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Donald Trump

Suppose He Had Led His People to the Capitol on January 6…

January 12, 2022
by Peter Feinman
The Trumpican Image of their Leader (Dave Weigel, Washington Post)

The story of the attempt to steal the election and overthrow the Constitution continues to surprise. While the focus has been on the intention of state legislators to send alternate Elector slates overriding the will of the people, it turns out that alternate slates were surreptitiously sent in 2020 perhaps at the initiative of a rogue insurrectionist at the Department of Justice. More to come.

One seemingly obvious question that has not received much attention is why the Hitman did not lead his people to the Capitol. He exhorted them all to walk there himself included and fight like hell for their country. But instead of doing so, he then retired home to watch with the great glee the events to unfold without him. Only when the failure to reverse the vote became obvious did he rouse himself to tell the people he loved to go home in peace. We do not know the various iterations of his speech but perhaps sooner rather than later we will.

So why didn’t he march with his people?

LEADERSHIP

One reason which comes to mind is that he physically was unable. We should at least give credence to the idea that Tubby Wubby could not have walked to the Capitol. Going in a golf cart would have seemed unmanly.

William Wallace watching the battle on TV

Speaking of being manly, what would Mel Gibson aka William Wallace have done. This figure is much beloved by Trumpicans for his manly display of leadership. In the movie Braveheart, Wallace is shown charging full speed ahead with his people to confront the English. He does not simply walk to the Capitol, he races to his destiny. One might have expected the would-be Wallace to have done the same. If the movie-figure had said, “No, you go ahead. I am going to stay back and watch from here. It’s more fun this way,” would he be regarded as heroic?

Maximus riding away from the Capitol as fast as his horse will carry him

One can make a similar case for the fictional Maximus in Gladiator, another popular manly figure. In the opening battle, Maximus forcefully leads his forces into battle. He stridently charges forth on his horse into the fray. The fictional figure later literally goes into the proverbial arena and displays the right stuff that is so much a part of American manly vigorous lore.

The Alpha-Male wannabe’s greatest victory (Patrick Semansky/AP Photo)

Bone Spur Boy is no Wallace. Macho Macho Boy is no Maximus. The alpha-male wannabee is no match for these manly heroic figures. His great victory occurred when he dominated Lafayette Square … after the Square had been cleared of all people who might protest his heroic display of masculinity.

The Big Lie

Trumpbo would rather watch on TV than fight.

In case we have forgotten, we just now have had an example of how the seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck operates. His natural venue is the professional political arena where he can be mean, nasty, and insulting to his heart’s content. The perfect weapon for the immature child is Twitter. Sure enough, when a Senator from South Dakota dared to speak the truth about the 2020 election, the Loser went ballistic. Notice how childish his responses were. Notice how he vented like a crybaby teenager. Notice how unmanly he was. After closing in one year without the cacophony of baby talk from someone with the emotional maturity of a three year-old, we were reminded of just how childish he is. It makes one dread when he becomes a candidate and we are forced to endure such behavior on an ongoing basis.

WHAT IF HE HAD LED?

Now suppose, hypothetically he had been physically capable of walking to the Capitol.

Now suppose, hypothetically he had been capable of being a leader.

Then what?

What do you do if you are the Capitol Police and you see the President of the United States, his Secret Service detail, and a crowd walking towards you?

Would you have even have tried to stop the President of the United States?

My guess is at that moment a negotiation would have occurred.

What are you doing here?

We are here to stop the steal. Let us in.

You can come in Mr. President along with X number of followers. Go through the security screeners and you and your group will be escorted to the Visitor Gallery. The rest will have to remain outside. We can’t allow people to just wander around the building.

What would the Commander in Chief had done at that point? What would his followers do? Both the ones allowed to entire after being checked for weapons and those who had to remain outside?

What would have happened if he and his group had been escorted to the Visitor Gallery? Would they have been content to impotently watch as Joe Biden was certified as the winner? Would rowdy individuals have been asked to leave? What would the would-be Hitman have done?

We will never know the answers to these questions. Nonetheless, they serve a purpose. They demonstrate how poorly thought out the slapdash insurrection was. It should be no surprise that January 6 was not well-planned. We know from his serial business failures that organization, planning, management, and thinking things through are not his strong point. We know from his failure with COVID, that he was just as inept and incompetent as President as he had been in business. Therefore, it is quite reasonable to expect that the planning for January 6 was equally inept.

THE HYDRA INSURRECTION

The Hydra Insurrection
(https://steemit.com)

As we are learning the Hydra Insurrection was proceeding on many fronts. At first everyone was focused on the inanities of Pillowhead, Séance Sydney, and Ridiculous Rudy with the absurd legal challenges they raised. They had a perfect batting average. And the effort have backfired. Voting machine companies and election workers named have responded with lawsuits.

Then we became aware of the infamous attempt to find 11,780 votes in Georgia. Criminal charges are likely in a few months against the Hitman and his confederates. And it may have helped the two Democratic Senate candidates win thereby giving the Democrats the majority.

Then we became aware of the pressure on the Vice President in a six-point plan to disqualify Electors for Biden and/or accept alternate Electors. Criminal charges are likely this year against the originator of this illegal ploy.

Yesterday we become aware of at least five examples of illegal submission of alternate Electors.

Today we became aware of the discussion with the Hitman over resignation, the 25th Amendment, and impeachment due to the ongoing attack on the Capitol.

More to come.

Presumably the Hitman was aware of all these machinations. Presumably he expected/hoped the Vice President would act accordingly to certify the Loser as a winner. The unruly crowd disrupting the proceedings to intimidate the voters and the Vice President would have been icing on the cake.

There was a lot going on. The failure of January 6, 2020, has been studied closely to make sure there is no need for in 2025 or if there is, the attempt will be better organized and planned including control of both Congress and the election infrastructure. It’s amazing how many Democrats will be cheering on Governor Brutus to save the country by slaying the Hitman (who, to be fair, is no Caesar!).

Which one is Governor Brutus? (Vincenzo Camuccini The Death of Julius Caesar detail)

The Historical and Political Significance of Trump Acknowledging His Vaccination Shots

December 28, 2021
by Peter Feinman

The COVID President has acknowledged that he has been vaccinated. Even though he had been infected already he still was vaccinated. According to the science, the vaccination is a more powerful a defense against COVID than any residual antibodies from having had the virus. And if there is any President who believes in following the science it is the former infected-President who lost to Joe Biden.

As has been pointed out by commentators, when the COVID President does acknowledge that he has been vaccinated, his own followers boo him. If he does it on a podcast, then the Candace Owens, the Trumpican host, later twisted into a pretzel. She had to explain to her audience that Trump is too old and too dependent on mainstream news sources to know what he is talking about. She makes him sound like the Foxhub view of the current President!

Alex Jones was even blunter:

This is an emergency Christmas Day warning to President Trump. You are either completely ignorant about the so called ‘vaccine’ gene therapy that you helped ram through with operation warp speed, or you are one of the most evil men who has ever lived…What you told Candace Owens is nothing but a raft of dirty lies.

Trump’s example is unlikely to inspire Trumpicans to convert to followers It should be fun watching the diehard Trumpicans become the ones to challenge him in the way only real Republicans like Liz Chaney have. of science and highlights that they would be ready to cancel him if someone purer came along. It is going to be both brutal and fun watching Trumpicans give the treatment.

Commentators may also note the paucity of the crowd at these “I want your money” shows. He does not appear to be raking in the money that he had anticipated.

What is generally overlooked is the significance of his having been vaccinated. That action has historical and political implications for understanding his tenure as President and for the upcoming elections.

Here is a list of some of the consequences from those comparatively brief and low-ley announcements that he had been vaccinated and his audience should be too.

