Elephant

Thursday December 8, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday December 8, 2022

Red states and blue states; the coming 2024 U.S. Presidential Election

November 17, 2022

Donald J. Trump’s unusually early announcement of a third presidential campaign was aimed in part at clearing the Republican field for 2024, but his first three weeks as a candidate have undercut that goal, highlighting his vulnerabilities and giving considerable ammunition to those in the G.O.P. arguing to turn the page on him.

Since emerging from the November election with a string of humiliating losses to show for his pretensions to be a midterm kingmaker, Mr. Trump has entertained a leading white supremacist and a celebrity antisemite at his South Florida mansion.

He has suggested terminating the Constitution — the one that a president swears to preserve, protect and defend — in furtherance of his long-running lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Wednesday June 15, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday June 15, 2022

Rudy Giuliani, drunk on conspiracy theories

President Donald Trump, his former aides testified, faced a fateful choice on election night 2020: Heed the best advice of his top political and legal advisers? Or go with the erratic drunk guy?

January 6, 2022

Trump chose Option No. 2.

“President Trump rejected the advice of his campaign experts on election night,” Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) alleged at the start of Monday’s hearing of the House committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, “and instead followed the course recommended by an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani to just claim he won and insist that the vote counting stop, to falsely claim everything was fraudulent.”

A video of Jason Miller, a senior Trump campaign adviser, flashed on the screen above the dais in the Cannon Caucus Room. “The mayor was definitely intoxicated,” Miller testified, but “I do not know his level of intoxication when he spoke with the president.”

What, he wasn’t carrying a Breathalyzer?

July 20, 2021

Whatever his blood alcohol level, Giuliani’s nonsense quotient was over the limit. He was saying, “We won it, they’re stealing it from us,” Miller recounted. And “anyone who didn’t agree with that position was being weak.”

So Trump did as Giuliani instructed: He cried fraud and declared victory.

Giuliani, once America’s Mayor and Time’s Person of the Year, long ago became a national punchline, with his melting hair dye and his post-election news conference at Philadelphia’s Four Seasons Total Landscaping. But thanks to the select committee, we now know that people inside the Trump administration and campaign also thought him preposterous — with one key exception: Trump.

The committee relived some of Giuliani’s most ludicrous claims, sometimes accompanied by footage of his wild-eyed TV appearances. Votes “in garbage cans” and in “shopping baskets” being wheeled in for counting under orders from Frankfurt, Germany. Eight thousand dead people voting in Pennsylvania. A suitcase full of ballots pulled from under a table in Georgia. Votes manipulated via Italy, the Philippines and a deceased communist dictator in Venezuela.

February 26, 2021

In depositions screened by the committee, a veritable parade of Trump advisers testified that they told the president what they thought of such ideas: “Bull—t.” “Completely bogus.” “Silly.” “Completely nuts.” “Crazy.” “Incorrect.” “Debunked.” “Idiotic.”

White House lawyer Eric Herschmann, in his videotaped deposition, wondered aloud whether Giuliani, “at this stage of his life,” had “the same ability to manage things at this level or not.”

Trump campaign lawyer Matt Morgan, in his deposition, spoke about his conversations with outside counsel: “The general consensus was that law firms were not comfortable making the arguments that Rudy Giuliani was making.”

But Trump still sided with Giuliani’s lunacies — which “demoralized” the attorney general, Bill Barr. “I thought, ‘Boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has … become detached from reality.’”

January 8, 2021

Barr worked for Trump for two years before this occurred to him?

Even Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, no profile in courage, testified that he disagreed with Crazy Rudy. Asked in his deposition whether he ever shared with Trump his “perspective” on Giuliani, Kushner paused 10 seconds as he searched for a reply: “Um … I, I guess … [Sigh] … Yes.” Finally, Kushner said he told Trump it was “basically, not the approach I would take if I was you.”

