Democracy Has Prevailed.

March 17, 2024

This is What Donald Trump Said

From The New York Times:

The dark view resurfaced throughout his speech. While discussing the U.S. economy and its auto industry, Mr. Trump promised to place tariffs on cars manufactured abroad if he won in November. He added: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a blood bath for the country.”

 And:

He asserted, without evidence, that other countries were emptying their prisons of “young people” and sending them across the border. “I don’t know if you call them ‘people,’ in some cases,” he said. “They’re not people, in my opinion.” He later referred to them as “animals.”

And then this from The Washington Post

Later in the rally, Trump warned it will be a “bloodbath for the country” if he is not elected. The comment came as he was promising to hike tariffs on foreign-made cars, and it was not clear exactly what Trump was referring to with his admonition.

“Now we’re going to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across [the] line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those guys — if I get elected,” he said. “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole. That’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”

The Biden campaign characterized the comment as a promise of political violence.

And as she said: When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time.

March 15, 2024

Does Sam ("PA Fake Elector") DeMarco even hear himself?

I caught this on the TEEVEE last night:

An Allegheny County councilman is suing the county executive over her plan to create five ballot drop-off sites for next month's primary election.

Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato announced her plan last month, and Councilman Sam DeMarco believes her actions violated election laws.

"I believe the county executive needs to follow the law..."

This is true. Everyone needs to follow the law. No one is above the law. Not even this guy: 

Has Allegheny County councilman Sam DeMarco ever commented as forcefully on Trump's dozens of indictments?

He was one of Trump's fake electors, you know. In Pennsylvania, Trump's fake electors added some words to the fake certificate to (seemingly) give themselves political and legal cover.

I will let the process play itself out on Allegheny County Executive Innamorato's drop-off sites before commenting.

Law and Order DeMarco goes on:

"My big concern was if she is able to take and do this without pushback, what's to stop what other decisions she might make or unilateral actions she might take either for the primary or for the general election here in November," DeMarco said.

Did he hear himself when those words were coming out of his mouth?

What about the guy (see the mugshot above) behind this?

I mean my big concern is if Donald Trump is able to take and do this without pushback, what's to stop what other decisions Donald Trump might make or unilateral actions Donald Trump might take either for the primary or for the general election here in November?

Everyone has to follow the law. Even Donald J Trump.

You were one of Trump's fake electors, right Sam? 

Did you think (or hope) we'd forget?


 

 

March 14, 2024

Pi Day!

Today is March 14 (3/14) or Pi Day.

For those who don't know (or need a reminder) pi is the ration of a circle's circumference to it's diameter.  

So if the diameter of a circle is 1 unit, the circumference is:

3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164 062862089986280348253421170679....

The number itself doesn't end and it doesn't repeat. 

Archimedes had a brilliant method of approximating pi:

Archimedes' method finds an approximation of pi by determining the length of the perimeter of a polygon inscribed within a circle (which is less than the circumference of the circle) and the perimeter of a polygon circumscribed outside a circle (which is greater than the circumference). The value of pi lies between those two lengths.

By doubling the number of sides of the hexagon to a 12-sided polygon, then a 24-sided polygon, and finally 48- and 96-sided polygons, Archimedes was able to bring the two perimeters ever closer in length to the circumference of the circle and thereby come up with his approximation.

Specifically, he determined that pi was less than 3 1/7 but greater than 3 10/71. In the decimal notation we use today, this translates to 3.1429 to 3.1408. That's pretty close to the known value of 3.1416. (For simplicity's sake, we round off all figures to four decimal places.)

I teared up the first time I read about Archimedes' method. It was so simple and so beautiful and I knew instantly that there was no way on this (mostly) round Earth that I would have gotten there myself.

Sniffles all around.

March 12, 2024

Donald Trump, Democracy Lover. Or Not. We Report. You Decide.

In case you missed it:

To Donald Trump, Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán is “fantastic,” Chinese leader Xi Jinping is “brilliant,” North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is “an OK guy,” and, most alarmingly, he allegedly said Adolf Hitler “did some good things,” a worldview that would reverse decades-old US foreign policy in a second term should he win November’s presidential election, multiple former senior advisers told CNN. 

Hitler did some good things, according to Donald Trump. 

CNN has a little more - from former Trump chief of staff, Gen John Kelly:

Trump allegedly reserved some of his most unnerving praise for Hitler, who led Nazi Germany during World War II.

“He said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things.’ I said, ‘Well, what?’ And he said, ‘Well, [Hitler] rebuilt the economy.’ But what did he do with that rebuilt economy? He turned it against his own people and against the world. And I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing,’” Kelly recounted. “I mean, Mussolini was a great guy in comparison.”