1. The coronavirus is not a hoax.
2. The 15 cases going down to zero was nonsense.
3. The miracle disappearance was nonsense.
4. The warm weather cure in the summer was nonsense.
5. The hydroxychloroquine preventative was nonsense.
6. The disinfectant cure was nonsense
7. The vaccine is not worse than the disease.
8. Demonizing Fauci was wrong.
9. Weaponizing masks was wrong.
10. He was wrong to fire or transfer government workers who spoke the truth.
11. Following the science was right
12. He does not deserve a “10” for his handling of the pandemic.
13. He does not deserve an “A’ or “A+” for his handling of the pandemic.
14. He is responsible for the deaths of more Americans than Osama bin-Laden.
15. He is responsible for the deaths of more Americans than Adolf Hitler.
16. He is responsible for the deaths of more Americans than the Spanish flu.
17. He had an opportunity to be a Mount Rushmore President if he had provided the United States with the leadership it needed.

This list is quite extensive. It shows how one simple little utterance can have a Krakatoa-East-of-Java impact. By acknowledging that he was vaccinated and his followers should be too, he gives credence to the House Select subcommittee report on the coronavirus crisis released on December 17, 2021. Undoubtedly this report will be a featured item in the COVID in the Unpresidential Library to be located in Manhattan (Presidential Shrine versus Presidential Library for the Former Guy). The 46-page report documents the culpability of the COVID president for his mismanagement of the crisis. Rather than rehash what already had been reported in the news, I will present the section titles of the report:

Part I: The Trump Administration Was Responsible for a Series of Critical Failures that Undermined the Nation’s Ability to Respond Effectively to the Coronavirus Pandemic

Part II: Companies Profited during the Pandemic while Endangering the Public’s Health

Part III: The Trump’s Administration’s Questionable Management of Pandemic Relief Programs Left the Federal Government Vulnerable to Fraud and Profiteering, while Failing to Effectively and Equitably Deliver Relief.

A subtitle under Part I is quite explicit:

5. The Trump’s Administration’s Persistent Political Interference in the Pandemic Response Contributed to One of the Worst Failures of Leadership in American History.

How much more damming a criticism of a President could there be? The criticisms levied about 9/11 and 12/7, the Day of Infamy are about what a President might have done beforehand. In this case, the accusations are about the President did and did not do afterwards.

I predict that in the Unpresidential Library there will be a picture of Nero fiddling while Rome burned and of Trump touting disinfectant.

But this report and the reporting on it fail to tell the whole story. The COVID President is rightfully criticized for his political interference. He also is routinely criticized for always putting himself first, for his narcissism. But it is not evitable that a narcissist playing politics would mismanage the crisis. More is involved.

Reporters and politicians should keep in mind that he was a serial failure in business before he came one in the pandemic. He was and is quite capable of being inept and incompetent even in non-political settings. One should go back and read some of the criticisms of him and predictions about him if he were to become President. Up until COVID, all his failures were self-generated (excluding Charlottesville, perhaps, which was reactive). When he faced his first command decision in a crisis situation, the simple-minded immature child with the emotional maturity of a three-year old was out of his league. He did not have the mental necessities and emotional maturity to succeed in handling the crisis.

Imagine if you will a narcissist with no morals, no conscience, and no ethics as President but who was an adult. Such a person might well realize that the COVID crisis also was an opportunity to provide leadership that would make the President a hero worthy of being on Mount Rushmore. The smart political move was to follow the science and end the pandemic by explaining to We the People what the problem is, the stakes involved, and how we were going to solve the problem. The problem was not that the COVID President acted politically but that he acted stupidly. Remember if the Senate had voted to remove Trump from office then Mike Pence would have become the COVID President, hundreds of thousands of Americans would be alive today and the medical profession would not be exhausted, burned out, an decimated (If Mike Pence Were President, How Many More Americans Would Be Alive Today?: Over 80,000 and Counting, May 22, 2020).

By revealing that he has been vaccinated, DONALD TRUMP has validated the Congressional report and all the criticisms of him as failure.

His admission also has implicitly called out others to desist with the anti-vaxx rhetoric.

1. Foxhub was and is wrong to demonize Fauci
2. Trumpican Congressional performers are wrong to demonize Fauci.

Now we see another reason why it be would a disaster for the country if Jim Jordan and/or Marjorie Taylor Greene attain leadership positions in the House of Representatives at the beginning of 2023.

Perhaps that election result can be prevented. Somehow all the consequences of the admission that he has been vaccinated have been ignored so far. Everything he said about the coronavirus now can be weaponized against him. The opportunities to use his own words against him in upcoming campaigns are endless.

There should be giant billboards of him saying:

I WAS WRONG WHEN I SAID….

followed by the words from the examples listed above… or commercials by The Lincoln Project.

There should be giant billboards of him calling out all the hosts on Foxhub, Congressional legislators, and others who demonized Fauci and refused to follow the science. Trumpicans should be reminded every moment of the truth rather than the bulltrump they are used to hearing.

Naturally, he has no idea of the consequences of saying he was vaccinated and his followers should be vaccinated too. It may start to sink in through the Trumpican reaction. The reaction by Trumpicans to their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name, Say Hallelujah, saying to be vaccinated will become a classic case of cognitive dissonance that psychology teachers and others will use in the classroom.

Because he is a simpleminded immature child he can only understand his comment for the moment. He is not capable of seeing the ripple effect of his being vaccination on the judgement in history of his management of the crisis when he was President.

The question is not is he too simpleminded to understand the consequences, but are the Democrats too incompetent to exploit this admission to the hilt in the upcoming elections in 2022 and 2024. We will have to wait and see.

Foxhub Fears Patriotic Tourists: Suppose John Kelly Had Been Chief of Staff

December 15, 2021
by Peter Feinman
Tsunami Mark Randall Meadows Strikes America (YouTube.com)

The Mark Randall Meadows tsunami has struck the American political arena in overwhelming force. It rates high on the political Richter scale and is the tip of the iceberg of what is to come. It hints at the crimes to be revealed in the documents he did not release to the House Committee. And if this is what Meadows has, imagine the treasure trove of criminality contained in the archival material just waiting for the Supreme Court ruling for it to be released. In this regard, the current hullabaloo over contempt charges pales in scope and significance before the crimes to be charged in the House report as the election season gets underway.

Let’s survey the damage wreaked by the text tornado.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

The House of Representatives consists of multiple subgroups which will react differently to the Meadows Massacre.

1. Fellow Conspirators

It is no secret that members of the House of Representatives conspired with the Hitman to steal the election and overthrow the Constitution. Now their names are known. Not yet to the general public as the members of the House Committee refrained from disclosing those names. It also means that the co-conspirators do not know if their names were included in the particular batch of texts which Meadows turned over so far.

Imagine the situation in the chambers. It was not good before. There already were tensions over masks, guns, and social media postings. Now some of the members have the mark of Meadows emblazoned on their foreheads. They know they are going to be indicted. They know they put their colleagues at risk. They know that they only regret the failure of the effort and being caught but not the attempt to steal the election and overthrow the Constitution.

2. TRINOs (Trumpicans in Name Only)

For TRINOs the final moment of truth is in sight. Even though they are not true believers in Little Donney Wanee as their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name, Say Hallelujah, they have acted as though they are. They voted not to impeach him twice. They voted not to investigate the assault on the Capitol. They voted not to hold in contempt the co-conspirator who defied the House Committee.

Now they are facing a series of votes that represent their last chance to regain their integrity. They are being asked to hold co-conspirators in contempt when the evidence of their crimes is overwhelming. They will be asked to approve a House Committee report recommending criminal indictments of the participants in the effort to steal the election. They will be asked to indict their own colleagues who have expressed no remorse over jeopardizing their lives.

It is easy to assume that TRINOs will remained submissive and in fear of the infamous “base.” It also will be true that these votes will come at a time when it is too late to be primaried. True there is the physical threat to themselves and their families. In this regard the TRINOs are like the election board workers who have voted with their feet to abandon their post. While some may retire, it also is possible that TRINOs may finally have reached their breaking point. Not all of them and not all at once, but little by little as the Big Lie can no longer be lived and they face how close the Hitman came to succeeding, how hard he worked at it, and the help that he had.

