Watts also believes the worst is yet to come, adding, “They now have had time to think about what they want to do. They have heard continuous false claims – which they want to believe – and now they are being pushed and pointed to places to mobilize.” Watts noted the dynamic could intensify after Trump is ejected from the White House, COVID-19 becomes less of a threat, and there are more public targets as people start returning to public life.
Reed warned that unless “something happened” to reverse the certification of votes in the election, “we’re looking at the possibility and the prospect of a Vice-President Kamala Harris being able to break a tie and turn control of the U.S. Senate over to Chuck Schumer, AOC and the squad, and the far left,” Reed said. (Reed was referring to New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and 3 other female members dubbed as “The Squad” (all non-White) who serve in the House of Representatives, not the Senate.)
“The country that we have known for over 230 years will be gone, and there will be no protection for our rights as believers or of the minority rights of the conservatives in the Senate,” Reed added.
“This is what they do to Trump. It’s not going to work with me. I won’t back down because I am very religious and I know God is watching over me. This started with COVID. The Obamas funded that Wuhan lab to make COVID. Then the impeachment process. They’ve used every avenue possible to cheat, they used Dominion. Dominion software was created to cheat. I have a binder from Dominion that proves this. There’s so much more that will be exposed.”
– Mellissa Carone, former IT contractor for Dominion Voting Systems in Michigan, on SarahPalin.com
Carone worked on Election Night last month in Detroit and claims the amount of fraud at that one vote-counting center alone should be enough to overturn the election in President Trump’s favor.
“The Supreme Court, in tossing the Texas lawsuit that was joined by seventeen states and 106 US congressman, has decreed that a state can take unconstitutional actions and violate its own election law. Resulting in damaging effects on other states that abide by the law, while the guilty state suffers no consequences. This decision establishes a precedent that says states can violate the US constitution and not be held accountable. This decision will have far-reaching ramifications for the future of our constitutional republic. Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution.”
– Allen West, Chairman of the Texas Republican Party, responding to the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to hear a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
To non-Americans, the term “Union” is basically a reference to the 19th century U.S. Civil War, which long-time conservatives still describe as a states’ rights issue, when in reality, it was about the right of southern states to keep human beings enslaved.
Two runoff elections for senator in Georgia on January 5 will determine control of the U.S. Senate.
“I personally think my company should pay me workers compensation for brain damage for having to read that lawsuit and related filings. It really is one of the stupidest bits of performative leg humping we have seen in the last five years. These attorneys general are willing to beclown themselves and their states all to get in good with the losing presidential candidate. The suit is absurd on its face. These states seek to interfere in the internal affairs of other states when those states are not actually electing the president, but allowing their voters to choose members of the Electoral College. Were this to succeed, which it will not, the states will start suing each other at every election as a bit of theater.”
– Erick Erickson, far-right social conservative and evangelical Christian fundamentalist radio host, in an essay on his blog
Erickson endorsed Trump’s reelection campaign, but criticized a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, denouncing it as “one of the stupidest bits of performative leg humping we have seen in the last five years.”
“We believe our Jewish community needs to be able to join and partner in solidarity with communities of color like Arab Americans, Black Americans, Indigenous people who are facing systemic injustice and be able to listen to their narratives just as we expect other communities to listen to our narrative as Jews.”
“The allegations in the lawsuit are false and irresponsible. Texas alleges that there are 80,000 forged signatures on absentee ballots in Georgia, but they don’t bring forward a single person who this happened to. That’s because it didn’t happen.”
In the suit, Paxton claims pandemic-era changes to election procedures in those states violated federal law and is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block the states from voting in the Electoral College.
Last month marked the 45th anniversary of the death of Francisco Franco, Western Europe’s last dictator. Afterwards Spain finally transitioned into a democratic state; something it had tried when it elected a new government in 1931. During the “Second Republic”, Spaniards deposed King Alfonso XIII and reduced the powers of the military, the Roman Catholic Church and property-owning elites. But, just two years later, a center-right coalition won a majority in the elections and they brought in Franco. Franco had gained some notoriety for fighting against an insurgency in Spanish-controlled Morocco amidst World War I. In 1926, at the age of 33, he became the youngest general in all of Europe. But, as the “Second Republic” proceeded, Franco grew critical of the new government and was subsequently banned to a military outpost in the Canary Islands. By 1936 right-wing extremists had fomented plans for a military coup. Apparently Franco was initially opposed, but joined the effort as it took shape.
The 1936-39 Spanish Civil War actually began in Morocco, as right-wing activists launched concerted efforts to regain control. By 1939 they had won – at the cost of 1 million lives – and Franco became Spain’s eminent ruler. Spain’s “White Terror” induced a culture of repression and execution; a persecution of democratic supporters of a truly tolerant government. Civil wars in any country are brutal and destructive, and Spain’s conflict was no different. During Franco’s reign, an estimated 150,000 people were executed or mysteriously vanished. That’s a modest assessment. Personally, as with the Nazi Holocaust or the Cambodian massacre, I believe the official estimates are politically polite.
