The Fifty Six Percent

Trump supporter shows his opinion of the media. Uh huh.

Oh boy.

The latest Ipsos poll is out, with some good news, and of course, worrying news, because this would not be 2021 without some bad news lurking around the corner preparing to jump you. 

Here’s the good stuff, to bolster your sagging faith in humanity: 75 percent of Americans believe that Joe Biden is the “true” president, while 55 percent think he is the “legitimate and accurate” president; 25 percent disagree with each. Well, not crazy about the 25%, so let’s break this all down and look at the ‘by party’ numbers. This is where the face-palming comes in:

“56% of Republicans believe the election was rigged or the result of illegal voting, and 53% think Donald Trump is the actual President, not Joe Biden. Only 30% of Republicans feel confident that absentee or mail-in ballots were accurately counted, compared to 86% of Democrats and 55% of independents. As a result, 87% of Republicans believe it is important that the government place new limits on voting to protect elections from fraud. Finally, 63% percent of Republicans think Donald Trump should run for President again in 2024, compared to only 8% of Democrats and 23% of independents.”

56% of Republicans think the election was stolen from Donald Trump, somehow, someway, 53% of them think Trump is actually still president, and 87% of Republicans want to limit the right of non-Republicans to vote. These are the people Democrats are supposed to ‘listen’ to and ‘empathize’ with. Really. They are still firmly embedded in November of 2020, to just before Fox News called Arizona for Biden, still sitting in front of the TV or hitting refresh on the Fox site to see the numbers. They are so far beyond rational political thought they’d have to get off the bus and walk back ten miles to find it.

That’s the definition of ‘delusional’.

There’s simply no way to reason with or ‘understand’ the MAGA voter when they sit down opposite you with this already in their heads. If this is their starting point, where could the conversation even begin? If months of no evidence of fraud hasn’t shaken lose this dog bite clamp on the leg of the election, you calmly explaining their faulty reasoning/logic isn’t going to do it. This won’t be solved over a burger and a handshake.

Maybe though, just maybe, they’re playing us, trying to own the ‘libs’ though the polling. They might not actually believe what they claim to believe. Maybe they’re just telling the pollsters something outrageous to invite controversy or prove a point about mean liberal polling, as they seem to think the House/Senate races were just fine. Expressing their anger at the loss by stating something they don’t truly believe but wish to be so. Maybe we’re all being played.

I seriously doubt it, but maybe…

Of course, if this were true, it causes a big problem as well. The far right at the moment is a swirling cesspool of grievance, anger, blame, conspiracy theories, and potential violence just looking for an excuse to explode. The ‘Big Lie’ over the election is fueling that time bomb. The Republican leaders, in pushing and supporting that Lie, are working to light the fuse in the belief that that is what their supporters want. They are rightly scared to death of their own base (after January 6th, I don’t blame them). What if their base doesn’t actually believe the ‘Big Lie’? We have the perfect feedback loop, the base feeding the Lie to the leaders, and the leaders working on feeding it right back to the base. With each cycle, the belief in the Lie grows stronger, more ridged, harder to break, or break away from.

The GOP is using the whole mess as an excuse to push voter suppression (they are the same people who disastrously put together a commission trying to find 3 million ‘illegal’ votes in the 2016 election), to try and make sure they can hold power without having to worry about elections. But in doing so they are also riling up a base desperate to be riled, desperate to be told that yes, they are right; people are out to get them, to do them harm, to destroy them over their religion, politics, way of life, skin color. Yes, they are the true minorities and they are the true persecuted. The more the Republicans push this lie for their own ends, the more dangerous the situation becomes.

In the end, whether the base believes the lie, or the leaders are cynically pushing the lie to gain power, it doesn’t really matter. The end will be the same, destruction of our democratic ideals.

An AEI poll this year found most Republicans agree "the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it." They’re primed, 56% think they have an illegitimate president in the White House and 53% think the former president is still in power, or should be. Will they sit by and do nothing?

56% would rather live their shared delusion, stuck in their 2020 infinity loop than come forward into the sunlight.

And that’s where we are.

Trump Lies, Democracy Pays

“Suckers” as Trump would call them. But really, we’re all getting screwed.

Trump lost an election, he’s a loser, and he’s making sure we all pay for it.

