DOW JONES INDEX HITS ALL-TIME HIGH

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

In September, Colorado District Court Judge Sarah Wallace ruled that Donald Trump is qualified to contest the Colorado primary ballot in 2024. Her ruling hinged on a technical interpretation of the wording of Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment, which states:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of the President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or any other state, who previously having taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress, may by a vote of two-thirds each House, remove such disability.

The 14^th Amendment was ratified after the Civil War in 1868, based on a statement made by President Abraham Lincoln, when he spoke to Congress in 1861:

“When ballots have been fairly, and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets”.

Lincoln’s grave has been spinning violently since 2020.

In her ruling, Judge Wallace acknowledged that Trump was guilty of inciting a violent insurrection to subvert the constitutional function of Congress, engaged in the certification of the election of President Biden.

However, on a strict but preposterous interpretation of the 14^th Amendment, she deemed that a president of the United States is not an “officer of the United States”, because the 14^th Amendment did not specifically contain the word “president”.

Preposterous, as the Amendment includes all those who have sworn allegiance to the Constitution, which is the first action of the new President when he formally assumes the presidency, as Trump did in January 2017.

When she submitted her ruling, Judge Wallace all but implored the Colorado Supreme Court to overrule her decision. Her prayers were answered last Tuesday.

Since her ruling in September, there has been increasing momentum among the legal community, ratifying the constitutional argument that, according to the 14^th Amendment, Trump should be disbarred from contesting any federal position, including the presidency.

Lawrence Tribe, Professor Emeritus of Constitutional Law at Harvard University, Founder of the American Constitution Society and deemed one of the nation’s foremost authorities on Constitutional Law, stated, “The people who wrote the 14^th Amendment were not fools. They realized that if those people who tried to overturn the country, who tried to get rid of our peaceful transitions of power are again put in power, that would be end of the nation, the end of democracy”.

Santa came early this year, when, on Tuesday, December 19, the Colorado Supreme Court reversed the lower court decision, and ruled that Trump be disqualified from being on the state’s 2024 presidential ballot. The ruling was based on Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment, that Trump “engaged in an insurrection with his words and actions around the January 6 attack on the US Capitol” and therefore cannot hold the nation’s highest office again. The fact that the word “president” was missing in the Amendment was not relevant as the president was an officer of the state who had taken an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment is a self-executing provision of the Constitution, a provision that can be enforced without the aid of a legislative enactment, like a conviction.

Republicans argue that the question of who should be on the presidential ballot is a matter for Congress, not a decision to be made by state courts.

The Colorado ruling will now be appealed before the Supreme Court of the United States.

The Supreme Court gives Trump a 6/3 advantage. A prejudiced highest court in a land where not only the judiciary, but the legislature and the executive functions are debased to levels that would be treated with contempt in the most corrupt Banana Republic.

A land where a criminal, convicted of fraud and sexual assault, arrested and on bail for 91 felonies, including espionage and attempting to incite an insurrection to overturn one of the fairest elections in the nation’s history, walks free. He also is the choice of the majority of the electorate to again preside over the country whose democracy he had incited his terrorist supporters to overthrow. And now threatens openly, in his campaign rallies, that, if he is re-elected to the presidency, he will terminate the Constitution revered throughout the world, prosecute his political opponents and marginalize a large swath of its minorities. He is on a path to succeed where Hitler failed.

The final ruling of the Supreme Court may not only affect the Colorado ballot, but also those of other states. All 50 states have mechanisms in place to disqualify candidates who do not meet basic presidential requirements, and many will likely use these mechanisms to disqualify Trump, depending on the final ruling of the Supreme Court.

There is one important factor to be considered regarding the US Supreme Court, which could have some influence on the Colorado ruling to disbar Trump from contesting the presidency in 2024:

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas has already recused himself from a case related to the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol, an appeal brought by John Eastman, former Trump adviser, indicted on election fraud. No reason for Thomas’ recusal was given, though his corruption and his wife’s complicity in the January 6 insurrection are ongoing scandals.

