rule of law
The Moral of the Story
When four highly decorated, high ranking United States generals who risked their lives in battle to protect our country and its Constitution despite any bone spurs they may have suffered, who all served in the cabinet of that irresponsible MAGA leader’s first term tells you that that this MAGA candidate for President of the United States of America is a clear and present danger to America, to our country, to our democracy, to our system of government and to our republic, that he is unfit to serve in the office of President, you should believe them. When a substantial number of other respected citizens who worked in that same administration tell you the same thing, you should believe them.
Not heeding the warning of these respected generals and these other respected public government servants will cause you to help destroy your nation in the same way the German people destroyed their nation in the 1930’s and 1940’s, in the same way the Russians destroyed their once democratic and free republic in the 2000’s. Failing to recognize fascist wannabe dictators who so callously manipulates the masses into committing unfathomable violence and talks them into believing his nonsensical and dishonest rhetoric, will bring about a dark dystopian future the likes of which you have never seen and which will not be easily recovered from.
By the time you realize what you have done, when that MAGA President turns on you, when he finds he no longer needs to pander to your ideas since he has all the power he needs now, it will be too late. You will have helped him remove all those guardrails that would have protected us in the past and there is nothing you can do to change it…you voted away your democracy.
Don’t vote away your democracy. Don’t vote away your republic. Don’t self destruct. Don’t cause our country to self-destruct. Don’t vote for a multiply indicted individual facing 91 felony counts. Whatever faults Biden has, he won’t ever cause our system of government to collapse. Is your frustration with Biden worth sacrificing your whole democracy for? Is it worth destroying our whole American way of life? Is it really worth the risk of losing it all?
Day 1,467
There is a great possibility that this fictional story may soon be more real than you think…
- Day 1: the Maga President will be a dictator.
- Day 2: he will “suspend” the Constitution.
- Day 3: he will put all Muslims seeking asylum or already living in America in concentration camps.
- Day 4: his political adversaries will start to mysteriously die for unknown reasons (poison being the most highly suspected cause of death).
- Day 5: other political adversaries and critics will be charged with unsubstantiated crimes based upon false witness and made-up testimony.
- Day 6: news organizations that report unflattering news stories about the Maga President’s behavior and/or his policies are first fined, then shutdown, then outlawed and their chief operating officers jailed.
- Day 7: Fox News and the other radical-right conservative propaganda news machines merge to form Maga News and is now the only news organization legally allowed to operate by the state.
- Day 8: guns will be confiscated from all gun owners who have not pledged their loyalty to the Maga President.
- Day 9: guns are also taken away from all gun owners who have pledged their loyalty to the Maga President. This campaign is promoted as a test of their complete loyalty to him.
- Day 10: former Maga gun owners who made the mistake of criticizing the Maga President, upset they no longer are allowed to own guns, are arrested.
- Day 11: appeals to the Supreme Court regarding the Second Amendment are rejected. The Constitution is still suspended. There is no Second Amendment.
- Day 12: Christians who have criticized the Maga President’s un-American behavior and refuse to pledge their loyalty to him begin to be rounded up and put into concentration camps.
- Day 13: the rest of the Christian population begins to be rounded up and put into concentration camps, retribution for their failure to “vote hard enough for him in 2020,” as they are the group he now most blames for all his legal trouble he had to suffer after the 2020 election.
- Day 14: America abandons NATO.
- Day 15: Russia conquers Ukraine but not without finishing the genocide it began 3 years ago.
- Day 16: Russia invades Poland.
- Day 17: World War 3 begins as all Western Nations except for America declare war on Russia.
- Day 18: Russia, Iran, North Korea and China create an axis alliance against the western nations.
- Day 19: China invades Taiwan.
- Day 20: Taiwan quickly falls as the Maga President praises the Chinese leader for being so bold, smart, and ruthless.
- Day 21: China invades Japan.
- Day 22: The Maga President continues his fawning over the Chinese leader.
- Day 23: Japan falls quickly due to the lack of American support and the years it was required, by post WW2 defense policies, to refrain from weapons manufacturing until only recently.
- Day 24: China invades Australia as the Maga President continues his praises of the Chinese leadership. The Maga President snipes that, “he never liked Australia.”
- Day 25: Europe falls to the Russians.
- Day 26: the Maga President sends Putin a pair of his gold-plated tennis shoes to congratulate the genocidal maniac for his impressive subjugation of two continents in such a short amount of time.
- Day 27: Russia invades the United States through Alaska; assisted greatly by the Top Secret documents the Maga President had earlier provided Russia before he took his second term of office.
