Democrats are beginning to take RFK JR as a threat, a spoiler

 This is an updated version of an earlier posting

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: My rap on a third party theme; , Mesaging to Gen Z . Update Nov, 2https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4564375-democrats-rfk-jr-biden-trump-2024/-26,20 23, 1/19/2024

Updated: 1/19/2024  Update 2/12/24  Updated re RFK JR 3 31 24

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4564375-democrats-rfk-jr-biden-trump-2024/.

Student Loan Forgiveness: Biden Approves Another Nearly $5 Billion In Debt Relief For 74,000 Borrowers (forbes.com)

Excellent analysis where third parties have influenced election outcomes and coult in 2024.  https://thehill.com/opinion/4308326-matthews-how-a-third-party-candidate-could-create-political-chaos/

Reposted Nov. 26, 2023  As Biden is showing weakness from younger voters, getting a message to them becomes ever harder.   Update from prior posting.: 11/24-26/23   https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/poll-bidens-standing-hits-new-lows-israel-hamas-war-rcna125251How to communicate with young voters who get their news from social media like Chinese related TikTok, instead of even cable and broadcast means that communicators need to meet them where they are.  The message should be clear: ID their issues and point out how the GOP would fail them and how Democrats would and have tried to help.  The other fear is that out of a " plague on both your houses", younger voters would vote for some third-party candidate. It Isn’t Just TikTok: Americans Like Other Chinese-Owned Apps Too | Wilson Center

 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/06/no-labels-exposed-heres-a-list-of-donors-funding-its-effort-to-disrupt-the-2024-race/?fbclid=IwAR2i9xlb8z3TDNW_Fpi8OM5mpgCBsoLczPbhqI73S4H8uOEuCwrxwlYMyZ0

 Two can play that game regarding messaging, but Democrats should get their game face on. and then flood Gen Z's preferred social media platforms with messages refuting the negative messages they are hearing.  I wonder if there is any effort on the part of the DNC or Biden campaign organizations to do that.  The messaging should not be difficult for Biden forces to construct: If Gen Z is concerned about student loans, gun violence, social justice, choice, gender issues, climate range, the GOP and the Trumpsters have a terrible record. If freedom to vent and voice their protests, Trump actually wants to put out of business media that does not support him and if there are demonstrations, he wants to use the active military to put demonstrations down, invoking the insurrection act on day one.  

(Update: 1 14 2024:  Dave Williams, Colorado GOP Chair and now candidate for the House seat in Colorado vacated by Rep. Lamborn, made national news with a campaign slogan  running earlier for Lamborn's seat (and lost) that he incorporated in his name as "Dave Lets go Brandon Williams" which was disallowed by the Colorado Supreme Court.  The "Let's go, Brandon" slogan was standing for F...K Joe Biden.  In response, the Biden campaign (per MNBC, Jen Psaki, says the counter meme of "Dark Brandon" is gaining traction with the TikTok generation.  https://www.tiktok.com/channel/dark-brandon-meme?lang=en)  That is indeed fighting fire with fire.  Laser eye, aviator glasses Biden strikes back.

While it was not immediately obvious, Biden put pressure on Israel to agree to the hostage exchange, [paise fighting to allow humanitarian aid to reach Gaza, called for a two-state solution (consistently and firmly even before Netanyahu was in power), and even per some independent media reports, opposed the IDF extending military action to southern Gaza.  

  Remarks by President Biden on the Release of Hostages from Gaza | The White House     He had been listening all along and attempting to free hostages and get humanitarian aid into Gaza.  

Biden faces a warning sign from younger voters critical to his coalition | CNN Politics

Poll: Biden’s standing hits new lows amid Israel-Hamas war (nbcnews.com)

US Warns Israel AheaBidd of Next Phase of War in Gaza (newsweek.com)   Biden is listening.

So I wrote a rap (the lyrics at least)...with apologies to Ari Melber, who honors Tne Beat.  The implied message is to those who might be Biden voters but who throw their vote away to a third party, or minor candidate on the basis of being pure at heart, on certain issues, protesting, or just being contrary or going along with peers.. a vote for a third-party candidate is a vote for Trump.  Don't be stupid and elect him. He will not fix your student loans;, he will not keep politicians out of your bedroom and your health care choices; in fact, if you get angry, he'll just sick the active US army on your demonstrations.  Before long, we would look like every other country, Russia, China, and Hong Kong, run by an authoritarian or a dictator.   I may have had fun writing it, but the message is just darn serious. None of these candidates who are not part of the political party two party majors have a chance to be in the White House because the system, the electoral college, winner-take-all all state by state requires a large number of states to even show a blip in the electoral college.  Where the damage is in a swing state in a close election,  votes against Biden could swing a state or two to Trump since Biden's votes would be split among two or more while Trump's vote remains steady.  Then in a close electoral count, as is predicted, in 2024, one or two states could make the difference one way or the other. It has happened within the past 23 years. Imagine if Nader in Florida had not taken votes from environmentalist Al Gore. Gore's loss set the environmental movement back years.https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-nader-cost-gore-an-election/2015/  Hillary ran into another buzz saw in Jill Stein.  Imagine if Hillary Clinton had won that election instead of Trump. Jill Stein's Ties to Vladimir Putin Explained (newsweek.com)

