Episode 43 “This Day In History: December 31, 2020: The Storm Gathering Around The Congressional Affirmation Of The Electoral College Vote For The 2020 Presidential Election January 6, 2021”

The issue of electoral college affirmation of the 2020 presidential election became a big deal when Donald Trump decided that he was going to claim victory in the election in spite of no evidence that the result was different than was accepted by the new major news outlets, the courts, and the majority of the voting population—Joseph Biden was considered the winner of the election. Since Trump has continued to claim that he actually won the election and then he was robbed of the legitimate victory many of his 74 million supporters have continued to believe the myth that their candidate was the victim of a massive fraud. The normal process of counting the electoral college votes and finally certifying The official results of the election is being complicated by the ongoing process of confusion courtesy of Donald Trump. We will discuss the 2 senatorial runoff elections in Georgia on January 5 and the expected finalizing of the 2020 vote. There’s significant conflict between the Trump supporters and everyone else that will be played out in Congress on January 6. Ari Melber interviews a Trump supporting legislator who tries to explain his opposition to the 2020 election results (not very convincingly to me ears—this was previously linked on the 39th episode): https://youtu.be/S3tm3ID0eDM. The show down on January 6, 2021 will be the subject of our next episode.

Barak Obama was unique in the modern post World War II presidency as a chief executive who could lead the country and write about the experience in a reasonably accessible style that could describe the journey in terms that the average person could easily understand. His philosophical and spiritual foundations were clearly evident. His practical and technical grasp of domestic and foreign policy were obvious as well. To enter the presidential office at a time of economic calamity and to set our country on the road to recovery and growth is quite remarkable. While his critics have been strenuous in raising concerns about the direction his team led us in many areas, the recovery and growth of the economy over this last 12 years is undeniable. And as James Carvel famously said if you want to boil down the American people’s judgment of the success of a presidency in normal times, “It’s the economy stupid!”

The thing that caught my eye in the preface of this book is these sentences: “What I can say for certain is that I am not yet ready to abandon the possibility of America—not just for the sake of future generations of Americans but for all humankind. For I’m convinced that the pandemic they we’re currently living through is both a manifestation of and a mere interruption in the relentless march toward an interconnected world, one in which peoples and cultures can’t help but to collide. In that world – of global supply chains instantaneous capital transfers, social media, transnational terrorist networks, climate change, mass migration, and ever increasing complexity— we will learn to live together, cooperate with one another, and recognize the dignity of others, or we will perish. And so the world watches America—the only great power in history made up of people from every corner of the planet, comprising every race and faith and cultural practice—to see if our experiment in democracy can work. To see if we can do what no other nation has ever done. To see if we can actually live up to the meaning of our creed. The jury is still out.” (page xvii-xviii) This book is an important document that comprises a first draft of history. It’s worth a read.

In this episode we continue with the sad story of the Republican parties attempt to invalidate the 2020 presidential election. 17 attorneys general from republican states join in a lawsuit with 126 republican congressional representatives to ask the Supreme Court of the United States to overturn the elections in four states that were won by President elect Joe Biden. The Republicans asked the Supreme Court to find in favor of President Trump, that the election was fraught with fraudulent vote stealing. The Supreme Court turned the lawsuit away without hearing it because there was no evidence of fraud and because the attorneys general had no constitutional basis for challenging the elections in other states.

This is Part 2 of a continuing story. This is a copy of the link from Part 1 In which Steve Schmidt characterizes the republican party as having hit a new low and it’s history. And he was formally declaring that he was changing parties as a result of the violation of principle.

tps://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/12/10/lincoln_project_founder_steve_schmidt_warns_the_republican_party_is_an_organized_conspiracy_and_they_just_crossed_the_rubicon.html

In this episode we continue with the sad story of the Republican parties attempt to invalidate the 2020 presidential election. 17 attorneys general from republican states join in a lawsuit with 126 republican congressional representatives to ask the Supreme Court of the United States to overturn the elections in four states that were won by President elect Joe Biden. The Republicans asked the Supreme Court to find in favor of President Trump, that the election was fraught with fraudulent vote stealing. The Supreme Court turned the lawsuit away without hearing it because there was no evidence of fraud and because the attorneys general had no constitutional basis for challenging the elections in other states. This action by the Supreme Court upheld the principle of democracy in the states in question because they had recount of the votes several times and had found no significant problems. Steve Schmidt, one of the founders of the Lincoln project, a new advocacy group of former Republicans, called this action by the attorneys general and the congressman an act of treason toward our people. We will publish the link to Mr. Schmidt’s comments for the interested reader to be able to verify what was actually said.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/12/10/lincoln_project_founder_steve_schmidt_warns_the_republican_party_is_an_organized_conspiracy_and_they_just_crossed_the_rubicon.html

