Donald Trump, Traitor

 

Not to put too fine a point on it, Donald Trump, the 45^th President of the United States, is a traitor. As president, he swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States by faithfully executing its laws. These are his publicly-recorded words:

 

I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

 

And yet, in at least two major ways, he has violated that oath. First, he has perpetrated the Big Lie that he actually won the Presidency in the 2020 election, and that he was deprived of his victory by fraud. In pursuit of that claim—rejected by every court and every state that heard it, including Arizona—he and his cohort organized and instigated the January 6 assault on the nation’s Capitol. This resulted in five deaths, with 140 more wounded, and endangered the lives of hundreds of Senators and Representatives, all in the brazen, violent attempt to prevent the assembled Congress from doing its Constitutional duty—e.g. to certify the election. Perilously for our democracy, this attempt to overturn the 2020 election has never quite abated, nor has Trump’s insistence that he is the legitimate president who should be re-instated in place of the “fraudulently-elected” Joseph Biden. 

Second, the migrant conflict on the border of Poland, created by the dictatorial president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, is a blatant attempt to cause a crisis in NATO by weaponizing migrants. Both Russian President Putin and Pres. Lukashenko know full well that migrants incite right-wing opposition: Viktor Orban took power in Hungary by inflaming popular fears of migrants, and Donald Trump followed the same playbook to take the U.S. presidency in 2016.  Nor is this mere speculation: Lukashenko has publicly promised to “flood the EU with migrants and drugs”— this in response to international sanctions following his downing of a plane that was crossing Belarusian territory carrying dissident journalist Roman Protasevich (see Heather Cox Richardson, “Letter from an American,” Nov. 10, 2021). This, of course, follows the many signs of fealty that Trump gave to Putin, both before and after his election—not least by criticizing and denigrating NATO members and leaders nearly every time he had the opportunity. He is the first US president in memory to have done this, and many critics consider this cozying up to our avowed adversary, while denigrating our perennial allies, as tantamount to treason. Lukashenko’s current move with migrants plays this same game. 

            It is hard to think of more that any president could do to qualify him for treason. In spite of this, Trump retains millions of die-hard supporters throughout this nation. Not only are they supporters, but many of them seem ready and eager to foment a revolt to overthrow the legitimate and now-certified election of Joe Biden, and install their great leader in his place. It is, for me at least, impossible to imagine that most of them are fully aware of what his means. Perhaps they consider the similar attempt to fight a war with the Lincoln-led Union in 1861 as a good precedent for their plans. But that secession-driven attempt, which caused the death of more Americans than all our other wars combined (until the War in Vietnam), was clearly treason. This little detail seems not to matter to Trump’s supporters. Some of the latest evidence for this comes from the now-notorious memos from John Eastman, conservative lawyer (one of Trump’s senior advisers to promote and validate the Big Lie), outlining how VP Pence, acting to supposedly count the votes, could recognize that several states have alternate slates of electors, and thence turn the electoral decision either over to the Congress, where Republican senators could use the filibuster rule to prevail, or to the state legislatures, where Republicans control a majority of state delegations. Either way, Pence, if he went along with the plan (which praise be, he did NOT), could, “without asking for permission,” declare Trump the winner. Subsequently, Subsequently, Eastman also “co-wrote a blueprint for how Trump could use the military, the police, and criminal gangs to hold onto power after a disputed election” (Lindsay Beverstein, “The Evidence We now Have is Utterly Damning,” Raw Story, Nov. 18.) The Jan. 6 insurrection followed. 

Even more astonishing than the collusion of Trumpistas, is the collusion of almost the entire Republican Party. Every member of that party in the current Congress, with a few glaring exceptions like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, as well as thirteen outliers who took the risky step of voting recently for the Infrastructure package sponsored by the hated Democrats (earning them vilification and death threats), has genuflected at the altar of Trump to follow his lead. This includes that arch-hypocrite, Senate majority leader McConnell, and House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy. How is this possible? What of the party of Lincoln? What of the alleged conservative commitment to Constitutional originalism? It’s as if we’re in the topsy-turvy world of Alice in Wonderland, and makes one wonder:  Have any of these people ever read the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence? 

            Let’s quickly review those two revered documents. The Declaration has these words in its second paragraph:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal… 

 

This does not say “some men” or “only men of noble birth or white skin color.” It says all. Jefferson goes on to enumerate all the violations committed by the British King as reasons why “these sovereign states” are cutting their bond with him—essentially because of his behavior as a  dictator who considers himself superior to common settlers, e.g. the people of America. In other words, the polar opposite of a leader in a democracy.   

