Kamala's Closing Argument Speech on the Ellipse

The Vice President delivered this speech in Washington, D. C., last night against the backdrop of the floodlit White House, essentially repeating what she has said in every speech of this 100-day campaign.  But her remarks last night were very well-written and well-spoken, and this could be considered the definitive version of her appeal to the nation.  Rachel Maddow afterward called it a "damn good speech," and so it was, in the best constitutional tradition of our republic.

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Fellas, we might wish she had said more about this or that; but the plain truth is she's all we've got, and it's Kamala or the devil. So I'm backing her 100% and I hope you are too. She's a fine person, a good woman, and a true patriot, and thank God for all that. Don't sweat the details; it will all get sorted out as we go along.  The alternative is unthinkable.

 

And today the Morning Joe panel discussed Harris's speech, in contrast to Trump's recent pronouncements:

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A Sickness in Texas - and the Nation

Morning Joe nails it, laying the blame for the recent Texas massacres squarely at the feet of bobblehead governor Greg Abbott and his minions:

 

CNN has an excellent summary and analysis of recent Texas events here.

Chuck Todd of NBC's Meet the Press summarizes the national deadlock that makes rational change impossible:

 

For the record, I haven't blogged about the horrific recent massacres here in Texas because I simply have nothing to say.  What can anyone say, in a state, in a nation, where mass murders have become routine events?  Where they happen more often than days in the week?  Where no one is safe, from babies to the aged - and no place is safe, neither schools nor churches nor grocery stores nor anywhere else, public or private.

All that can be said has been said many, many times in the last 20 years and more.  And still the red tide flows on, higher and higher.

Nothing will change here in Texas while the fanatical idiots who control the state government absolutely refuse to lift one finger to make a difference.  You'd think the point-blank massacre of a whole classroom of little kids in Uvalde last year - with nearly 400 police officers on the scene, inexplicably doing nothing to stop the killing - would have softened even the stoniest of hearts.

But no.  Nothing moves those stinking jackasses in power, and the voters who keep them there, except fanatical hatred and self-righteousness.  Oh sure, they say they are working on "long-term solutions" - but don't believe a word of it.  They will do nothing.  They don't care who dies or how many.  

The same could be said about the powers that be in many other states, and in Congress.  Until the balance of power shifts away from the fanatical religionists, nothing will change.

But I blame the other end of the political spectrum, too.  For fifty years or more, some people on the leftward side have encouraged a culture of unlimited "free speech" and "do your own thing" that has allowed the glorification of violence and narcissism.  Step by step and bit by bit, our whole culture has become saturated with images and voices of violence and horror - brutalizing the mind and deadening the conscience of young and old alike - to say nothing of the effect on the mentally deficient.  But now good "enlightened" folk are aghast and bewildered at the state of the nation.

Why are you surprised, I would ask them.  Monkey see, monkey do.  Humans are imitative animals.

Last Christmas, M.P.'s four adult children, their spouses, and four kiddos came for dinner, the one day a year that they all pile into "Papaw's" little bungalow.  And for a few hours, I was quietly reassured to see that despite modern clothing and slang and toys, these nice young people and their kids were behaving just as parents and kids did fifty and sixty years ago at Christmas time, with glee and wonder and even good manners.  There are still good people in the world, and the ceremonies of innocence continue still.

But it seems to me that the country, and the whole Western world in fact, is simply falling apart like a rotten melon, and both sides are to blame.  The center cannot hold.  Extremism on the right or on the left is equally toxic.  Liberty is not license; and democracy is not anarchy.  

I don't care to argue the point with anyone, that's just how I see it, and from my vantage point a little apart from the crowd, I have been watching it happen all my adult life.  I know what I know.

It is a sick society that acquiesces in the slaughter of innocents.  Extremely sad.  But what can you do when are there no tears left to cry?  

