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Posts Tagged ‘2012 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION’

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ANN COULTER: GETTING THE FUHRER YOU DESERVE

In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on June 14, 2017 at 12:19 am

On November 6, 2012, Ann Coulter, the Right-wing activist and propagandist, was devastated by the re-election of President Barack Obama. 

“People are suffering. The country is in disarray,” she whined during an interview. “If Mitt Romney [the Republican Presidential nominee] cannot win in this economy, then the tipping point has been reached. We have more takers than makers and it’s over. There is no hope.

“Mitt Romney was the president we needed right now, and I think it is so sad that we are going to be deprived of his brain power, of his skills in turning companies around, turning the Olympics around, his idea and his kindness for being able to push very conservative ideas on a country that no longer is interested in conservative ideas. It is interested in handouts.”

Mitt Romney

Note the chief reason for her regret: Romney would have been “able to push very conservative ideas on a country that no longer is interested in conservative ideas.”

Unfortunately for Coulter, a majority of Americans rejected this mentality–and the repressive measures that would have accompanied it.

So, naturally, Coulter and her fellow Rightists felt dejected. 

One of these was Donald Trump, then a real estate mogul and host of the “reality show” The Apprentice.  

Donald Trump

When it became clear that Romney was not going to be America’s 45th President, Trump went ballistic on Twitter. Among his tweets:

  • More votes equals a loss…revolution!
  • Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice!  The world is laughing at us.
  • We can’t let this happen.  We should march on Washington and stop this travesty.  Our nation is totally divided!
  • The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation.  The loser one!
  • He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election.  We should have a revolution in this country! 

To put Trump’s rants into real-world perspective:

  • According to Trump, the electoral process works when a Republican wins the Presidency.  It only doesn’t work when a Democrat wins.
  • “We should march on Washington” conjures up images of another Fascist–Benito Mussolini–marching on Rome at the head of his Blackshirts to seize power. Which, in a democracy, is treason. 
  • “The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. The loser one!”

Ironically, the 2012 Republican Platform had fully embraced preserving the Electoral College: “We oppose the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact or any other scheme to abolish or distort the procedures of the Electoral College.

“We recognize that an unconstitutional effort to impose ‘national popular vote’ would be a mortal threat to our federal system and a guarantee of corruption as every ballot box in every state would become a chance to steal the presidency.”

And the loser didn’t win: He lost. Obama got 60,652,238 votes. Romney got 57,810,407. 

But by 2016, Coulter no longer felt dismayed. She felt rejuvenated–for she had found her perfect Presidential candidate: Donald Trump.

Appearing on the Right-wing radio program, “The Eric Metaxes Show,” she said: “It is like the fall of Rome but, thank God, and I am not using the Lord’s name in vain, I mean that absolutely literally, thank God for raising up Donald Trump and giving us a chance to save the country.

“What is the point of talking about abortion or anything else unless you get Donald Trump in to build the wall, deport illegals, end this ‘anchor baby’ nonsense, stop importing 100,000 Muslims a year, in addition to two million Third Worlders per year. It’s madness what this country has been doing.” 

Coulter not only spoke on Trump’s behalf–she sang his praises in a 2016 book: In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!

Ann Coulter

According to its dust jacket: “[Ann Coulter] argues that a bull in the china shop is exactly what we need to make America great again.

“In this powerful book, Coulter explains why conservatives, moderates, and even disgruntled Democrats should set aside their doubts and embrace Trump:

“He’s putting America first in our trade deals and alliances, rather than pandering to our allies and enemies.

“He’s abandoned the GOP’s decades-long commitment to a bellicose foreign policy, at a time when the entire country is sick of unnecessary wars.” 

To Coulter’s delight, Trump defeated Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on November 9, 2016.

Although Clinton got almost 2.9 million more popular votes, he swamped her in the Electoral College–304 votes to Clinton’s 227. 

Suddenly, for Trump, the Electoral College wasn’t “phoney.”  

But by May, 2017, four months after Trump had taken office as President, Ann Coulter was ready to abandon him. Her chief complaint: He hadn’t built the wall along the United States-Mexican border he had promised to erect.

“We want the ruthless businessman we were promised,” she told the conservative website, The Daily Caller.

“I guess we have to try to push him to keep his promises. But this isn’t North Korea, and if he doesn’t keep his promises I’m out.