As to Amendment XII of the Constitution, reflecting Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 3, it says:

The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed… 

 

That is about as clear as it gets, and means exactly what it says: the president of the Senate, that is, the then-sitting Vice-President, Mike Pence, must open the votes from the Electors of each state, and count them. The entire Congress—not the president, he is not a King—then certifies the election. This is its Constitutional duty, as it was Mike Pence’s duty, which he faithfully carried out on Jan. 6. 

But, the Constitution notwithstanding, Trump has continued to express his rage at Pence, the same rage that his minions expressed by screaming “Hang Mike Pence” as they invaded the Capitol on January 6. Though he was protected by the Secret Service, and escaped lynching that day, it was clear that the Vice-President of the United States was shaken. Trump, meanwhile, has continued to complain (as if he were King) about this alleged betrayal by his Vice-President and supposed ally in not following John Eastman’s script. The latest twist in this nearly-unbelievable episode of a president turning on his own vice president, is his expression of approval of the insurrectionist behavior in an interview conducted in March by Jonathan Karl of ABC news. In Karl’s rendering of that interview, to appear in his forthcoming book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, he quotes the former president as follows:

“It’s common sense, Jon. It’s common sense that you’re supposed to protect…How can you, if you know a vote is fraudulent, right, how can you pass on a fraudulent vote to Congress?”

 

What this means is that Donald Trump defended the invaders’ chants of “Hang Mike Pence” during the Jan. 6  attack, saying it was “understandable” because they were angry that the legitimately-conducted election hadn’t been overturned(quoted by Jesse Rodriguez and Rebecca Shabad, “Trump Defends Jan. 6 rioters’ ‘hang Mike Pence” chant in new audio,” nbcnews.com, Nov. 12, 2021.) One comment about this, among many, is that of CNN legal analyst Elie Honig, who said on Nov. 12:

"Big picture: first of all, this is a constitutional nightmare. This is a constitutional worst-case scenario. The utter madness of a president… who is endorsing, supporting these people who are attacking his vice president.” 

 

As if the unhinged behavior and comments of the former President were not enough, one of his former principal advisers, Steve Bannon, has added to the fire. Bannon, like many of Trump’s inner circle, refused to honor a subpoena from the House Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Assault on the Capitol (the committee had asked Bannon for documents and testimony). Charged with criminal contempt for defying the subpoena, he was taken into custody by the FBI, defiantly alleging that his people would take action. But even before being charged, Bannon had clearly stated, on his War Room podcast (the war room is what the Willard Hotel meeting on the eve of Jan. 6 among Trump conspirators, including Giuliani, Bannon, and Eastman, is also called), what he and the right-wing Trump minions were trying to do: do away with democracy to reverse the results of the Trump loss in 2020:

“‘We’re taking action. We’re taking over school boards. We’re taking over the Republican Party with the precinct committee strategy. We’re taking over all the elections,’ Bannon said.” (Peter Wade, Rolling Stone, Nov. 12, 2021)

 

Not content with that, Bannon added to this defiance when he was taken into custody by the FBI: 

 

"I'm telling you right now, this is going to be the misdemeanor from hell for Merrick Garland, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden," Bannon told reporters after the hearing, swearing his team is "going to go on the offense." (cnn.com, Nov. 15, 2021)

 

How much more offensive the Trumpers can get is not immediately clear. But it is clear that Donald Trump and his minions have little regard for either the law, or democracy itself. 

            One more element has recently surfaced. Tom Boggioni writes that Max Boot, the conservative military expert, referenced a memo to Donald Trump “making the case to fire Defense Secretary Mike Esper” as evidence that Trump wanted to find some other head of the military whom he could control. The said memo, written by Trump’s director of personnel, Johnny McEntee (formerly his baggage handler) was “both sinister and ludicrous.” It made the case for getting rid of a Cabinet officer because of “insufficient loyalty to the president.” Boot goes on to say that Trump “appears determined to turn the military into his personal goon squad.” Further, if he manages to get another term as president,  “Trump would want to ensure that the ‘guys with guns’ are on his side” (Raw Story, Nov. 15, 2021). In short, Donald Trump has had no compunctions in the past, and certainly would not in the future, about using the U.S. military (before him, mostly kept from use as a political actor) to compel domestic compliance with his dictates—very much like the kings and dictators he admires most. 