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Lost, Not Stolen

For the record:  A report entitled Lost, Not Stolen, written "by conservatives for conservatives" and signed by several retired Republican senators and federal judges, was released today, documenting in great detail the failure of Trump partisans to prove the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen.  NBC's Morning Joe presents an interview with two of the authors:

 

Excerpt from the introduction to the report (emphasis mine):

We therefore have undertaken an examination of every claim of fraud and miscount put forward by former President Trump and his advocates, and now put the results of those investigations before the American people, and especially before fellow conservatives who may be uncertain about what and whom to believe. Our conclusion is unequivocal: Joe Biden was the choice of a majority of the Electors, who themselves were the choice of the majority of voters in their states. Biden’s victory is easily explained by a political landscape that was much different in 2020 than it was when President Trump narrowly won the presidency in 2016. President Trump waged his campaign for re-election during a devastating worldwide pandemic that caused a severe downturn in the global economy. This, coupled with an electorate that included a small but statistically significant number willing to vote for other Republican candidates on the ballot but not for President Trump, are the reasons his campaign fell short, not a fraudulent election. 

 Donald Trump and his supporters have failed to present evidence of fraud or inaccurate results significant enough to invalidate the results of the 2020 Presidential Election. We do not claim that election administration is perfect. Election fraud is a real thing; there are prosecutions in almost every election year, and no doubt some election fraud goes undetected. Nor do we disparage attempts to reduce fraud. States should continue to do what they can do to eliminate opportunities for election fraud and to punish it when it occurs. But there is absolutely no evidence of fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election on the magnitude necessary to shift the result in any state, let alone the nation as a whole. In fact, there was no fraud that changed the outcome in even a single precinct. It is wrong, and bad for our country, for people to propagate baseless claims that President Biden’s election was not legitimate. 

 In the past 30 years, those tasked with administering our elections have helped create a modern election system in which we can and should have confidence. In all fifty states and at the national level there are transparent recount and election contest procedures designed to allow candidates to investigate and litigate claims of voter fraud and corruption. Those procedures have been tested in every presidential election since at least 2000 and have been found in every instance to be sound and reliable. The Trump Campaign and its supporters had full access to these remedies and used them in 64 proceedings in the states we examine, and in each instance, their claims of fraud and miscount failed. Our review of each of these Trump charges affirms that the 2020 election was administered by trained professionals who reaffirmed their established track record for fairness. 

The performance of the system in 2020 was all the more remarkable because of the extraordinary circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which precipitated changes on an unprecedented scope and timeline. Some of those changes may have created possibilities for fraud, but there is no evidence that those risks materialized in reality; nor did they result in dampening voter participation—quite the opposite. Nonetheless, moving forward, the states should redouble their efforts to strengthen the integrity of our voting systems and make it as easy to vote and as hard to cheat as possible for persons of every circumstance. 

We urge our fellow conservatives to cease obsessing over the results of the 2020 election, and to focus instead on presenting candidates and ideas that offer a positive vision for overcoming our current difficulties and bringing greater peace, prosperity, and liberty to our nation.

The full text of the report is here.

See also the Wikipedia article Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election.

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George Will: "This Sad, Embarrassing Wreck of a Man"

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"Want to play with my ball, Donny?"

Your Head Trucker finds it odd that people keep trying to pin the label of mental illness on Trump, when instead it is patently obvious that he is no more than a big, dumb buffoon - a consummately vain, overgrown rich kid who learned little from his expensive education, and remembers less - a reality-show actor who keeps flubbing his lines and missing his marks - a mental infant in the paunchy body of a 70-year-old blowhard.  Had he remained in private life, the only ones really hurt by his incorrigible self-worship would be his many creditors, probably.

But as president, with the active connivance and abetting of the entire sycophantic Republican Party - and perhaps with the encouragement and blackmail of Trump's Machiavellian father-figure, Putin - Trump, like a rogue elephant in a bazaar, is doing incalculable damage day by day not only to the foundations of this Republic, but also to the finely balanced bulwarks and linkages of the Western world that have, in broad terms, kept the peace and enabled the general prosperity of the whole world these seventy years.  (I do not say it is or ever has been a perfect world - but just try to imagine how much worse a world it would be without America in the lead, morally, financially, and militarily.)