- Day 28: the Maga President happily cedes Alaska over to Russia as a symbol of his fidelity to the ruling strong man he admires so much
- Day 1,461: the Constitution is still, “suspended.”
- Day 1,462: the Maga President is still holding onto the shaky reigns of his power.
- Day 1,463: Putin replaces the Maga President with a governor from Saint Petersburg, citing the governor’s younger and sharper abilities.
- Day 1,464: a former Fox News host does grocery shopping for Putin in his new position in Moscow as the Minister of Communication and Culinary Services for the new Russian Union.
- Day 1,465: The Maga President, deposed and without the magnificent tower he wanted to build in Saint Petersburg after the tower in Moscow went bankrupt, is exiled to Siberia.
- Day 1,466: At the behest of the new Russian governor, the Maga Republican House passes a bill to rebrand, “The United States of America,” as, “The Soviet States of America.” Since the Democratic Party has been outlawed long before the Maga President left office, it is expected to easily pass the Maga Republican Senate.
- Day 1,467: Some Maga voters wonder if they have been dupped. America does not seem as great as they were promised it would be. But the thought is fleeting as they rush to wait in the bread lines to feed their hungry kids.
The Colorado Ballot Case: What Happened to the Conservative Notion of States Rights?
“The whole point of the 14th Amendment was to restrict state power,” this is Chief Justice Robert’s assertion. While there are clarifications regarding what States can do in The Fourteenth Amendment, a good portion of The Fourteenth Amendment is to affirm the rights of all United States citizens and outline the protections that States are required to offer all United States citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment also offers additional guidance to States regarding federal office holding requirements.
Yes, States must defer to the Constitution and to the laws of the federal government. That, for sure, is explicitly stated. However, that doesn’t mean that the power that States have been granted in other parts of the Constitution have been erased or supplanted in some crazy way as Roberts appeared to imply with his questioning.
States have the authority to manage elections for federal offices. They have the authority to print ballots for federal offices. They have the authority to send delegates to the Electoral College to vote for President and Vice-President. When printing ballots, States have the authority and responsibility to follow the Constitution.
Additionally, the United States Constitution provides that you cannot be 34 years of age or younger to hold the Office of President. You cannot be a Naturalized Citizen to hold the Office of President. You cannot be an insurrectionist to hold the Office of President. You cannot give aid or comfort to insurrectionists and expect to hold the Office of President. This is clearly defined in the Constitution. The States are NOT limited in this power. The States can decide who is included on the ballot for all these cases. States can exclude anyone from the ballot if candidates do not meet the requirements to hold an elected federal office. Colorado was following the Constitution when its highest court made its ruling in favor of removing a disqualified candidate from its ballot.
If these candidates cannot hold the Office of President, then there is no legitimate reason for States to print disqualified candidate names on the ballot. Also, it is the federal government that has limited to no involvement in all these election processes managed by States not the other way around as Roberts suggested. Nowhere in the Fourteenth Amendment does it say anything about taking away the States’ right to run elections for Federal government offices.
The Fourteenth Amendment only amends the power that States have as described in Article II of the Constitution, to clarify that the power States have cannot conflict with the Federal Constitution, Federal Government rulings or the general rights guaranteed to all citizens of the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment says, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” The amendment then goes on to indicate what powers States have, “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.” These inclusions in The Fourteenth Amendment are less of a limitation than they are a clarification.
Earlier in the Constitution, the second paragraph of Article Two clearly spells out the power States have, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.” Also, Article Two, paragraph 5, specifies, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.” The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3, amends who can qualify as a Presidential candidate with additional requirements for the States: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.” Here, the federal government by way of Congress, does have the power to veto the State’s decision. But, overall, the Constitution gives States quite a bit of power.
Chief Justice Robert’s combative tone in his line of questioning on Thursday, February 8th, 2024, during oral arguments in the Colorado Ballot Case (Trump v. Anderson) seemed very odd and bizarre to me. There used to be a time when conservatives believed in States rights, especially in the ones that appear to be clearly assigned to States in the Constitution. What happened to that?
References:
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript
https://apnews.com/article/federal-government-role-elections-392a5567755549336fe91132b9fd5908
The Supreme Court and the Colorado Ballot Case: Only One Way to Rule
I’ve read and re-read Article II, section 1, paragraph 5 and The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3 of the Constitution over and over, multiple times, and it seems really clear to me that there is only one way to understand these clauses. You don’t need to be a lawyer to understand this text. It is written that well, in plain English. There is only one legitimate way to rule on this matter.