“It’s pretty hard to believe he missed the Holocaust, though, and pretty hard to understand how he missed the 400,000 American GIs that were killed in the European theater,” Kelly told me. “But I think it’s more, again, the tough guy thing.” 

Huh. 

Oh yea - on the very same day, this happened in our very own Pennsylvania:


This is the memo announcing the proposed legislation

In the near future, I will introduce legislation to ensure that all schools in Pennsylvania offer age-appropriate education on the Holocaust.

We are almost 80 years from the end of the Holocaust. Most of those who were alive to witness those horrors have now sadly passed on.

Now more than ever, it’s important for future generations to learn about the genocide which resulted in the deaths of over six million Jews.

Does PA State Senator Doug Mastriano not know that Donald Trump thinks Hitler did some good things?

And now that the truth has come to light, what does Doug think of the former president now?

Any comment for the blog, Senator?

March 11, 2024

Follow-up On Mastriano And That Ethics Charge

Apparently, it's not gonna happen:

A Democratic state senator’s request for an internal ethics investigation into Republican Sen. Doug Mastriano’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results was denied.

Sen. Art Haywood of Montgomery/Philadelphia counties said he received a letter on Thursday saying the six-member Senate Ethics Committeee decided against conducting a formal investigation into what he said was the spreading of “lies and disinformation as well as other activities” documented in his complaint by Washington, D.C.-based Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics.

We reported on this earlier this year and you can read CREW's report on Senator Mastriano's involvement in the January 6 insurrection here

So no ethics investigation despite this (from the CREW report):

In the lead-up to January 6th, Senator Mastriano was one of former President Trump’s most important state allies in his failed effort to overturn Pennsylvania’s presidential election results. The day after the Pennsylvania Department of State certified the general election results declaring Joe Biden the winner of the Commonwealth’s electoral votes, Mastriano and other GOP lawmakers hosted Trump lawyers Jenna Ellis and Rudy Giuliani at a “hearing” in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.30 The hearing—which in reality was a town hall-type meeting—gave Giuliani, Mastriano, and former President Trump (who appeared by phone) the opportunity to perpetuate false claims that the general election had been rigged due to so-called voting irregularities in Pennsylvania and other swing states. These claims became part of the larger movement known as “Stop the Steal,” which was based on the false premise that the 2020 election was stolen and that the certification of the 2020 election and the transfer of presidential power needed to be stopped. This movement successfully mobilized and incited thousands of people from across the country to form a violent mob in Washington, D.C. to attempt to intimidate Vice President Pence and Congress to “stop the steal” on January 6, 2021.

Mastriano also served as the Trump campaign’s “point person” in the Pennsylvania fake electors scheme, meaning he was the person the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee were in touch with about selecting a “fake” slate of electors. The fake electors scheme was vital to Donald Trump’s extra-legal January 6th strategy to pressure Vice President Pence to reject the legitimate Electoral College results. The idea was that by receiving multiple slates of electors from so-called disputed states, Pence would be able to falsely claim the results were in dispute and therefore either accept the fake Republican slates or send the issue back to the state legislatures for resolution.

And this:

One video shows Mastriano advancing through breached police lines. Another video shows Mastriano at the base of the Capitol building’s steps, far beyond the police lines he claimed not to have crossed. In response to these videos, Mastriano released a statement, explaining that “[e]ven disingenuous internet sleuths know that police lines did shift throughout the course of the day. I followed those lines as they existed.” Mastriano’s explanation is, at best, misleading. As another video shows, one so-called “shift” in the police lines, which Mastriano witnessed from only a few feet away, involved police officers clearly trying to hold the line while the mob pushed them back and one man in particular forcefully removed police barricades. It is significant that the “shifts” that Mastriano refers to were not the result of intentional, strategic decisions made by Capitol police, but rather due to the force of the mob pushing against the police who were trying to protect the Capitol from further violence.

And so on.

The ethics committee got it wrong.

March 8, 2024

From The State Of The Union - Anyone Else Notice This?

In case you missed it, you can watch it here.

And if you wanna, you know, read it - you can read it here.

My lifetime has taught me to embrace freedom and democracy. 

A future based on the core values that have defined America. 

Honesty. Decency. Dignity. Equality. 

To respect everyone. To give everyone a fair shot. To give hate no safe harbor.  

Now some other people my age see a different story.  

An American story of resentment, revenge, and retribution.

But did anyone else notice that the words "decency" and "dignity" start with a D and the words "resentment, revenge, and retribution" each start with an R?

What party is Biden from?  What party Trump?

Maybe it was an unconscious decision from whomever wrote the address. Maybe it was just a coincidence and I'm connecting dots needlessly.

March 7, 2024

A Reminder