            Enough said. The former president seems to take pride in breaking with America’s most hallowed traditions, up to and including behavior that seems, and, in my opinion is, treasonous. That he has been able to get away with this, so far, is an indication of how far the United States has strayed from the democratic republic that was once the envy of the world. And also, how huge portions of the public seem totally unaware of the danger that inheres in that departure, and/or how little they seem to care. Let us hope that the danger is forestalled before it is too late—before, that is, a real dictator steps on stage. 

 

Lawrence DiStasi

Rand Paul is Right

This morning I heard excerpts from Rand Paul’s filibuster speech to oppose the confirmation of John Brennan for CIA director. Until he gets a "yes" or "no" about whether or not the President claims the power to kill American citizens, via drone, on American soil, Senator Paul is opposing the nomination. And though I oppose most of what Rand Paul (and his usual Tea Party allies) says and stands for, on this issue he is absolutely right. No American president—Democrat, Republican or any other brand—should be allowed to arrogate to himself alone the power of life and death. It violates every tradition of this country (and all English tradition back to the Magna Carta), its Constitution, and numerous laws (Posse Comitatus) about preventing the military from exercising its jurisdiction over domestic affairs. As Paul put it,

“No president has the right to say he is judge, jury and executioner.”

That’s the issue in a nutshell. Every American citizen, indeed, every person residing on American soil, citizen or not, has the right to due process: the right to a jury trial where he is allowed to know the charges against him, and to face his accusers. For a president (who has already done this in the drone warfare this nation has been waging for several years in Pakistan and Yemen) to make the decision to “take someone out” with no evidence required, no judge or jury to weigh the evidence, and no need to even inform the person that he is a suspect, is to turn the U.S. president into a tyrant, a dictator, a king.

            I differ with Rand Paul only in this: he limits his objections to drone kills of Americans on United States soil. That limitation automatically sanctions (and I suspect Paul would certainly approve it) the killing of Anwar Al-Awlaki and then his 16-year-old son in Yemen earlier this year. Both were American citizens. Anwar himself was allegedly involved in planning or inciting attacks against Americans, but his son certainly wasn’t. More to the point, no one but the president and a few of his advisors were given the opportunity to consider the evidence, and whether it even qualified as evidence, against Anwar. As to his son, there seems to have been no evidence whatever against him, save his parentage. And yet, both were targeted for assassination, and then assassinated without so much as a by your leave from Congress, much less the courts. Some corporal in Colorado sitting at a computer was simply given the order, and when he, apparently, got a good enough shot, he took it. Target vaporized. Perhaps with some collateral damage. No questions asked. And then high fives all around, in the White House, and among most Americans.

            Now, suddenly, the chickens have come home, potentially, to roost. And Senator Rand Paul has decided that if this were to happen on American soil, it would violate our Constitution. Who knows who the president will decide is a terrorist worthy of a targeted drone strike? It could be anyone, at any time. It could be someone who has associated with, or is suspected of associating with terrorists, or suspected terrorists. It could be someone who has contributed funds to an association that has or is suspected of having supported known terrorists or suspected terrorists. And—and this is most significant—it could be someone who could never be convicted in a court of law, given the rules of evidence and transparency demanded in our courts. So, simply dispense with all the problems and messiness of courts and trials and the whole complex legal system of rights given to American citizens. Just drone the bastard. No mess, no fuss, no bother. It’s as simple and efficient as killing insects with a nice, powerful pesticide. Would you rather have a house full of mosquitoes? Plants full of aphids? Of course not. The risk of contamination—and this is the risk for all of us; that all of us or some of us will eventually (the “war” on terror, don’t forget, is virtually forever) be contaminated by the power this concentrates in one person’s hands—is minimal; little more than the risk presented by a small spray of DDT to protect our investments.

            The problem here is that the decision—the decision to kill—is sort of final. And sort of contagious. Too final and contagious for me, so I send my congratulations to Senator Rand Paul. We all owe him a vote of thanks for bringing this issue onto the front pages of a press that is too obsequious to do it on its own. We all also owe it to ourselves and our posterity to protest drone warfare in every forum, and at every opportunity we can think of.  

