"It is maddening that a man's egocentrism can blind an electorate to the success of his presidency & give us President Biden." - Fred Fisher of Pensacola, Florida writing a letter to the editor of the WSJ on January 22.
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The protest march that turned violent on January 6, 2021 on & inside the Capitol following Trump's rally @ the Ellipse is another day that will live in infamy for our country - not just for the riotous events that day but for the even wider division of the country that has developed since.
At the current rate all of Trump's many accomplishments during his term in office will long be forgotten by the November midterms let alone the 2024 presidential race thanks in large part to Pelosi's January 6 investigative committee keeping the images of people crawling all over the Capitol in the news to remind voters like suburban women of the disgraceful incident. Pelosi's committee stands ready to exploit every revelation & leak.
And any midterm election problems for Republicans because of the notoriety of the January 6 event are entirely Trump's fault as he has proven time & again to be his own worst enemy. What did he expect to happen that day that would turn out well?
Trump's tweet of December 19, 2020, "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!" was the invitation for his supporters & also trouble makers to come.
Trump's speech on the Ellipse that started shortly after noon on January 6 was a continuous list of complaints of how Trump thought the election was stolen from him & it came across to me, who saw it live, to be delivered in a mean spirited, selfish, bitter tone. (Click here to see a link that includes a video of the speech & a transcript as well.) Trump wanted VP Mike Pence to not accept the certified ballot lists from electors from some states during Pence's constitutional function of counting votes for president & vice president that same afternoon & announcing the result. Trump wanted Pence to return the ballot lists of these states so they could recertify their ballot lists to indicate Trump won. No state Secretary of State had made such a claim, but it did rile the crowd up as Pence tried to count the certified votes on the ballot lists he had received, whose total for president showed Biden the winner.
Pelosi's January 6 investigative committee will not only continue to provide powerful reminders through the hostile anti-American media of just how bad that day was, they will do everything possible to destroy everyone who is considered a traditional American patriot that can possibly be linked to it. Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a good example when the committee leaked that Thomas's wife had texted Trump's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that the election had been stolen. No sooner were the text messages leaked by Pelosi's committee that right on script AOC called for Mrs. Thomas's husband to resign, Ilhan Omar called for him to be impeached, & Amy Klobuchar called for him to recuse himself from election cases or resign.
If a spouse's activism was disqualifying it is a good thing Jim Carville was never a Supreme Court Justice or he would have been cancelled the moment Mary Matalin opened her mouth.
Also, Trump loyalists have been effectively charged with criminal contempt of Congress (e.g., Bannon, Meadows, Navarro, & Scavino). Bannon's trial is set for July & the others may not be prosecuted @ all by the Justice Department for political reasons - i.e., the November election.
And Rudy Giuliani faces possible disbarment while his law license is suspended in NY & Washington. Sidney Powell has been sued by Dominion Voting Systems & even more importantly the Texas Bar has filed a disciplinary lawsuit against her for bringing frivolous lawsuits in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, & Wisconsin regarding the 2020 election, making false statements to a court, using evidence known to be false, & engaging in conduct "involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation."
Now I don't support any of the above actions by these seven people that got them in trouble but it is clear that the only people safe from cancellation are those who support a massive new government that has fingers in every aspect of your life - specifically, people who support AOC's green new deal & open borders, & are soft on crime. In short, people who have no moral outrage as teachers in government schools introduce 5 year old children to the concepts of gender identity & homosexuality - such people know right from wrong but don't care about it.
Teaching homosexual & transgender sex in schools to very young children is a perfect way to destroy a child's innocence, but who should care if it indoctrinates them to see the importance of climate change?
What parent would want a stranger talking to their young children about sex, & yet Wisconsin special education kindergarten teacher Sarah Whaley had the support of the teachers union after she hung a homosexual & transgender pride flag in her classroom. Doesn't this sound like it could be full of trouble?
But getting back to Pence: The Constitution calls for the electors in each state to sign & certify ballot lists that show the results of their state's election for president & vice president. The ballot lists are to be transmitted sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate - which by definition is the sitting vice president - Mike Pence. (Note the actual election of the president & vice president is by mail-in ballot.)