3. Elections

It is taken for granted that the Trumpicans will regain power in the House of Representatives in the 2022 elections. The Meadows Massacre may alter those algorithms. Never before will so many named criminals who sought to steal the election be running for Congress. At this point we do not know all the names. We do not know how widespread the conspiracy was. We do not know if the TRINOs will attempt to regain their integrity.

What all this means is that there is a new element to be factored in to political calculations. As this point we can only anticipate that the news will be worse for the co-conspirators as more is released and more people testify even if only to admit with every question that they are guilty by taking the Fifth.

CO-CONSPIRATORS

Contempt of Congress is the least of the problems facing the co-conspirators. People like Steve Bannon, Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Mark Meadows and others (or their lawyers) must realize what is in store for them down the road. Once the documents from the archives and Meadows are released, the House Committee will not need testimony from them to incriminate them. The documents will render the pleas to take the Fifth absurd.

TRUTH OR TRUMP?

The Foxhub hosts have all shown that they are capable of distinguishing between truth and Trump. Their messages from January 6 are now part of the permanent record of the House Committee investigation into the Hitman’s assault on America. For a brief moment like Kevin McCarthy in the House chambers on the phone during the attack, the Foxhub hosts understood that it was Trumpicans ransacking the Capitol and that only one person could call them off. The Foxhub hosts had no illusions about what was transpiring.

I am sure many people cannot wait to the Foxhub hosts are subpoenaed and forced to testify live on national TV. Imagine the ratings. The only network that will not cover it is Foxhub itself.

The Foxhub hosts subsequent dishonesty in covering or rather not covering the investigation is likely to be a campaign theme in the 2022 elections. They are all on record now as being liars. They are all on record as being con artists duping their viewers for ratings and money. This is not to say that they are not true believers in the culture wars only that they cannot be trusted on the facts in what they say. Expect to see billboards with the words of the Foxhub hosts on them. Democrats now have the option of running not only against the Hitman, not only against the co-conspirators running for re-election but against the Foxhub hosts themselves.

Remember the motto: If it’s Foxhub, its bull-Trump.

STOP TREATING TRUMP AS AN ADULT

The stupidest way to analyze the actions of Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, are to treat him as an adult. Such nonsense guarantees the failure to understand him. He lacks the mental necessities to mastermind an attack. In this regard we are fortunate that a simpleminded charge was the Hitman rather than an adult criminal.

Reporters are not the only ones to make this error in judgement. Even the people at Foxhub clamoring for him to act reveal that they believe their own propaganda about him. If they understood who he was and is as a person, they never would have sent those texts.

On January 6, the immature child President was having the time of his life. He loved watching his people storming the Capitol. He genuinely believed that their physical forceful presence would intimidate Pence and the Republicans to undermine the peaceful transfer of power to the duly elected Joe Biden.

It did not occur to him that the members of the House would vacate the chambers for their own safety before the vote could be taken. He expected them to remain in their place.

It did not occur to him that his followers really would kill Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence and who knows who else if they had the chance.

It did not occur to him that if his people had successfully intimidated the Vice President that the results would not be accepted as valid by the country.

What the immature child did do was what he always does – he watched the show on TV. He did not walk down the street with his people as he said he would. Bonespur boy is an alpha male wannabee who never goes into the arena in the real world. Instead he watched the show on TV.

What caused him to act was not the texts he may have been receiving. What caused him to act was not anything someone in the White House said to him, assuming anyone in the White House had the temerity to challenge him to his face. What caused him to act was not the thought that anyone had done anything wrong.

What caused him to act was his realization that the show was over. His people had not caused the election results to be reversed, they had only delayed the inevitable. The fleeing Representatives would return, the vote would be held, and Biden would be certified as the winner. Only with this realization was he willing to say anything to his people. It was a good show. He loves his people. But the time had come to return home.

He may not have realized how widespread the belief in the Big Lie would become.

He may not have realized how quickly Trumpicans would coverup the truth and resist uncovering it.

And he may not have realized that a House Committee would be formed that would uncover the truth and recommend criminal indictments against him.

Up until that time, the President of the United States who openly acknowledges that he prefers dictators and authoritarian leaders to democratically-elected ones, was having the best day of his presidency. To see his people storm the Capital to win him the election brought joy to his heart as he watched it on TV. He was like a child at the circus not wanting the show to end.

Meadows: Science Saved Trump – He Is Furious

December 13, 2021
by Peter Feinman
Mark Meadows reveals the truth

Mark Meadows is not often compared to Toto. However like the famed dog pulling back the curtain to expose the truth of the smoke-and-mirrors Wizard, Meadows has revealed some of the truth about the Liar in Chief. While not the whole truth, it at least is some of the truth. Plus it is important enough to enrage the exposed former President.

DONALD TRUMP CAN NOT READ A BOOK  

The first truth Meadows exposed actually is the well-known fact that the simple-minded child with the emotional maturity of a three year old lacks the mental necessities to read a book. It should be noted that this is not his own fault, it’s just the way his mind is wired. If he was in elementary school today, he would be considered special and alternate means would be used to try to teach him other than through reading. For example, visual means since he can watch television all day long.

During his administration, periodically books would be published about him by reporters, former White House employees, and even a relative. Almost always he would have a comment, negative of course, about the publication following day. I always wondered how he was able to read the book so quickly until I realized, of course, he had not read it at all.

With the Meadows book, he simply took for granted that it would be favorable. He had no hesitancy in promoting the Meadows book as a holiday gift item. Presumably Meadows knew that his boss would not read the book but how he could be so sure someone else would not read it and spill the truth prior to publication? And why did he include the truth anyway? He had to have known that sooner or later the truth would come out and the proverbial Trump would hit the fan.

IF DONALD TRUMP HAD NOT BEEN PRESIDENT HE WOULD BE DEAD

The second truth Meadows exposed is about Covid. The Meadows version of the Covid infection is quite different from the “official” version. The patient was sick before he went public and then he tried to blame Hope Hicks. Before the heroic ride around the parking lot and the macho removal of the mask at the White House, there was an extremely sick person on the brink of dying. He was weak, disheveled, and receiving treatment not yet approved for the general public.

Meadows disclosed that the doctors decided to put the sick President on a respirator in the White House and hope for the best.

Meadows disclosed that the decision to transport the sick President to the hospital would be see as an act of capitulation. Could there be a worse example of leadership?

Meadows disclosed that only the image of being taken out on a gurney was sufficient to cause the sick President to go voluntarily while he still could walk.

Meadows disclosed that the sick President was so weak he was unable to carry his briefcase.

Meadows disclosed that he arranged for unauthorized medicine to be secretly delivered for the sick President.

Naturally the sick President erupted in anger at that time when Meadows disclosed the truth to the press on how dire the situation was. That should have been a warning as to how he would react if the truth was published in a book…even one he could not read.

If Trump had not had access to this level of care there is a good chance he would not have survived.

SCIENCE SAVED HIM.

He was not saved by injecting disinfectant.

He was not saved by horse medicine.

He was not saved by mouthwash.

He was not saved by distrusting science.

Instead he was saved by following the science. This scenario is totally unacceptable to Trumpicans and they simply will not believe it…. assuming they even hear about it on Foxhub.

MEADOWS WAS A CO-CONSPIRATOR ON 1/6

The third truth that Meadows has exposed is that he was a co-conspirator in the attempt to steal the election and overthrow the Constitution. The House Committee has now voted to recommend that Meadows be indicted for contempt. Enough information has been released so far to indict him for sedition as well. Far from being a casual bystander, Meadows was an active participant in the attempt to steal the election and overthrow the Constitution. One wonders what is going through his mind now since surely he is intelligent enough to see his future is a criminal one.

Obviously, the House Committee would be helped if Meadows told the whole truth. It can expect additional documents from both Meadows and the Hitman once the claim of Executive Privilege is disposed of by the Supreme Court at some point early next year. It can expect Meadows will be forced to appear before the committee at some point next year. It also can expect that he will take the Fifth repeatedly. Meadows is still under the impression that he has a place in the Trump administration after the next presidential election….plus he also may realize what may happen to him if he did tell the truth.

