Civil War or Autocracy?

Is this what the start of a civil war looks like in America in 2020?

Thousands of President Donald Trump’s supporters of all stripes, including right-wing and far-right groups, rallied in Washington, DC, on Saturday to protest the election results and fights erupted between Trump supporters and Biden supporters.

Autocracy is a system of government in which supreme political power to direct all the activities of the state is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control. An autocrat is a ruler who has absolute power. That is the dream of Donald Trump.

In an extension of Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the election to Joe Biden, Vice President Mike Pence on Friday said the administration plans to remain in place for another full term. But it won’t be his last term.

I wish it wasn’t so but Donald Trump will not be giving up the presidency. Somehow he will be inaugurated for his second term on January 20. And I predict he will be inaugurated for his third term on January 20, 2025. By that time the congress will have will have been sidelines and on the way to elimination as an unnecessary waste of time and Trump will remain in office for the rest of his life with absolute total power. We have the GOP to thank for this. By 2025 some Republicans will realize their error. History will note the end of the American democratic republic in history books written in other countries. In 2025 there will be controls on the “free press.” The constitution will be a memory by the end of Trump’s third term.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for example, said Tuesday that “there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.” And Trade Advisor Peter Navarro said Friday that the White House is operating “under the assumption” that Trump will serve a second term in office.

Other than a Supreme Court with a backbone and a populace that says No to Trump’s ambition the path is clear. Over 70 million people voted for Donald Trump. That is not a majority but is a substantial minority.

I fear this could be the end of the world’s greatest democracy.

Poor Losers Club

Pictured are three presidents who skipped their successor’s inaugurations.

Bad loser Donald Trump is not likely to attend the inauguration of Joe Biden. He would not the first president to refuse to attend his successor’s inauguration. In the past, three outgoing presidents — John Adams in 1801, John Quincy Adams in 1829 and Andrew Johnson in 1869 chose not to attend their successor’s inaugurations.

In the instance of John Adams a re-election a tie between Jefferson and running mate Aaron Burr, which meant that the election decision next moved to the House of Representatives. After more than 30 ballots, the House of Representatives finally decided the race for Jefferson. For reasons that he never made public, he chose to skip Jefferson’s inauguration, leaving on the early morning stagecoach out of Washington that morning to begin the journey back to his beloved Quincy, Massachusetts.

John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, faced multiple challengers, notably from Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay. Jackson won the most popular and electoral votes, but he failed to obtain a majority of needed electoral votes. With the election at stake, the Clay electors switched their support to Adams, and the House of Representatives voted to make Adams the next president. Later, Jackson declared a “corrupt bargain” had taken place and vowed to run again in 1828. The election of 1828 featured a contentious rematch between the two men. Adams’ supporters accused Jackson of being a military tyrant and a bigamist. Rachel Donelson Jackson’s divorce to Lewis Robards in 1793 had not been granted, which technically made her an adultress. She was granted a divorce the following year, but Adams’ camp claimed Andrew Jackson was morally unfit to serve as president.

Vice President Andrew Johnson succeeded to the presidency after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. In turn, the new president committed himself to obstructing the will of the Republican Congress at every step. In November 1868, the nation elected Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Johnson’s nemesis, to the presidency by a wide electoral margin. In the popular vote, Grant owed his slim majority of 300,000 to the votes of nearly a half million freedmen in Southern states.

Donald Trump will probably be in Mar-a-Lago on January 20 surrounded by his family and friends. And the world will move on wondering how Americans could have fallen for a circus barker.

“If you count the legal votes, I easily win.”

Waah, Waah. This can’t be happening to me

A Panicked Trump falsely claims he’s winning as Biden’s lead expands in nail-biter election.

It is a sad time for the American democracy. Of course we don’t know who will win the election but I can’t recall any one term president claim there were illegal votes and that was the reason he lost re-election.

Donald Trump’s claims of fraud started at 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday November 4 in an appearance at the White House, Trump falsely asserted the pending outcome was “a fraud on the American public” and an “embarrassment on our country.”

Then Trump followed up with these were the words were spoken at about 7 p.m. eastern time yesterday by the president in the press room at the White House. “If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.”

The Los Angeles Times reported some Republicans joined other officials in swiftly condemning President Trump’s latest false claims late Thursday that he is being robbed of a reelection victory by fraudulent votes in decisive states where Joe Biden appears to be winning.

“There is no defense for the President’s comments tonight undermining our Democratic process,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, tweeted shortly after Trump spoke from the White House briefing room. “America is counting the votes, and we must respect the results as we always have before. No election or person is more important than our Democracy.”