He can’t admit to being a loser (which is what he is, a loser), so he’s screaming fraud. And he won’t stop for the next four years, hell, for however long he lives he won’t stop. There is, of course, no evidence of any widespread fraud. But this is about evidence, this is about the long con, and power. Trump yells ‘RIGGED!!’ He begs for money to ‘stop the steal!’ and then diverts that money into his personal ‘leadership pac’ (slush fund) to the tune of 200 million or there about. Jesus.

Insane. He’s grifting them, admits (at the crazy Georgia rally) to grifting them, and supporters give him more money to continue the grift.

I think the Kevin Bacon character in ‘Animal House’ defines the ardent Trump supporter. As a pledge being whacked hard on the ass all he can say is ‘Please sir. May I have another?!’

Yep. ‘Please sir, even though you are actually keeping my money and not giving it to fellow grifters Rudy Giuliani and Jena Ellis (Well, not all of it) please take more of my money anyway!’

Trump will probably announce a 2024 run, even if he doesn’t really mean it. This will ensure that he keeps owning the GOP and that all candidates have to kiss what must be a well-callused ass. It gives him the power and attention he desperately needs. Attention is like oxygen to him; without it he will wither and die.

Trump and the Trump Party (really, it kisses up to his ass so much it’s really the only honest label/name for the former GOP) is going to push this ‘rigged election’ nonsense and use it to shove (and probably pass) new and even stricter voting restrictions, coming down hard on Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, students, anyone who might be seen as a ‘Democratic base’. Trumpubican legislatures and governors will use the idiotic claims of the Great God Trump to screw anyone who might dare to vote Democratic. The ‘steal’ will be the excuse for years to come, a reason for draconian measures to make certain a Trump loss will never happen again, no matter which Trump is running. The Trumpers will punish anyone who would dare to vote against them, legal or not.  

This lie of a stolen election will consume the Republicans, if it hasn’t already. It will burn in those whose anger and grievance already overwhelms them and those Republicans that don’t show enough fealty to the lie, or to Trump himself, (the president-in-exile) will be purged from the party.

The faith cannot handle the influence of the non-believer.

Trump lies, and democracy pays. He and his supporters will make sure it will.

Trump Seal Team Super StrikeForce, Ninja-Robot Warriors.

Rudy laying down the first wave of crazy, Sidney Powell ready to bring on the second.

Here we are, nearly 3 weeks from election day, two weeks since the outcome was obvious (hint, it was Biden, with what is looking in the end to be a margin of 7 million votes). So, Joe Biden is President-Elect, Kamala Harris is Vice President-Elect and the country can move on, start dealing with the many crisis’ created by the previous administration.

Right? Please?

Sigh.

No.

You see, we have this malignant tumor bunkered down in the White House, refusing to utter the words ‘Biden Won’. Can’t do it, just can’t. He instead, after some media calls election night, came out at 3am and gave a rambling ‘victory’ speech (at a victory party that turned into another White House, covid super-spreader event) claiming victory, spewing nonsense about ‘voter fraud (really ‘election fraud’, but there ya go) and seeming to go from rage, to despair, back to rage again.

Really, I think he was going for an Emmy.

Immediately he started filing a lot of baseless lawsuits, getting laughed out of court by Republican judges, and shedding lawyers like a sheepdog sheds hair in summer. Right now, his team is led by Rudy Giuliani, the human self-debasement machine, whose previous actions helped to get Trump impeached, and by Sydney Powell, a lawyer under investigation for possibly tampering with court documents for her other client, Michael Flynn.

You hit the Batty Signal, you get the bats.  

Still, even though no reputable attorney will work for them, Trump Team Crazy is busy, filing lawsuits left and right, tossing them out like t-shirts to a crowd, shouting ‘voter fraud’ up and down the hallways.

So, how are all those 'voter fraud' cases going?

They're not. So far Trump 'Elite StrikeForce Team' are 1-33. That means out of the 34 cases they brought, they're won one. One. Here's another thing; they're not actually voter fraud cases.

