Getting caught up in Trump hysteria serves us poorly. Just as the party duopoly disguises ruling class dominance so Trump the Devil misdirects us from the fact that he is the over-ripe fruit of capitalism and that most of what he has done or tried to do is out of US capital's playbook. The exceptions being his continually stymied attempts to withdraw troops from the ME and his counter-productive tariff war against China. He says he relies on his 'gut feelings' and the resulting flatulence confirms that he is indeed the avatar of his class. At a time when his peers would tamp down visible racism to get a respite from protests and incipient radicalization he doubles down on dividing the workers. An instinctive 'back to basics' approach, the hallmark of any sort of conservative. The more sophisticated approach to 'crowd control' espoused by liberals, platitudes, bribery and assimilation meet the current and short term needs of capital and while not the slippery slope which conservatives decry do take a dime or two out of the booj's pockets and might encourage further demands, which is of course part of our game plan.Trump's effort to overthrow democracy dead ends at Supreme Court but the damage is lasting
(CNN)President Donald Trump's effort to unravel democracy hit a dead end at the Supreme Court Friday night, capping five weeks in which he dragged the country along on his narcissistic quest to stay in power after President-elect Joe Biden overwhelmingly won the election.
In the end, the guardrails of democracy stayed in place. Trump lost -- for the second time at the Supreme Court this week. But instead of helping the effort to curb a deadly pandemic that has claimed nearly 300,000 American lives by easing the transition for his successor, he is already scheming about his next political moves. Before the high court rejected his bid Friday, his campaign announced a cable ad buy to further his fraudulent claims about the election, and he clearly intends to try and meddle in Congress' counting of the Electoral College results in January.
More broadly, the damage he has done to Americans' faith and trust in democratic institutions will last long after he packs his bags and ends what will go down as one of the worst presidencies in history.
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Trump "put a huge stress test on our democracy," GOP election lawyer Ben Ginsberg said, reflecting on the destruction that the commander-in-chief has wrought by undermining US election processes and jeopardizing the safety of countless election workers as he pursued frivolous lawsuits that were scorned even by judges he appointed.
"It's five weeks after Election Day, and the institutions of our democracy held against this onslaught, and so we should be really proud of that," Ginsberg said to CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room" Friday evening. "At the same time, the Republicans who did follow Donald Trump really have an obligation now to make the country strong again, to heal the chinks that Donald Trump tried to put in the foundation and the democracy."
But there are few signs that Trump loyalists are taking that moment of reflection in a deeply fractured Republican Party. When Trump joined Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's lawsuit, which was also joined by 19 GOP attorneys general and was attempting to invalidate the votes of millions of voters in Biden-won states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin, more than 125 GOP House lawmakers also signed on, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
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"The Supreme Court really let us down. No wisdom, No Courage!" Trump tweeted shortly before midnight.
But the Supreme Court's order once again affirmed that the President's legal efforts have been a total waste of time for the country at a moment when there were lives to be saved.
Despite the court's solid conservative majority -- and the fact that Trump named three of the justices seated on the court -- there were no noted dissents to the court's order, which essentially said that Texas has no grounds to challenge how other states conduct their elections.
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Trump tries to subvert science
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"I promised that we would produce a vaccine in record time before the end of the year," Trump said. "They said it couldn't be done, but with today's announcement, we have now achieved that goal."
He called the vaccine "verifiably safe and effective," but hours earlier he smashed through the time-honored tradition in the United States of separating politics from science by trying to interfere in the FDA's authorization process.
Frustrated by the fact that other countries like the United Kingdom began vaccinating their citizens first, the President appeared to lean on the FDA to accelerate their review -- which could increase the skittishness of Americans who are already wary of taking the vaccine because of fears it was rushed. A Gallup poll released this week showed that 63% of Americans now say they are willing to be immunized against Covid-19.
On Twitter Friday, Trump called the FDA "a big, old, slow turtle."
"Get the dam vaccines out NOW, Dr. Hahn @SteveFDA," Trump tweeted at Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn, misspelling the word "damn." "Stop playing games and start saving lives!!!"
At the time of his pressure campaign, sources told CNN the FDA had been expected to grant emergency use authorization either Friday or Saturday, so it was unclear why Trump felt the need to weigh in on a decision that would come within hours.
CNN's White House team reported that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told Hahn during a call on Friday morning that he needed to grant an emergency use authorization for Pfizer and BioNTech's coronavirus vaccine by the end of the day or he should resign.
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https://us.cnn.com/2020/12/12/politics/ ... index.html
The damage done to public confidence cannot be underestimated. It was never that great, the chump wouldn't have won in '16 otherwise. The performance of the state in meeting the expectations of the masses is one reason, it's been bait & switch every time as what is purported to benefit all only results in substantial benefits for the wealthy few. Compounding this knavery is the libertarian truism that private enterprise is always superior to government, as self-serving a lie as has ever been uttered. But it chimes well with the distorted 'individualism' that the panegyrists of privilege purvay.
The validity of elections from here on in will be subject to suspicion if not outright hostility and not just by the MAGA crowd, anybody can play that game and it has cred on the popular level.
Any old fart(like myself) who reads the pages of warnings that come with their meds might be more than a little suspicious of the super-rushed & politically expedient output of US Pharma. I am not in a hurry to get their vaccine until a few million of my fellow Amerikans are guinea pigs but would jump at a Cuban or Chinese product.
Bourgeois democracy has been the ruling class's plow horse since the beginning of this racket, it's old and getting slow and the prez has kicked it when it fell.. How much further it can drag their plow remains to be seen.