Update: 11/20/2023 Whether the plight of the Palestinians will be an issue a year from now is unknown.  The obvious unconcern for their safety by the IDF has hit a sympathetic vibe among younger voters. However, much depends upon the progress made in the two-state solution and Biden's support of that for years and if he can engineer that, as well as to credit for his wisdom and skills. Also, the participation by neo-Nazis in pro-Palestinian demonstrations should be a red flag to university students that are supposedly educated about history. They are being played by some ugly forces.  In short,  much can happen between now and November 2024. Neo-Nazis and the Far-Right Are Trying to Hijack Pro-Palestine Protests (vice.com)   Trump has also called to ban Gaza refugees from immigrating to the US and well as his history of stoking Islamaphobia.  That is the contrast that Biden can make.  Opinion | A short history of President Trump’s anti-Muslim bigotry - The Washington Post

Here is what is disturbing: Trump's party is full of White Christian nationalists, anti-semites, and eeo Nazis.. It comes with the package of racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Muslim, and Trump just announced he plans to instate a Muslim ban."  Undocumented immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country", he recently opined. Hispanics take note.  That one is straight out of the neo-Nazi playbook. He also promises to put undocumented immigrants in concentration-like camps while at the same time, using the FBI and DOJ to get revenge on those who oppose him after he replaces them with loyalists to him, not to the rule of law, or the Constitution, which he plans to rewrite. Want to vent your ire at Trump's policies?  His most recent comment should put a chill up your backs: He wants to use the active military to put down protests against him.  He tried that in Lafayette Square in the Black Lives Matter unrest, but Gen. Mark Milley  revolted and refused to let him use active military for a domestic political purpose.  Trump has called Milley a traitor   and called for him to be executed and he would appoint a yes person to the Joint Chief chair.,

From my December 16 posting: A word to those on the left from one who is hardly viewed as right-wing on civil rights and domestic issues. This initiative from the extremists on the right has nothing to do with the immorality of war; it is a political strategy to give them more power and an anti-democratic ideology. Playing their game of Putin love/isolationist/ appeasement will only lead to the possibility of getting ourselves involved in a hotter, wider war, not with a proxy like Ukraine, but actively ourselves. If we reduce our defense budget by the 10% Ukraine is costing us, do you really think the savings will be applied to domestic social programs instead of reducing taxes on the rich?    Do not be played.  The reason we are in this position now is because of a power-mad hyper-nationalist Putin, determined to recreate an empire they lost in ending the Cold War. Putin’s plan for a new Russian Empire includes both Ukraine and Belarus - Atlantic Council 

Trump called his political opponents 'vermin' echoing language used by Hitler : NPR

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/crank-politician-family-rfk-jr-kennedy-gosar

Trump's anti-immigrant comments draw rebuke | CNN Politics

Trump Threatens Wide Use of Military Force Against Protesters (voanews.com)

Trump Suggests That Mark Milley Deserves Execution - The Atlantic

My rap on a third party theme follows

Listen my children and you will hear

my fervent fear to what you adhere

of hopes you are  given more choices not just

 of only two candidates who now do appear.

 

You long for some younger, more genders, you say

so vote for Jill Stein or others in play.

Your hope is eternal, with goals aimed to save

 us from greed  and  an earth that is near its last day..

 

If that’s what you think, consider this thought:

A vote for third parties will leave you distraught.

 Instead, they might cause Trump to  win a  key state

and make what you hoped instead what you hate.

"Too moral to vote ",is your foolish boast?

So at home you stay, making Biden toast.

 

As students of history,  you should be  aware

that third party spoilers like Nader and Stein

 caused  Clinton and  Gore, to lose by a hair,  

and handing the White House to antagonists’ care..

 

  MAGAS and Trump care not for more Green.

His party thinks debts  that you think are obscene.

 you owe them.  You signed them. The law stands above.

Your choice of your health care or whoever you love

are no longer the freedoms  you once thought supreme.

 

 Your urge to protest when Trump is  the head, ,

as dictator  Trump , had already  said,

“his” army  he orders will  stop you  instead.

because by that time democracy  is  dead.

Trump's use of fear backed up with violence has left a long trail leading to this day

 From the beginning of his political career, Trump has been promoting violence to give credibility to his use of fear, which he sees as a powerful tool to get his way. Posting on his social page a photo created  picture of Biden tied up in the back of a pickup truck with Trump's thumbs up in approval truly got attention on March 30. Those who ignore his threats of fear and violence, keep silent, and waive them off as just bloviating are his enablers. They also help unleash the unhinged violent actors and give them cover to carry out the threat on Trump's behalf. Even worse: He gives cover for others who normally would never let exhortation of violence to cross their tongues. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/tom-cotton-s-tweets-about-violence-against-protesters-are-alarming

Trump names and fingers the targets in public of who should be the victims of violence on his behalf, a presiding trial judge's daughter, for example, the day before the vile pickup truck meme. He stands by, or as on January 6, reveling in the TV images of violent acts committed under his banners for hours before calling them off. He calls them patriots and hostages he will release from jail if he gets re-elected. The head of the husband of a political opponent is bashed in with a hammer in his name, and his supporters laugh as he recounts that attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband.  Violent acts committed in his name are not considered crimes, or they are ignored or become a joke, like the recent pickup truck meme. Fear his promise of revenge and retribution if he gets re-elected because he is not kidding, which means more power to a "strong leader" his followers hope he will be.  