Lawrence DiStasi

Puking over Republicans

I’m noticing one overriding fact in writing about Republicans as they leer towards the end of their convention. I feel more and more nauseated by having to watch them, listen to them, sniff their pasty souls and outrageous deceptions. As one vivid example, Republicans have spent the last year and more raising alarms about the chief problem facing our country: the deficit. We owe trillions of dollars, is their mantra, and Obama has been the most irresponsible president in history in running up that debt. But as Matt Taibbi pointed out in a hard-hitting article in Rolling Stone yesterday (Aug. 29), it is actually Republicans, and Mitt Romney in particular, who are the debt mongers. Here is what he says:

Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.

What Taibbi is referring to, of course, is Romney’s reign at Bain Capital, the “private equity” company he headed for years, and through which he made his big money. That’s because the way “leveraged buyouts” (LBOs) work is by the gathering of a small amount of capital (by companies like Bain) with which to borrow huge amounts of money (borrowing a lot with only a little is called “leverage”) from the likes of Goldman Sachs, so they can take over a given company. One example Taibbi uses is the buyout of KB Toys. In that case, Bain put up $18 million of its own, and then borrowed no less than $302 million from investment banks to complete the deal. Then Bain induced KB Toys to “redeem $121 million in stock and take out more than $66 million in bank loans - $83 million of which went directly into the pockets of Bain's owners and investors, including Romney.” Long story short, KB Toys went into bankruptcy (because, you see, the company is saddled with the huge debt Bain borrowed to buy it, and has to pay it off, often an impossibility, even after laying off half its workers), while Bain earned a return of “at least 370% on the deal” or up to 900% if the assertion of Big Lots, LB Toys’ former parent company, is correct. In dollar terms, that is, Bain added more than $300 million in debt to KB Toys, and took out more than $120 million in cash via fees and other perks. As usual, they managed to do this by giving big bonuses to the company’s top managers: “CEO Michael Glazer got an incredible $18.4 million, while CFO Robert Feldman received $4.8 million and senior VP Thomas Alfonsi took home $3.3 million.” Of course, mere workers were left with no jobs and no money at all when the company, formerly a successful maker of things, went belly up.

            Now we have Mitt Romney, and his current attack dog, Paul Ryan (but really, doesn’t Ryan look like some bug-eyed Disney cartoon?) excoriating President Obama for piling up $5 trillion in debt. This is the Republican mantra. Debt will bring down our country. Debt is the cancer eating away at the American dream. Government simply can’t afford to spend any money on frills—by which they mean, of course, social programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, or any kind of welfare programs whatever (other than corporate welfare, of course). Austerity, that’s the only way to get out of our debt crisis. And the fact that Mitt is the great debt creator himself, or that economic history has proven that austerity fails to solve depressions, and in fact makes them worse—because the problem, as Paul Krugman has pointed out endlessly, is that austerity reduces employment, and people without jobs can’t afford to spend money, so businesses don’t invest, having no one to sell to, hence the depression—matters not a jot. Romney and most Republican movers and shakers, that is, are investors. And investors make their money by being paid back in currency that is more, not less valuable. If money that debtors pay back is less valuable, then investors lose. This is the whole story in a nutshell. The deficit becomes the prime concern of the investor class because they fear that inflation rises from it; and inflation, whether it be rising prices, or an increase in the money supply (which is what finances stimulus programs to put people back to work), cheapens the value of the dollars they have invested. Being paid back in cheaper dollars is a loss to them. What they really want is to be paid back in more valuable dollars—the result of deflation. They can’t opt for too much deflation, of course, because that would bring down the whole system. But enough deflation to bring sufficient pain to the poor bastards who have borrowed from them, and a somewhat greater return on their investments, is just right. This is the core of the “hard, courageous” choices they pretend to make as leaders: pain and deprivation for the working stiffs, the ones who borrow, so the investor class and financiers can have ever bigger cars and houses and yachts and private schools for their precious offspring.

            This makes the upcoming election starker than any in recent memory. If the Republicans manage to convince the benighted American public of the rightness of their deficit analysis, and win this election to put Romney in the driver’s seat, with a Republican congress to allow him to implement his austerity program (austerity for you and me, that is, not for the investor class who can count on lower tax rates and bigger loopholes in which to hide their money), watch out. The nation will be even more the plaything of the moneyed class, while the so-called “entitlement” programs that keep the unemployed from falling off the edge entirely, will be decimated. We simply can’t afford them, will be the Republican rationale. Which is to say, we simply can’t afford the poor.