The Supreme Court must make their ruling based upon what is explicitly written in the Constitution. The Supreme Court must allow States to determine ballot eligibility based upon what is explicitly stated in the Constitution. Trump must be booted off the Colorado ballot if Trump is an insurrectionist or if Trump has “given aid or comfort” to insurrectionists.
Presuming that the court is not willing to define Trump’s status as an insurrectionist and/or collaborator, the court cannot take any other “offramp” that is somehow molded into a legitimate Constitutional argument that makes any type of sense in favor of keeping Trump on the ballot, not for any reason; even if the court thinks they need one to avert some highly speculative and imaginary negative Constitutional incongruity between the power the State and Federal governments might have. If the court does try to take any other offramp, the court risks compromising their own oath to protect and support the Constitution. Taking a procedural route would be just as bad for different reasons (they shouldn’t do it).
There is nothing to infer, nothing to doubt in this judicial review like in other controversial cases that have recently been overturned by the Supreme Court where the Constitution might have inferred a right but does not explicitly state one (i.e., Roe v. Wade and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, etc.). Ruling on the side of what is plainly written in the Constitution, especially when it is so clearly written, arguably, takes a lot of courage. It may not be popular or politically expedient. It may even be dangerous given all the right-winged crazies and thugs that exist out there but it is the right thing to do. It is the American thing to do.
We need to protect our country from insurrectionists who sway public opinion with falsehoods, exaggerations, fear and frenzied rhetoric. We need to protect our nation from insurrectionists who bring dishonor upon themselves and their autocratic enabling political party. We need to protect our citizens from insurrectionists who constantly blame others for all their problems. We need to protect ourselves from insurrectionists who never take responsibility for their own criminal actions but who are always happy to divide then destroy our Constitutional government for the sake of their own narcissistic, power-hungry appetite.
Without that protection, the Supreme Court will take one step closer to ending our democracy. The Supreme Court takes one step closer to ending our republic. One step closer to abandoning the Constitution, altogether. And if that happens, where would that leave the Supreme Court?
References:
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobbs_v._Jackson_Women’s_Health_Organization
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trumps-ballot-eligibility-is-headed-to-the-supreme-court-heres-what-to-know/ar-BB1hUWL1
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/08/politics/norma-anderson-trump-colorado-ballot/index.html
Soliciting New Names for the Republican Party
Since the Republican Party no longer appears to be the Party of Lincoln (preferring dishonest seditious TV Reality Stars instead) and it is definitely no longer the “Law and Order Party” given their continuing unwillingness to hold dishonest politicians in their own Party accountable for their unethical and inciting offences, the Party should really consider a name change. Here are some ideas I have for a new name:
The News of the World Party
The National Enquiring Minds Party
The Chupacabras and UFO’s Really Exist Party
The Chest Hair Totalitarian Party
The 11,780 Missing Votes Party
The Alien DNA and Stop the Kabul Party
The Laser from Space Forrest Fire Party
The Seditious and Capital Vandals Party
The Censure Character and Integrity Party
The No Checks and Balances Party
The American Dear Leader Party
The One Dude Weird Worship Party
The Jim Jones Reinvented Party
The Grape Flavored Kool-Aid Party
The Kiss My Shinny Ring Party
The Alternate-Facts State TV & Propaganda Party
The My Pillow Party
The Forsake Our Founding Fathers Party
The Twisted Big Liars Party
The Bone Spurs and Lost Boats Party
The Walk to the Capital Party
The New Confederate Patriot Party
The Confederate Statue and Peculiar Reinstitution Party
The Throw Your Supporters Under the Bus Party
The Extort Another Foreign President for Political Gain Party
The Witness Tampering & Subpoena Obstructionist Party
The Vindictive Felonious Witness Retaliation Party
The Abuses of Power Party
The Russian Conspiracy Theory Champions Party
The Deference to Putin Party
The Alienate Your Traditional Allies Party
The Oops, We Found Another False Positive Dead Voter Party
The Dodge another Billion Dollar Law Suit Party
The Defamation of Character Party
The No Character and Wet Noodle Party
The Despicable Me Party
The Dr. Evil and Backwards Little Finger in the Mouth Party
I am pretty confident that one of the above names will be much more appropriate for the Republican Party. And, that way, by selecting one of those above names, the Republican Party no longer has to worry so much about soiling the good name of President Lincoln and his former Party that had once held a place of so much honor and respect for preserving America’s dedication to the rule of law and against the rule of men.
