Monthly Archives: August 2024

It’s The End Of The World, As We Know It!

General, Politics, Rants,
The GOP elephant is on his deathbed.

With all of the machinations happening with several state election boards recently to make things confusing. It is fairly obvious that the goal is to have enough of the Electoral College ballots contested to throw the election to the congress. For those of you out there who did not know this would mean that the House of Representatives would select the President and the Senate would select the Vice President. To make maters even crazier in both cases each State gets one vote.

What this means is that both the most populous states have the same voice in selecting the president. States like California, New York, and Texas have exactly the same vote as states like Vermont, South Dakota, Delaware. This also means, given that we have 50 states, the winner needs, at a minimum, 26 Sates voting for them. This is what many people thought Donald Trump was after in 2020. Like most of Trumps great plans it has some problems.

First is that the Republicans don’t have a majority it the delegations of 26 states. The have around 22/23. In several states the number of Republicans and Democrats is almost equal, needling only one or two delegates to switch to change the results. Another problem is that, at this time, we have no clear idea of what the new House of Representatives will look like. The Democrats just might win control of the House by wining seats in states that have a small margin of control for the Republicans. Given the performance of the current House Republican leadership I don’t expect a well run election.

So let’s run a little “thought experiment”: Election is thrown into the House and the House selects Trump but the Democrats gain control of the House and keep the Senate. Now add in that Walz is elected Vice President. Just what would the next four years look like? The last time this happened in our history we ended up with many years of very poor government and the rise of the Jim Crow south. to me, it sounds like something out of those nightmare novels where the country goes crazy.

Just think, a President who was not elected by anything even looking vaguely like a vote of the people. With a Congress in control of the party that “lost” the election. Now add in the President has almost total immunity from prosecution for his “official” acts, without a working definition of “Official”.

I can see it now: the House starts to impeach President Trump and Trump orders the Army to arrest all Representatives who he thinks would vote for impeachment. The Army officer corps declines till he gets down to captains and lieutenants. Now what happens? What if the generals face the troops in front of the Capital? Would SCOTUS hold that the orders were “Lawful”? What if they don’t? Instead of the Army Trump uses the US Marshals or the FBI?

Get the picture? It’s the end of the world as we know it.

What to Expect in next weeks DNC

Politics, Rants, , ,
A return to the Good Old Days

Democrats and the nation need to be on the look out for a lot of staged events outside of the convention hall next week. The Trump campaign and the Republican Party are going to be doing their best to insure a repeat of 1968. “Why?” Do you ask, would they want this? For many many reasons and here are just a few of them.

First it is part of the GOP’s mythos that the riots in Chicago as seen on television was a major reason Nixon won. That the war in Vietnam was very very unpopular has nothing to do with it. That V.P. Humphrey had to define not only the war but also all of the changes to end segregation had nothing to do with it. Also the GOP need something, anything, to take the camera off of all the bad campaigning both Trump and Vance are doing. Finally they hope to show how the “Evil”, “Liberal”, Communist”, “DEI”, etc is going to destroy the country. They need a violent confrontation to play the “What about” card this year.

The problem facing the GOP is that the people who will be protesting will not be the “Yeepies” of 1968. Nor is Mayor Daly going to call out the Chicago PD this time to club heads. The Protestors are going to be made up of the same people who stormed the Capital in 2021, and it will be obvious to anyone with eyes to see just who they are. Rest assured the Harris campaign is locked and loaded to deal with any effort to blame “Liberals” or Democrats. Don’t believe me, just take a look at how it has handled the lame attempt by the Trump campaign to say the photos of the Harris rallies are AIed to look bigger than they were. With in minutes of the first social media posting of the AI story the Harris campaign had its response out on the internet. An not just tweets either, we had actual videos showing the truth.

But we, the viewing public need to keep our eyes open to what is happening. We the electorate need to be ready to see, link, and share what we see. Because MAGA thinks we are both too stupid and too lazy to challenge anything they do.

What the VP pick tells me.

Politics,

With the announcement of Gov. Walz as VP Harris’ pick for her running mate I thought I’d take the time to explain what a Presidential candidate’s pick of a running mate tells me. A presidential VP pick can tell us a lot about what kind of President the candidate will be. Not only does it tell us how much influence the party leadership and Influencers have with the the candidate, such as Trump first VeeP Mike Prence but also how good they are at putting the right person in the right job. This can tell us a lot about their coming administration, if elected. So lets take a Quick Look at the VP picks this election.

First let’s look at J. D. Vance. First thing right of is that the behind the scenes ‘influencers’ have more pull this time around with Trump. It shows they now have a good feel for how to work him to get what they want. J.D. is a first term senator with little to no experience. This means he has little or no ability to work the system as in he has no favors he can call in. He has few, if any, workable contacts. So he has very little usable political capital. So what does he have?

First, J. D.; Vance is a Central Casting pick. On camera he looks like what people think a Vice President should look like. The problem is no one ran him by the casting director to see if here can read the lines. As long as he just stands there and keeps his moth shut everything is fine. The minute he starts speaking all bets are off. An I’m not talking about what he is talking about. While his subject mater is bad enough, it is how he delivers it that sucks. He really needs to take a few classes in public speaking. First he has a very dry and uninflected voice. Second he can not read his audience well. He doesn’t know when to stop and let them emote, he just keeps talking over them. In like DJT he has no clue how to just wing it and give the audience what they came for. He just drones on.

J.D. also show how the Trump campaign deals with negative news, as if we didn’t know already. The problem is that J.D. does have a clue either. He just goes to the Trump playbook and denies everything. Also we can see how well the Trump machine vets its selections and prepares for thing that will be trouble. Just one example is just how well the comment J.D. made about “Cat Ladies” was taken up by the Harris campaign to hit Trump over the head. One of the ancient truisms of politics is you can handle being shouted at but it is ‘death’ to be laughed at.

So what does Harris’ selection of Gov. Walz tell me. First she knows how to select a good campaigner. Walz is good at the comeback to nasty comments. His response to his being white haired is a case in point, he turned it back on them by using his 20+ years as a teacher. He also shows that she backs people who can do the job in a way she approves. I will have to wait to see what else Walz pick will show as it has been less than a week since we found out.

So keep watching the VP’s to see what they can and are doing. It just might be a game changer.