While Trump is screaming in all caps on Twitter. and Rudy G. and Sidney Powell are making bizarre claims about 'Hugo Chavez, communists, and China' funding secret vote-flipping machines, and election fraud on a massive scale, they have yet to make these claims in court. In fact, they go out of their way NOT to claim fraud... because they have no proof of fraud. They start bringing charges of fraud then the judge is going to ask them to prove it. No, the cases have mostly been about oversight, have been about such pettiness as in Arizona, when 'sharpies' used on ballots supposedly caused them to be rejected (their own witnesses proved this to be nonsense), poll watchers not allowed in polling places in Pennsylvania. There the lawyer pissed off the judge by trying to get cute:

Judge: "Did the plaintiff have representatives in the room?"

Lawyer: "“There were a nonzero number of people in the room."

Judge: “I’m asking you as a member of the bar of this court: Are people representing the plaintiffs in the room?”

Lawyer: "Yes."

Judge: "Then what are we here for?"

Always good to en-madden the judge hearing your case.

One case filed was, literally, based on what one witness was told by another poll worker who had overheard something someone else had said. No kidding. A sort of 'double heresy', the judge laughed that out of courts with a big, fat 'come on!'.

In Georgia, Trump lawyers and minions are doing stellar work. Cybersecurity worker and expert witness in the case, Russell J. Ramsland Jr., claimed in an affidavit that his company had uncovered “evidence of inconsistencies in electronic voting machines”. Maybe he did, but not in Georgia, the districts he list were in Michigan. Red districts that voted for Trump. Oops.

He also listed a bunch of towns and counties he claimed showed there were more votes than voters. Again, maybe so, but he was listing towns in Minnesota, not Michigan. Or Georgia.

Judge tossed it. No evidence. Huh.

In Michigan, a state court judge lovingly took apart the six witnesses with claims of improprieties at the counting center, noting that had they not skipped orientation, most of their claims would have been answered. The Trump team also mis-filed a Michigan case in a court in DC. Working hard to bring the best in incompetency.

The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.

Stormtroopers on the Death Star had better aim.

The Trump team have no real cases, they have no real chance as the numbers are against them. The plan, as near as anyone can figure, seems to be to get Black votes (city of Detroit) thrown out because... the poll watchers didn't stand close enough to the counting...? Something insane. That would give them Michigan, then… something, something… Georgia and Arizona, and bam? Election won?

Really. They would have to flip three states, disenfranchise millions, and forever kill any trust in our election system.

But they’re good with that.

There is no plan, no endgame here, just throw everything at the wall and keep refiling to try and get a judge more interested in party than justice.

They're out there, McConnell saw to that.

Which brings us to the Republicans, the GOP, the party of ‘Law & Order’, friend of the ‘working man’ (that’s White working man), what are they doing about this situation?

Nothing. With a few notable exceptions, they are maintaining silence, like they always do, or crying ‘let it play out’, as Trump hacks at Democracy with an axe. Why won’t they say something? Several factors:

One; he’s still the head of the party. Hell, it IS his party, he’ll cry if he wants to, and that big, beautiful base of his is loyal not the GOP, but to Trump himself. To speak up now is to anger the base, which they will need in their next reelection, or in 2024 if their ambitions carry them that far.  

Two: mean tweets. Trump’s base may be angry, but Trump is angrier, and can focus his hatred, and that of his base, right between the eyes of anyone daring to step out of line, even a little. He loves doing it, his thumbs are fast, and he doesn’t care about spelling.

Three: they want him to succeed. Sure, it’ll tear the country apart, but hey! They stay in power another four years, country be damned. That’s what really matters, doesn’t it?

So, they’ll stall the transition of power, watch as Trump demands no one speak to the Biden/Harris team, and valuable time is lost, information is lost, chaos seeps into every crack and corner, and Trump hides behind his extra-tall, super-secure fence, and tweets all caps into the void.

January 20th cannot come soon enough.

Happy Thanksgiving.

The Last Whine

Dude, buddy, calm the fuck down.

Trump voters, you need to try harder.

I don’t mean marching-in-the-streets-with-your-pet-AK-and-Trump-flags harder, no. You need to try harder to accept the loss, to ‘take the ‘L’

“The Lame-stream Media doesn’t say who is president!!” 

Uh huh.

Listen, because you need to hear and take this in. Ready?

President Donald J. Trump lost. By, the count so far, some 6 million votes. When all is said and done, it’ll probably be more like 7 million.

“But the lawsuits! We need to play out each and every lawsuit because fraud!!! Oh, the terrible, horrible, no-good fraud!!”