One indelible image comes from January 6 of an actual scaffold and hangman's noose standing by.  Pence got the message, yet he bravely refused to perform the coup and will not support Trump in 2024, citing the threat of violence to which he was subjected and blaming Trump for it.  Whichever it is. innate, nurtured, or naturally cunning, this country has never had such a person with this behavior profile in the Oval Office until now, and he is trying to get into power once again now that he has learned why and how he failed the first time. 

Loyalty to Trump means fear of the consequences if you fail to show it in your words or deeds.  Is he just kidding, snarling a threat? Is he just an angry, uncontrolled, unhinged mouth blowing off steam, or is he doing it intentionally to scare an official to behave a certain way or to back off holding himself,  Trump,  accountable for breaking the law? It is both, but it is more one of intent and conscious use of fear as a tool for power and support of violence that gives the threat credibility. Fear as a tool to better power was admitted to Bob Woodward in 2016 and reported by Woodward in his 2028 book "Fear," based on interviews with staff in the White House. He referenced Trump's statement that "Real power is, I don't even want to use the word, fear."  

I particularly relate to threats of violence as a former election official myself. Trump and his minions are still perpetuating the big lie, and it has violent results. It fuels intimidation and attacks on our election processes. It is close to home in Colorado as our secretary of state felt it necessary to go public and the high profile given the recent ballot issue initiated by GOP and independent never-Trumpers.  Here is what it means. It is an attack on democracy itself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5iMjxrIN-8  Violent threats increase 600%, and she will not be intimidated.  How many profiles of courage like that are out there? Jena Griswold Sees 600 Percent Spike in Threats Since Trump Challenge (rollingstone.com)

For his use of violence as a political tool in Trump's past, and documented,  go to https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2020/08/trump-fans-flames-of-violence-yet-calls.html

Trump uses fear in another way. " Fear what I tell you to fear "even though you probably never met an immigrant, for example, or never was a victim of a crime committed by an immigrant. "You could be" is enough for the paranoid and those hateful of others to fear them.  "They bring disease, will contaminate your blood, and rape your daughters. And they are so foreign they don't speak English or some language..."   These are simple messages that appeal to those who do not indulge in thinking objectively or care about facts and data. (Violent crimes are down under Biden, for example, and cities filled with migrants actually have less crime)  .https://www.thebulwark.com/p/biden-won-the-war-on-crime  in general

The use of law and order to control his threatening, violence-supporting behavior has failed to keep him in check. Law and order are only respected if they serve their purpose.  In MAGAland, killing Blue, who put up the resistance on Jan. 6 by those committing the violence on Trump's behalf, does not count as breaking the law. It just makes them patriots, not perps, in Trump's openly expressed view. Holding up the death of a cop at the hands of an immigrant means all immigrants are like that, so that is an example of fear of them and calls for more law and order. 

 Attempts to hold him accountable for inciting Jan.6 standing by for hours before calling them off are explained away to his followers with judges who rule against him because they hate Trump,  are corrupt, are black women, family members are never Trumpers, etc".It is not just a life-long bully speaking and channeling others' support of violence. He is the instigator, and he knows there always will be those who will pull the trigger or deliver a threatening message in his name.   

 The kind of power wielded by Putin is so admired so often by Trump, and a knot of Putin-loving GOP House members needs to be firmly rejected in November. Democracy is at stake. It is not the soothing kind of dictatorship Orban has constructed in Hungary, the darling of CPAC and entertained last month in Mar-a-Lago by Trump himself.  It is a violent one based on fear of retribution and the use of the executive branch and the Department of Justice as its weapon of implementation.  Political violence is  a Trump's approved and promoted tool of enforcement.   https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/03/whats-difference-between-orban.html  It is closer to the Putin model, and alarming is Trump's attempt before the Supreme Court now to get total immunity for any crimes he committed or will commit while in office.   It is that kind of a dictatorship for which he lusts. In his anger over his frustration in trying to overturn the 2020 election, he proposed to rewrite the Constitution. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4168261-trump-called-for-termination-of-parts-of-constitution-in-december/

Some personal notes:

I have to admit I have a particularly strong revulsion to dictatorships of any kind, fascist or communist. Few have ever had hands-on experience with dictatorship where fear of revenge or retribution backed up by actual physical violence or fear of it permeates all society, but take it from me, I have. Been there and done that firsthand.  It not only affects high-level dissidents like Navalny, it dictates a way of life for ordinary people living daily, watching their tongue, scared to complain about wrongdoing, for fear their co-workers and neighbors will report them, and they will lose the next promotion at best,  a backing for political office or a chance to become a medical student (as it happened to my husband to be when he was a student), or at worse, the knock on the door at night with government operatives searching for a long-gone family member (as experienced by my husband as a teenager). He knew they had the power to cart you off to "interrogation" and conduct a warrantless search while the paddy wagon waited outside. The rule of law or civil rights protections were nonexistent in practice, though they existed, useless, on paper. All arms of government power, legislative, judicial, executive, and police, were dedicated to Drug (Comrade) Tito, and positions were only filled with loyalists.  It is not unlike the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/03/why-trump-only-needs-to-be-dictator-on.html  Ideology is different, but the result is the same: control of the levers of power