            What we will be able to afford are even more and bigger mansions for the likes of corporate raiders like Romney, and even better financial deals for his backers—the Goldman Sachses, the Morgan Stanleys, the Citigroups, and dear old Sheldon Adelson. I may need a whole blog to cover the latter—the most foul, scabrous creature that has appeared on a national scene since Charles Dickens was portraying them in his novels—but here, suffice it to say, this is the guy who earns his money running a gambling empire, the Sands Corporation, that is even now under investigation by the Justice Department for allegations of bribery (in China) and money laundering (everywhere). Nice fellow. And Adelson has said in no uncertain terms, that he will personally spend at least $100 million to get Republicans elected not just to the presidency, but to Congress as well. If he succeeds, of course, there will be a new Attorney General, and (he no doubt hopes and intends) his legal problems will go away. There will also be a more generous and cooperative (read ‘obsequious’) policy towards Israel’s Likudniks, as well as a more aggressive policy towards Iran and other Israeli “enemies” like Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinians, and just about the whole middle east.

            In short, a disaster. So while earlier I had suggested that it might be time for progressives to start thinking in terms of third-party candidates, the situation has become too dire for that. Obama must win a second term. Otherwise, we will be buried beneath a deluge of corporate money and power the likes of which we haven’t seen since Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan and their fellow robber barons ran the government as their own private fiefdom—though not even then would they have dared put one of their own, nakedly proclaiming his greed, in the White House.

Lawrence DiStasi

           

           

            

Akin & Geller: Comrades in Crazy

Everyone has by now heard of the inflammatory, idiotic statement made by Congressman and Senatorial candidate, Todd Akin of Missouri. In response to a question about his stand on abortion in cases of pregnancy from rape, Akin replied: 

“From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”  

Of course in the furor that resulted—with even Republican pooh-bahs, including Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, urging Akin to drop a candidacy that was not only hurting Republican chances to unseat current Senator Claire McCaskill in Missouri, but Republicans across the country—Akin tried to clarify his remarks and apologize (but not drop out of the race). It was only his “words, not what’s in his heart” that he was expressing, insisted Akin. Just a little word mistake—the explanation of our time: “I misspoke one word in one sentence on one day and all of a sudden, overnight, everybody decides, well, Akin can't possibly win.” Gee, what’s a public figure to do? That one word, according to Akin, was “legitimate” which he insists people misapplied to the “rape” rather than “the female body shutting down.” And Akin then cited anti-abortion quack Jack Willke, who wrote a letter supporting Akin’s claim that women often make false claims of rape—as in the whole Roe v. Wade case, whatever that means. What, are Repubs now saying that Roe v Wade was supported by ‘illegitimate’ rape cases? These people are something, aren’t they?

            But even if we grant him his “misplaced modifier” excuse, Akin’s past record as a Congressman, and the entire Republican Party’s, for that matter, gives the lie to that excuse. In fact, Akin and the House Republicans sponsored and passed a 2011 bill to redefine rape—The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortions Act—further restricting the use of federal money in cases of rape or incest or when the mother’s life is in danger. That is, the word ‘rape’ would have been changed to “forcible rape,” presumably so that no mild rape cases (i.e. not “legitimate,” which is to say, I suppose, “fake” rape) would qualify for abortion funding. So we can see that here is where Akin’s mis-speaking actually derived from. He apparently wants to make sure a women is beaten good and proper before she can qualify for an abortion—and even then. Because as McCaskill pointed out, Akin opposed a Missouri law against spousal rape because of his fear that such a law “might be used as a tool against husbands in a ‘messy divorce.’” And we couldn’t have that, now, could we? More than that, the now-sanctimonious Republican leaders urging Akin to withdraw, aren’t doing so out of any moral scruples or late-breaking concern for women. It’s all political to them—because now, this Akin flareup has drawn attention to their default stance on rape and abortion. Which is clear to see in the already-written Republican Party Platform about to be rolled out (or covered up) next week. Even as the Akin bomb was exploding, that is, the Republican Platform Committee was approving draft language for proposing a “Human Life Amendment” to the Constitution that would give legal protection to the unborn (with no exceptions for rape or incest). That would, of course, make any abortion quite problematic, if not outright illegal, jeopardizing as never before Roe v Wade. And to add a little spice to the idea, the platform committee later passed a measure to oppose FDA approval of drugs like RU-486, thus effectively preventing the sale of “any drug that terminates life after conception.” Thank god these things are “only” in the platform and stand little chance of passing into real laws. But still, as an indicator of how the zealots in the modern Republican Party are thinking (and note, the Human Life Amendment proposal was there in the last party platform as well), it’s pretty scary.  

