The Big Dump of the 2020 Elections

Top photo is a YouTube screenshot of President-Elect Joe Biden
https://youtu.be/n0-LhNSUqjo

We are still waiting …

The entertainment surrounding this election continues. Full disclosure: I’ve been watching MSNBC almost exclusively over the past week-plus mainly because they have been painfully cautious about predicting and calling results. As it turns out CNN and Fox News were painful somewhat and I watched them at times. In fact I had to watch Fox a bit when I saw so many people on the Facebook machine denouncing the network and vowing to never watch it again! There were calls for Tucker, Sean and Laura to find new outlets because gosh, all these Fox viewers were now ex-viewers. There is Newsmax and … can’t remember the other … oh yeah, who can forget OAN? What does that O-A-N stand for? Overtly Anal Nutbars … I think. The New York Daily News says it’s the best network you’re not watching.

All the insane, off the wall conspiracy theories Fox News news people won’t air, let alone endorse, as their opinion stars do. Neil Cavuto abruptly stopped covering a White House press briefing when it became clear W.H. spokesmodel Kayleigh McEnany was lying. How could Neil do it! How could he betray the Dear Leader Trump so publicly? How could the network allow it to happen? What is wrong with the Murdochs? What’s wrong with Disney? You knew Fox would get soft once they got bought up by Disney … Wait, what? That was a conspiracy theory I hadn’t heard.

As it turns out Disney bought the 20th Century Fox Studios and some other film and television properties, but the Murdochs retained the news network and several local Fox television stations. So, for many right wing nut bars Disney now owns Fox News and that’s why the network came out of the closet and revealed itself as a tool of the radical left. And you know Disney, speaking of coming out of the closet, was one of the first corporations to recognize LGBTQ rights, including civil unions and giving benefits to life partners, regardless of gender I.D. 

So there you go. Next thing you know Fox News is going to start reporting Black people are equal to white people and that they don’t deserve the discrimination that is apparent and embedded in the legal and law enforcement system.

Man, can you believe that? For more than four years Fox News viewers could rely on the network to be completely unfair and out of balance when it came to siding with President Trump on every stupid idea, policy or statement. But then, they called Arizona for Biden, based on facts and then the election for Biden, based on the facts and totally ignored what President Trump and his cult were saying! Fox News went along with reality instead of the hyper mania based on the fantasies! It’s that effin’ Disney!

Seriously.

Reminds me of the time, about 18 years ago when I worked for a large multinational media company in a local cable TV customer service department. When customers were angry they would call in and harangue the corporation — we customer service workers — and on occasion one or two would accuse Ted Turner of major malfeasance. The callers believed Ted had been turned into a raving communist when he hooked up with Jane Fonda. I enjoyed telling those rubes Turner did not own Time Warner, that the media giant had bought out the Turner networks and Ted had little, if any, influence in the Company’s decisions. It didn’t solve anything, but it gave me a sense of superiority. 

Getting back to the present … Not only are these former Fox News viewers abandoning the network, they have found alternative social media from Facebook and Twitter primarily. The main social media network for these disgruntled Trump cult members is called “Parler,” the French word for talk, or speaking.  It’s for the people that entirely buy into the crazy conspiracy theories being spewed by Trump and others, that there was massive voter fraud across the nation that stole the election from Donald J. Trump,  the second coming of the Savior. Parler, it seems, promises no fact-checking, something Facebook, Twitter and other platforms have been doing.

That evil lame stream media is in cahoots with George Soros, Bill Gates and the Democratic Party to turn this once great nation over to a One World Government. Donald J. Trump is going to save us from the conspiracy, the people who eat babies and engage in a world wide pedophile ring.

While we hover on the brink of our 19th nervous breakdown — I don’t know why that Rolling Stones classic came to mind — we do get some entertainment. Like Gadi Schwartz of NBC News reporting on the beginnings of a conspiracy theory at the Maricopa County election center in Arizona. A Fox News van pulled up — with California plates — to cover the insanity taking place in Phoenix. Immediately the pro-Trump protestors/conspiracy nuts jumped into a hot boil and started screaming that news people were trucking in illegal ballots — from California — to help Joe Biden stay ahead of Donald Trump. 