 A true story about how fear works and a true trauma. 1972, Yugoslavia, Split Airport. Dictator Tito was still following much of the Stalinist governing model, though moderating a bit, so we had taken a chance to visit my husband's mother, whom he had left behind nearly 15 years before, and introduce her to the grandchildren.  He was an emigre from that dictator-run Communist country; we met in Berlin during my junior year abroad, and he was now a US citizen, an MD in private practice,  residing in the US.  As we were on the plane to leave after a happy visit, my husband was yanked off the plane with three wailing children, and an equally frightened me were left in their seats as our bags were searched on the tarmac. They found nothing threatening. Safely back in Italy, my husband had a nightmare in which the police gave him the choice of being shot in the front or in the back.  Fear is a powerful emotion.

 I fear in my soul that some ignorant fools want to trade democracy in for an "autocracy" as a way to get their agenda implemented.

https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2024-03-29/trump-posts-video-with-an-image-of-a-hog-tied-biden-drawing-a-rebuke-from-democrats-campaign

 https://siepr.stanford.edu/news/mythical-tie-between-immigration-and-crime  

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/15/us/border-migrants-crime-cec/index.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trumps-claims-crime-rates-clash-police-data-rcna145353

https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/03/after-four-futile-years-of-trying-to.html

 https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/trump-paul-pelosi-gop-18404812.php

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2024-03-29/da-suggests-donald-trump-violated-gag-order-with-post-about-daughter-of-hush-money-trial-judge

Rep. Ken Buck's replacement for Colorado's 4th a real doozie

 Update: 3 19 2024: Buck's replacement was picked to run in the primary. Greg Lopez is an election denier, against abortions with no exceptions, with a history of domestic violence, DUIs, and other run ins with the law.  Boebert did not vie for the nomination.

https://coloradosun.com/2024/03/28/greg-lopez-ken-buck-colorado-4th-district-lauren-boebert/

Nov, 1, 2023 posting on this blog as background?Ken Buck, R-CO, just announced on Andrea Mitchell's midday news program on MSNBC that he is not standing for re-election. Buck was an outspoken critic of his fellow House members who still supported the Big Lie and excused the Jan.6 riot/insurrection. He also was a strong supporter of aid to Ukraine. His district in Colorado is red, and he has just left the field to further takeover by MAGA. He, however, has made it clear he will still be a strong voice on the issues that put him in direct conflict with the new speaker, Mike Johnson though he rationalised his recent vote on Speaker that Mike Johnson did not participate in the Jan 6 violence and sought remedies within the judicial system.. When asked if Buck would support Trump or Biden in the upcoming presidential election, he answered he did not like either one. He does not plan to leave the Republican party.

He follows the recent announcement of a long time member of Congress from Texas that she could not seek re-election. Longtime Texas Rep. Kay Granger won’t seek reelection | The Hill

GOP Rep. Ken Buck is leaning in to his role as a conservative contrarian. But will voters in Colorado’s reddest district punish him for it? | Colorado Public Radio (cpr.org) 

What if Trump's racist dog whistles get him back in the White House?

 China, North Korea, based on long-standing communist political control infrastructure, and Iran..a theocracy, gave rise to dictators for reasons other than racism. Otherwise, racism and hatred of immigrants are tickets to the front-row seat of the drama of demagoguery. Particularly in the Western world since the end of the Cold War, in Turkey, Hungary, and Russia,  racism and ethnic nationalism have boosted dictators to power. These are instances where there was a weak form of democracy in place and fear of Middle Eastern or certain ethnic/immigrants seeking refuge "poisoning blood or culture" of the existing super majority of the current demographic makeup. The question becomes in the US, with only 57 percent of the population white, whether the Trumpian "adulterating the blood" would resonate with enough of them to succeed. In any case,. given the diversity we already have, any attempt to instill white nationalist policies will likely be violent. Domestic tranquillity will be at risk, impacting domestic prosperity until the turmoil subsides. If Trump gets elected, we are in for scary, hard times.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trumps-attacks-on-prosecutors-echo-long-history-of-racist-language

https://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12270880/donald-trump-racist-racism-history

https://apnews.com/article/trump-hitler-poison-blood-history-f8c3ff512edd120252596a4743324352

https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/03/whats-difference-between-orban.html

Why election deniers have reasons to keep up the big lie

The importance of continuing the lie that the 2020 election was stolen is that it has become a political strategy key to Trump's re-election.  No evidence has emerged in nearly four years of trying to find it that would have found enough irregularities to result in Trump being re-elected.  By now, rational thought should have debunked the lie long ago.   Instead, more political leaders still embrace the Big Lie than ever before.  Not all of them are so irrational to ignore the lack of evidence. It has evidently become an important 2024 election tool for Trump supporters. 

