Trump says he’s made a decision on whether to run in 2024

 Former President Donald Trump said Wednesday he had made up his mind about whether he would seek to regain the White House in 2024, but declined to actually say whether he would launch yet another presidential campaign.

“You’re not going to answer, but I have to ask,” Fox News host Sean Hannity told Trump at a town hall event in Edinburg, Texas.

“Where are you in the process, or — let me ask you this, without giving the answer … have you made up your mind?”

“Yes,” Trump responded, generating applause from the friendly audience.

On Wednesday, Trump railed against McConnell again, saying the Kentuckian “can no longer do the job.” He also lashed out against “RINOs” (“Republicans in name only”) and “weak Republicans” in Washington.

More: https://nypost.com/2021/06/30/trump-has-made-a-decision-on-whether-to-run-in-2024/

Isn't this JOYOUS news?

New survey of experts ranks US presidents

A new C-Span poll of presidential historians has ranked US presidents. As usual for expert rankings so far, the ex-president is ranked in the bottom four. He is tied with Franklin Pierce for third worst. The results are shown in comparison to rankings from 2017, 2009 and 2000.

This survey was informal, with respondents selected by C-SPAN, not by scientific polling. This year, more historians were invited to complete the survey compared to the past. C-SPAN said this was to better reflect diversity in race, gender, age and philosophy. That makes it harder to directly compare it to previous surveys. All of the respondents are distinguished presidential historians covering a broad range of perspectives.

The experts rated presidents from 1 to 10 on ten different leadership categories. The averages of all of ratings were then ranked. The ten categories are public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with Congress, vision/setting an agenda, pursuit of equal justice for all and performance within the context of the times. The ex-president's best average rating was for public persuasion, where he came in 32nd. On moral authority and administrative skills, however, he came in dead last, i.e., he was first in being last on morals and competence. That assessment seems quite reasonable.  

Obviously, this ranking by experts is way out of synch with how most rank and file republicans view the ex-president. Some of them believe he was sent by God and was a great president. Some Republicans believe he is far and away the best US president ever.

One can reasonably expect silence from radical fascist Republican media sources and leaders. Most of the rank and file will probably remain ignorant of how history is starting to assess the fascist president's God-awful time in office, his incompetence and his lack of morality.

Ignorance really is bliss when reality isn't.

The Republican Party continues to oppose democracy and the rule of law

“A society devoid of compromise is totalitarian. If I had to define a free and open society in one word, the word would be ‘compromise.’” -- Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals, 1971

The fascist Republican Party continues to show clearly how anti-democratic and opposed to the rule of law that organization and its elite leadership still is in the wake of the fascist 1/6 coup attempt. The latest show of its contempt for and opposition to democracy is in almost total Republican opposition to investigating the coup attempt. All Senate Republicans oppose a commission to investigate. And yesterday, all but two Republicans in the House voted against a House measure to establish a select committee to investigate the 1/6 attack on the federal government. The New York Times writes:

The House voted mostly along party lines on Wednesday to create a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, pushing ahead over near-unanimous Republican opposition with a broad inquiry controlled by Democrats into the deadliest attack on Congress in centuries.

The panel, established at the behest of Speaker Nancy Pelosi after Senate Republicans blocked the formation of a bipartisan independent commission to scrutinize the assault, will investigate what its organizing resolution calls “the facts, circumstances and causes relating to the Jan. 6, 2021, domestic terrorist attack.”

The 13-member panel, which has subpoena power, will have eight members named by the majority party and five with input from Republicans, and is meant to examine President Donald J. Trump’s role in inspiring the riot. While the measure creating it does not mention him, it charges the committee with looking at the law enforcement and government response to the storming of the Capitol and “the influencing factors that fomented such an attack on American representative democracy while engaged in a constitutional process.”

By opposing an investigation, the Republican Party defends fascism and the opposes the rule of law and democracy.

A galling aspect of this is the obviousness of Republican contempt for democracy and the rule of law. The GOP is blatant about it. The only thing that matters now is power and wealth. Other than corrupting and destroying government, here is no Republican Party governing vision or concern with the public interest. Attaining and exercising raw power for party and donor advantage is the only morality and vision. In this regard, the Republican Party is uncompromisingly fascist and very much like any other purely self-centered special interest seeking wealth and power without much or any regard for the public interest, public opinion or democracy. The GOP doesn't do real compromise, it only does window dressing when needed.

A deeply troubling aspect of this is how some Republicans rationalize the 1/6 coup attempt into something it was not. One bemused congressional Republican characterized the attack on the capitol as just a bunch of innocent tourists being polite and taking selfies as they toured the capital building. Either that Republican was unaware of what happened on 1/6 or more likely, he is a cynical liar feeding a ridiculous excuse for consumption by rank and file populist Republicans to use to justify their continuing support of fascism and the ex-president, who is the epitome of modern American fascism.

Most rank and file conservatives seem to be comfortable with the coup attempt by rationalizing it into either insignificance or literal non-existence, e.g., ‘it could not have been a coup attempt because those people on 1/6 were disorganized fools who failed to overthrow the government and/or just harmless demonstrators expressing their unhappiness (about whatever they were unhappy about)’. The definition of a coup attempt does not take into account how inept it was. A coup attempt is a coup attempt. Period.

Even more troubling is that some independents and democrats also downplay or even deny the seriousness of the 1/6 attack and the now blatant and undeniable fascism of the Republican Party. This reflects the human condition from evolution. The human mind did not evolved such that different people observing the same thing see the same thing. This is particularly true of modern politics and American Christianity, both of which are awash in dark free speech that distorts reality and manipulated minds into false beliefs and irrational behaviors. This is what can take democracy down and give rise to the historical normal human condition, namely tyranny, plutocracy and kleptocracy. Put another way, the modern Republican Party has become the face of the historical normal human condition striving to free itself from the unspeakable horrors of democracy and civil liberties. 

Blog note

I am having endless troubles in trying to migrate to a new laptop. Not sure how this is going to work out or if it will work out. I thought I lost my Disqus account yesterday, but it came back, none of which I understand. If I disappear, I'm not sure how to come back. I may have to remove Disqus from this blog and revert back to the original Blogger comment system. I'm still trying to work through this nightmare.

test image 

test post