The Failure Of President Trump And His Supporters To Deal With Reality (17 Attorney Generals Fight Democracy)” (Part 2) This episode continues the story of how President Trump failed to deal with his defeat in the election of 2020. He claimed victory before November 4 was over and later learned that the vote count did not go his way. This is part 2 of the discussion where we recognize the historic significance of a president who refuses to accept reality and how his party also refused to accept the reality of his defeat. The attorney general of the state of Texas (Ken Paxton who has coincidentally been under federal investigation for corruption and thus might be interested in obtaining a presidential pardon if needed) filed a lawsuit with the supreme court protesting how other four states had conducted their elections and he felt that the results should be reviewed and overturned. 16 other attorneys general (all from pro-Trump states) filed in amicus status to back up Texas. To add further fuel to the fire 126 Republican Congressional Representatives filed in agreement with the 17 attorneys general to petition the Supreme Court to overturn the election results of the four pro-Biden states. Both Chris Cuomo (CNN) and Ari Melber interviewed pro-Trump officials who tried to explain the rationale for their legal strategy. These programs are linked here. Listen and think about the arguments. https://youtu.be/S3tm3ID0eDM (This is the YouTube link for the program on December 14, 2020 where the MAGA delegate from Wisconsin Bill Feehan explains to Ari why he wouldn’t concede Biden’s victory in the presidential election even after the electoral college certified Biden’s election). This clip https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cuomo-prime-time-with-chris-cuomo/id1393858741?i=1000502132109 from the Chris Cuomo show on December 11, 2020 begins at the 39’ mark when congressman Doug Lamalfa (R-Ca) refuses to concede the election of Joe Biden as POTUS #45 although the congressman does call the 9-0 refusal by the US Supreme Court to hear the case a “setback.” As the judicial losses are piling up Trump won’t stop raising money from his supporters and crying “foul.”

And we will extend the discussion as needed because this is truly a unique time in American history. We hope that all those in the 33% to 40% of voters who did not register and did not vote will finally discover that their votes are important and that is important for them to investigate the issues and vote.

“The Failure Of President Trump And His Supporters To Deal With Reality (17 Attorney Generals Fight Democracy)” (Part 1) This episode begins the story of how President Trump failed to deal with his defeat in the election of 2020. He claimed victory before November 4 was over and later learned that the vote count did not go his way. When he won 309 electoral college votes but lost the popular vote by 3 million votes he called it an historic landslide. He called it one of the great elections of all time. But when his opponent won 309 electoral college votes Trump called the election result “fraudulent” which he refused to accept. He is refusing to accept the vote as of December 20, 2020. This is part 1 of the discussion where we recognize the historic significance of a president who refuses to accept reality and how his party also refused to accept the reality of his defeat. We will continue this discussion in episode 39. And we will extend the discussion as needed because this is truly a unique time in American history. We hope that all those in the 33% to 40% of voters who did not register and did not vote will finally discover that their votes are important and that is important for them to investigate the issues and vote.

This episode Chronicles the origin of Donald Trump‘s strategy of communication which was first outlined in the book the art of the deal. Trump was advocating that he could keep his opponents off guard by the use of “creative hyperbole”—That is, not telling the truth, using confusion, exaggeration, misstatements and if necessary out right lies to gain any and every advantage in his quest to win at all costs. The Art Of The Deal was a New York Times bestseller that was actually dictated to ghost writer Tony Schwartz.

Soon after announcing his candidacy for the nomination Trump continued to beat on the lie that Barak Obama was not born in the United States and was therefore not a legal and legitimate president. Trump admitted that he had been promoting a false conspiracy about for five years about Obama on September 16, 2016 https://youtu.be/FVNLWTQ9VH0. Strangely no one brought up this lie again during the 201 6 presidential campaign. And stranger still, 38% of people describing themselves as strong Republicans and 11% of people describing themself as strong Democrats continued to report in November 2018 that they believed that Obama was not born in the United States https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-race-ethnicity-and-politics/article/genesis-of-the-birther-rumor-partisanship-racial-attitudes-and-political-knowledge/8C13EDF7D45A475E97B5D2B35BC8979E.

