Rockin' Trump

Bruce Springsteen made a powerful statement against Donald Trump and his dictatorial actions - you've already heard it, I won't repeat it - at a concert he performed in Manchester, England. 

To be honest, I would have preferred that he make that statement in Manchester, New Hampshire, not in a foreign locale, but as Trump got upset over it, it was worth it.

Trump is now threatening to investigate Springsteen, as well as pop stars like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé Knowles, and Paul Hewson, the artist familiarly known as  Bono . . . although, as an Irish national, Bono probably shouldn't be subjected to what is apparently the very, very long arm of the law.

Especially when he didn't participate in the 2024 presidential campaign, he being an Irish citizen and all.

Apparently, Trump believes that Springsteen's and Knowles' appearances at Harris campaign events and the appearances of other high-profile appearances of celebrities like Oprah Winfrey amounted to a "MAJOR AND ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION" (capital letters his), and that they were paid to appear.  In fact, they were not, and even if Harris had paid them, giving money to campaign supporters is perfectly legal, as is any campaign contribution Bruce or Beyoncé might have given the former future President.

Bruce . . . Beyoncé . . . Taylor Swift . . . They may all be singing the same song -  "Trump Is a Dictator" - but in the future, they may have to take the advice of Rubber Soul #14.

Joe Is It

Give it up, Democrats.

Joe Biden is it.

Looking for an alternative to Joe Biden is like looking for an alternative to your local rock radio station that plays all of the same tiresome songs from the previous century without going to satellite radio.   He's it.  There is no other person for the Democrats to nominate for President in 2024.  And right now, Biden is failing in spite of all of his policy successes.  He's behind Trump in the polls for 2024 and rates lower than Trump on the economy, border security, crime, and just about everything else except abortion.  And Democrats had better get that in their woke little heads and get behind Biden or else Trump will sweep right in and establish Der Amerikanisches Reich, a country in which abortion being outlawed will be the least of our issues.   Trump will weaponize the Justice Department to go after his enemies.  The civil service system, a pillar of the government for 140 years, will be gutted and filled with Trump loyalists.  The Insurrection Act will be invoked to prevent demonstrations against the Trump regime.  And that's just what Trump is saying he will do.  If the Insurrection Act is invoked, martial law will be declared and it just won't be abortion that will be outlawed - so will the Democratic Party, and all third parties, putting all fifty states under Republican control and turning Congress into a rubber-stamp legislature not unlike the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. or the Reichstag of Nazi Germany.  And don't count on the Constitution to protect your rights.  Trump has said he wants to terminate it.  I'm already certain that Trump henchman Kash Patel - who has indicated a willingness to go after Trump's critics in the press even while Trump himself vows to shut down anti-Trump cable news channels like MSNBC - will use Internet Protocol addresses to track down and arrest anti-Trump bloggers . . . like me.   

Lawman says "Get him dead or alive," I'm sure he'd sooner see me dead . . .

Elections?  Sure, we'll still have them.  One person, one vote.  Each of us will have one vote, but we'll be able to cast them only for one person per office.  The Republicans will win the 2026 midterms with 103 percent of the vote.  

Which means he'll either run for a third term unopposed in 2028 or simply extend his term to six years . . . or eight . . . or possibly for life.

How did we get here?  Mainly because of Democratic complacency that goes back fifteen years, when Barack Obama was elected President and decided that reaching out to Republicans was more important than building up the Democratic Party.  I have discussed that before, so I won't bring it up again, except to say again that Obama's efforts to be above politics caused the Democrats to lose so many elections from 2009 to 2016 that Democrats who were the future of the party suddenly found themselves with brilliant futures behind them.  Nancy Pelosi, as House Democratic leader, also bears responsibility for the dearth of  new-generation leaders, as she froze out younger House members - including the star-crossed Tim Ryan - from House leadership.  With so few fresh faces for the party's presidential nomination in 2016 and with Hillary Clinton having hijacked the party machinery, Hillary was nominated for President and inevitably (see what I did there?) lost to Trump.

Tom Perez, who was party chairman from 2017 to 2021, reversed course for the Democrats and did a pretty good job rebuilding the Democratic Party with promising newcomers - think Gavin Newsom, Elissa Slotkin, Gretchen Whitmer and Pete Buttgieg - but as far as cultivating future presidential prospects, that work wouldn't bear fruit for a decade.  The Democratic presidential nominee for 2020 would inevitably have to be a veteran party member, as many of the younger candidates from that crowded 2020 field - including Kamala Harris - were so unready for prime time that they folded their campaigns before a single primary or caucus was held; among the under-60 crowd, only Buttigieg lasted long enough to face the voters. 

We all know what happened.  Biden was eventually nominated despite a slow start and disgust toward him from the party's progressive wing, and he was able to defeat Trump - probably the only Democrat who could.  But with new leadership in the party still years away from surfacing, Biden knew as early as November 8, 2020 - the day after he was declared the winner of the presidential election -  that there was no consensus choice on a new candidate for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination.  Kamala Harris is the only obvious heir apparent, but - I'll come right out and say it - no one seems to want a a biracial female President who prefers Bootsy Collins to Phil Collins and whose husband is a Jew.  If the Vice President were a white man named Ken Harris who was a Beatles fan and whose wife was a Protestant of Midwestern or old New England Anglo-Saxon stock (Doug Emhoff is originally from New Jersey) and had the same policy positions, he'd be a shoo-in for 2024.  Or maybe not, if he were the same age as our current Vice President and had the same experience, including a failed 2020 presidential campaign, because he'd still be considered untested. Bottom line: Joe Biden is the only Democrat who has been tested.

And the Democrats have only themselves to blame.

And they have a lot of damn gall to say that Biden at 81 is too old to run in 2024 - Trump is 77 - when they rejected candidates who offered youth and vigor (and in Beto O'Rourke's case, eccentricity) in earlier electoral cycles. 

Biden has already made it clear that he likely wouldn't be running again if Trump weren't.  And while he admits that there are maybe fifty Democrats who could beat Trump in 2024, Democrats would never agree on which one of those fifty to nominate.

So that's it, Democrats.  It's either Biden or Trump.  It's either Biden in the presidential chair or it's bloggers in the electric chair.  It's either Biden re-taking the presidential oath or the Oath Keepers becoming the secret police.  If you want to save democracy, get behind Biden and get his polls numbers up - not to 65 points, that's not going to happen, but just one above 50 percent at least, and concentrate on the voters in bipartisan "swing" states that decide these elections in the Electoral College.  And don't think this is the last word on this topic, because you can expect me to regurgitate several talking points in this blog post in future posts from time to time all the way to Election Day.  Along with, I'm sure, several new ones.

Either you, Democrats, hang together in 2024 or you will most assuredly hang separately in 2025.

Hangman is coming down from the gallows, and I don't have very long . . . 😱   

Faceban

I got restricted on Facebook.  I haven't been allowed to post anything, comment on anything, contact anyone through Facebook Messenger, or even click "Like" on anything since Thursday.

Because, apparently, this picture of a little boy urinating on a Trump lawn sign is . . .

. . . frowned upon by the Facebook police!

Because, I am told, this is child sexual exploitation, though I don't know how showing a little boy's bare bottom while he's relieving himself on a Trump lawn sign is exploitative when you can't see anything worse than, well, a bare bottom.  

I got this from a friend's Instagram feed.  Guess who owns Instagram.

Meta!

Since the same people who use Instagram also use Facebook and vice versa, what the hell is Meta doing by penalizing me for posting this to Facebook?

Aah, computer bots are policing Facebook and Instagram now, not real humans.  What's really galling is that I clicked on a button for a form with which to fill out on Facebook to challenge the removal of the photo and the resulting suspension, but I got a message saying the feature doesn't work and that someone is working to get it fixed.

Yeah, right. 

The real reason  for this photo being taken down, I suspect, is because the real crime is demonizing Trump, whose hateful rhetoric has been very good business for Meta.  Meta has just lifted its ban on content promoting the fallacy that President Biden stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump, and so has YouTube.  That is why I made this video. 

I plan to post this video to my Facebook timeline as soon as my restrictions have been lifted, which should be either tomorrow or Monday.

In the meantime, I would encourage Trump's opponents to take advantage of the right to free speech and speak out against him as much as possible.  After January 19, 2025, we may never get the chance again.

Waiting For the Worms

As someone I know likes to say, the worm turns.

Donald Trump now has has two allies - tabloid publisher David Pecker and Trump Organization financial officer Allen Weisselberg, both Pace University graduates - talking to federal investigators under protection of immunity about hush money in connection with Michael Cohen to keep damning information about his extramarital affairs from getting out . . . and leaning to violations of not just campaign finance laws but possibly of money laundering in all sorts of business transactions by the Trump Organization.  And state and local authorities are likely to investigate the matter further.

So, after all of Trump's efforts to undermine Robert Mueller's Russia collusion investigation, it turns out he was focused on the wrong investigation.  There's still no evidence that he illegally colluded with Russians to win the 2016 presidential election.  But there's plenty of evidence that he illegally colluded with Americans.  Like Michael Cohen.

By the way, Mr. Cohen, I heard that today is your birthday.  Mr. Potter called to wish you a happy birthday - in jail!  Go on home, they're waiting for ya!

Be that as it may, Trump is feeling the heat, and he's no doubt planning to pull another trick in his book to save himself, like campaign in the midterms against illegal immigrants who commit crimes or start a war with North Korea after canceling further denuclearization talks.  Also, he's ready to fire Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from the Russia investigation, and replace him with an Attorney General who can kill it.  Sessions angrily defended his record as Attorney General and his respect for the law in response to these reports, but other Republicans are beginning to abandon him; his only defenders at the end of the day may be Democrats.  Imagine that - Trump has made a hero out of Jeff Sessions.  Jeff Sessions!

The only thing that can stop Trump now is a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives, but despite Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com site currently giving the Democrats a 72 percent chance of taking back the House, it's not in the bag.  And if the GOP keeps the House in November, then that's it.  The Democrats deserve to go full Whig.  

Remember reading about the anarchy of the 1850s in history class - Bleeding Kansas, the Dred Scott decision, Know-Nothingism, Harpers Ferry?  That will be nothing compared to what happens in 2019 if the GOP retains full power in Washington.

Get ready for Civil War II.

Anything else?  Yeah, don't send your kids to Pace.