Pathetic Sycophantic Careers
Republican Senators may play to their misinformed Base during this impeachment phase by being unwilling to prevent a dangerous and seditious politician from ever holding public office again, but it will be the majority of Americans and history who will be the final judges regarding how little these Senators really care about justice, integrity, principles and the ideals of our Founding Fathers regarding their responsibility to be a check against absolute power and criminal abuses of power. These Republican Senators will be judged by their failure to honor their oath to protect our nation from insidious tyrants who attempt to thwart our Constitution. That will go a long way to justifiably put an end to their disgraceful and otherwise pathetic sycophantic careers as they cower in front of the disreputable beast they have deliberately chosen to pledge allegiance to.
The rest of America will then go forward to pledge allegiance to our more noble ideals that that justice is blind to wealth and power and that all men are created equal as represented by our nation’s flag. And those Pathetic Sycophantic Careers dedicated to lies and despotic ideals positioned against our democracy will just fade away forever into history as prime examples of how weakness of character can be the greatest threat to our republic and to any republic based upon constitutional law and self-rule.
What REAL Men Do
Apparently, real men are back and here is what they are saying…
“Real men wear masks. Those who don’t…just have draft-dodging bone spurs.”
“Real men wear masks. Those who don’t…think celebrated captured and tortured soldiers from Arizona who fought in Vietnam are not heroes.”
“Real men wear masks. Those who don’t…have despotic, undemocratic fantasies that the election they just lost and they, themselves, are having trouble rigging, was…rigged.”
“Real men wear masks. Those who don’t…think that soldiers who died or who were maimed while serving their country are ‘losers and suckers.’”
“Real men wear masks. Those who don’t…fire their defense secretaries for adhering to American ideals of honor and respect for the Constitution over loyalty to a single self-aggrandizing, vindictively insecure individual.”
“Real men wear masks. Those who don’t…fire their heads of cybersecurity for contradicting their unfounded and un-democratic lies about voter fraud.”
“Real men wear masks. Those who don’t…fire naval commanders at sea for trying desperately to keep their crew safe from a deadly disease.”
“Real men wear masks. Those who don’t…hire former New York City mayors with damaged reputations as legal counselors to spread lies and attack and undermine our democracy.”
“Real men wear masks. Those who don’t…ignore Federal laws (18 U.S. Code § 1513) as they fire in retaliation decorated military intelligence officers testifying to the truth.”
“Real men wear masks. Those who don’t…demand more loyalty to themselves than they do to our Constitution.”
“Real men wear masks. Those who don’t…are good with a Sharpie Pen when hurricanes strike.”
“Real men wear masks. Those who don’t…unsuccessfully pay-off adult film actresses to keep them quite.”
“Real men wear masks. Those who don’t…are still looking for all those boat owners in North Carolina.”
“Real men wear masks. Those who don’t…ignore bounties placed on the heads of their soldiers.”
“Real men wear masks. Those who don’t…think democracy is too inconvenient and too inefficient.”
“Real men wear masks. Those who don’t…corruptly extort presidents of foreign nations by using U.S. government resources for their own personal and political gains.”
“Real men wear masks. Those who don’t…just get impeached.”
“Real men wear masks. Those who don’t…brood inside an oval office; launch endless, frivolous electoral lawsuits and never man-up to concede with honor.”
Well, there you have it. “Real men” wear masks. Doing their duty, they are protecting the ones they love, their fellow citizens and, to the extent that masks self-protect, themselves as well. All “Real Men” agree that you should wear a mask too. However, and for some reason we still don’t quite understand, after all these years, “Real Men” still don’t eat quiche?
Conspiracy Theorist in Chief
He is the “Conspiracy Theorist in Chief.” From Birther Stories to Deep State delusions to dangerous hallucinations about Election Fraud to hordes of imaginary caravanning terrorists at the border to his support of QAnon’s insane theory about a secret cabal of leading Democrats involved in a nefarious network of human trafficking, he is the king of misinformation and other flights of dangerously un-American despotic fantasies. As confirmed by his doctors in the white suits, this makes him uniquely qualified to identify elephants, but, leaving him without much ability to identify anything ever having to do with the truth, especially when it comes to COVID-19 (“Did I tell you, Bob, how dangerous this disease was in February, much deadlier than the flu but I’m down playing it because, you know, I don’t want people to panic? Plus, I like calling things that are the truth a hoax”).
Jumping Out of the Pages
It’s like Trump jumped out of the pages of a “Left Behind” book…he is that guy; the world leader that keeps doing unacceptable, evil, corrupt, unethical, un-American things yet people continue to follow him convinced that, somehow, all of this unacceptable, chaotic, narcissistic behavior, is making America great. And, ironically, the people who you’d least expect to follow someone like this, are following him—the very people who should have that special religious insight to know better.
