It Really is Almost Over, Right?

No, alas, that means it's just beginning. Let's begin with the election, since it was an election like no other. An army of Trump followers raged against the system, led by our toddler president. They raged against Biden and his followers over supposed Democratic cheating. The Trumpkins continue to rage, screaming and demonstrating to "Stop the Steal." One Trump supporter interviewed by MSNBC was convinced that a steady stream of Biden ballots was coming in from China. The Trumkins would not have raged so if Donald Trump himself had not issued a constant stream of rage from his Twitter account. To call Donald Trump a racist misses the point. Our wholly narcissistic president hates with a deadly passion anyone who does not love him, and is pleased to embrace anyone who does. But the love must be absolute, and use no judgement to suggest that the Donald might be in error. Ever.

Trump once smilingly told a group of reporters that “I always win,” so when the Democrats began pumping voter turnout by pushing mail-in ballots in the period prior to the election, he screamed foul and prepared to challenge the outcome. Many a reporter had asked him if he would accept the election result — a question never posed to a sitting president before Trump. Aside from coy evasions, the best answer we got was "If I win." That should have been a clue; always take Donald Trump at his word — he is pure narcissist. He can't stand to be a loser. So when all those votes were counted, and Joe Biden had won both a popular and Electoral College victory, Donald Trump's retainers and fans put the country through five weeks of litigation and demonstration hell. His lawyers were thrown out of every courtroom they dared enter, though not the US Supreme Court. Those Justices dismissed his petition out of hand, refusing to hear his case. An even sillier case by the fawning Texas Attorney General who claimed states that didn't run their elections just like the Lone Star State were somehow harming Texans didn't get any farther, though the fawning Justice Alito thought maybe the court should hear it.

The President's most popular conspiracy clown was an attorney named Sidney Powell, who was happy to go on any radio or television show that would have her, making the most outrageous claims. Those claims then went into circulation in the conservative media bloodstream, where they became truth, even after they'd been thrown out of court. The claims were surreal: The voting machines used in many states had been programmed in Venezuela; they changed Trump votes to Biden ones automatically; they could be hacked by a fifteen year old; they transmitted their votes to Germany for counting; the list went on. A former Chief of Staff of the US Air Force claimed to know for certain that US soldiers had been killed assaulting a CIA base in Germany where the votes had been transmitted. The number of nut cases aligned with Donald Trump seemed (and still seems) endless. There was and still is no end to Republican conspiracy theories. Those conspiracy theories will endure and multiply for the next four years. The only one we won't see is that Joe Biden was born in Kenya. There was a day not long ago when Americans were shocked that a man in North Carolina would hop in his car with several weapons and drive to Washington DC to investigate a story about child sex trafficking at a pizzeria. And further that he would burst into the pizzeria without consulting the police, ready to shoot the place up, expecting to find a former first lady as the head exploiter. Such times and conspiracies seem a bit quaint.

How do we know our election nightmare is only almost over? Early this morning President Donald Trump tweeted: “Many Trump votes were routed to Biden,” and then: “This Fake Election can no longer stand. Get moving Republicans.” We know that the President is hoping Congress will hand him the election by fiat on 6 January when it meets to affirm the Electoral College vote. But he expected the Supreme Court to hand him the election two days ago. This is a president who has seen his power strangely limited over the past four years. He was likely most content when declaring a national emergency to seize funds from the Defense Appropriations Bill to build his border wall. From that there was little appeal. His attempt to ban immigration from select Muslim countries was a fiasco, as was the attempt to end DACA. The last should have been easy, since it was created by am executive order, but those pesky courts got in the way. It now appears that Donald Trump might actually lose this one.