Early last month a friend posted a photo (a formal portrait) of Franco on his Facebook page. One of his friends replied by declaring that Franco would have never let Spain become the socialist state it is now. I responded by noting that Franco was a dictator who opposed free speech and freedom of religion. Franco imprisoned and executed thousands of political opponents, while thousands more disappeared. Like Argentina, Guatemala and other Latin American nations, Spain emerged as a totalitarian state, where anyone who dared criticize the leadership was deemed a rebel and summarily prosecuted. No one among the Spanish populace ostensibly was brave enough to stand up to such totalitarian shenanigans, until Franco died. But it is what it is. Calls for revolution are always easier than actually revolting.
I don’t believe either my friend or his friend responded to my comment. I guess I should have been shocked by the aforementioned Facebook posts. But ultimately it didn’t surprise me, since my friend is a devotee of Donald Trump. He once posted photos of himself and Spanish dignitaries at a diplomatic function in Houston. But seeing his post about Franco angered me.
I’ve noticed some conservatives hold a certain degree of sentimentality for dictators and autocrats. Hence Trump’s conciliatory behavior towards the likes of Russia’s Vladimir Putin or North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Both Putin and Jong Un live in relative luxury, while essentially holding an iron grip on power. North Korea is particularly egregious in this dichotomy. They still won’t acknowledge the brutal severity of a 1990s-era famine in which up to 3.5 million people perished.
Trump is also in line with Brazil’s Jair Bolsarano who openly longed for the period of the nation’s military rule; a time when – like many other nations in Latin America – thousands disappeared, were imprisoned or turned up dead. Bolsarano has often been dubbed as “Trump of the Tropics”.
I’m sure the analogy flattered Bolsarano, and it sounds appropriate. Like Trump Bolsarano denounced COVID-19 as a “little flu” and downplayed it, even when he contracted the virus. As with any European-style colonialist, Bolsarano lamented that Brazil didn’t succeed in eliminating the nation’s indigenous populations. He doesn’t seem to realize North America’s indigenous peoples were NOT completely obliterated from the continent. Yet, Bolsarano ultimately will go to his grave knowing his sanguineous ideals failed. And I couldn’t be happier.
I also couldn’t be happier knowing Donald Trump will NOT be President of the United States after noon (EST) on January 20, 2021. Fortunately, our beloved democratic process functioned as designed last month. The United States isn’t like Franco’s Spain or Latin America of the past; where military dictatorships commanded every aspect of people’s lives, or like Putin’s Russia where one person can hold the reins of power for infinite years, or Kim Jong-Un’s North Korea where a single clan of dynastic brutes can cripple the minds and bodies of their subjects.
I feel Donald Trump came as close to an autocrat as we’ve ever had. It was a frightening prospect, especially knowing he actually wanted to delay the November 3 elections.
But American democracy prevailed over Trump’s fascist tendencies. That’s how all civilized societies should operate.
In his first formal interview since the election, Trump spoke to FOX News’ Maria Bartiromo, where he spit out more lies and unsubstantiated allegations. Critics have condemned Bartiromo for not fact-checking him.
“Anybody who thinks the election went well, like that idiot Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity, that guy is a class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot.”
– Joe di Genova, a Trump campaign lawyer, in an interview with “The Howie Carr Show,” which was broadcast on the radio, Newsmax and online streams.
Di Genova was referring to Christopher Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, whom Trump fired on November 17.
“I assume that the power of the pardon is absolute and that he should be able to pardon anybody that he wants to.”
– Sean Hannity, in his radio interview with fringe lawyer Sidney Powell, about Trump’s ability to pardon himself and “his whole family” as he walks “out the door” of the White House
“If you want to steal an election of the United States, what do you do? You go into the swing states, your Democrats, you target the urban areas where you have the largest vote count. They need to produce a massive, significant, large number of votes – therefore they have to go to large Democratic cities.”
– Gary Berntsen, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) career officer who worked on various counterterrorism deployments, to Epoch Times.
Berntsen claims that the irregularities during the November election may be part of a larger scheme. He didn’t provide supporting evidence or name any specific person or party for wrongdoing.
“Unless the legal situation changes in a dramatic and, frankly, an unlikely manner, Joe Biden will be inaugurated on January 20. To say this constitutes living in reality, and if I offered you a false reality, if I told you that there was an excellent, phenomenal chance that the Supreme Court was going to step in and deliver a victory for President Trump, I’d be lying to you.”
“So as to whether or not I can get this apparatus moving this quickly – because time isn’t on our side, everything else is on our side – facts are on our side. This was a massive fraud. It should have never taken place in this country.”
I guess getting a quarter of the way to a full admission of defeat is better than no way. Conservatives and autocrats usually make progress in tiny steps.
“The other legal theory they have, which is a potentially strong one, is that the computers, either fraudulently or by glitches, changed hundreds of thousands of votes. There, there are enough votes to make a difference, but I haven’t seen the evidence to support that. So, in one case, they don’t have the numbers. In another case, they don’t seem yet to have the evidence, maybe they do. I haven’t seen it. But the legal theory is there to support them if they have the numbers and they have the evidence.”
“The DC U.S. Attorney today confirmed to me that they will not pursue an investigation of who is funding the thugs who attacked my wife and me and sent a DC police officer to the hospital.”