The brief tenure of Ronna McDaniels as a political commentator on NBC left me with mixed feelings.  McDaniels, the former chair of the Republican National Committee, had been brought on to the network to give news coverage a more balanced appearance, I assume. Still, it ended in heated and on-camera objections from many NBC and MNBC stars. the network brass reversed itself.  In her first appearance, she refused to back down from being an election denier who contributed to the January 6 violent rioters and Trump's attempted coup to overturn the 2020 election results to turn him from a loser to a winner. I would have looked forward to her defending election denying in the face of challenges from other panel members or moderators. The sign of a true believer is to admit that Biden sits in the White House, so he is now President, but never to admit the 2020 election was legitimate.  McDaniels, now a private citizen, passed the true believer MAGA test in her interview on Meet the Press in March, igniting howls of protest that giving a public platform to promote such lies was unacceptable. She refused to agree the 2020 election was fair and referred to all of the "problems" in the 2020 election. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ronna+mcdaneil+meet+press+first+interview

How can one explain why election denials  have such power even in 2024? It makes no sense unless you view it as a cynical political strategy that benefits Trump and the MAGA movement.

     1. One explanation could be that it has value as a strategy and a tactic to give some sort of rationale to justify a second coup, violent or otherwise.  The 2020 election was stolen, so expect 2024 to be stolen again if Trump loses, goes the pitch. Political violence is already being threatened. The chief election official in Colorado is the Secretary of State, a Democrat, and like other election officials throughout the US, she must have 24-7 security protection because of the threats of violence against them. https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/07/politics/threats-us-public-officials-democracy-invs/index.html

Trump has a long history of supporting violence to accomplish a political goal. Even if you think he is just bluffing and bloviating, then learn how he has promoted violence in the past. It is a big part of who he is Promising to free and forgive violent and convicted January 6 protestors is just the most obvious one, but his inciting violence or advocating it has a record. https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2020/08/trump-fans-flames-of-violence-yet-calls.html

     2. Another explanation could be that it is also a way to identify those who are true MAGA supporters from those who are not, like a secret handshake to get entry into the Trump club or as a hex sign to warn off a political attack by MAGA party disciplinarians of being primaried or publicly humiliated. Fear of loss of power or livelihood in a primary is a powerful motivator.   Trump's threat of revenge and retribution if he is re-elected is his promise often repeated.

    3. There could be another, darker reason for keeping the Big Lie going. It provides motivation and a rationale to enact voter suppression legislation and call it "voter integrity."  If the system is broken, we should fix it, according to pious logic. The problem is there is no evidence the system was that broken to justify unlawful purging of voter records, playing keepaway from convenient ballot drop boxes, and stopping mail in voting. However, suppressing the vote benefits the Trump re-election efforts by weakening his feared opposition.  What the MAGA "fix" is passing laws making it hard for targeted, presumed potential anti-Trump and pro-Biden voters to vote, all in the name of "voter integrity," based on the presumption that the young and the poorer minorities are the ones to commit voter fraud.  The current crusade is to end mail-in balloting (the fraud-free system used in Colorado by most voters). That is both a race-based approach that appeals to the white nationalist element of MAGA and one that does not stand up to evidence of prosecution records. Furthermore, when the MAGA crowd and FOX media lost millions in losing the defamation suit against the vote tabulating systems of Doniniium, they just kept spouting their unproved theories.  If the solution is to use only paper ballots, the answer is to keep mail-in voting and still provide same-day polling places as Colorado does. Paper ballots kept secure are the best proof in an audit that the computer systems upheld the validity of the count in an audit.   https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/5-egregious-voter-suppression-laws-2021

https://www.lwv.org/voting-rights/fighting-voter-suppression

     4. It supports the continuing rule of autocrats, which Trump promotes and what he promises to be. However, know when an autocrat controls the election system, as Trump would like to do with his appointments. there is no faith that there is any election integrity at all. We just witnessed the Russian sham elections recently, which were neither fair nor free, giving Putin his 6th term with 87% of the vote, the same incredible outcome of voting as in the old Communist-controlled USSR.  Putting MAGA in control, like the fox guarding the henhouse, of counting the vote is about the same lack of faith and credibility as it is in Russia. 

5. The Boss requires it. He has honed the technique over many years. Donald Trump has a long history of denying he lost a contest. It was noted when he was the Apprentice star who failed to get the Emmy he thought he deserved. Election denial was again used to explain the rigging that explained Obama's success, which popped up in 2012, and then, in 2020, it set off a bell in an October presidential debate. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/timeline-donald-trumps-election-denial-claims-republican-politicians/story?id=89168408   At first, it was just a comment made during a debate by Donald Trump in  October of 2016 that set off the first alarm bells. .https://www.npr.org/2016/10/20/498713509/donald-trump-says-hell-accept-the-results-of-the-election-if-he-wins    Some watching the debate thought he was just making a joke, but the joke was on us. He was not kidding. Others thought he believed he would lose, so he was preparing his followers to not lose faith; he never lost anything, and he would do something.   And something he did culminating in the January 6 attempted coup.  https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/no-modern-presidential-candidate-refused-to-concede-heres-why-that-matters  