Ellen Weintraub, chair of the Federal Election Commission and a Democrat, urged the president to stop making false claims. “Enough, Mr. President. Enough. Spewing conspiracy theories regarding this election will not change the results,” she tweeted. “Your lies undermine our democracy and harm our country. Just stop.”

The sad reality is that we elected a person to be president who believes he is above the law and has the right to a second term in office no matter what the vote count results. The cartoon above says it all.

Blind Political Party Loyalty

Americans are notorious for voting the political party nominees for every same party nominee on their ballots. They are called the down ballot candidates. Most people simply believe that whoever their party has selected is the best person for the job.

The political party message is Don’t think just mark your ballot as we have instructed.

In other words, if you are voting for Donald Trump the right thing to do is vote for every Republican candidate – senators – congress representatives – governors – etc. even if they are not qualified for the job.

The consequence happened in Los Angeles and it is about to happen again.

Sheriff Alex Villanueva, a Democrat, was the party’s choice over incumbent Jim McDonnell, a Republican. The public elected Villanueva because he has a Hispanic name and he was a Democrat even though he had a checkered past. Shortly after entering the office he reinstated a deputy who had been fired by his predecessor for violating department policies regarding domestic violence and lying. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will consider a motion Tuesday seeking options for removing Villanueva, who in recent weeks has faced growing calls to step down because of what many describe as his resistance to oversight and transparency.

Jackie Lacey has served as the District Attorney of Los Angeles County since December 3, 2012. She is the first woman, and first African-American to serve in that position since it was created in 1850. She is a Democrat. Now another Democrat, George Gascón is challenging her the in the County district attorney race. He has obtained endorsements of the mayor and many council members as well as the Los Angeles Times all because of his claims of being more concerned about the welfare of those charged with a crime. The race is seen as a referendum on what 21st century criminal justice should look like, one that’s been exacerbated after a summer that saw large-scale opposition to the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the shooting of Jacob Blake. Lacey has been faulted by activists for her perceived hesitance to charge police in controversial killings, but Gascón has faced questions about his own record of not filing such charges during his eight years in San Francisco.

After you have read this you are most likely to ignore my plea to think about your choices.

Donald Trump is a Racist

When asked if he understood the gravity of “the talk” that Black parents are too often forced to have with their children, Trump simply answered, “Yes, I do.” Then he pivots to attacking Biden and says “I’m the least racist person in this room,”

Really? I thought. Charlottesville and his words “stand back- standby” in his denunciation of white supremacists came to mind.

Washington Post White House bureau chief Philip Rucker reacted by describing Trump as the “president who has repeatedly made racist comments, spread a racist lie about Obama to build a national political profile and has refused at times (such as the last debate) to condemn white supremacists.”

Trump has a long history of racist controversies.

Here’s a breakdown of Trump’s history, taken largely from Dara Lind’s list for Vox and an op-ed by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times:

• 1973: The US Department of Justice — under the Nixon administration, out of all administrations — sued the Trump Management Corporation for violating the Fair Housing Act. Federal officials found evidence that Trump had refused to rent to Black tenants and lied to Black applicants about whether apartments were available, among other accusations. Trump said the federal government was trying to get him to rent to welfare recipients. In the aftermath, he signed an agreement in 1975 agreeing not to discriminate to renters of color without admitting to previous discrimination.

• 1980s: Kip Brown, a former employee at Trump’s Castle, accused another one of Trump’s businesses of discrimination. “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” Brown said. “It was the eighties, I was a teenager, but I remember it: They put us all in the back.”

• 1989: In a controversial case that’s been characterized as a modern-day lynching, four Black teenagers and one Latino teenager — the “Central Park Five” — were accused of attacking and raping a jogger in New York City. Trump immediately took charge in the case, running an ad in local papers demanding, “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” The teens’ convictions were later vacated after they spent seven to 13 years in prison, and the city paid $41 million in a settlement to the teens. But Trump in October 2016 said he still believes they’re guilty, despite the DNA evidence to the contrary.

• 1991: A book by John O’Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, quoted Trump’s criticism of a Black accountant: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.” Trump later said in a 1997 Playboy interview that “the stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true.”

• 1992: The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino had to pay a $200,000 fine because it transferred Black and women dealers off tables to accommodate a big-time gambler’s prejudices.

• 1993: In congressional testimony, Trump said that some Native American reservations operating casinos shouldn’t be allowed because “they don’t look like Indians to me.”

