantasyland it can be tough to determine someone’s exact mixture of mental illness vs stupidity vs cynicism. But in right-wing Fantasyland, this post-defeat period is a great 10-week natural experiment, gradually sifting out cynics from the sincerely impaired.”-Kurt Andersen
Don’t tell me that everyone is equal under the law….
“Robert Kraft had his charges dropped after allegedly getting a hand job in a massage parlor. The women didn’t”-Rolling Stone
“9/11 body count. Every day. Trump’s lethal incompetence will kill hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans who didn’t need to die.He’s not just a failed, impeached,1 term President. He’s a mass murderer enabled by a GOP death cult that makes Jonestown look like a theater camp.
“There’s no standard of decency that he is not willing to shred,” warned Charlie Sykes.
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