All of Pence's work in this regard is the ceremonial counting of votes in the presence of the Senate & House of Representatives & announcing the result. If the VP was authorized to reject or return votes to any state there would be a tremendous conflict of interest if the VP had just run as an incumbent & lost - like what happened. After the 2000, 2008, & 2016 elections Gore, Cheney, & Biden respectively could easily have done what Trump wanted Pence to do & the chaos that would have resulted is unimaginable.
From a constitutional standpoint what Trump asked Pence to do is outrageous & unforgiveable to students of the Constitution. Those who believe in the rule of law & the peaceful transfer of power should remember, & take it into account, understanding that Trump's actions following the 2020 election are what gave Pelosi the chance to form the committee & politically milk the January 6 assault on the Capitol for all its worth including releasing an upcoming report right before the 2022 midterms.
But even more trouble of a different nature is what we got on the two days right before January 6 starting when Trump went to Dalton, Georgia on January 4, 2021 to supposedly campaign for the two Georgia Senate candidates who had each received more votes than their opponents in the November election, but not a majority, which therefore called for a runoff election on January 5.
But Trump's appearance, instead of focusing on getting the two Senate candidates elected, was little more than a rehearsal for his speech on the Ellipse two days later. Trump sparingly praised the two candidates but predominantly concentrated on his views of a fraudulent Georgia presidential election which gave supporters of the two Republican candidates little incentive to vote the next day - & of course they both lost handing Democrats control of both chambers of Congress & the Presidency.
Trump talks powerfully but since 2016, under his leadership, Republicans lost the House in 2018 & the Senate & Presidency in 2020 & more pathetically the two Georgia Senate seats on January 5, 2021 when the stakes were precisely known - namely, the progressive Biden agenda would proceed unchecked without a Republican majority in the Senate. Much of the Biden assault on America the past 15 months would not have happened if Trump would have campaigned for Loeffler & Perdue instead of whining about his presidential loss during campaign stops in Georgia supposedly on their behalf.
And right in line with the Republican loss of the Senate is Biden's successful lifetime appointment of 51 year old Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court following 83 year old Associate Justice Stephen Breyer's forced retirement (AOC & other progressives were afraid Democrats would lose the Senate in November & didn't want to lose the chance to have a younger big government progressive confirmed by a friendly Senate so they unceremoniously forced Breyer out after 28 liberal decision making years on the Court). Had Republican McConnell been Senate majority leader I doubt Breyer would have retired to begin with. So much for any consideration or appreciation of Breyer by the Democrats.
But the damage is done with the Senate's confirmation of Ketanji including three Republican (Romney, Collins, & Murkowski) votes to confirm.
Ketanji's hearings exposed her as having a liberal judicial philosophy & record that is sympathetic to terrorists (possibly resulting from her previous work as a public defender representing Guantanamo Bay detainees) & soft on crime with special leniency towards child pornography offenders, often giving out sentences that were much lighter than even defense attorneys suggested. In this regard Ketanji wrote a brief in the Harvard Law Review entitled "Prevention Versus Punishment: Toward A Principled Distinction In The Restraint Of Released Sex Offenders", that stated that the judicial system was unfair to people who sexually prey on children. Such theories go hand in hand with defund the police movements & Soros supported DA's who have let crime run rampant in far too many of America's cities by simply not prosecuting crimes in accordance with the restorative justice theory that the victim is secondary & the criminal needs to be understood & reasoned with rather than put on programs of monitoring & treatment after prison.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Ketanji's "record is full of cases where (she) ruled like a policy maker implementing personal bias, instead of a judge following the text wherever it led."
While @ Harvard Ketanji wrote in her senior thesis entitled "The Hand Of Oppression: Plea Bargaining Processes & the Coercion of Criminal Defendants" that judges have personal hidden agendas that influence how they decide cases - which she disowned during the hearing saying that line was written (in her thesis) by someone not in law school.
Ketanji would not answer whether or not schools (like Georgetown Day School where she was a Board Member) should teach 5 year old children that they can choose their gender or whether it is proper for schools to indoctrinate young children in Critical Race Theory.