But what of the interim period, that time prior to Joe Biden's inauguration? Clearly seventy-million people and over a hundred congressmen are delusional on the electoral vote. Will the President count on their support to do something bold? Start a war or declare martial law? It is not out of the question. He cannot brook being a loser. And Donald Trump has two things that no other president before him has had — his own private army of thugs, the Proud Boys, who will come out for him in any city he requests, and a huge body of fans willing to show up for demonstrations most anywhere. Never before has a president commanded a fandom such as these. Further, Trump could start a regional war, or simply declare martial law in order to keep the White House. It all seems so third world, but so does the legal maneuvering over the last five weeks.

Next we'll look at the remains. Two hollowed out political parties pick over the bones of a once great country. The fact is, it always looks better than it really is. If you want to study examples, study the Roman and British Empires. What is not clear is how the Republican Party lost its entire moral fabric so quickly.

The Bacillus Amongst Us

The election is finally over, unless Justice Alito gets his way, and the Supreme Court speaks in some perverted manner. I believe that those few justices who were around for Bush v. Gore have had their fill of election intervention, though the newcomers seem to be feeling their oats just a bit. It is something how the term 'activist judge' can suddenly become a not so dirty a word. In fact, Mark Levin seems to be calling on the Court each night to intervene and deliver the election to Donald Trump. He's the fellow who keeps harping on the duty of the state legislatures to do their constitutional duty — the one only they can do, according the Constitution, and him, 'The Great One.' Of course according to the Great One, Mark Levin, only he can adequately interpret the Constitution. Everyone else has strayed from orthodoxy, and is a clown. It's merely a matter of what you really want, not what you actually believe. As Donald Trump stated before the election, he needed his Supreme Court in place for the election.

But it looks like Trump is going, and Biden is moving in, as big a change as there could be. We're going from an extreme right wing do nothing, to an extreme left wing do everything. From a pro Israel to an anti Israel, an anti Iran to a pro Iran. From no policy, to an everything policy.

But the greatest issue may not rest in policy, but in population. Donald Trump received over seventy-four million votes. Where there might have been a time when these votes were segregated in a particular region, they are now scattered throughout the country. Trump certainly has his regions of strength, but unlike the country's divisions during the civil war, that were almost entirely regional, our current divisions are peppered throughout the nation. Wherever there is a small rural enclave there is a center of Trump support. Even within urban areas there are often Trump strongholds. The ideological split has no regional definition.

This non division means that the United States is truly a divided country, not a country capable of being divided. We are a country that differs in so many ways:

Guns Taxes Abortion Police policy Law and order Immigration policy Environmental policy Trade and tariff policy How to conduct elections How to handle race relations What our own Constitution means

When Joe Biden steps into office on 20 January the country will not be calm. There will be a resistance, just as there was when Donald Trump entered office. The land will rest uneasy, and unlike the Democrats of the anti Trump resistance, this new resistance may be infantile and lack a certain self control, just as its mentor did.

When Did We Militarize The Presidency?

Time was that the President was thought of as the President. Now the news folks, those who are so busy setting the national agenda, constantly refer to the President as the Commander in Chief. Our Constitution does designate the President as the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces (Article II, Section 2), however he is much more, and for most of my lifetime we didn't dwell upon the President's qualifications to be Commander in Chief.

Dwight Eisenhower had been Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, but even he was looked upon as a president, and having sent so many men into battle, he worked hard at avoiding conflict during his presidency. Few people alive today know how hard Eisenhower worked at keeping the peace. A reading of the history of the U-2 spy plane program makes it clear. As wonderful as that plane was, he didn't let them fly it anywhere where he thought it might cause a war. The Powers shoot down was a shock to him.

By the time Bill Clinton ran for president, commentators were asking whether candidates were fit to be Commander in Chief. Perhaps it was Clintoin's obvious cynical draft dodging. During the George W. Bush Administration the Secretary of Defense insisted that all world wide CINCs, that is Commanders in Chief, such as the Navy's CINCLANTFLT, or Commander in Chief, US Atlantic Fleet, undergo name changes because “there is only one Commander in Chief.” It's nice to be powerful — it enables silliness without consequence.