• 2000: In opposition to a casino proposed by the St. Regis Mohawk tribe, which he saw as a financial threat to his casinos in Atlantic City, Trump secretly ran a series of ads suggesting the tribe had a “record of criminal activity [that] is well documented.”

• 2004: In season two of The Apprentice, Trump fired Kevin Allen, a Black contestant, for being overeducated. “You’re an unbelievably talented guy in terms of education, and you haven’t done anything,” Trump said on the show. “At some point you have to say, ‘That’s enough.’”

• 2005: Trump publicly pitched what was essentially The Apprentice: White People vs. Black People. He said he “wasn’t particularly happy” with the most recent season of his show, so he was considering “an idea that is fairly controversial — creating a team of successful African Americans versus a team of successful whites. Whether people like that idea or not, it is somewhat reflective of our very vicious world.”

• 2010: In 2010, there was a huge national controversy over the “Ground Zero Mosque” — a proposal to build a Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan, near the site of the 9/11 attacks. Trump opposed the project, calling it “insensitive,” and offered to buy out one of the investors in the project. On The Late Show With David Letterman, Trump argued, referring to Muslims, “Well, somebody’s blowing us up. Somebody’s blowing up buildings, and somebody’s doing lots of bad stuff.”

• 2011: Trump played a big role in pushing false rumors that Obama — the country’s first Black president — was not born in the US. He claimed to send investigators to Hawaii to look into Obama’s birth certificate. Obama later released his birth certificate, calling Trump a “carnival barker.” The research has found a strong correlation between birtherism, as the conspiracy theory is called, and racism. But Trump has reportedly continued pushing this conspiracy theory in private.

• 2011: While Trump suggested that Obama wasn’t born in the US, he also argued that maybe Obama wasn’t a good enough student to have gotten into Columbia or Harvard Law School, and demanded Obama release his university transcripts. Trump claimed, “I heard he was a terrible student. Terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?”

Donald Trump’s War on Barack Obama

President Donald Trump’s war on every successful action of former President Barack Obama continues to this day. It appears to me that Trump is bitter that a Black man was so successful and is still admired by millions of Americans.

It all started before Trump decided to run for president. In 2011 Trump joined the groups of people who questioned Barack Obama’s place of birth. It was called birtherism.

Trump began pushing the issue in television interviews as he was considering whether to run for president in 2012.

“I have some real doubts,” Trump told the “Today” show. He claimed to have sent his own investigators to Hawaii, where Obama was born. “I have people that actually have been studying it and they cannot believe what they’re finding.”

Trump raised another falsehood in an interview with “Good Morning America,” suggesting Obama was trying to conceal his religion by withholding his birth certificate. “Maybe it says he’s a Muslim,” he said. Obama is Christian.

His latest is the claim that Osama bin Laden wasn’t killed and is still alive, and that the man killed in the Obama-directed raid lead by Seal Team 6 was actually a body double.

The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was Trump’s first target. He has claimed the law is too expensive and denies everyone the right to choose their own plan. Trump is correct in saying that some plans are not included but that is because the coverage is very inadequate.

The Iran Nuclear deal in which Iran agreed a long-term deal on its nuclear programme with a group of world powers known as the P5+1 – the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany. It came after years of tension over Iran’s alleged efforts to develop a nuclear weapon. Iran insisted that its nuclear programme was entirely peaceful, but the international community did not believe that.

However, in May 2018, US President Donald Trump abandoned the landmark deal and in November that year, he reinstated sanctions targeting both Iran and states that trade with it. He claimed it was the worst agreement ever made by the United States.

The Paris Climate Accord Agreement was a commitment that was made by the Obama administration: a pledge to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions 26 to 28 percent by 2025. On June 1, 2017 Trump announced the United States’ withdrawal from the agreement.

Trump has directed the Labor Department to reverse Obama-era rules imposing restrictions on major banks and investment advisers, and the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has also rolled back multiple regulations aimed at fostering worker protections. These include the delay of a rule requiring employers report worker injury and illness records electronically so they can be posted online, and the cancellation of a directive allowing a union official to accompany an OSHA inspector as an employee representative into a non-union shop.

DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) was an Obama effort to protect children brought to the United States illegally but have grown up believing they are Americans. When congress refused to resolve the issue Obama issued an executive order to stop deportation of those people. As recently as June of this year his administration said will again try to end legal protections for young migrants at risk of deportation a day after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his first attempt.

At the September 29 presidential debate Trump once again accused the Obama administration of spying on his campaign — a claim that Trump has made on numerous occasions and which remains false.

So let’s be clear. Donald Trump cannot stand for the idea of someone else can be more successful than him.