6. The purge is complete.MAGA election deniers have taken over the GOP and many state officials.They got the power and prestige by riding on election denying oratory. The US Speaker of the House is an election denier, and the present and just past RNC (Republican National Committee) chairs are election deniers. Election deniers are in place to administer the 2024 elections in many states.   https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/election-deniers-playbook-2024 

In Colorado, recently mostly blue,   a very conservative and disgusted  Rep. Buck (R)  bailed out of the House before his term was up, leaving the GOP control hanging by a thread. He cited that the lies still promoted by the 2020 election were stolen. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republican-rep-ken-buck-leaving-congress-eroding-gop-majority-rcna143046 His district is ruby red, so he will likely be his replacement who passes the MAGA loyalty tests. The Colorado state party chair, Dave Let's Go, Brandon Williams, the supreme Colorado election denier, is also running for Congress to fill another announced House vacancy in a red district.  Republican state chair Dave Williams wins top-line in Colorado's 5th Congressional District primary | Elections | coloradopolitics.com   

Buck's replacement was picked to run in the primary. Greg Lopez is an election denier, against abortions with no exceptions, with a history of domestic violence, DUIs, and other run ins with the law. https://coloradosun.com/2024/03/28/greg-lopez-ken-buck-colorado-4th-district-lauren-boebert/

https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/local-politics/candidate-lets-go-brandon-nickname/73-cac3b05d-4d57-4ac6-961c-6d308155e2f6

In my own county, the newly elected County Clerk nearly lost to opponents who suspected she was an election denier who would be running elections. She squeaked by winning her election recently after claiming the retiring loyal and much respected GOP clerk was OK, but the rest of the 2020 election, state and national, was a fraud. Go figure.    

Why Trump only needs to be dictator on day one to be dictator for years to come update 4 4 2024

Update 4 4 24   This is an attempt to block Trump's day one implementation of Project 25, making it harder to replace career service employees with Trump loyalists. This is rule making, but if Trump also controls the Supreme Court, he can get around this, too.  It would make it a bad day on day one for him, though.

https://apnews.com/article/biden-2024-government-regulations-democrats-6badc3b424b9eff3ba51e0ec35a8d824?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=share  Former President Donald Trump has plans to radically reshape the federal government if he returns to the White House, from promising to deport millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally to firing tens of thousands of government workers. 

Cont'd.Here is why Trump only needs to be a dictator on day one to be a dictator for years to come. He is old, just turning 80. The biological clock is ticking. There is a plan to accomplish much of that in the first 180 days of his administration. This is no "conspiracy theory" but a plainly written and documented plan, Project 2025, that is well funded and already being implemented to be ready to go on Day One 2025. The executive orders and appointments signed on Day One triggers the rest of the Project 2025 implementation and both  kinds of documents are now being prepared. This gives Trump the ability to execute the laws of this land, but not faithfully to the intent or the purpose of those laws, but to manage them to implement policy dictated by an ideology influenced by White Christian nationalism and self-serving corporate anti-environmental interests. The power it gives him will be policies that last years beyond the four years he is in the Oval Office with plenty of leverage and ability to keep himself or his successors in power with  appointments to the "administrative state."  

 Most current dictators, Orban of Hungary, Putin of Russia, and Erdogan of Turkey, took several years and some traumatic events to exploit (mass migrations ethnics fleeing Middle Eastern violence (Hungary, Turkey, Russia (Breslan massacre by Islamic terrorists..related to the concert hall massacre this past week) to amass enough power to qualify for the title of dictator.  All three are there for life, not for four years. Once they controlled all levers, judiciary, legislative, executive,  and media, they maneuvered the constitution and laws to eliminate any term limits. Getting there was subtle, nonviolent,  and, like a frog in ever-increasing hot water, finally reaching the boil and death, in this case, the death of democracy. 

 The Heritage Foundation, with $150 million in the tank, is already training, recruiting, and drafting executive orders for Trump to sign on Day One. Heritage Foundation is one of the US's largest and most influential think tanks. This is no "conspiracy theory,"  and it is not just thinking and planning, but it is already being implemented with training and recruitment of participants to put into practice of a theory underway to be ready to go on Day One 2025. The goal is to eliminate "the administrative state" and to replace all parts of the executive branch and an estimated 50 thousand civil servants with loyalists to a highly conservative agenda.   It would keep the form of the executive branch. Still, it would sabotage their agenda by replacing it with loyalists pledged to a highly conservative one instead of adhering to the intent and purpose of the rule of law. This is the Orban playbook on steriods and fast track. The long term impact witll last even after Trump is ousted.  Will it work?  If you remember how the Federalist Society engineered the MAGA takeover of the Supreme Court with ideologues still in place after Trump left the Oval Office, you will get an idea of the long term impact of having loyalists to Trump or vetted and proposed by the Heritage Foundation in place in the federal buraucracy for years.  It is not just the federal exutive branch that the Heritage Foundation has as their target. It is state and local governnments, as well.

https://www.heritage.org/press/heritage-foundation-raises-more-150-million-record-breaking-fundraising-year

https://www.heritage.org/press/project-2025-announces-the-launch-the-presidential-administration-academy

Read it from the Heritage Foundation itself: Playbook | Project 2025

2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf (thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com)

newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/how-the-federalist-society-won

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/04/20/4-pillars-project-2025-conservative-plan-undermine-liberal-behemoth-washington/

https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2023/11/what-trump-plans-for-his-second-term.html

Crony capitalism: MAGA's threat to consumer product safety and protections

 Core to MAGA plans, if they win in November 2024, is to upend US free market capitalism and replace it with crony capitalism, which is regulated and supported by political loyalists with their allegiance not to the rule of law but to Trump and his think tank planners at the Heritage Foundation.  Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation think tank plan already poised to be executed upon Trump's election, proposes to fire and replace thousands of civil servants with political loyalists.  The result will be a blow to consumer safety and prices.  

Update: 4 9 2024: The company Trump keeps and to whom he owes, and his record of a fraudster means headsup for consumers. He is not your friend. The businessman Don Hankey, who provided the money for Donald Trump's $145 million bond, has a reputation as what we used to call in a white collar prosecutors unit a high-risk loan shark, a lender of last resort, and a repo man in car loans who got rich providing loans to high-risk customers and charging fees skating usury.  His practices are not consumer-friendly, to put it mildly. and has had run-ins with regulators. Trump owes him a big one since, given Trump's practice of going bankrupt and court processes around fraudulent business practices that bring into question Trump's financial worth, make him a high-risk borrower. Trump claimed he could not find anyone to give him the bond he needed as he appealed a $400 plus judgment for financial fraud. Hankwy and Trump deserve one another.  https://projects.apnews.com/features/2023/trump-investigations-civil-criminal-tracker/index.htmlm  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-don-hankey-billionaire-175-million-bond-who-is-he/  He also defanged the new financial consumer protection bureau. https://www.npr.org/2018/02/12/584980698/trump-administration-to-defang-consumer-protection-watchdog

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/billionaire-don-hankey-trump-175-million-bond-subprime-car-loans-rcna146232

Original posts continue:

Crony capitalism is a feature of every autocracy from Hungary to Russia. Crony capitalism is institutionalized corruption.  In fact, that is how Viktor Orban accumulated is political power with promises and favoritism to loyalists. . It is the same model that CPAC and Trump salivate after and advocate to install if elected to power. Instead of "keeping us safe at any speed," regulatory law will decide who and which businesses have proved their loyalty, either in campaign contributions or in loyalty pledges, and how towed to the party line. The standard in crony capitalism is no longer market competition based upon the survival of those with best practices. and price/value fair standards within regulatory constraints even their competitors are bound to obey. There is no level playing field where all must abide by the same rules. Instead, it is based on the favoritism given to businesses that have paid for in political contributions or sworn to loyalty to their regulators.

 Those who have faith that the medication they take they can afford and they are warned of side effects and labels and advertising cannot lie will be destroyed if the decisions favor manufacturers and producers who are looking after their self-interest and profit instead of having to toe the line of regulations designed to protect consumers from being ripped off or endangered.  That anti-trust action to protect consumers from price gouging and price fixing. Truth in labeling and disclosure requirements will be ruled by those who have shown loyalty to MAGA and Trump.    That affordable access to health care and prescription drugs by MAGA and Trump, already advocating the end of Obamacare and cutting Medicare and Medicaid, will now be decided by MAGA loyalists who have already promised to cut,  subvert, or end them.  

One of the dumbest and most harmful proposals by Donald Trump is to slap a 100% tariff on every import care. This means that to cover the import costs and keep their profit margins, manufacturers will simply increase the cost of the imports to customers or go out of business..  that will not only kill off the import market, but it will also give cover for domestic car manufactures to raise their prices too, and still be lower than the import competition.  

Even more profound, foreign and domestic investors who counted on the stability of the rule of law provided them will no longer see the US as a stable place to put their money and invest in improvements or that the free market will even be the level playing field in which they can compete. Instead, their advantages will go to the loyalists, not those whose price, manufacturing efficiency, and consumer appeal have the advantage in a free market system. 

Felicia Muftic is the author of the Colorado Consumer Handbook and has a career spent in prosecution, regulatory agency oversight,  and consumer advocacy of consumer protection and support of ethical business practices and practitioners.   She is also the president and principal partner of a small business subject to FDA and FTC rules and regulations. She appreciates the level playing field in a competitive business environment. 

https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2023/08/how-heritage-foundation-plans-to-turn.html

https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/03/grocery-price-inflation-biden-is-taking.html

https://fortune.com/2024/03/16/trump-100-tariff-for-cars-made-in-mexico-by-chinese-firms/

https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/01/victims-of-trump-v-2-would-be-us.html

Is it 1939 all over again, a bookend of my life?