The committee played the deposition of Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, in which he testified that he disassociated himself from Trump’s bogus election-fraud claims. “There were two groups,” he said, “my team and Rudy’s team.” Stepien’s was, he said, “Team Normal.”

But Trump disbanded Team Normal the second week after the election. Instead, he arranged for “Mayor Giuliani to be moved in as the person in charge of the legal side of the campaign, and, for all intents and purposes, the campaign.”

May 14, 2021

A Republican-appointed U.S. attorney from Georgia explained how he chased down the Giuliani allegation that a “black suitcase” stuffed with ballots was the “smoking gun”: It was “actually an official ballot box,” handled correctly.

A former Republican official from Pennsylvania testified about investigating Giuliani’s claim to the state legislature that 8,000 dead people voted. “Not only was there not evidence of 8,000 dead voters voting in Pennsylvania, there wasn’t evidence of eight.”

A supposed 68 percent error rate of Michigan voting machines? Trump Justice Department official Richard Donoghue’s deposition said the actual error rate was 0.0063 percent.

But the debunking of each zany conspiracy theory (“whack-a-mole” was Barr’s description) would only cause Trump to “move to another allegation,” Donoghue testified.

January 31, 2008

And so the “big lie” was born — of no evidence but limitless repetition. Even now, Giuliani is, well, drunk on the idea.

“If you gave me the paper ballots, I could probably turn around each one of these states,” he said to the Jan. 6 committee in his own deposition. “I’d pull out enough that were fraudulent that it would shake the hell out of the country.”

Thanks, Rudy. But Team Abnormal has already done damage enough. (The Washington Post) 

 

Thursday May 5, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 5, 2022

Canadian Conservatives reluctant to comment on report that U.S. Supreme Court will overturn abortion law

September 14, 2021

Conservative MPs and candidates for the party’s leadership were reluctant to talk Tuesday about a leaked report that suggests the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to overturn decades-old case law on abortion.

A decision by the U.S. top court to upend abortion services would have little practical effect on Canadians; some women pursuing late-term abortions go south of the border for care because of limited access here at home. But the political ramifications could be enormous.

Late Monday, Politico published a copy of an initial draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, a Republican appointee, that suggests a majority of justices are prepared to overrule Roe v. Wade — the landmark decision that allowed legal abortions in the U.S. — and return the issue to state legislatures.

The opinion claims the 1973 Roe decision was constitutionally dubious and “egregiously wrong from the start” because its reasoning was “exceptionally weak.”

Alito said that decades-old decision, which essentially found that the right to privacy extended to reproductive choices like an abortion, has had “damaging consequences” by dividing a nation into anti-abortion and pro-choice factions and robbing state officials of the power to regulate the practice.

Friday May 14, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday May 14, 2021

House Republicans oust a defiant Liz Cheney for her repudiation of Trump’s election lies

In a remarkable display of loyalty to Donald J. Trump, Republicans moved quickly to purge Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming from House leadership on Wednesday, voting to oust their No. 3 for repudiating the former president’s election lies and holding him responsible for the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

February 26, 2021

The action, orchestrated by party leaders, came by voice vote during a raucous closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill that lasted just 15 minutes. Ms. Cheney made a defiant final speech rather than fight the ouster, warning that Republicans would follow Mr. Trump to their “destruction” by silencing dissent and refusing to reject the myth of a stolen election. She drew boos from her colleagues.

Ms. Cheney urged her colleagues not to “let the former president drag us backward,” according to a person familiar with the private comments. 

“I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office,” Ms. Cheney told reporters afterward. 

February 4, 2021

Republican leaders, who portrayed Ms. Cheney’s removal as a way to unify the party, declined to allow members to register a position on it. When Representative Tom Reed of New York, a moderate who has announced his retirement from Congress, rose to ask whether a recorded vote was allowed, he was told no. Mr. McCarthy had told his colleagues that a voice vote was important to show “unity,” and that it was time to “move forward” and look toward winning back the House, according to a person familiar with the remarks.