Ketanji would not say if there are physical differences between men & women that are enduring, whether references to men & women means male & female, & most famously would not provide a definition of the word "woman" because she is not a biologist.
Click here to hear a section of Marsha Blackburn's questions & Ketanji's non responses from which many of the above points were taken. It is a cat & mouse game with Ketanji reluctant to answer anything.
In summary, the country is being torn apart because of all the factors highlighted above & more - open borders allowing 18,000 illegal aliens per day to enter the country & of course decades-high inflation, both of which have been the subject of many previous posts.
We cannot withstand another minute of Biden-Harris than we have to & Trump's actions since the election not only brought us much of the trouble we have & will continue to have as indicated above but have also disqualified him from being president again.
We need a clean slate - Biden & Harris almost certainly will be primaried on the Democrat side & Republicans have many excellent undeclared candidates like Mark Robinson & Ron DeSantis.
BTW - For those who have called me longing for a Trump-DeSantis ticket I always ask which one will move out of Florida. What people, including commentators on TV, don't know about the Constitution would fill a book.
To help put this in perspective I provide the following questions for you to answer.
1. If you were @ the Capitol on the afternoon of January 6, 2021 would you have gone into the building?
2. Do you think Trump was wrong to ask Pence to return ballot lists to some states & not announce the results of the 2020 presidential election on January 6, 2021?
3. Do you think young children should be taught Critical Race Theory & The 1619 Project or do you think, like Ayn Rand, that the United States was the first moral society in history? If not, who was?
4. Are you for defunding the police, DAs who do not prosecute crimes, & judges who are soft on crime with special leniency towards child pornography offenders?
5. Do you think transgender women should be able to participate in women's sports?
6. Do you think a person who could not define a "woman" should sit on the Supreme Court ruling on cases involving abortion rights, religious exemptions regarding First Amendment rights concerning discrimination of same-sex couples, & transgender women competing in womens' sports?
7. Do you think Fred Fisher's quote @ the very top of this post is what happened to America?
1. If younger I would have, this day and age no, I don't think anyone would have gone in if not for the FBI instigators
ReplyDelete2 No I do not. With the findings of 3 states illegal findings have occurred.
3. Absolutely not, it is taking away the rights of parents, also the worst is filling mush minds with garbage, children are too impressive at that age, those teachings rob children from growing up properly, they care nothing about gender equality. Now they come home and call their parents racists.
4. NO! Defund the police is an orchestrated move to create chaos and corruption, Alinsky calls it "overloading the system."
5. No! I will say that women fought for the right to play in men's sports, crying now serves them right. Feel good laws always come back and bite.
6. That question should not even have to be asked. Morals have diminished so much, if you don't have any morals you can do and say anything with no repercussions. Which the democrats seem to understand. The reason for the war on religion.
7. Needs more detail which are many, doubt if a computer can list them all with details and reason before running out of space.
I do not come down hard on the Trump voters for their actions Jan. 6 It is a lot worse what has happened to the Democrat cities, teaching people how to hate, and being fearful of words and their own shadow. At least one very rich American has stood out to get back free speech. I for one hope to capitalize on his actions. This is a kick in the teeth of the WOKE extremists. I have a question, why in the world do people bow to this WOKE crowd are people no longer able to stand on their own feet? and the leaders are much worse for allowing it. People have to start pushing back and forget the names being called. Company's should stand behind them. Not fire them. Fear has a grasp that is choking the life from our America. FB has filtered my content without explaining what for which I don't care. So waiting for Twitter to be overturned and the free speech will return to other programs. They had their day and it's time to collapse the WOKE agenda.
Hi Doug: Once again, great post.
ReplyDeleteHappy Easter Doug! Trump is far from perfect! He has many enemies- the worst is himself but he also has tremendous insight into what is good for the country. I am not happy that he endorsed Oz! Please God that wisdom guides the ‘24 election!
ReplyDelete1. I would not have been at the Capital on 1/6/21. Before that date I was pretty tired of Trump's claims of victory because of fraudulent vote counting. The 4 years of his presidency was so chaotic and full of vitriol and I believe the Democrats and the media were responsible for that. However, Trump's ego, as stated by Fred Fisher in his letter to the WSJ, never allowed Trump to learn to just keep quiet and not feed their ill intentions.
