Author: Paul Murphy

Indefensible!

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/elections-2020/trump-again-sows-doubt-about-election-as-gop-scrambles-to-assure-voters/ar-BB19oHSs?ocid=DE_20200925_ENUS__1

Trump, having had a day to think about it, refuses again to peacefully accept the results of the November 3 election. And he continues his campaign to de-legitimize the coming election. It is now obvious that no matter how thoroughly he is trounced he will continue to sow dissension and distrust. He will try to hang on to power the same way he has stayed out of jail his entire life – with a swarm of lawyers spreading chaos.

Trump’s faithful lap dog, Lindsey Graham, made a it clear what is going on in this appalling statement . . . “I promise you as a Republican, if the Supreme Court decides that Joe Biden wins, I will accept the result. . . The court will decide, and if Republicans lose, we’ll accept the result.”

What happened to the people deciding who the President should be?

Trump prepares a coup d’etat.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-09-23/trump-prepares-for-electoral-college-tyranny-will-republicans-follow

It does not get more serious than this. The Trump campaign is preparing to destroy democracy and execute a coup d’etat that will be the end of Constitutional government in our nation. The mechanism will be phony claims of massive voting fraud as an excuse for Trump friendly state legislatures to ignore the votes of the people and send their own Trump electors to the Electoral College. Attempting to hamstring the Post Office is part of the preparation for this coup.

These now well-documented preparations for this coup are all the evidence that anyone should need to vote for Biden. A landslide victory for him is the only way to prevent this disaster. With these developments it is IMPOSSIBLE to claim to support the Constitution if you continue to support Trump.

Time to Apply the McConnell Rule

In 2016, Mitch McConnell declined to give Judge Merrick Garland even a hearing, much less a vote. According to him at the time it was an election year and “only” nine months before the people could weigh in with their votes. Fast forward to 2020 and here we are with the election less than two months away. We should apply that McConnell Rule again and let the choice of the people make that SCOTUS appointment AFTER the election.

Of course, that is not going to happen. McConnell is already signaling that his rule will not be applied and Trump is indicating an appointment will be made very soon. If the seat is filled in this way and the Senate does fails to stop it, then there is no legal, moral, ethical or political reason for the new Democratic Congress not to reorganize the Supreme Court as it has the power to do. Nine seats are too few for all the important work it does. Fifteen would be more suitable. The Republicans will cry “Foul!” Let them. They threw out the rules and established that it is raw power that counts when Democrats cried “Foul!” in 2016. What goes around, comes around.

As an aside, this rushed appointment looks like a no-win for Trump. If he does not appoint some semi-rabid ideologue, his base will be very unhappy and lose interest in turning out. If he does satisfy them, he will be handing yet another strong issue to the Democrats.

The hits keep coming!

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/09/donald-trump-masks-usps

The essence of this somewhat snarky presentation is that the “deep state” bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services conspired with the Post Office to distribute 650 million face masks to Americans starting with very hard hit areas in Louisiana, Washington state, New York and Michigan. This was in April when flooding the zone with masks would have done a lot of good according to those pesky scientists. A press release from the Post Office was ready to go when the White House stepped in to kill the effort.

Another on-the-record Truth Teller

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ex-trump-staffer-potus-intentional-negligence-doomed-covid-response/vi-BB19bmCD?ocid=chromentpnews

POTUS’ ‘intentional negligence’ doomed COVID response

Here is yet another senior Trump-appointed DHS officer for his supporters to disparage, mock and/or ignore. Let those words from one of the “best people” sink in – INTENTIONAL NEGLIGENCE. She shares estimates of 100,000 dead as a result of that negligence.

Fall from grace.

Colbert has a great deal of adults-only fun (you have been warned) at the expense of Donald Trump’s most influential Evangelical enabler. But as he reminds us at the end, Michael Cohen described burying some Falwell photos in his possession (somehow) BEFORE Falwell’s VERY influential 2016 endorsement of Trump. Thus the chyron above.

One has to wonder, is there anything about Trump and his enablers that is NOT sordid, corrupt or disgusting?