Considering the fact that the United States has sought out and engaged in conflict almost continuously since the early 1990s, the militarization of the presidency may be understandable, but it is unhealthy.

Haiku in Memory of The Attack on Vukovar

We are Vukovar, The dying; buildings that smoke, Let dead voices speak.

The Problem Isn't What They Say, It's What They Stand For

“We need to learn how to talk to a bigger swath of the population.” — MSNBC anchor quoting a Democratic Party operative

There's a too-often employed saying that once you put lipstick on a pig you still have a pig. That Democratic Party operative must be too young to have heard the phrase. Those voters in the big red middle of the country can read. I read “Joe's Plan.” To them it was one big Bernie Sanders socialist playbook. Whether it was a worthy playbook is irrelevant. Tell those oil states their meal ticket will be worthless in fifteen years. Rush Limbaugh has been telling them that the German's have been going through rolling blackouts since they prematurely put their nuke and coal plants to sleep.

If you look at the Wednesday morning electoral map, you will see how divided the United States really is. The emphasis on electoral vote totals is so ingrained that I haven't seen any popular vote totals, but a country this divided must be in trouble.

Night Messages

Upon a lonely limb,
We might in silence
Hang our love,
Let it call out
Into the dark.

A chilled wind carries
Hopeless words,
'Till sunrise
Drowns them out,
They cannot stand
The light of day.

A Few Thoughts on Former Vice President Joseph Biden

Since I'm writing about Mr. Biden, I'm going to begin by speaking about President Trump, just to add a little balance. I think Donald Trump is a narcissistic moron. But Joe Biden has this critical quality — he is not Donald Trump. He also appears honest. The goodness ends there. He isn't up to the job.

When Mr. Biden speaks, he sounds like an old guy who might have once had it, but now is trying to sound like he still does. That's just what Joe is — a guy who once had it, maybe. I tried reading Joe's 'plan.' It's terrible. My sister, a dyed in the wool Trump supporter, thinks Joe is a socialist. That's just Republican blather. Joe isn't organized enough to be a socialist anymore. I doubt that he had much of a hand in writing his 'plan.' In the first four pages of the 'plan,' we get the phrase 'union jobs,' 'union labor,' or 'union work force,' about twenty times. OK, Joe, I get it, Democrats are all in with the unions. Are all those folks working from home gonna be organized too? Are we going to use all those good union jobs to compete against that semi slave labor in Foxcon City? Dear reader, if you don't know what Foxcon City is, then you don't understand how China has out competed us. And they did it with the help of a Taiwanese firm. China even uses its enemies to get ahead, something that is beyond Donald Trump's ability to comprehend.

Joe's plan is going to give us a carbon pollution free power sector by 2035. Knowing the clowns in charge of his party, I suspect that won't include a massive nuclear power construction effort, so be prepared to be sitting in the dark during those rolling blackouts. The Bozos who wrote the plan think 2035 is a long way away, but from an R and D to industrial production and logistics planning point of view on a nationwide scale 2035 is the day after tomorrow, given that we're beginning from a standing start.

Joe has the federal government spending trillions on things it has not traditionally done, such as insulating homes, repairing water pipes, and such. That is an enormous increase in federal spending.

Joe's plan is a crazy quilt wish list designed to bring a smile to every corner of the balkanized Democratic Party where people seem to be lined up waiting for free stuff. It is a party of unreality that, when tempered, is bound to be much, much better than the rapacious anti science thieves and traitors who currently inhabit the Republican Party.

So . . . I believe all thinking citizens should spend at least two hours each week listening to those two Republican apologists, Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh. It's important to understand how the criminals who currently control the government perceive themselves. It doesn't take a lot of time, but knowing your enemy is important. Living in a liberal bubble isn't a good idea. There will be lots of repair work to be done. And if Joe really does get elected, we will at least have the rule of law back, and then we'll see about the rest.