No. Sorry. The lawsuits have failed, the lawyers are all embarrassed (those that have enough morals left after working for Trump) and the judges have had enough.

The courts have all come down against Trump. I tell you, you Trump supporters are so far into right wing grievance you can't/won't see the truth. There just is no evidence of wide spread voter fraud, none, nada, keiner. My friend, stop listing to what the right-wing talking heads are saying and take a look at what the Trump lawyers are actually saying and doing in court, where they can't make stuff up. The judges are catching them every time: yes, there were observers in the polling places and tabulation halls, no, 'sharpies' didn't matter, no, no voting machines switched votes, nobody switched dates on ballots, no 'Biden/Harris' vans showed up in the parking lot of a polling place, then opened ballots and filled them out (in broad daylight, in a logoed van, where everyone could see!), and the rest of the nonsense they've been spouting, why haven't they gone to court? Filed complaints? For the most part, they’ve either dropped the claims (in Pennsylvania), are just making them on TV (the 'van' story on Laura Ingraham) or have watered their claims down to the equivalent of a shrug. It’s nonsense. Besides, if the evil Democrats could steal the presidency, why didn't they get the senate as well?

It literally makes NO sense. Come on, think about it, buddy. It just doesn't.

And now if he wants a recount in Pennsylvania, he’ll have to pay for it himself. 8 million, by Wednesday. You think he’s going to pony up that amount? Donald Trump? Pay for something?

Sit down, breathe. You want a soda, huh?

It's over, Biden won, Trump lost.

I know, you tell me over and over again, “look at the documents! Look at the facts.” Okay, that is what I'm doing. Trump is racking up loss after loss in the courts because he literally has no proof of fraud, like I said, none. Rudy, Jr., Eric, and Trump himself are spreading lies about our election they literally cannot back up. If they could, they would be winning in the courts (before several Republican appointed judges, btw), they would be backed up by the Republican election officials instead of having to smear them to bolster their own scheme.

He lost, the American people have rejected, soundly, Donald Trump and no amount of crying, screaming, and whining is going to change that. No, I’m not saying you’re doing any of that, friend. He is. He looks like an idiot, holding his breath, stamping his feet and saying 'nuh uh'.

Time to give it up.

Remember, Hillary, (now calm down) conceded the day after, and she had a better case for contesting than Donald (having won the popular vote), and the next day Obama had Trump and Melania to the White House, and the transition began. But they both have more class that Donald ever did, evidently. 

Yes, that was a dig, sorry.

Seriously. It's over. This isn't about the evil, evil media, but about reality. The right-wing media has never been about reality, but about helping Republicans, any way they can. Now that Fox News is actually trying to push back against the crazies they have on their airwaves in the evening (see Tucker have to apologize to a lady he accused of voter fraud? He wasn't gracious about it), people aren't getting the fix they need and are going to Newmax and OAN, there they will get told what they want to hear, regardless of the truth, or reality.

Is that what you’re doing? It’s okay, we all like our bubbles.

The reality is, Joe Biden (not a socialist, or controlled by them) and Kamala Harris (also, not a socialist, but a moderate like Joe) are the President and Vice-President Elect, and will be taking office noon, on January 20th. Donald Trump, if he does not leave, will be a trespasser and will be escorted from the grounds.

I know, it sucks, I was there in 2016. I feel ya.

You can take it.

No, you can keep the hat.

To the Trump Voters

Trump supporters. Yep.

Okay. I know, I spend a lot of time, talking to people who do not like Trump. There’s a lot of them out there. I mean, this is a president who has never cracked 50% in the polls, never. The majority of the country can’t stand the guy, but he could still be reelected. Really. If not outright, he could try and throw the election into a very friendly Supreme Court and have them basically appoint him president (happened in 2000, I remember it very well). As we’ve seen, over and over, he is not above undermining confidence in the election, in the ballots, in the counting of the ballots, or even demanding they stop counting any votes after midnight, somehow giving TV networks calling of an election the power and imprimatur of an official government agency. 

But now, let me put all that aside, ever so briefly, to talk to the Trump supporters.

No, really. 