He also has made himself, not really the leader, but rather the tool of those hateful, benighted forces in this country that are inimical to liberty, equality, decency, and democracy, with baleful results we have already seen; even worse may be to come. If his childish, lurching rampage is not soon stopped, or at least neutralized, he stands a good chance of going down in history as an enemy of the human race and a betrayer, whether by sheer stupidity or malicious design, of all that America is and has been and should be.

When I was younger and more idealistic, not to say naive, I thought it a very strange and rather silly thing, that custom of the ancient Egyptians and Romans, among others, to pronounce damnatio memoriae - oblivion - upon a despised ruler, once he was removed from office.  I must say that I have in recent years come to understand much better just why they did that.

George Will, one of the leading conservative pundits for the past four decades, a man of high intelligence and fine writing, who left the Republican Party in 2016 with the advent of Trump, began a column in the Washington Post this week with the same metaphor of an infantile leader:

America’s child president had a play date with a KGB alumnus, who surely enjoyed providing day care. It was a useful, because illuminating, event: Now we shall see how many Republicans retain a capacity for embarrassment. . . .

I recommend the whole essay for the perusal of my truckbuddies. But if you haven't the time to read it, Will summarized his views in the first five minutes of this clip from Wednesday's Morning Joe program:




I believe Trump will not last very long on the spotlit stage he occupies now - as them ol' Greek boys put it, after hubris comes nemesis, and a miserable end. But Trump is merely the image of the beast - a fake president, to use his favorite adjective - the willing, gullible pawn of evil men who are only too glad to feed his gluttonous self-love while using him to further their hellacious schemes - and beyond them, the credulous millions who eagerly follow and support, an army of willing tools and fools, worshipers of a god made in their own image.

If Trump for some reason were to fall silent tomorrow and depart the White House for some quieter spot, do you not think there would be plenty of others ready to fill the space he vacated?  Be sure that the fakery show would continue as planned, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.  The dire problem we face is not simply that of one churlish buffoon alone.

If you want to see a preview of the next episode in this filthy saga, look no further than Steve Bannon, Trump's erstwhile campaign manager and political incubus, who has stated his own evil intentions quite plainly, for all the world to hear: "I'd rather reign in hell, than serve in heaven."  What he is now organizing is a world alliance of far-right nationalist parties, united in one revolutionary goal: the exaltation of dictatorship, tribal hatreds, and willful ignorance, along with the utter destruction of liberal democracy, the rule of law, and fundamental human rights; that is to say, the triumph of lust over love, of greed over goodwill, of darkness over light in the human soul.

Do not be deceived, my friends:  the long, pleasant Indian summer of the postwar era, so dearly bought with blood, toil, tears, and sweat, may be drawing to its close sooner than you think, if the present danger is not swiftly and firmly averted.

And somewhere, the cunning jackal Putin is licking his chops hungrily, while the foolish Europeans and Americans split and re-split themselves into warring camps:  divide et impera. I do not know the remedy to all this - I only point to the rising flames.

So quit fretting about Trump's mindless tweets, a child's babbling, a mere sideshow, and focus instead on the real peril, the mortal danger that lies straight ahead. Bannon's declared intentions are unmistakable, undiluted evil, straight from the mouth of the Devil.

And now you can't say you weren't warned.

A Turning Point

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Your Head Trucker regrets that he just can't keep summarizing all the ghastly, grizzly goings-on in Trumpworld - it's quickly gotten to be such a boatload of ugliness that it overwhelms me, and sours my whole day.  What I see is that Liar-in-Chief Trump and his fascist minions are determined, like a herd of bulls in a china store, to wreck the American government and likewise wreck the international order that has preserved the general peace and stability of the world for the last seventy years - and what can anyone do to stop them?

Probably the world will not grind to a total halt - history records many, many cycles of ruin and recovery in human history - but I fear that the world and this country will be crippled, blighted, altered beyond recognition, and who knows at what cost in lives and treasure and needless suffering.

For the record, the conversation on Morning Joe today nicely sums up much of my own thinking about the Comey-Rogers revelations before the House Intelligence Committee yesterday: