Are We Ready?

 

This week the world will get to see (on the debate stage together for the first time in about four years!) the two expected contenders for the Office of the Presidency. Debate rules are set: the candidates may bring no notes but can jot down some points as they wish, and the moderators will mute the microphone when the other person is speaking. There will be no studio audience at the Atlanta CNN studio site at the event on Thursday, June 27^th. President Biden will stand at the podium on the right side of the stage, while his opponent stands on the left side and will make the final statement. Neither person will make an opening statement. Since this debate is not being sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has run these events since 1988, and is on a commercial network, there will be two breaks for ads in the 90-minute program.

What should we make of these elaborate requirements? Could it be that one candidate is known to be mercurial and must be tempered on stage? Do you think these measures will work?  I do not know if the moderators will have fact-checkers reporting to their ears, but certainly calling out the serial liar might be helpful. Personally, I have doubts, but will wait and see how it goes. There will be another debate in September. The VP debate will be in July between VP Kamala Harris and ?

DJT has been out and about on the campaign trail recently, now that his first trial ended, but his speeches ramble, repeat his oft-told lies about the election being stolen from him, his claims of persecution by Biden and others, and continue his rants against immigration. Today, he voiced his support for the new laws in Louisiana that require placing a copy of the Christian Ten Commandments in every public classroom. He mentioned a couple, but since he has already broken so many of the others, mentioned no more.

(Actually, I wonder if he could name all ten!) 

Although the Supreme Court already ruled on this separation of church and state issue many years ago, some Christian conservatives are hoping this more conservative court might reverse that ruling.

While President Biden is planning for the debate and huddling with aides up at Camp David, as is usual, DJT claims to not need to prepare and suggests the President will come into the debate “jacked up on drugs”. He is even floating the idea of demanding a drug test for the President.

The right-wing media and Maga hangers-on continue to splice and doctor videos, and make crude remarks about the President walking off into nowhere when he was looking at a soldier off-camera, or needing guidance to find his chair. There are apparently no laws to prevent these misleading or lying presentations. In a free country, one hopes that truths will prevail. However, there is a saying, attributed to Winston Churchill: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

If there is no rigorous fact-checking, I expect more outrageous claims to appear. Some pundits expect Hunter Biden to be attacked with claims that he is part of the so-called Biden crime family, as has been said before. Biden quietly deflected this subject when it was raised in 2020. I hope he can do so again.

Somehow, I find it hard to believe that logistics and rules are being widely discussed without attention being paid to policies,  programs, and initiatives for the new presidency. Perhaps it is because the Heritage Foundation and others have been working on a plan to overhaul our democracy and reduce government and its services as we know them now. The Center for American Progress discusses some of these proposals here:

USA Today goes further in its explanation:

The Heritage Foundation document is over 900 pages long (and I’m certain they don’t expect many Americans to even glance at it). It is called A Mandate for Leadership-The Conservative Promise. and can be found here.

Hey, they are telling us all what they are going to do to our country, dismantle much of the Affordable Care Act, destroy the Civil Service structure as we know it, weaponize the Department of Justice, and go after those who might oppose any of these initiatives.

In its opening statements, the coalition defines its goals:

“It’s not 1980. In 2023, the game has changed. The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before. The task at hand to reverse this tide and restore our Republic to its original moorings is too great for any one conservative policy shop to spearhead. It requires the collective action of our movement. With the quickening approach of January 2025, we have two years and one chance to get it right. Project 2025 is more than 50 (and growing) of the nation’s leading conservative organizations joining forces to prepare and seize the day. The axiom goes “personnel is policy,” and we need a new generation of Americans to answer the call and come to serve. This book is functionally an invitation for you the reader—Mr. Smith, Mrs. Smith, and Ms. Smith—to come to Washington or support those who can. Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State.”

Is this description of America one that you recognize? I certainly do not agree with the premise. I know there are and have been generations of Americans working for the betterment of this country through their terms as Civil Servants, whether in a governmental agency such as Commerce or the Treasury, reviewing spending under the GAO, or looking at healthcare in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS). There are military members who sign on to protect the country against enemies, take an oath to protect the Constitution, and serve the office of the Presidency (not the president). We all know, especially in the DC MD VA area, our neighbors who diligently work for the “government” whether it is as a scientist at NIH, a groundskeeper for the Park Service, or a deputy secretary in the State Department. They are not members of a nefarious plot to turn the country Marxist, they are just hard workers doing their jobs. When they took civil service jobs, they were given the protections from the old-school patronage and other favoritisms that prompted the laws that protect them now. They should not be so maligned or threatened by this apparent right-wing attempted coup.

These plotters against our current systems are not out to better our country, they are after power and money. They want to create an autocracy where they do not need to follow the Rule of Law. Why else would we see billionaires giving the Maga campaign folks $50 million dollars, as Paul Mellon did recently?Oh, there are nefarious plots out there, but they are coming from the radical conservatives, not the progressive community.

They are the ones who want to take away a woman’s bodily autonomy, create a Christian nation, ban books, and mandate rote education that obliterates historical facts, just to mention a few of their ideas.

Just take some time and read parts of their document. I have just gotten started, but hey, we can get through 900 pages well before election day, can’t we?

Til next week-Peace!