Oberweis, like Trump, not going quietly into that goodnight

If there was one person on the planet not to emulate it would be Donald Trump. But defeated IL 14th Congressional candidate Jim Oberweis has chosen The Donald as his beacon for unseating his victor, Lauren Underwood, sworn in and working hard for her 718,000 constituents. Oberweis preservers in trying to undue her clearly fair and valid election.

Oberweis claims ‘thousands of illegal votes were counted’. Sound familiar?

Oberweis offered up a tweet from a Kenosha, WI resident who claimed he voted for Underwood. Sound familiar?

Running out of state appeals, Oberweis hurled his last ‘Hail Mary’, asking the U.S. House to simply overturn the election and hold a new election on April 6, date of the Illinois Consolidated Election. Sound familiar?

Turns out Oberweis has more than age, 74, in common with Trump. His character is apparently too small to accommodate American electoral democracy.

Ice Cream magnet Oberweis will retire from the Illinois Senate next week. He might consider going back to the Oberweis Dairy laboratory and concocting a new ice cream flavor. It would taste like sour grapes… and be called ‘Sore Loser’.

Trib Editorial: Biden’s Afghan mission: a sensible withdrawal

This Trib editorial today simply rehashes every perpetual war meme it’s been pushing since the Trib supported our senseless, neverending Afghan war 20 years ago. While saying it would be good to end this endless war, the Trib puts forth every roadblock the Congress, the military, the media and the munitions makers have set up to keep the perpetual war gravy train chugging down the track of futility:

We can’t leave till the Taliban makes nice with the corrupt U.S. sponsored Afghan government, vows to stop the violence, tamp down ISIS and al-Qaeda, and grants women full citizenship rights. Laudable goals all, but not achievable with U.S. firepower, whether from 150,000 troops at its high, or the current low of 4,000.

Time for the Trib admit these truths. We lost the Afghan war October 7, 2001, the day we invaded to take over Afghanistan as a client state rather than take on the real 911 culprit, Saudi Arabia. Hey, we can’t fight our best multi billion dollar weapons customer that supports our senseless regime change effort in Iran.

The U.K and Russia both learned relatively quickly that Afghanistan cannot be conquered regardless of money, time and blood squandered. America never learns, in part because of war interests entrenched in the entire national security apparatus.

The editorial could have been 13 words: ‘Get directly out of Afghanistan; do not pass GO. Do not collect $200’.

It's not a scavenger hunt, Mr. Trump

With our own ears we heard Trump committing treason in his call yesterday to the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger. Trump asked, pleaded, begged, demanded Raffensperger change the result to Trump..."because we won the election". “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.” What he meant was 'make up the deficit plus one'.

He told Raffensperger he must do it because Trump won, because Raffensperger is a Republican and because it can be done in one day before the special Georgia Senate election.

This further evidence of Trump's treason, trying to overturn the duly elected incoming Biden government, is not new. Trump signaled his treason early in the campaign when he repeatedly claimed he could only lose due to Democratic fraud. He signaled his treason when he tried to stop mail in voting desperately needed to slow pandemic, because "if we have mail in voting no Republican can ever be elected again". How many became infected and died because he told his voters to vote in person Nov 3 instead of voting by mail. He signaled his treason when he filed endless frivolous lawsuits, all the way to the Supreme Court, to overturn a valid election. He signaled his treason when he disregarded definitive statements form his usually supportive Attorney General that the election was legitimate.

The best interpretation we can possibly put on Trump's betrayal of our democratic institutions is that he has lost his mind. That is plausible. If he hasn't, then he needs to be arrested for treason and brought to justice.

This existential crisis to our representative democracy must end.

3rd party voters propelled Biden to victory

Comparing the 2020 presidential vote with 2016 offers fascinating trends. The total vote was up by an astonishing 21,715,000 votes, a 16% jump.

Trump lost 5 of the 30 states he won in ’16 and couldn’t sang one of Hillary’s 20. But Trump’s vote percentage edged upward in 4 of the 5 states he lost and in 18 of the 25 states he won. His losing vote percentage edged upward just under a point from 46.1% to 46.9%. While those increases are disturbing, it indicates the Trump base unlikely to ever pass 50%.

In winning 25 states to Hillary’s 20, Biden increased the Democratic vote by 15,405,400 votes (23%). Since Trump’s vote actually improved, where did Biden get his staggering increase? 2016’s third party voters. Their votes dropped a dramatic 63%, from 7.83 million to 2.90 million .

My view is 3rd party voters are highly engaged progressive folks who shun both parties as Tweedledee and Tweedledum. I’ve spent hours trying to dissuade them of such folly. That backfired on them in ’16 as Trump was no Tweedledum….just dumb and evil.

After suffering for 4 years they bailed on their ideal candidate to repudiate Trump. Had they been so sagacious in ’16, we would have been spared four years of agony. Maybe even a couple hundred thousand covid victims wouldn’t be pushing up daises.