Trump is the self-proclaimed 5th Avenue shooter who defends his thuggish, vigilante militia supporters whether they are White Supremacist groups in Charlottesville or presumptuous overzealous militia groups in Kenosha. Trump even defends his supporters when they are underage militia members charged with committing murder. Trump has his own Gestapo like secret police that he created from repurposed Homeland Security personnel—personnel that used to protect us from terrorist threats abroad but are now used to intimidate and threaten marching civilian mothers in Oregon protesting for justice.
At the same time, Trump claims to be the “Law and Order President who thinks all protestors marching for justice are rioters and looters. In Trump’s feeble mind, any protester marching for justice must be marching against him, right? Trump is only the “Law and Order” President for one race of people, his own. Trump is only the “Law and Order” President when they happen to be laws that apply to other people but these same laws are never to be applied to him or his supporters (i.e. Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, etc.).
People follow Trump to their own doom, like Herman Cain and other misguided conservatives, while the rest of us scratch our heads in complete horror wondering…how? How could they let somebody do this, all these self-destructive things that he does to our country, all the deaths people suffered because of Trump’s incompetent response to the pandemic, all the destruction done to our traditional American institutions like the Justice Department, all the abuses of power and all the abuses of position, all the corruption that lead to his impeachment, all the damage done to our Constitution, all the damage done to the rule of law, all the damage done to our values based upon respect for the individual, all the attacks against a person’s right to vote, all the actions to prevent votes from being delivered on time, all the remarks to persuade his supporters to break the law by voting twice, all the damage to our economy, all the actions never taken against national security threats from Russia, all the bounties on the heads of our military personnel in Afghanistan left unanswered, all the abandonment of our Kurdish allies in Syria, all the American troops pulled out of Germany and redeployed elsewhere because of all the delicate feelings that were hurt by a stately German chancellor, all the insults to our military servicemen and servicewomen who are the complete opposite of “losers” and “suckers,” all the grief he’s caused our traditional allies that have stood by us since World War II, all the bone spurs suffered in a letter from his doctor, all the incompetent conflicting messaging with the experts at the CDC, all the vindictiveness, all the petty, illegal retaliations against people who testified under oath, all the distractions, all the name calling, all the division, all the doubt, all the confusion and all the chaos?
Think about it. Who sows this type of confusion and division? What makes anyone think this is sustainable or aligned in anyway with any type of Christian thought? How do people, especially those who call themselves Christians, justify in their minds that this type of behavior is ever acceptable? Are they so bound and determined to continue to follow this world leader to their own doom as they attempt to drag the rest of us along with them into that dark un-American pit they have chosen? I, for one, am fed up and unwilling to tolerate any more of this indecency, nonsense and self-destruction. Let’s put Trump back into the pages where he belongs before it is too late for us and for our 244 year old experiment in self-rule.
Permanent Despotism
The President deliberately cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives all because he believed a national testing plan would only benefit Blue States. This, taken together with the most recent revelations from Bob Woodward’s new book, “Rage,” that the President knew how deadly COVID-19 was in the early weeks of February, paints a disturbingly grim portrait of an extremely morally compromised human being. That testing plan, had it been executed at its earliest, in all likelihood would have avoided the “shelter-in-place” orders that individual States were forced to later make. It would have spared us the devastation it is still causing our economy.
The President has a responsibility to consider all Americans whether they voted for him or not. The words of President Washington in his Farewell Address are just as valid today as they were 200 years ago: “Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally…The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.”
We are Americans—we belong to the United States of America. We don’t belong to Red States or Blue States of some foreign, different America that has committed itself to endless political corruption and intrigue. Leaders who are morally incapable of recognizing that we are all Americans with basic core commonly held beliefs about liberty and justice are dangerously ill-suited for the office of President. These individuals, like Trump, will never do the right thing for their country because, in reality, they have no country. They just have themselves and think only of themselves. They will lead our country into a state of “permanent despotism.”
It’s time to remove dangerous threats to our republic and to our democracy. Starting with this virus but not ending there. We need to remove the self-serving politically corrupt demagogues that have made this virus outbreak in our country so destructive, so deadly and so unmanageable.
References:
#CNN #News – Jul 31, 2020 – Report: Kushner’s Covid-19 testing plan ‘went poof into thin air’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_Farewell_Address
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Washington%27s_Farewell_Address
The Polarity Resistance 