There is around 40% of America that supports Trump. You are out there, ready and willing to give this man another four years, proud of your support and assured that another four years, just like the last four, will be a good and needed thing for this country. We don’t deserve a man as good, honest, forbearing, and true as Donald J. Trump, but you’re going to give him to us anyway.

Do me a favor.

Don’t.

I don’t mean, ‘Don’t vote’, I would never say that. Just don’t vote for him. If you can’t bring yourself to vote for Biden, write in ‘Ronald Reagan’, your grandmother (she was nice), a favorite uncle (not that one, the other one) anyone but Trump. Vote like your life depends on it, but it kinda does.

Be truthful, are things better now than they were four years ago? There are 235,000 dead people and hundreds of thousands of their families, friends, and loved ones who don’t think so. There are over one thousand parents and thousands of their relatives who had their children stolen by the Trump administration who don’t think so. I’d say most countries of the world, looking at the state of the once admired America, would not think so either.

My friend, please. What are you actually voting for? Healthcare? Trump has been promising a plan for four years, the GOP now for a decade and have never delivered, and never will. Not really in their interest to do so. This is a transactional party headed by a transactional leader; if they can’t get something out of it, they won’t do it, end of story.

Jobs? Contrary to what Trump says, ‘his’ economy was not the greatest ‘ever’, heck, Bill Clinton had him beat by a mile. Jobs are down, the actual economy has tanked because Trump doesn’t understand he has to get the virus under control before the economy can fully come back, but he’s so far in denial about this he can never admit it. You want jobs to come back you have to vote for someone who can get the virus under control. That’s not Trump.

Are you fighting for cultural issues? Because that’s what they want you to do. They want you to be distracted, vote on the cultural issues they really can’t do anything about (The LGBTQ community are people, they are here, and deserve the same rights you do, get over it, same with BLM) as they enact their tax cuts for wealthy donors, strike down regulations that affect their donors’ businesses, and destroy any controls that stand in the way of complete power. Have they enacted those promises they made you? Do you have that great new manufacturing job that Trump brought back? Has Mexico paid for the wall that isn’t built?

Friend, you need to open your eyes as to what you're supporting. Trump and the GOP are poised to go down in a huge Blue tsunami and there's only one reason for it: the embrace of Trump and 'Trumpism'. As I said, 235,000+ people are dead due to his ego and inaction, over 500 children parentless because of his policies, the economy cratered, businesses, entire industries on the brink of disaster, and all of this because Trump is too stubborn, too egotistical to admit he screwed up and too afraid of showing ‘weakness’ try to fix things. While infections have surpassed the summer rates, he's holding infection spreading rallies and denying there's a problem. He doesn’t care about anything or anyone not stamped or named ‘Trump’.

It didn’t have to be this way, it really didn’t. 

In 2012, after getting their butts handed to them a second time by Obama, the RNC did an 'autopsy' trying to outline the future of the GOP. It recommended abandoning hard Reaganism, try to open themselves up to new ideas, to appeal to People of Color, and move into the 21st Century. But no, that was too hard, sounded too much like Communism (oh dread!). Better to just double down on White grievance, use as your nominee someone who was pushing a racist 'theory' (birtherism, WTF with that?) and hope for the best. They got lucky that time with the Electoral College, it saved them when they lost of the popular vote by nearly three million votes (In over 30 years, the GOP has won the popular vote exactly once). If the movement to get rid of the EC succeeds, I bet it'll be a long time before that happens again.

This Tuesday, the Democrats are probably going to win the WH, the Senate and keep the House (and might flip a few state legislatures as well). Yes, this is my prediction. Why such a huge wave election? It’s all because of the behavior of Trump and the Trumpers. Going forward, if the Democrats are smart, they'll get rid of the filibuster, and that'll be it for the GOP. Fix a few laws and they won't be able to cheat their way back into power for a while (they'll find new ways to cheat, they always do). Minority status for the Republicans while the Democrats fix (again and again) the damage wrought by an out of control GOP, an incompetent president, and his enablers.

So, you, proud Trump voter, take a look around you. Trump talked of ‘American carnage’ at his inauguration, and then he went out and created it. America is in near ruins, gun sales up 91% over last year, so bad that Walmart took them off sale until after the election.

That’s enough.

235,000+ dead Americans, 500+ purposely created orphans. I'd say that’s legacy enough for Donny, don't you?