When the time came, the ayes loudly drowned out the noes. The ouster was so swift that some Republicans were still trickling in to take their seats when Ms. Cheney strode up the center aisle to make her way to a bank of microphones and reporters waiting outside.

January 8, 2021

The action came the day after Ms. Cheney had delivered a broadside on the House floor against Mr. Trump and the party leaders working to oust her, accusing them of being complicit in undermining the democratic system by repeating his false claims that the 2020 election results were fraudulent. 

“Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar,” she said. 

Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, who helped lead the charge against Ms. Cheney, said his case boiled down to a simple idea: “Can’t have a conference chair who recites Democrat talking points.”

“It’s time to focus on stopping the Democrats and save the country,” he said.

Mr. Trump weighed in Wednesday morning with multiple statements attacking Ms. Cheney and cheering her removal, including one calling her “a poor leader, a major Democrat talking point, a warmonger, and a person with absolutely no personality or heart.” (New York Times) 

 

Thursday October 22, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday October 22, 2020

Canadians don’t need election melodrama

If not for Jagmeet Singh and the NDP and the three members of the Green caucus, Canada would be heading into a federal election today. We are not, and we should be thankful for that.

November 12, 2018

An election campaign, with the federal Parliament adjourned for campaigning, is the last thing the country wants, or needs. The second wave of this pandemic is sweeping across the nation. We need all hands on deck to manage the crisis, and no one needs to be distracted by an election campaign and everything that goes along with that.

But how did we get here? How did we end up on the brink of an election no one wants? 

There’s blame to be apportioned across the board, but the majority of it falls on the governing Liberals and Opposition Conservatives. They joined in a high stakes game of chicken that was not driven by anything other than partisan advantage. 

First, the Conservatives. They launched a motion on Opposition Day that called for establishing a new super-committee to investigate corruption, specifically the WE scandal. It would have had unprecedented power to call not only members of the government and civil service, but people such as friends and relatives. It could have compelled the release of private citizens’ financial records over a 12-year period. That is probably not even legal.

October 23, 2019

It was a massive overreach, especially considering Parliament already has multiple committees that can do that work. And given that this is a minority government, those committees are often dominated by opposition MPs, so the government doesn’t always get its way. 

Further, there is a central hypocrisy in what the Conservatives are saying. They want a committee specifically focused on government corruption, and they publicly declare they do not have confidence in the government. But they also say they don’t want an election. You cannot square that circle.

But the Liberals delivered a surprise — they chose a nuclear response to the Conservatives overreach, saying the motion amounted to a loss of confidence in the government, and therefore would trigger an election. They drew a line in the sand, and they dared opposition parties to cross.

October 28, 2016

There’s no doubt, from a political strategy perspective, that the government outplayed its opponents. But beyond that strategic victory, this brinksmanship isn’t a good look for anyone involved. The government is acting like it has a majority when it doesn’t. The Conservatives wanted to weaponize the committee process for partisan gain. Both were willing to force Canadians to endure an election campaign in a very dangerous time. For that, they should be ashamed.

Thankfully, Singh’s NDP sought middle ground. They proposed a committee that would oversee and investigate all spending and management during the pandemic, including in the WE affair. That is a reasonable mandate for a new committee. We don’t know what the Liberals agreed to in exchange for the NDP’s support against the Conservatives, but don’t be surprised if the end result of this drama fest is something like what the NDP proposed. 

So for now, this melodrama is over. Don’t be surprised when the next game of chicken breaks out, as happened frequently when Stephen Harper’s minority government was challenged repeatedly and dared opposition parties to trigger an election. 

That said, there was ample cynical political gamesmanship on display here. It’s wasn’t pretty. The Liberals and Conservatives should take a long look in the mirror and try to remember what Canadians are dealing with. That’s what matters, not an unnecessary election campaign. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)