One conspiracy nut kept yelling that the ballots didn’t have the necessary watermarks (how would he know?) and despite the news crew from the van showing the conspiracy nuts the contents of their vehicle, the nuts were not convinced. Someone I know asked on Facebook what the “watermarks” conspiracy was all about. At the time I didn’t know either, but when I saw Schwartz’s report on MSNBC I burst out laughing. Sorry SNL, you cannot do anything to top that. Sadly I couldn’t find the clip on YouTube.

Then I woke up on Saturday Morning (Nov. 7), about 8:30 Pacific Time, to see every news network had declared Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had won the election.

Dear God In Heaven Almighty! (Sometimes the Catholic in me just can’t be contained)

They did it, we did it, over 75 million American voters did it. When I turned on the television there were people dancing in the streets. I don’t recall anyone dancing in the streets when Barack Obama was declared the winner in 2008. Well, there was some dancing in Grant Park in Chicago the night Obama was declared the winner in 2008, but not all over the U.S. There was a lot of celebrating, but back then Obama was running against an old school Republican, a war hero no less, not a narcissistic, racist ego maniac with obvious symptoms of dementia who had ground this nation’s reputation and psyche into the dirt.

On the flip side, just over 48% of the votes went to the narcissistic racist. Seventy-one million Americans voted to keep the racist, xenophobic and hate-filled guy in the White House. They approve of his policies, or lack of policy when it comes to the coronavirus. Nearly half of the nation’s voters decided they like racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia that Trump represents more than the stability and even, middle of the road policies of Biden. When Trump told these people to stop watching sports, including the NFL, because the players and league were showing themselves to be anti-everything Trump stands for when it comes to racial issues, those people stopped watching.

Racist white people, or white people with no moral compass, don’t like to see rich Black men who get paid — over-paid in the minds of many — to play games, making statements against their preferred political leaders. A guy like LeBron James makes in one playoff game more than the average American worker does in a year. There’s a lot of resentment about that with many white people who have to struggle paycheck to paycheck. 

We can analyze why men’s sports are so lucrative for the leagues and the players, but it comes down to this: the fans are willing to spend the money on their teams and favorite players, through sales of merchandize. That’s a different topic, one I’m not prepared to wax profane on here. Professional sports leagues — men’s professional sports leagues — make billions of dollars every year and naturally the players get a big taste of that revenue. Plus product endorsements.

During the 2018 NBA All-Star Weekend Lakers and former Heat and Cavaliers star LeBron James made some political statements. Fox News host and supreme Trump supporter Laura Ingraham shot back that she — and by inference her viewers and fans — were not interested in the political views of “… someone who gets paid $100 million a year to bounce a ball,” and what became a racial epithet, “Shut up and dribble.”

In 2020 the people that support what athletes are doing with their platforms to push for social justice rose up after the murder of George Floyd and the 2020 sports leagues followed suit. Someone said that would galvanize the vote against the Democrats. Maybe it did. Instead of the 99% of the peaceful demonstrations that were occurring across America in the summer of 2020, the news focused on the rioting, looting and burning buildings. The GOP, i.e. the Trump Cult, used that for their “law and order” message, tying every Democrat to the violence, thereby drowning out the acts of violence perpetrated on the unarmed black men and women who had been killed by law enforcement. The acts of violence that started the demonstrations in the first place. And as it turned out, some of the rioting was started by boogaloo boys and other right wing agitators.

That’s all old news, covered in my previous posts. One thing I didn’t post was that Alabama proved once again it is, collectively, one of the DUMBEST states in the union. Now, there are some smart people in Alabama, some Democrats and really, a few smart Republicans. And here’s how smart those Alabama Republicans are: They ran a politically illiterate retired football coach, with absolutely no experience in any kind of government, up against a well-educated former U.S. Attorney/U.S. Senator with every expectation of winning that seat, which they did. 

They ran Tommy Tuberville, former head football coach at Auburn University, against Doug Jones, a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama and current U.S. Senator. I won’t, like far left commentator Farron Cousins, call Doug Jones “Republican-like,” but I will call Doug Jones rather moderate, a guy willing to break with the Dems on some issues and give his full throated support on others. By the way, for those who didn’t know or forgot: Jones is the U.S. Attorney who successfully prosecuted two former Klansmen for the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. 

