Vaccination Appointments, Undemocratic Founding Fathers, the Deplorables and the Chief Telemarketer

A Vaccination Question

What Floriduh county has seven commissioners (each earning about $100,000 a year to serve the public) none of whom had a clue that the phone number given to the tens of thousands trying to make appointments for a Covid19 vaccination would max out after 150 calls?  None of these overpaid hacks should be re-elected when the time comes.

 

Vox Populi, Vox Dei ?

The Founding Fathers did not trust the public.  That’s why they left the election of Senators to State legislatures and put the choice of a president in the hands of a not particularly democratic ‘electoral college.’  And the right to vote, aside from the exclusion of women and slaves, was originally riddled with property requirements on the State levels.  Did they fear that believing “the voice of the people would be the voice of God” (Vox Populi, Vox Dei) might someday result in that ‘voice’ being the voice of the Devil instead?  They had the French Revolution as a bad example of what horrors democracy can cause just across the Atlantic.

Maybe.  But these limitations on the right to vote slowly disappeared over the years as democracy was broadened in the United States. Americans, at least up to now, felt that the people could be trusted.  Well, in view of the ‘devils’ the people voted into both Houses of Congress and put in the White House in 2016 as well, it turns out that the Founding Fathers may have been right after all.

The Plight of the Sore Loser

I can understand how the losing candidate in an election can complain about election fraud as an excuse for losing, but there has to be evidence of such fraud.  It is not enough to claim that it exists with no evidence to prove it and demanding seemingly unending searches for such evidence does not make its existence more likely.  

And declaring that the election was “stolen” by virtue of such unproven fraud, without evidence to back it up, may be a crime in itself.  You just can't call someone a thief unless you have something to prove it.

If I call the police claiming that a neighbor stole something from me but without any evidence that they did, they will come and visit him or her and ask about it, but without evidence, that will be the end of it.  If I repeatedly call them with the same unproven complaint, I may be subject to arrest myself and also to a civil lawsuit by my neighbor, who might feel his reputation has been sullied by unwarranted charges that he or she is a thief, and when you say someone stole something, that is what you are doing.

How do you make Republicans understand this?

The Incurably Ignorant and Gullible

The ongoing Congressional strategy of many Republicans, refusing to accept the presidential election results, is based on lies, dreams and fictions, and is something they act out with impunity. The non-existent evidence they talk about, if presented before a judge, would result in lawyers being disbarred but they can get away with lies in Congress where they are not under oath. That’s why they lose in court but win in the minds and hearts of the gullible and ignorant.  

Last week, the New York Times’ David Brooks pointed out that attempting to educate such people with the truth doesn’t work. Rather, it only causes them to dig in their heels strengthening their belief in the lies upon which their alternate reality is based.  Is there a “democratic” solution?  This is why Hillary Clinton called them "deplorables."

 

Our Telemarketing President

"Fellas, I need 11,000
votes. Give me a break"

Last year, our President, on a phone call, tried  to blackmail Ukraine’s president into digging up dirt on the Bidens before the November election in exchange for releasing money for defensive arms for that country to use against Russia.  He failed and was impeached in the process, his butt being saved by the GOP’s Senate majority.  He has just tried, again via a phone call, to similarly blackmail Georgia’s Secretary of State into fiddling with that States presidential vote results, long rechecked and certified.  His phone call threatened some vague sort of retribution if he didn’t comply.  

Trump gets away with this kind of scurrilous behavior, acceptable in mafia circles and in less savory business environments, because when he is caught with his pants down, shyster mouthpieces like former Attorney General Barr come to his rescue.  Since the day Barr whitewashed the Mueller Report, Trump has been unleashed.  Both Trump and Barr belong in jail.  It won’t happen, but they do.

Barr

JL