            To top off the comedy, another Republican Congressman, Steve King of Iowa, supported Akin’s no-pregnancy-from-rape assertion by saying that he, King, just hadn’t heard of any cases brought to him “in any personal way,” but would be open to discussion about it. Juan Cole then pointed out, in a response to King, that not only are 32,000 American rape victims made pregnant by rapists every year, but that “science has actually found that raped women are more likely to get pregnant” (Juan Cole, Reader Supported News, August 22). Cole also referred to the thousands of pregnancies that result from rapes in war zones like Bosnia and elsewhere across the globe. But of course, such “facts” do not impress the likes of King and Akin, or, for that matter, the Republican Party zealots like Paul Ryan.

            Which leaves the rest of us with the hope that ever more Republican crazies will keep putting their stupid feet in their stupid mouths right up through election day.

            Speaking of which, yet another crazy has managed to get her racist venom plastered on Muni buses in the city of San Francisco. Here’s the “ad” Muni buses currently carry:

            “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.”

            The author of these “civilized” sentences is one Pamela Geller, head of the American Freedom Defense Initiative—an organization deemed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (isn’t it amazing how racists/fascists always manage to portray their hate as “defense” of “freedom”?). Geller has managed to browbeat Muni to run her ad because she claims that the First Amendment protects her right to free speech. Her claim was given added force by a federal judge last month who, in a case Geller brought against the New York Metropolitan Transportation Agency—which refused to run her ads—ruled against the NY Met agency by saying the ad was protected speech.

            But doesn’t implying that Muslims are “savages” sound like hate speech? It does to me. It apparently sounds like hate speech to many American Jewish groups as well. But not to a federal judge. And so, Muni buses in our bastion of free love, San Francisco, are carrying Pamela Geller’s crazy hate message emblazoned on their sides.

            In case you don’t remember Pamela Geller, she was one of the main organizers of the demonstrations and anti-Muslim rant against the downtown Manhattan project, known originally as Cordoba House and later as Park51, to build a mosque and community center. With Robert Spencer, she took over an organization known as Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) that has continued its inflammatory campaign against Muslims in America. Her blog regularly insults Muslims, such as in a video implying that Muslims practice bestiality with goats, and cartoons depicting Mohammed with a pig’s face. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, she has also denied the genocide of Bosnian Muslims by Serb forces in Srebrenica, calling it a myth. She has spoken favorably of Stalin’s forced relocation and execution of Chechen Muslims after WWII, arguing erroneously that the Chechens were allied with Hitler. She has also claimed that President Obama is the “love child” of Malcolm X. Below are some other Geller gems cited by the SPLC:

            “Obama is a third worlder and a coward. He will do nothing but beat up on our friends to appease his Islamic overlords.” (on her blogsite AtlasShrugs.com, 4/13/10.)

            “Islam is not a race. This is an ideology. This is an extreme ideology, the most radical and extreme ideology on the face of the earth.” (on Fox’s “Follow the Money,” 3/10/11.)

            “Hussein [meaning President Obama] is a muhammadan. He’s not insane…he wants jihad to win.” (on AtlasShrugs.com, 4/11/10.)  

            Pamela Geller is not insane either, at least not clinically. What she is is another wealthy zealot (her money came from two car dealerships enabling known drug dealers and thugs to buy cars using fake identities) who has gone off the rails trying to defend against what she calls “fallacious anti-Israel propaganda,” and who has become, according to her onetime collaborator, Charles Johnson, “an anti-muslim ‘hatemonger.’” As the SPCL points out, after Geller criticized the Islamic halal practice of slaughtering animals for food in September 2010, Johnson pointed to the almost identical kosher practice, observing, “My GOD she is stupid.” (see the whole file on Geller at SPCL’s website: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/pamela-geller.)

            Sadly, stupid and/or crazy people with money and/or influence can punch large holes in the fabric of democracy. And we seem to have, in this nation at this time, an ample supply of them. It’s going to take work to prevent them from taking us down the well-worn path.   

(P.S.: Just yesterday, yet another crazy, this time in New Hampshire, vowed that, as sheriff, he could use deadly force to stop an abortion doctor. His name is Frank Szabo, he’s a Tea Party Republican, and he’s running for sheriff of Hillsborough County, the largest county in New Hampshire. Republican crazies: the gift that never stops giving.) 

Lawrence DiStasi