Doug Jones is not, in any way, shape or form a progressive Democrat, let alone a socialist. He is a fairly reliable Democrat and votes for the interest of his constituents back home when his moral compass agrees.

So, the GOP/Trump Cult in Alabama ran Tommy Tuberville against Jones. Tuberville is so ignorant when it comes to American history and the U.S. Constitution, it would be an embarrassment to have him representing me in congress. Tuberville thinks the three branches of government are: Congress (by which he means the House of Representatives), the U.S. Senate and the Executive Branch. O Dear …

It’s the Legislative Branch (House of Representatives and Senate), Executive Branch and Judicial Branch, in that order; Articles I, II and III. 

Then he said his father fought in Europe during World War II to defeat socialism … O Dear …

No, no, no, no no! Excuse my melodrama! The U.S. fought on the same side as the Communist U.S.S.R. and the current Democratic Socialist countries of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the somewhat socialist United Kingdom to defeat fascism. Nazi Germany was fascist, not socialist. Being the political party and movement that likes to promote ignorance, the Trump Cult likes to point out the name of Hitler’s political party was the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party.” It was anything but socialist and more concerned with unwavering support for one person and one party.

Farron Cousins was right though, about the Trump Cult’s choice of a complete ignoramus like Tommy Tuberville to run against Doug Jones. The GOP base doesn’t know any more about the Constitution and U.S. History than Tuberville and therefore would not know their candidate is an ignoramus. They just figure Jones is a socialist or leans socialist because he’s a Democrat and that’s all they need to know. The very definition of low information voters. If Doug Jones is a socialist or socialist-leaning, I’m Carl Marks (Yes, I am aware of the spelling).

The smart people of Alabama need to continue organizing, but it must be tough for them. That is, after all, the state that let four named murderers go free for over 10 years and 30 years respectively. White Alabamans don’t like to put Klansmen or former Klansmen on trial for anything, let alone convict them, even if it is for murdering four little girls. Yeah, three of the four named conspirators in the crime were found guilty and sent to prison, but it took an awful long time to do it.

Plus, as a friend and former public defender Stephen Cooper has pointed out many times in this and other publications, Alabama is one of the leading offenders when it comes to the inhumane death penalty. Alabama loves killing people, especially if they are poor and can’t afford a law firm and especially if they be African American. I’m sure Tommy is all for Alabama’s death penalty.

Back to the presidential election:

The Trump Cult withdrew its law suit in Arizona, signaling an end to their nonstop litany of lost court battles over the recounting and allegations of voter fraud wherever Trump lost  what had been wins in 2016.

We are a nation of laws and the law accommodates those who wish to challenge the count in individual states and districts. That has been taken to court many times now in this election and because the plaintiffs offered no evidence of any wrong doing or mistakes in the counting of ballots the courts have denied their claims.

There was also a meme floating across Facebook saying we should have a do-over election. Because we are a nation of laws, one of the requirements for a plaintiff is to provide evidence something should be overturned, or in this case, recounted. No credible evidence was offered. There are no provisions in the Constitution for redoing national elections. There is no “consolation” clause for the losing side to demand a do over if they lose.

Congress cannot just decide to do a “do over” election because it is not in the Constitution to allow them that luxury. Congress would have to start a constitutional amendment process to allow “do-overs” and invalidate the current election result and then hold another election. It does not make any sense to do such a thing for many reasons, not the least of which is the time it would take to have the country vote on and approve such an action.

The losing side needs to do what people have done for over 200 years when their candidate loses the presidential election: Put on their big boy/girl pants and accept it. Trump lost, he’s out.  Take consolation in knowing the Democrats screwed up royally on so many other down ballot elections.

On a lighter note …

On his Sunday evening HBO program “Last Week Tonight,” John Oliver pointed out something hilarious about the vote counting. Reporters and politicos kept talking about the “dumps,” big and small, coming from election registrars across the nation. For instance Steve Kornacki of MSNBC was waiting for several “big dumps.” Poor guy. There he is, trying to work on television while having diarrhea … or something. Okay, I agree it’s nothing more than adolescent, scatological humor, but what the hell, it’s funny.

Speaking of big dumps, please don’t wait for me, I’ll handle this one on my own.

BTW: We are still waiting for Trump to concede. Should he actually do that publicly it will be one big dump indeed.