Politics

Washington DC Thousands of Trump supporters descended on Washington DC on Wednesday for the second rally against alleged voter fraud in the presidential election. The #StopTheSteal rally took place on the same day Congress was set to certify the Electoral College results, as President Trump urged Vice President Mike Pence to reject the electors. It had a markedly lower turnout than the Million MAGA March in the fall, at least partially because it was frigid and took place in the middle of the work week. People with flags sporting a variety of slogans, from ‘Trump 2020’ to ‘Latinos for Trump’ to ‘No More Bullshit’ mused about whether or not Pence would stop the certification — and whether he’s even qualified to do so.

Two things seem to be agreed upon by most reasonable people debating the November 3 election. First, there was election fraud. There is some degree of election fraud in every cycle. Second, the presidential election of 2020 was susceptible to more than the usual dosage of deceit because of the large number of mail-in ballots. Whether or not you believe that enough fraud existed to change the election results, these realities seem to share consensus. So does the lack of interest in doing anything about them. Republicans care only about election fraud on a scale that would tip the results to President Trump. Democrats care only about election fraud on a scale that might tip the results to President Trump too.

Steve Bannon’s plan to build a great populist ‘movement’ in Europe hasn’t quite yet come to fruition. But the former White House chief strategist has formed an interesting relationship with Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, who these days talks as if he’s been avidly listening to Bannon’s War Room podcast instead of reciting the rosary. The two men have just released an extraordinary interview, in which the prelate describes the connections between what he calls the global ‘Deep State’, that serves China’s interests, and the ‘Deep Church’, led by Bergoglio — or, as most the world knows him, Pope Francis I.

Like most Greek stories, the tale of Pandora’s box is fraught with ambiguity. Most of us, when we first encounter the story, learn that it is a fable about the dangers of curiosity, not unlike the story ‘of man’s first disobedience, and the Fruit/ of that Forbidden Tree’. As Eve sneaked the apple, so Pandora took the lid off a box that she was forbidden to peek inside. Bang! Death, illness, famine and all the other miseries of the world escaped to blight man’s life, leaving behind only hope as a sort of consolation prize. But is hope a consolation? Or is it a subtler, more insinuating evil?

The American middle class is in a precarious position. After decades of decline — the percentage of Americans in the middle class fell by 10 points between 1971 and and 2011 — the most important income group in the country seemed to be stabilizing. That likely won't be the case much longer if the government-ordered economic shutdown continues to put the squeeze on everyday Americans. The middle class was largely left out of the conversation as politicians and pundits spent months debating a second round of COVID relief. Republicans re-discovered their fleeting affair with fiscal conservatism, advocating for slashing unemployment insurance bonuses and sneering at the idea of more substantial stimulus checks, both of which would provide huge benefit to middle income earners.

In a speech to the Federalist Society in November, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito reiterated his concern that ‘in certain quarters, religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavored right’. Small wonder that the subject was on his mind. A week earlier, the Court had heard oral arguments in the latest religious-liberty case, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. In it, Catholic Social Services — one of some 30 agencies used by the city to place foster children in private homes — claimed religious exemption for its policy of placing kids in traditional mom-and-dad family settings. So far, one might think, so unremarkable: a Catholic agency conforms its good works to Catholic principles. But what about nontraditional couples — like those of the same sex?

How many passes does Anthony Fauci get? How many times must he be categorically wrong before people stop ogling his every facial expression and treating him as some sort of minor deity? Let me state unequivocally that enough is enough and it’s time for him to step aside. ​He won’t, of course. He’ll sit for magazine covers, attend sporting events the rest of us don’t get to go to, perhaps take CBS up on their offer to appear on Dancing with the Stars or sign a multi-year cable news contract. As COVID-19 tears through the country, and more importantly, through the parts of the country like California where elected officials worship Fauci like a sun-god, he continues his tour of the television studios. He continues to mislead the public.

At the end of the day, the votes cast and counted determine who wins and who loses. Though it might be the case that many people cast ballots in 2020 who weren’t eligible to do so for one reason or another, putting that horse back into the barn after the election is nearly impossible. The vote totals in seven Ohio counties shows why Donald Trump barely lost the election to Joe Biden while Republicans down ticket did extremely well. Republican congressman Troy Balderson’s 12th Congressional District encompasses parts of heavily-Democratic Franklin County (Columbus and its suburbs) along with six other suburban and rural counties north and east of Franklin County. Those counties include: Delaware, Licking, Marion, Morrow, Muskingum and Richland.

You’ve succeeded in business, made it as a TV star and got yourself elected president. What could possibly top that? Donald Trump may have stumbled on the answer. He has, perhaps accidentally, become a religious leader. Christianity has always played a major role in US politics. What’s new about Trump is the fervor he excites in his supporters, and how easily it can be combined with a kind of religious devotion. Trump fans bring crucifixes and rosaries to his rallies.

It’s been a month since the President pardoned a turkey, so why pardon a flock of them now? Presidential pardons and commutations may be lawful and traditional, and the conduct of government agencies in the Trump years has certainly confirmed that presidential fiat might be fairer than the Justice Department. But some of the names in Trump’s flurry of pre-Christmas pardons smack of the Washington insider-trading that Trump has decried — and suggest we might be better off with no pardons at all.There are exceptional cases, of course, but they are rare. The necessity of Andrew Johnson pardoning Confederate combatants after the Civil War is obvious.

If you were called upon to invent the human antithesis of rock and roll, you couldn’t do better than our nation’s 37th president, Richard Nixon. Habitually clad in a funereally dark suit and dress shoes, even when strolling on the beach, Nixon’s tastes in music ran to the semi-classical strains of Mantovani and the Boston Pops, and a penchant for sitting alone at night brooding to Wagner. I once asked the legendary White House fixer Gordon Liddy what his chief thought, if anything, about pop music. ‘Crap,’ Liddy replied succinctly. In late 1970, the 57-year-old Nixon was at something of a low point. A combination of the continuing war in Vietnam and domestic economic woes proved disastrous for the GOP in that November’s midterm elections.