Thomas’ recusal on the Eastman case may set a precedent for him to recuse himself on all future cases involving the insurrection. In that event, the Republican majority in the Supreme Court on the Colorado case will be reduced to 5/3, with a possibility of an even 4/4, with Chief Justice Roberts usually voting not on party lines but on conscience.

Also, Justice Kavanaugh, in previous writings, has approved the immunity of a sitting president of investigation into all crimes, but opined that immunity no longer exists after he leaves the office. Of course, he is not necessarily compelled to base his rulings on past writings.

Trump thrives on incriminating legal decisions, which he, like no politician in history, can turn to his advantage, even make tons of money from his criminal behavior. The more damning the legal accusations as to his criminality, even his treason, the higher his ratings rise, the more funds he raises from his devoted supporters. Trump may be a treacherous moron, but his God has compensated him with the gift of making money out of crime that transcends all his many evil character flaws.

Recently, Trump has juiced up his incredibly bigoted, cruel and noxious anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic rhetoric, getting more evil every passing day. Vile rhetoric, direct quotations from Hitler’s Mein Kampf – “vermin poisoning the blood of our people”, “mass deportation camps” – have been his regular oratorical fare at campaign rallies.

However, the virulent speeches made during the past week, which make Hitler’s rants sound like children’s bedtime stories, were no longer the impromptu drivel of a racist madman. They have been read from a teleprompter, indicating that they represent the official Republican Party line. Extreme authoritarian policies which will maintain the privileges of Christian white supremacists, and take America back to the good old days of segregation and Jim Crow.

This latest decision to openly toe the Nazi, white supremacist line was probably made by Trump and the billionaires and corporations who fund the Republican Party because it seems to be working. What is truly frightening is that these racist, fascist rants at campaign rallies are not only met with thunderous applause from Trump’s devoted supporters, but are now gaining the approval of an alarmingly large section of the American electorate. The reason Trump continues to spew such hatred may be because he feels that America is ready for a “temporary” dictator, ready to exterminate those vermin who poison the blood of white people. Sure worked for Hitler. Until the American cavalry came to the rescue in 1945.

If Trump is defeated in November, he will once again claim the election was rigged, refuse to concede defeat and incite a Civil War. Unfortunately, Americans cannot count on the cavalry to appear at the last moment to rescue them, because they themselves are the cavalry.

The more vitriolic Trump’s anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic rantings. the higher his poll numbers rise. The more Trump shouts about the Jews and brown-skinned immigrants not just from Latin America, but from Africa and Asia (Europeans are fine, Russians welcome) being the enemies of the people, the greater his popularity, not just from the cult, but also from moderate Republicans and Independents. The holocaust may be a nightmare of the past for the Germans, but it could well be a harbinger for the America of the future.

Trump even sings the praises of murderous dictators like Russia’s Putin and Hungary’s Orban, who graciously reciprocate the compliment. Orban said that Trump is the only hope for the salvation of the western world – which, in this context, means the salvation of white supremacy.

The re-election of a twice impeached, quadruple indicted former president is a terrifying prospect. He has now doubled down on his resolve to be a “dictator for a day” if re-elected. Only it won’t be for a day.

As Maya Angelou, renowned poet and political activist once said, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time”.

The latest rumor is that a red binder containing top-secret files, a collection of intelligence on Russian collusion in the 2016 election shared with NATO, has gone missing since Trump left the White House. These files are said to be buried in first wife Ivana Trump’s coffin, behind the first tee at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Top-secret documents may well be on sale at the White House gift shop, if Trump wins a second term. Trump will personally declassify and sign them for an extra charge.

The obvious alternative to a Nazi dictatorship in 2024 would be incumbent President Biden or the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, to ensure that the nation will continue with the progressive policies initiated during Biden’s first two years. Legislation already showing positive results in the form of an improving economy, low unemployment, inflation under control and rising wages. Last week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the most reliable gauge of the strength of an economy, reached an all-time high of 37,305 points.

Besides, I feel that regular Americans are getting sick of Trump’s whining that he has been the perpetual victim of a multitude of witch-hunts. Even during the four years when he held the most powerful position in the world, he failed to catch these hunters, who exist only in that deluded piece of crap that masquerades as a mind.

On that mildly indecent but hopeful note, I wish you all a Merry Christmas.