MEADOWS LIKE PENCE AND MCCARTHY IS ON THE TRUMP LIST

Mike Meadows has joined Mike Pence and Kevin McCarthy on the Trump list. Once you are disloyal you are placed on the list and never can be removed from. It doesn’t matter what you do, what you kiss, or how many times you visit him, nothing can change the fact of your betrayal. Meadows betrayed his boss on both Covid and January 6. The fact that he now refuses to cooperate with the House Committee and has filed a silly lawsuit is meaningless. It’s too late. Thousands of documents already have been released.  More will follow as the Courts eviscerate the claim of executive privilege.

How many times can people plead the Fifth without openly admitting that they are guilty?

How many people can plead the Fifth to every question without openly admitting they all are guilty and you know who the Hitman is?    

Mark Meadows has now arrived at his moment of truth. Soon he will have to decide to whether or not to tell the House Committee the whole truth or not. Mike Pence who still hopes to be President and Kevin McCarthy who still hopes to be Speaker of the House will face the same moment of truth. One wonders how long before the three of them realize that they never will be removed from the Trump list and have no future in a Trump-dominated parry. In other words, what do they have to gain by covering up for the Hitman when he is perfectly prepared to throw them under the bus?

So far Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Jeffrey Clark, and John Eastman have yet to realize that they are going to be indicted for sedition in the House report. Is Mark Meadows equally shortsighted and stupid? Will the light bulb ever click in his head? Will he be willing to make a deal in exchange for telling the truth? His book suggests he might be but his actions so far suggest he won’t, at least not yet.

Steve Bannon in Court: So What?

November 17, 2021
by Peter Feinman
The Ghost of Bannon Future (nypost.com/2021/11/17)

This week marked a change in the investigation of the Hitman’s assault on America in his attempt to steal the election and overthrow the Constitution. One of the leading confederates in this effort surrendered himself to the Court in response to his defiance of a House subpoena. His action including his public media antics have generated much discussion while obscuring the most important fact. The true question to be asked of the legal proceedings is “So what?”

Let’s examine a possible sequence of events and their meaning for the upcoming elections in 2022 and 2024.

STEVE BANNON

Bannon played a pivotal role in the insurrection of 1/6. He was the public voice. He was the one extolling the importance of this critical event in American history. He brought a sense of the historic even apocalyptic drama about to enfold. Bannon placed the events in its cosmic importance and called on Trumpicans to participate in this great day in American history.

He has no wish to say so under oath to the House committee. He understands the consequences of saying under oath what he said on the radio. He knows that these actions he advocated and the planning he participated in with others will be deemed criminal and seditious by the very people he was seeking to overthrow. Hence the defiance. He has more to gain from the national spotlight on his every utterance than he has to lose inside the courthouse or before the House 1/6 committee.

Suppose he loses the case in Court. Suppose after however long it takes including appeals, there comes a time when he is found guilty and stands for punishment. Will he be sentenced for two years or concurrent 30-day terms? Will he receive probation? Will his fine be minor and easily paid off by loyal Trumpicans? Will it cause him to testify under oath, to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and to incriminate himself? Obviously not. After going through these process the net result still will be no testimony.

The same sequence will be repeated with all the other participants in the attempted coup who are subpoenaed. What do they have to gain by testifying under the oath and telling the truth to the House committee? The answer is nothing. The people who are guilty of sedition have nothing to gain by admitting that they helped the Hitman’s attempt to steal the election and overthrow the government. Possibly one individual might seek a deal: to tell the truth in exchange for not being indicted in the final report. And that is the key. The final report and not these legal maneuverings is the key in determining whether the effort by the House committee was worth it.

THE HOUSE REPORT  

Consider what has happened so far. Over 150 people voluntarily have given testimony to the House Committee. Additional information is available from the public comments of various individuals such as Bannon and from published books detailing exactly how the Vice President was to steal the election. Simply based on the information provided so far, the House committee could write a narrative about the Hitman’s attempt to steal the election and overthrow the Constitution.

More information is coming. True, there has been a delay in the transfer of records from the National Archives to the House committee. Once those legal hurdles have been overcome there is likely to be a veritable gusher of data pouring onto the Committee. It will be as if it had struck the mother lode. There will be so much information there that the narrative of the final report will read like a Hollywood script as indeed it will be one day.

In addition, there may be information from the case unfolding in Georgia.

In short, the House committee will not need the testimony of the insurrection instigators to have sufficient date to indict all of them for sedition. This is not to say that the information from the co-conspirators would not be welcomed, only that it is not necessary to compile a damning indictment of all the people who refused to tell the House committee the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The concern for Bannon, Meadows, et.al. is not what is going to happen for defying the subpoenas, but what will happen when they are charged with sedition by the House.

THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

The true moment of truth will come the DOJ receives the House report calling for the indictments of multiple participants in the insurrection including the former President of the United States. Each and every person will not necessarily be charged with the exact same counts but all the people who obstructed the investigation will be charged for their participation in the insurrection.

What will the DOJ do then? So far most of the chronological discussion has been around the narrow window of the investigating committee. Everyone knows it needs to be done prior to Trump’s Traitors taking over the House. Informally, the Committee seems to be aiming for a (late) spring date to have a completed report with or without the recalcitrant participants. One can anticipate a report based on the evidence it has including the data from the National Archives. The House committee should be done in time.

In time for what? The general rule is no politically-related indictment after Labor Day when the election campaign “officially” begins. This means roughly, the DOJ will have the summer to decide whether or not to indict anyone for sedition and whatever other charges are included in the report. One of the conspirators named in the report will be the former President himself.

At this point, there is no way to know what the DOJ will do in the summer of 2022. There is no way to know which people it will indict, when it will indict them, or who it will not indict. One possible scenario is to string indictments of the small fish prior to Labor Day. This means Bannon, Meadows, Clark, etc.,, all the underlings save for the Hitman himself.

2022 ELECTION

Normally the midterm election in a first–term President is seen as an opportunity for out-of-power Party to gain seats. Certainly everyone anticipates that scenario will be followed even without the added benefit of voter suppression and gerrymandering. However, this time we will have two presidents. Strange as it might seem the leading issue after the House report is completed may not be the economy or Covid Instead it will be:

Is Joe Biden the legitimate President of the United States and should Donald Trump be held accountable for his effort to steal the election and overthrow the Constitution?

Or

 

Is Donald Trump the legitimate President of the United States and should Joe Biden (and his Vice President) be removed from office due to his successful steal of the election?

If the latter prevails, expect a new House committee to investigate the steal leading to an impeachment in the House but insufficient votes in the Senate to remove Biden.

Everything going on now is just foreplay. If Trumpicans take control of the House and Senate effectively there will be no government for two years save by Executive Order. The President will be spending most of his fending off repeated impeachment attacks and investigations from the Trumpican-controlled House.  It well may be that rather than have to wait for 2024 election for division of America into the United States of Trump and the United States of America, it may happen after the 2022 elections. Whether or not America can function in those circumstances remains to be seen. Stay focused on the 2022 election and let’s see if we make it to 2024. Maybe some Congressional Republicans will go rogue and caucus with the Democrats …

New York City Council Endorses Donald Trump for President: This Isn’t an April Fools Joke

October 24, 2021
by Peter Feinman
NYC Public Design Commission calls for toppling statues of slave-owner Ramses II at Abu Simbel (Wikepedia)

In a stunning and surprising move the Public Design Commission in New York City voted to endorse Donald Trump for the presidency in 2024. Amazingly, this action was taken three years before the election. It occurred in a jurisdiction that voted overwhelmingly against him in both 2016 and 2020. One might legitimately wonder why the Commission is so eager to encourage people to vote for Trump.

To answer that question, one should consider two facets of the puzzle: the historical and the political. The decision by the Commission to remove the statue of Thomas Jefferson from the Council chambers is both a political issue for the election itself (and possibly the 2022 Congressional elections as well) and an historical one as America prepares for the 250th anniversary of the signing of a document Jefferson wrote at the birth of the country.

NEW YORK AND THE 250TH ANNIVERSARY

During the 2021 legislative session, the New York State Senate and Assembly authorized the creation of a state commission for the 250th. Besides the obvious historical reasons for such a commission, as a matter of procedure, federal money for the 250th will be distributed through state commissions. Therefore it behooves states to create such commissions.

The bill is waiting for the Governor signature. Under the previous Governor, bills like this one tended to linger until the fourth quarter when they would be authorized. As an example, the bill for the quadricentennial of the non-New York 1619 event was not finally signed until 2020, meaning after the anniversary had occurred. A commission was to be created perhaps to be made public in March, 2020. That also was the time of covid, so in the end there never was a 1619 Quadricentennial Commission in New York.

A similar delay will not occur here. The new Governor obviously is quite busy right now including preparing for her own election campaign in 2022. I have been told that she soon will sign the bill. It definitely is to her advantage to own the 250th as New York was very involved in the American Revolution and in its continued legacy.

In some ways, there is no rush. While the Federal program is gearing towards 2026, things in New York will just be getting started then and will continue until Evacuation Day, November 25, 2033. In fact, the first big event in New York occurred just after July 4, 1776. The event is the toppling of the statue of King George III on July 9, 1776, at Bowling Green, just a few blocks from City Hall and the city council chambers.

So the first big event in New York as part of the 250th will be the response by New Yorkers to the reading of the Declaration of Independence. Undoubtedly this will be a big tourist event. The toppling of the statue will be re-enacted. Perhaps there will even be a convoy to Connecticut where the metal from the bronze statue became bullets for the Patriot army. The only one missing from this Declaration event will be Thomas Jefferson. He will be missing because:

“Jefferson embodies some of the most shameful parts of our country’s history,” said Adrienne Adams, Queens, co-chair Black and Latino caucus, New York City Council.

One possible disposition of the statue under discussion is to the New-York Historical Society. However in response to that suggestion current New York State Assemblyman Charles Barron said:

“I don’t think it should go anywhere. I don’t think it should exist. I think it should be put in storage or destroyed or whatever.”

The physical removal of Thomas Jefferson from the New York City Council chambers is easier than cancelling him from the American Revolution and its legacy. The legacy of the Declaration continued on in the efforts to end slavery in the United States. The legacy of the Declaration continued on in the efforts of white women to gain the same rights as white men. The legacy of the Declaration continues on to this very as an ideal by which to measure ourselves and to bend the arc of history. But not in the New York City Council. Will it cancel George Washington too?

THE POLITICAL RAMIFICATIONS

Why do I say the action of the Public Design Commission in New York City is an endorsement of Trump? I certainly do not mean to suggest that the individual members of the Commission support him or want other people to vote for him. I am saying that their actions encourage people to vote for him. The Commission has taken a stand in the culture wars. Not everyone agrees with that decision or supports that side in the culture wars.

At this point there is no reason to pretend that we are not a divided country. We are an intensely polarized country. Masks have been weaponized. Vaccinations have been weaponized. 1619 has been weaponized. The American flag itself has been weaponized. People who fly it or show it or have it painted on a truck are presumed to have a particular political and cultural point of view. In an article entitled “A Fourth of July Symbol that May No Longer Unite”( NYT 7/3/21), the issue of the connection between the flag and a political party was raised. Peter Treiber, a farmer who has a flag painted on his potato truck, often is presumed to have political views which he does not share. He is concerned that the left has all but ceded the flag to the right.

Joe Biden, of course, embraces the flag. But in the Democratic Party, he is the remnant of the dying past and not the wave of the future. One should always keep in mind that he is the only Democrat who could have defeated Trump in 2020 and at this point is the only Democrat with a chance of beating him in 2024. There is no Plan B. Whether Democrats understand that or not is problematical. Whether the Woke care or not is even more problematical.

One should understand the Woke actions of the Public Design Commission in this light. For those toppling, removing, cancelling or whatever Thomas Jefferson, the joy and satisfaction may be fleeting. At the same time the Commission was taking this action, columnist Tom Friedman appeared on CNN. First he appeared on Anderson Cooper and then portions of the interview were replayed by Don Lemon. Clearly they understand the importance of the message Friedman is delivering: “Our next presidential election could well be our last as a shining example of democracy (September 29, 2021, print).

Friedman did not really say anything new, only more emphatically and with greater urgency. His recent op-ed piece asked “Have We Reshaped Middle East Politics or Started to Mimic It? (September 15, 2021, print). We now have Sunnis and Shiites where an “epidemic of tribal political correctness from the left served only to energize the tribal solidarity on the right.” His thinks Democrats are digging themselves into a hole and should stop digging. He defines American as a center-left to center-right country. By contrast the politically-correct-Woke-Progressives are all left all the time. And they communicate in an elitist derogatory manner. Whereas Trumpicans claim the Joe Biden presidency is illegitimate, the Woke claim the country of the United States is illegitimate born in original sin. Far from accepting the advice of Friedman to tone it down, they will instead double down.

The political consequences for the Woke assault on the legitimacy of the United States will be detrimental to the Democrats. It did not help them in 2020 Senate and House elections. The Virginia governorship is at risk this year. It will not help Democrats in the 2022 elections. It already is taken for granted that the Democrats will lose the House of Representatives. Then the January 6 Committee will be replaced by the first of the impeach Joe Biden committees. At the moment the 2020 presidential candidate loser is going like gangbusters within his own party and chomping at the bit to declare his candidacy for 2024. He can smell the blood in the Biden polls.

In the meantime, America’s third civil war rages on. It is being fought at the local level in school districts throughout the country. School Board members are seeking protection. Covid has enabled parents to see online what is being taught in the schools. People can relate to 1619, systemic racism, critical race theory, and diversity-equity-inclusion in their own communities. They can see which party waves the American flag and which does not. They can see which party praises the Founding Fathers and which party topples them. There are plenty of online venues where these issues are being discussed. The front-page headline of my local paper today (October 24) is “Are schools making progress on diversity?” Parents already are voting with their feet to remove children from republic schools and to recall school board members. They are energized.

These issues go right to the gut of voters. America’s greatest con artist can fake being a patriot, the Woke cannot. One should keep in mind that regardless of the vote in 2024, roughly half the country will not accept the results or even agree on the results. The only real issue is what happens then.

Can West Virginia Save Ezra Klein?

October 11, 2021
by Peter Feinman
"Civil War" was a top trending topic on Twitter on Sunday after remarks from an attendee of former President Donald Trump's rally in Iowa were widely circulated online and by the media. Trump held a rally at the Iowa State Fairground in Des Moines on Saturday. At the event, Trump supporter Lori Levi told MSNBC that she believes the U.S. is headed for a "civil war." Levi criticized Democrats and Republicans, saying most members of the GOP are "as weak as they possibly could be in Congress." "They're establishment. They don't care about the American people because they're in their elite little tower," she said. "So we're just sick of it, you know, and we're not going to take it anymore. I see a civil war coming. I do. I see civil war coming." (www.newsweek.com)

West Virginia is having a moment. So far in 2021, it has been the legislative year of West Virginia. How much longer can this last? What does it mean for the elections of 2022 and beyond?

JOE MANCHIN IS NOT MITT ROMNEY

In February, 2020, I wrote a blog entitled Where Will Mitt Romney Caucus in 2021? I said the following about Manchin at the time of the second impeachment vote:

It is rare for a Senator to break with a party on an impeachment vote. So far in American history, there is only one instance of a Senator voting to remove a President of his own party. Apparently, the Impeached One thought there was a Democrat who might vote against his party. Joe Manchin, West Virginia Senator, has long been considered one of the more conservative members of the Democratic Party. He has voted more often against his Democratic caucus than with it. There seems to have been a genuine belief that this Senator (and perhaps Doug Jones of Alabama for different reasons) might defect. Obviously that did not happen. The Democratic Party remained united.

The main subject of the blog was not the impeachment vote but the 2020 Senate elections. Different outcomes were possible. I conjectured that there was the possibility of a split Senate and what it might mean.

And then there is Mitt Romney. Suppose when all is said and done, the Trumpicans have 50 Senate seats… But suppose the Democrats win the presidency. Then Romney’s vote could make the difference. In this case, the Democrats only need a net gain of two to put Romney in the driver’s seat.

At the beginning of this year, I returned to the same subject:

Depending on how the vote in Georgia plays out, Mitt Romney may potentially have the opportunity to take a leadership role in healing the country. Of course, even if that opportunity presents itself, he may not rise to the occasion to take such a leadership position. Of course, if he doesn’t, who will?

As it turned out, I had the numbers right but the Senator wrong. One Senator has been in the driver’s seat and taken a leadership position but it has been the West Virginia Senator, Joe Manchin.

THE SENATE AND EZRA KLEIN

Manchin’s position will likely change after the 2022 elections. One possibility is that the Democrats will do well and pick up seats in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. Such a Democratic majority in the Senate would neutralize the significance of Manchin’s vote including for the filibuster. Another possibility of course, is that the Democrats will lose their leadership in the Senate in which case Manchin will be meaningless.

The Democratic prospects in the Senate contributed to a major op-ed piece in The New York Times yesterday entitled “David Shor Is Telling Democrats What They Don’t Want to Hear.” Klein paints a dire picture for the Democrats in accordance with the prognostications of modeler Shor. My purpose here is not to regurgitate Shor’s predictions or Klein’s response. Rather I will hone in on the Senate-related comments.

Klein notes that the Senate configuration overweighs rural states. He cites the Republicans adding a flurry of states in 1889 and 1890 that continue to vote Republican to this very day – North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Washington (Democratic state level). Klein mentions the last gasp in the present Congress for additional Democratic states in Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. to rectify that imbalance.

The consequences of this division is doom for the Democrats. Essentially, Democrats can pile up the votes in states like California and New York and have little to show for it. I have always thought Democrats in California should create their own Homestead Act in other states. Imagine relocating 1-2 million Democratic voters from California to Republican and/or battleground states. In part, something like that has happened but it is Republicans in California moving to Texas instead. Think of New-York-City-dwelling Democrats who move to Florida and are replaced by immigrants who vote Democrat for a net change of zero. By contrast, when upstate Republicans move to Florida, they are replaced by no one. The result is an even more Democratic state.

In my local paper, there was a report of Westchester County Republicans becoming desperate. Once the county was Republican. Now all county positions are Democratic and all county legislators are Democratic except for one who is Conservative. The Republican Party therefore if it wishes to be successful has to live in real world. It has decided to jettison Trump to get back in the good graces of the voters. Good luck with that effort as the Hitman gears up for the 2024 election.

I mention these New York and California anecdotes to point out that major structural change is needed if the Democrats wish to overcome the Senate and Electoral College obstacles. Small actions just don’t cut it. Once again, West Virginia shows the way.

THE WEST VIRGINIA SOLUTION TO THE SENATE AND ELECTORAL COLLEGE

More and more people now are openly talking about the current civil war and the possibility of secession. On one level, I am pleased to see people are now facing the real world. For years I have been writing about the civil, not cultural war. For years I have expressed my doubts over whether we will celebrate the 250th birthday of the country in its present form. At this point baring medical concerns, the 2024 presidential election will be a rematch of the 2020 election, the first rematch since 1956. To know this far in advance who the candidates will be really is remarkable. The Hitman already has taken his show on the road to Iowa. The campaign is underway.

In 2024, no matter what, the Hitman will claim victory on Election Night. What will Joe Biden do? January 6, 2021, is small taste of what will happen if the Hitman is not certified as the winner in 2025. The civil war will move beyond the talking stage to the fighting stage. We already know that whether we want to admit it or not. Since we know this scenario will play out, what if anything can be done to minimize the looming violence?

One step is the West Virginia example from America’s Second Civil War.  The key to minimizing the violence and uncertainty is following the precedent of West Virginia. In the Second Civil War, the people of what became West Virginia separated from the Confederate state of Virginia. They did not ask Virginia’s permission; they just did it and with Federal approval.

We need to follow that precedent. The eleven Confederate states need to divide into their constituent parts – part Trumpican and part American. The boundary lines should not be that difficult to determine. There already are gerrymandered districts at the Congressional and state level. Voting results are known at the county level. As part of the post-2020 census reapportionment, the Confederate state legislatures effectively will divide their states into two groups anyway. The next step is to take that division further by creating separate states based on those boundary lines drawn by the Confederates.

The result will be eleven new states. What worked for Republicans in 1889 and 1890 can work for Democrats in 2024. The new states directly address the issues raised by Klein and in a far more decisive manner. The eleven new states mean 22 additional Senators and a reallocation of the current Representatives. The 22 states will have 44 Senators, 22 Trumpican and 22 Democrat. These numbers compare to 18 Trumpican and 4 Democrat at present. The net increase of 14 Democrats creates a high hurdle for Trumpicans to overcome to achieve control of the Senate. The separation also eliminates the issues of voter suppression, rigged counting, and partisan Secretaries of State at least in the Confederate states. It also means the current Electoral College vote totals in Confederate states including Texas and Florida will be split between the two candidates instead of winner-take-all.

We all know that winter is coming. We all know that the storm is coming. We all know that Americans will not accept the results of the 2024 presidential election. Why wait until after the fact to respond? Why not act now to minimize the violence? Separate the Confederate states into Union and Confederate peacefully now while we still can. Trumpicans are hard at work to ensure the game is rigged in 2024; it is past time for the Democrats to rise to the occasion and fight back.

Critical Thinking and the Stacey Abrams for Governor Endorsement

September 28, 2021
by Peter Feinman

Tucker Carlson calls for the banning of peanuts since someone died from eating them.

Tucker Carlson calls for the banning of sex since someone had a heart attack while having it.

Tucker Carlson calls for the banning of drinking water since someone had a stroke after drinking some.

Most likely such pronouncements would not pass muster not even on Carlson’s cable show. However, we are now experiencing case studies not in Critical Race Theory but in critical thinking. In a democracy everyone has the right to vote. We no longer can test people to determine if they have the mental necessity to vote, that is, to be informed voters capable of making critical thinking decisions about the candidates. But what we are learning, is that not all people have such skills regardless of their age and their decision making reflects that shortcoming.

CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS

Critical thinking skills are not the ability to memorize people, places, and dates. I mention those three examples because typically they are the way people define history in the public schools. It is all about the boring need to remember people, places, and dates, information that is readily available online should one actually have any use of it. To some extent such a characterization of history as it is taught in the public schools is true. Supposedly, the situation changes in history classes in college. The emphasis shifts from memorization and regurgitation to analysis and thinking about questions posed by the teachers and raised by the students themselves.

As a general rule, there are no child prodigies in history. On average, the public school mind is not capable of the same level of thinking as the college mind. The college mind is less capable of thinking than the adult mind in part due to the absence of experiences. The ability to incorporate real world experiences into one’s thinking changes the critical thinking skills of the individual. Ideas can become more grounded in reality.

The brain changes as one matures.  It does not happen at the exact same age for everyone, it does not develop at the same rate once it does start, and it does not end at the same place for everyone one the process starts. There is a bell curve to critical thinking skills just as there is for most things in life. There are Anthony Faucis and there are Marjorie Taylor-Greenes. Bluntly put, there are people who never will be able to think as well as others. In a democracy the issue is the ability to think well enough to be an informed voter. One problem challenging the ability of a democracy to survive is that suppose not enough people have the critical thinking skills to be an informed voter.

Let’s look at some case studies now affecting the country.

STACEY ABRAMS FOR GOVERNOR

We have just witnessed an example of the seventh-grade smart-aleck-dumb-aleck mind at work. When such a person wakes up in the morning, he does not know what smart-ass remark he will blurt out during the day. The material is not planned. It just happens. Yes, there may be some standard nasty comments but the original remarks are unanticipated. They depend on what the teacher says, how the students respond, and the individual skill of the smart-aleck-dumb-aleck to improvise based on the moment.

In other words, there was no plan to endorse Stacey Abrams for governor of Georgia over Brian Kemp. Instead the speaker was in the flow. He was grooving on insulting the person who had defied him and not helped me steal the Georgia vote and win the state. As he was speaking, the nastiest insult he could think of popped into his head. He would say a Democrat is better than a RINO. He would say that a woman is better than a man. He would say that a black person is better than a white person. He would say a loser (in 2018) is better than the winner. And he would do so in one perfectly calibrated insult: Stacey Abrams would be a better governor than you are. And it felt good saying it.

Did he think through the consequences of his insult? Of course not. The seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck simply blurted what felt good for the moment. He never gave a thought to the consequences because he was incapable of thinking of the consequences. The insult felt good at the moment so he said it. Sometimes he can show minimal thinking skills: going public with getting a colonoscopy would make him the butt of jokes. He knows what cracks he would make as seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck about a colonoscopy so he understood what would happen if he was the target instead of the attacker.

Unfortunately for him, there still are some Republican adults in Georgia. They understood the significance of his wisecrack. Stacey Abrams does too. One can anticipate seeing and hearing that endorsement multiple times during the campaign in the event she does run for governor.

But what about the audience? In general, the audience responds to the utterings of the seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck. They laugh along with his insults. If he tries some adult stuff like “get vaccinated” they respond by booing. But nobody seemed to boo at the Stacey Abrams endorsement. The question must be asked why didn’t the Trumpicans boo him after his endorsement of the number one enemy of the Georgian Trumpicans? Didn’t they understand the implications of what he was saying? Didn’t they recognize the consequences? Apparently not. Maybe now they realize the impact of what he said. But at the moment of utterance, they did not have the mental necessities to boo him for that remark.

CORONAVIRUS AND RED-STATE DEATHS

The inability to make an intelligent informed decision is most visible now in the deaths from the coronavirus. Initially White House Trumpicans did not care about a virus hoax that seemingly targeted AOC people. They did not understand that the virus strikes based on opportunity and vulnerability and not on politics and race. True we had to learn about the virus, but once we did as a nation we understood that politics does matter: adult human beings in a democratic society are making informed decisions not to be vaccinated. After all it is a hoax, it is no worse than the flu, I am healthy, the vaccination is more deadly than the virus, shortcuts were used to develop the vaccine. I have done my research on the web and have made an intelligent informed decision. Don’t bother me the facts that unvaccinated people in red states are now the ones being killed. What lie are you going to tell me next? That the election wasn’t stolen? That the forensic audit in Arizona proved the election was not stolen?

The coronavirus vaccines illustrate the absence of critical thinking skills in huge portions of the population. In the September/October 2021 issue of The Pennsylvanian Gazette, Penn President Amy Gutmann, nominated to be ambassador to Germany wrote:

For decades prior, Penn medical researchers Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó had been investigating synthetic messenger RNA as a new and completely different way to prompt specific antibodies to fight against a targeted disease. Quietly in their laboratories, without fanfare, they created the breakthrough technologies that underly (sic) two of the most effective vaccines being employed to battle the pandemic: the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech shots.

Shortly afterwards, the Lasker awards for 2021 for excellence in medicine was awarded to these two research scientists, a potential precursor to winning a Nobel Prize. In the meantime, the scientists have won the $3 million Breakthrough Prize and the $1 million dollar Albany Prize.

By coincidence, an enthusiastic Penn alum wrote a letter published in the same issue as the Presidential column above on these individuals. Her concern was:

What I fail to understand is why Penn is not screaming it from the rafters. Call CNN, PBS, specifically Fox, targeting the unvaccinated audience. Get on the news so people who think the vaccines were developed too quickly can be reassured that researchers have been working on them for decades.

One can feel the emotional urgency in this letter. The writer genuinely believes that this information can save lives. The Penn alum implicitly believes that the unvaccinated people exposed to this information possess the critical thinking skills to see the light, change their minds, and become vaccinated. The evidence suggests otherwise.  Such hopes are wishful thinking. Forget about mandates. Even death doesn’t change the unvaccinated peoples’ minds.  There has been a lot of discussion about achieving herd immunity. There has been very little discussion about culling the herd of the most vulnerable people, the unvaccinated, to attain it. The American gospel of “come let us reason together” presupposes that people have the critical thinking skills to reason together. No provision has been made for situations where they don’t.

Truth in Peril: Trump Fawkes Day

September 27, 2021
by Peter Feinman
Britain Celebrates Guy Fawkes Day by Burning Trump in Effigy (www.express.co.uk)

Last January 3, I wrote a blog about political thrillers. This genre perhaps peaked in the 1960s during the height or depths of the Cold War (World War III). They were stories of intrigue and deception as people battled for power at a time when the very existence of the world was at stake.

I wrote this blog due to the circumstances as I understood them on January 3. The Hitman (not yet known by that name) was trying to steal the election. In a few short days he would seek to overthrow the Constitution. I did not know that at the time. Since then I have learned a lot especially in the past two weeks as more and more information has become available. Undoubtedly we will learn even more. It is mindboggling how close his attempt to steal the election came to succeeding and how little consequences there have been for that effort.

TRUMP DAY, OUR GUY FAWKES DAY

America now has its own Guy Fawkes Day. The original holiday occurred on November 5, 1605, when Catholics in England sought to blow up Parliament, the Houses of Lords and Commons, as it was called into session. The intention was to spark a revolt against the Protestant state and restore the true Catholic monarchy to power. Spoiler alert: the effort failed.

Guy Fawkes and his confederates were captured, tried for treason, convicted, and hanged. In 1606, Parliament designated November 5 as Guy Fawkes Day in remembrance of the Catholic attempt to overthrow the government.  The holiday continues to this very day but in a more genteel fashion. It is a day of family, friends, and fireworks plus the hanging of Guy Fawkes in effigy. Sometimes the British even burn effigies of Donald Trump on that day. When January 6 becomes Trump Day in the United States, then he will be burned in effigy here. One should keep in mind, however, that while Guy Fawkes failed, the battle to overthrow the Constitution continues and its outcome is uncertain.

THE HOUSE COMMITTEE

Before January 6 can become Trump Day, the House Committee investigating the Hitman’s attempt to steal the election has to complete its task. In some ways its job as been made much easier. Bob Woodward and Bob Costa have investigated the attempted takeover and published their findings. If the Committee simply documents those findings as a matter of law, it would be sufficient to convict the Hitman and his confederates.

We now know the six-point plan for the Vice President to overthrow the election results on January 6. He was castigated by the Hitman for not doing what needed to be done. At the time, we did not know that he had been tasked by this plan to take specific actions. We can look forward to the two of them testifying under the oath about the plan.

We now know that the Trump campaign knew the charges of election fraud were bogus. More testimony to come.

The first round of subpoenas has been issued to the key confederates of the Hitman. Of course they will resist testifying. When finally forced to testify they will all suffer from memory loss and plead the 5th. They also know that they will be charged with crimes in the final report.

The same sequence applies to a future round of subpoenas to members of Congress who helped foment the January 6 assault on America and the attempt to steal the election.

The same sequence applies to a future subpoena of the Hitman himself.

One should not ignore the political consequences to these actions by the House Committee. Besides the legal jeopardy there is a political one. The Committee knows that it has to complete its work before the next Congressional session. There is too great a risk that the Trumpicans will seize power in House and disband the Committee. The report also needs to be completed prior to the commencement of the 2022 Midterm Congressional campaign. These calculations mean that in less than one year a House Committee will have issued a report calling for the indictment of the former President of the United States, sitting members of Congress, and others for their role in the attempt to steal the election and overthrow the Constitution.

Think about what that means. In September 2022, a criminal case in New York involving the Trump organization and perhaps the Hitman himself will be underway. The DOJ will be mulling over what to do in response to the report it just received from the House Committee. Does it indict the individuals immediately, meaning before the election, does it wait until after the election, or does it do nothing? We will not know until it happens. However we can easily anticipate what will happen if the DOJ indicts the Hitman and seeks to arrest him just as the Congressional elections begin.

THE CIVIL WAR

For several years now, I have been writing about the Third Civil War in the United States. I have expressed doubt that by the time of the 250th birthday of the country that it will still exist in the same configuration it does today. By employing the Civil War term and not just culture wars, I was referring to the violence which will occur as part of this process.

Initially, I expected the 2020 Presidential election as the time when the war would break out. To some extent January 6 falls in that category but like Guy Fawkes Day it did not spark a revolt. However it did spark an outpouring of legislative actions designed to prevent the reelection of Joe Biden and to guarantee the election of the 2020 loser. Also there has developed a widespread conviction among Trumpicans that the election was in fact stolen. Nothing, including the farcical Arizona “forensic” audit can sway them from their deeply held beliefs. In this regard the situation is much like the religious war circumstances of the original Guy Fawkes Day.

So what will Trumpicans do if their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name, Say Hallelujah, is charged, indicted, and taken into custody about one year from now? The civil war eruption now scheduled for the 2024 Presidential election may then be pushed up to the 2022 indictment. Any attempt to hold the Hitman responsible to for January 6 and the attempt to steal the election is likely to trigger a violent response.

People more and more are finally accepting the reality that we are two houses divided that cannot stand together as one. The language on talk shows, the op-ed pieces, and the speeches more and more express the reality that the talk of the civil war is not just talk. It is a question of when and not if. The release of the House Committee report may be the catalyst for that violence over two years before the Presidential election. It may determine if the Hitman even can be a candidate in 2024. If the United States prevails, then January 6 will become Trump Day, the American equivalent of Guy Fawkes Day. If Trumpicans prevail, then January 6 will become the new July 4th for the United States of Trump.

Mr. Ed versus Dr. Fauci: Lessons from Covid

September 10, 2021
by Peter Feinman
The true source of the inside scoop on Covid

Covid has shed a light deep into the American society and continues to do so. Unfortunately the American Covid show is playing not only for American audiences but a world one. Perhaps more than with any other country, what happens here is showcased to a global audience. So as we and the world look at America and Covid, what do we see?

AMERICA’S TECHNOLOGICAL PROWESS

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, one of the shining lights of America’s response to Covid has been the quick development of not just one but multiple vaccines. This development was a long time in the making. It built on years of scientific research that had no immediate payback. If ever there was a case study in the benefit of pure research it is in the disease that continues to infect America. Without all that behind-the-scene and below-the-radar work by research scientists we would not have been able to develop the vaccines as quickly as we did. Whether or not the American public realizes this development history is problematic meaning “No, it does not.” One only has to listen to people declare that the vaccine was developed too quickly with shortcuts to realize what has occurred. At least with the Moon Landing, people could physically observe the steps being taken along the way. By contrast, the America people do not know the Mercury and Gemini stages existed in the development of the vaccines; they just see the Apollo moon landing as if it happened out of nothing.

AMERICA’S STUPIDITY

Just as America’s technological prowess makes us the envy of the world, so our stupidity makes us a laughingstock of the world. Unfortunately these displays extend from the highest level in society to a surprisingly wide swath of the general population.

This is not the place to recount all the absurdities uttered by Little Donnee Disinfectant. He will be a case study all by himself in future crisis management classes. He will join the ranks of Nero fiddling while Rome burns (which is not fair to Nero!) as exemplifying ineptitude and incompetence during a crisis.

But the critical point is that he has paid little price for his shortcomings. True, he did lose the election but still received around 75 million votes. His continued support shows that true believers do not hold him accountable and they are eager to return to the office which he had stolen from him.

The bigger example of American stupidity is in response to the vaccine itself. Remember how you once thought the development of the vaccine would mean the end of the pandemic? Now here we are going from being on the brink of normalcy to having infection rates that are off the charts compared to what we once thought was the worst.

The only tracing that is occurring at present is from the anti-vaxx adherents who threaten “we know where you live. We will find you.” You would think the school boards were election poll workers who reported the results honestly the way they and others are being vilified today. All around the world even in trump-hole countries people are clamoring for the vaccine…except here.

Meanwhile governors and parents are eager to sacrifice children in the quest to be the 2024 presidential nominee, to spite Joe Biden, or because of their Constitutional right to play Russian roulette with the lives of other people. However just to show they are not anti-science, they will take a horse cure, go to a hospital when infected, and expect everyone else to pay the bill for their stupidity. How long did it take Trumpican Governors to heroically boast that they will not allow Joe Biden to end the pandemic in their state no matter how many people it infects and kills? Remember how the world looked at us when the vaccine first exploded throughout the country especially in New York? Now Americans from across the country are indelibly stamping the USA as a place of idiots.

MEANING FOR THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

One must keep in mind that the race to the bottom by Trumpican wannabees is futile (Abbott, DeSantis, Johnson, and Scott: The Race to the Bottom). That position is already occupied. He is running in 2024 and will put the wannabees in their place. There is nothing to be gained by selling your soul unless you think it will benefit you in 2028.

One also must keep in mind there is a difference between being a leader and being a con artist (Do Tucker/Trump Oppose the Socialist Chlorination of Water?). An effective con artist has to tailor the con to the gullibility and fears of the target. For example, in 2008, Barack Obama as a foreign-born Moslem was very effective. In 2016, “lock her up” and “build a wall” similarly were effective. The con artist follows the crowd and then amplifies the fear to make a killing.

That approach may not work in 2024. We have already seen what happened in Alabama when the 2024 nominee admonished his followers to get the vaccine. It backfired on him just as it had when Hannity did the same on his cable show. This reality puts the con artist in a strange position. How can he take credit for the development of something his supporters do not want to use? The people with the loudest voices at the rallies will be the ones who have not taken the vaccine, not the ones who have.

So what do you do in the 2022 Congressional elections? Every Trumpican candidate is going to be asked on the position on the vaccine. The new mantra by the vocal Tea-Party-Trumpicans will be for parental choice and NO VACCINE!!! Think about it. One political party that wants to govern the supposedly most powerful country in the world will be intimated by its base into vilifying Dr. Fauci, praising screwball cures, and championing the needless exposure of children … and it thinks that is a winning message.

As a result, one of the Democratic posters for the 2022 and 2024 elections will be a surprising one. It will show a revision of the famous “Uncle Sam Wants You recruiting posters. Only now it will be a picture of the Joe Biden and the former-President-now-challenger both saying “We want you to get the vaccine!”

HOW CHINA, AND RUSSIA AND ISIS CAN DEFEAT AMERICA

Our enemies are watching our public displays of stupidity. This scenario will happen in the movies before it does in real life but think of the opportunity we are displaying to our adversaries. China, Russia, and ISIS know or will realize that a virus attack against the United States will work. They know that even if the United States has a vaccine and/or cure for the virus, tens of millions of people will not take it. They would rather die first.

So let us just say that an adversary has some smallpox virus. Suppose years from now the anti-vaxx people have eliminated the requirement to be vaccinated against anything and everything. What would happen if China released the smallpox in the United States? It would claim to have a vaccine which it would distribute for free throughout the world. Meanwhile millions of Americans would decline to protect themselves against smallpox unless instructed to do so by Mr. Ed. I am not saying this will happen; I am saying that Covid exposes how willing too many Americans are not to defend themselves against viruses.

The lessons of Covid will continue to unfold to both an American and world audience. Joe Biden will try to be the President the United States needs to end the pandemic. His 2024-challenger and his supporters will fight him every step of the way. As befitting his immaturity, the sore loser has challenged the President to enter the arena against him on the twentieth anniversary of 9/11. He really believes that is a true test of leadership. If he was the only one who believed it, he could be institutionalized so he could get the care and help he needs. Unfortunately since Trumpicans think that challenge proves their Lord and Savior has the right to be commander in chief, we could be in for an even bigger assault in 2024 on America than either from 1/6 or Covid.