Trump has, according to The Washington Post, not a pro-Trump newspaper, told 25,000 falsehoods as of November 2020

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/22/president-trump-is-averaging-more-than-50-false-or-misleading-claims-day/. Whatever the true number of lies, Trump has abused the public with his “creative hyperbole.“ This strategy was expanded by a method developed in the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation called “Firehouse of Falsehood.” This strategy is designed to be so disorienting that people cannot keep up with the pace of trickery. Firehose is further explained by guest Jonathan Rauch on the podcast “Reliable Sources” at the 14’ mark of the episode https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reliable-sources-with-brian-stelter/id466789756?i=1000500726062. All citizens must be vigilant in checking out all information for validity and reliability, because freedom is not free.

Today’s episode looks at the issue of global warming as a part of our Principle 13 (“Increases Protection Of Nature And The Environment”) through the lens of the new documentary movie “Planet Of The Humans.” This movie has been viewed over 10,000,000 times on the internet and is now available for a nominal rental fee. The main idea of the movie is that it may be too late to undo the damage to planet earth from global warming and that the path to a safe temperature for our world may be unachievable due to the fact that technology is still too primitive to safely get to carbon neutrality. A final major theme is the fact that the environmental movement has been invaded by the billionaire class and the carbon based energy companies who want to profit off of the movement to save the planet, There are a number of critics who have made some legitimate points about how the movie does not accurately portray the problems and the complications of the solutions. We will include some of those links here, There is no doubt that critics’ validity aside, that global warming is really a thing, the environment is reflecting the effects of the warming and there will be a greater and greater price for damaging the earth. We need you people who have not yet decided to enter the political process to register to vote, to become informed about the issues, our history as it relates to how things got so messed up, and where we go from here to help ourselves and our children and grandchildren to correct these problems. Here are the links to the critics of “Planet Of The Humans.” 1) https://youtu.be/3Ya7Sb_lV5Q 2) https://youtu.be/cDqZVjAiAvs 3) https://youtu.be/__UJ09PZFoI 4) https://youtu.be/ZmNjLHRAP2U Michael Moore responds to some of the critics 5) https://youtu.be/qcqSTX2yDNc. Let’s vote Georgia between December 14, 2020 and January 5, 2021!

The forces of peaceful co-existence in the world (especially in the United States and Russia) have maintained a program to allow the two main nuclear super powers to keep and eye on one another and their allies to minimize the possibility that either side could surprise the other with warlike actions and threaten world peace: The Open Skies Treaty. President Trump recently withdrew (November 22, 2020) the United States from this treaty with no rational explanation. https://www.rferl.org/a/u-s-to-withdraw-from-open-skies-treaty-moscow-says-all-options-are-open-to-us-/30962981.html. We recognize that a new presidential administration has the option to bring us back into the treaty, but the question remains, why the sudden withdrawal? There are many such questions that demand answers, but it may be that you non-voting soon to become voting citizens will have to join the rest of the country to get our answers. Is this the end of imaginative thinking to keep humanity out of war? Some say “Yes!” https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/06/16/a-farewell-to-the-open-skies-treaty-and-an-era-of-imaginative-thinking/. We say “No!” Now get out there and vote!

It is very common for many workers to think about saving part of their paycheck for the future and more and more people have thought about investing that savings in the US Stockmarket. They dream of keeping their investment safe until retirement and then using the investment to boost their income in older age. Steve and I were talking about this idea when he happened to see an article in the local newspaper that “Millionaires in the Stockmarket Reach An All Time High.” We were intrigued to see how many people had reached $1 million or more in their balance. President Trump was constantly referring to how well the stocks were doing. Well, the number was about 240,000 which was about a 15% increase over the past 4 years, but the overall number of millionaires was shockingly small to us (less than 1/10 of 1%). And what is worse the average balance of the average 401k/IRA is about $110,000 which again is a pretty low number. You can’t live very well off of the interest and if you withdraw the money to live on, the money will soon be gone—it’s much easier to spend money than to earn it. And to make matters even worse our representatives in the US House of Representatives and US Senators are legally allowed to invest in stocks freely in spite of the inside information that they have access to as a result of doing their jobs. For example, David Purdue and Kelly Loeffler have taken advantage of their positions to make millions of dollars trading, buying, and they are now running for re-election to the US Senate. Kelly Loeffler’s husband is the President of the New York Stock Exchange! So, while we do not begrudge people being successful and doing well financially, it does appear that stock market reforms are in order and we need to give the politicians some new limits on investing to make sure that there is much more fairness in the laws governing investing. The limits of the politicians are completely in the hands of the voters. So if you needed one more reason to consider voting look at the following articles for more information. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/how-to-invest-in-stocks/. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/16/401k-millionaires-record-high/. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/congress-insider-trading-problem/608488/. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/25/senators-dumped-stocks-amid-coronavirus-crisis-heres-what-we-know-about-congress-financial-self-interest/.