ReplyDelete2. Trump was wrong to ask Pence to not follow his Constitutional duty. Where does Trump and his loyal followers point in the Constitution that Pence should have not counted the certified votes from the States?
3. THe United States is the first moral society. It it based on God-given rights, not rights given by men to men.
4. Many cities in our country have higher crime rates because of the defund the police policy that Democrats from the White House, to Congress, to mayors, and DA's advocate. However, it is the people who elected them to office: how can they elect people who cause such lawlessness?
5. No, transgender women should not be able to participate in women's sports. It is not fair to a girl who works hard to achieve in her sport to be bettered by a transgender in a man's body. Transgenders should compete with other transgenders.
6. It is difficult to believe that Brown Jackson doesn't know what a women is. We need the brightest minds on the Supreme Court, not one who is more concerned with political correctness. How can the scale of justice be even with that criteria on a case uppermost in the justices' mind?
7. Yes, it blinded people but was greatly helped by the media and Democrats and never Trumpers who hated this outsider from the get-go. And Trump fed it all with always fighting back and not picking his battles.
Answers:
ReplyDelete1) Doubt it, definitely would not have gone in if people were advocating violence. From what I understand there were some Capital Personnel holding doors open. If I saw that and the group going in that entrance were peaceful I might have gone in to see what was going on, but definitely not to conduct any violent acts.
2). Yes
3) No to critical race theory. Yes to history told straight, warts and all. But deifying our Founding Fathers never made sense to me. They had good points as well as bad. Had a pretty good idea on how to create a unique form of government, a form that had never been tried before.
But turning into cardboard caricatures of perfection whether it is George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Martin Luther King, etc. truly does them as leaders an injustice, both to them and to the citizens of this country.
In many respects we were probably more moral than most other nations, but again we have our warts and our angels and villains
4) No to defunding the police. The Tax Code and the legal system are the 2 biggest national disgraces we have. Both need to be completely reformed.
5) No, Transgendered people are still the sex they were born. They simply changed their outer covering.
6) No
7) No, but of course trump is his own worse enemy. i would like to see DeSantis be a Republican Candidate but as President not VP. Both the Republicans and the Democrats would do well to stop running old people for the Presidency.
Now a question for you.
Do you think Biden will attempt to run in 2024?
I think Biden will run but will be primaried. This will be tricky if Harris is one of his opponents. The idea would be that the Dems think it is best to get rid of both of them.
DeleteInteresting. I think he may run primarily to try and keep Hunter from either indictment or to pardon him if convicted.
DeleteAlso if Ole Joe is charged as well the argument will be made that a sitting President should not stand trial during his term.
We saw that with Clinton.
Doug – great post as always. I especially like that you point out Jan 4, 2020 – Trump rally supposedly for the Georgia GOP US Senate candidates. Unfortunately, Trump did not put aside his narcissism. Complaints about ‘rigged’ elections along with calling Pence to do the ‘right’ thing Jan 6 directly lead to severe damage to the US. Georgia voters were so turned off. Many obviously did not vote feeling their vote would not count. Concurrently, Georgia Democrats were so enraged, that Democrat voter turnout exceeded GOP is a long red state. Results included extra 2 Trillions $ that Democratic House and Senate (50-50, with VP Harris tie breaker due to loss of 2 Georgia Republican Senate seats. That was a major factor to what is now 8.5% inflation that will continue to increase. Interest rates will need to exceed inflation rates to kill inflation. That may cause a severe recession.
ReplyDeleteNo question Trump polices were pro American and very successful. However, in one night Trump put all that at risk and we now are experiencing it.
Trump may have a very high IQ; but his EQ (Emotional Quotient) well below average. It is very sad such a smart man, very successful businessman, in his 70’s did not learn when to put aside his narcissism.
I proudly voted for Trump twice as he was best choice by far both times. If he gets the GOP nomination, very likely I will vote for him again- but he can LOOSE to a low caliber Democrat (again). Why? Many voters are tired of him. Right now I believe better candidates are Kristi Noem, Ron DiSantis, and watch out for Va Gov Youngkin.
This comment shouted the answer to question #7 is yes.
Delete