 A story my father told me:  On September 1, 1939, my father with 18-month-old me were sitting in our olive green Studebaker parked outside our tourist cottage in Grand Lake, Colorado.  My grandparents and mother were "under the weather "inside.  Dad turned on the car radio, and out of the speaker came the news that Hitler had invaded Poland.  Now, nearly 85 years later, I read the report that a predator nation was threatening a neighbor, Ukraine, with a takeover. inevitable if the West continued quibbling about whether to send more aid to that country bravely fighting a war against Russia.  The isolationists in the USA are blind to the danger as the GOP House leadership puts a stranglehold on US aid to Ukraine.  Those who have been victims in the line of fire in 1939 and the Cold War and now in 2024 know this is not the bloviating of the US libs. Poland would not be caught flat-footed again, so they have begun building bomb shelters. They are taking the dictator of Russia, Vladimir Putin, at his word and his goal to reassemble the territory Russia once controlled in the Cold War.  Poland sees itself as the next in line, and they and their immediate small neighbors of the Baltics are to be attacked if Ukraine fails to stop Russia from a takeover.  It seems more than ironic, in fact frightening, that my life could be bookended to two world wars because of the fumbling, bumbling, and gridlock of those who should have been smarter to have learned the lesson of the late 1930s.  

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/polands-capital-warsaw-earmarks-30-mln-bomb-shelters-other-security-2024-03-13/#:~:text=WARSAW%2C%20March%2013%20(Reuters),city's%20mayor%20said%20on%20Wednesday.

Years of appeasement and isolationism convinced Germany to set its sights on America and declare war against the US  four days after Pearl Harbor in 1941. They saw our isolationism and the Nazi sympathizers that had become a large political force in the US as making it ripe for the pickings. Pearl Harbor had just verified the US weakness, failure of intelligence services,  vulnerability, and the complications of fighting a two-front war worth declaring war on the US in the epic miscalculation that the US was an easy target that would be unwilling to put up much of a fight. This was before there was a NATO, and even if Trump's goal for the US to pull out of that mutual defense treaty, we would be back at September 1, 1939.

That the MAGA wing demands Europe pay their fair share need to update their information bank. Europe is.  The MAGA wing needs to stop lying about this and keeping their followers ignorant.

Europe awoke as the zombies are sleepwalking in the MAGA House. https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/02/stop-whining-isolaitonsists-europe.html

A footnote: That green Studebaker lasted until after WWII because all manufacturing was geared to the war effort. Ration cards, shortages of certain food, toys made of cardboard, paper dolls, and war surplus canteens, dim lights as we practiced air raid blackouts, a father constantly worried as his brother fought in Italy, and two of my mother's brothers were bomber gunners or staff in the Pacific theater. Dad, rarely home,  was not in the military because he was essential services as the director of the "telephone exchanges" for an army camp, a POW camp, and a city of 40K throughout WWII. I wonder what it would be like with the aggressor and defenders now having nuclear weapons.

Alive and active: voter suppression and the big lie. updated notes

With alarm, national and state GOP organizations have been taken over by-election deniers.  It is suspected that they are laying the groundwork to protest the 2024 presidential elections should Donald Trump lose again. It almost worked in 2020, so expect the same playbook in 2024. The same lie has a new use, not only to find an excuse for Trump's loss and the justification for the Jan.6 insurrection but now to become part of a scheme. The Election Deniers’ Playbook for 2024 | Brennan Center for Justice

   https://news.yahoo.com/election-deniers-taken-over-rnc-152548092.html

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Colorado county clerks revolt against GOP election denialism pressure

 One of the puzzles is that voters have less confidence in results in federal elections than they do in their state and local elections.  States use the same methods for all candidates, federal and state, and do not have separate systems or totals in votes cast for federal and another for state/county. This means that the myth that the 2020 election was stolen has its believers, and fear tactics regarding that have been effective. It also means something unusual has happened or could happen in specific elections that rigged the outcome.  Nothing widespread was ever found, but there have been prosecutions in Colorado in specific counties, Mesa, where the local county clerk was accused of giving specific access to her partisans to tinker with the machine's hard drives and now is facing a federal trial for that.  https://coloradosun.com/2024/01/08/tina-peters-federal-suit-rejected/      The conspiracy theories regarding Dominium Voting systems have likewise been debunked, and it cost those who promoted those false theories a bundle of money: https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trial-trump-2020-0ac71f75acfacc52ea80b3e747fb0afe

Grocery price inflation: Biden is taking action

 Felicia Muftic

https://www.politico.com/.../biden-food-shrinkflation...

POLITICO.COM

Biden planning to hit food ‘shrinkflation,’ corporate greed in SOTU

Biden planning to hit food ‘shrinkflation,’ corporate greed in SOTU

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There are indeed several problems with grocery prices. Everything else seems to be leveling off or at least similar to inflation of around 3% except groceries. Yes, he is doing what he can about it, and he is supporting plans to deal with shrinkflation, the practice of charging the same for every less product in the package, price gouging, and anti-competition practices such as stopping the merger of Kroger and Albertson/Safeway this month.

Fair or not,  it is a political problem: In Wisconsin, a vote for Biden or Trump could come down to grocery prices (msn.com)

antitrust_enforcement_declines_under_trump.pdf (squirepattonboggs.com)

Feb. 14, 2024 (DENVER)—After a yearlong investigation, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser today filed a lawsuit in Denver District Court to block the $24.6 billion proposed merger between Kroger and Albertsons, two of the largest supermarket chains in Colorado.Feb 14, 2024

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser files lawsuit to block ...