“This is why we voted for him. I think everyone who voted for him knew his personality was grotesque, it was the issues.”

In short: She backed a monster to wreak destruction on those she hated.

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TRUMPING DEMOCRACY

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Military, Politics, Social commentary on September 1, 2016 at 12:07 am

As the 2016 Presidential race gets ever closer to the finish, it’s well to consider Donald Trump’s ideas about democracy. 

In 2011, as the 2012 Presidential race began heating up, Trump didn’t have a very high opinion of Mitt Romney, the man who then seemed the likely Republican nominee for President.

On April 17, 2011, toying with the idea of entering the Presidential race himself, the always self-promoting Trump said this about Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and GOP candidate:

“He’d buy companies. He’d close companies. He’d get rid of jobs. I’ve built a great company. I’m a much bigger businessman and have a much, much bigger net worth. I mean my net worth is many, many, many times Mitt Romney.

Donald Trump

“Mitt Romney is a basically small-business guy, if you really think about it. He was a hedge fund. He was a funds guy. He walked away with some money from a very good company that he didn’t create. He worked there. He didn’t create it.”

Trump added that Bain Capital, the hedge fund where Romney made millions of dollars before running for governor, didn’t create any jobs. Whereas Trump claimed that he—Trump—had created “hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

So Romney himself may have been puzzled when Trump announced, on February 2, 2012: “It’s my honor, real honor, and privilege to endorse Mitt Romney” for President.

“Mitt is tough, he’s smart, he’s sharp, he’s not going to allow bad things to continue to happen to this country that we all love. So, Governor Romney, go out and get ‘em. You can do it,” said Trump.

And Romney, in turn, had his own swooning-girl moment: “I’m so honored to have his endorsement….There are some things that you just can’t imagine in your life. This is one of them.”

Mitt Romney

Throughout the 2012 Presidential race, Trump continued to “help” Romney—by repeatedly accusing President Barack Obama of not being an American citizen.

Had that been true, Obama would not have had the right to be President—since the Constitution says that only an American citizen can hold this position.

Of course, that was entirely what Trump wanted people to believe—that Obama was an illegitimate President, and deserved to be thrown out.

Come election night—and disaster for Romney.  And Trump.

When it became clear that Romney was not going to be America’s 45th President, Trump went ballistic on Twitter. Among his tweets:

  • More votes equals a loss…revolution!
  • Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice!  The world is laughing at us.
  • We can’t let this happen.  We should march on Washington and stop this travesty.  Our nation is totally divided!
  • The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation.  The loser one!
  • He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election.  We should have a revolution in this country!

To put Trump’s rants into real-world perspective:  

  • According to Trump, the electoral process works when a Republican wins the Presidency.  It only doesn’t work when a Democrat wins.
  • “We should march on Washington” conjures up images of another Fascist–Benito Mussolini–marching on Rome at the head of his Blackshirts to seize power. Which, in a democracy, is treason.  
  • “The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. The loser one!”  

This last is startling, on three counts:

First, the 2012 Republican Platform spoke lovingly about the need for preserving the Electoral College:

“We oppose the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact or any other scheme to abolish or distort the procedures of the Electoral College.

“We recognize that an unconstitutional effort to impose ‘national popular vote’ would be a mortal threat to our federal system and a guarantee of corruption as every ballot box in every state would become a chance to steal the presidency.”

Second, the loser didn’t win: He lost.  With votes still being counted (as of November 8) Obama got 60,652,238.  Romney got 57,810,407.

Third, in 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote (50,999,897) to George W. Bush’s 50,456,002.  But Bush trounced Gore in the Electoral College (271 to 266).

Still, that meant Bush—not Gore—would head the country for the next eight years. And that was perfectly OK with right-wingers like Trump.

It was only when Obama won the Electoral College count by 332 to 206 that this was—according to Trump–a “travesty.”

And Trump’s solution if voters dare to elect someone other than Trump’s pet choice: “Revolution!”

This comes perilously close to advocating violent overthrow of the government. Otherwise known as treason–a crime traditionally punished by execution, or at least lengthy imprisonment.

When former President Andrew Jackson was close to death, he asked his doctor: What act of my administration will be most severely condemned by future Americans?

Andrew Jackson

The doctor threw out a couple of guesses.

“Not at all!” replied Jackson. “Posterity will condemn me more because I was persuaded not to hang John C. Calhoun [the South Carolina Senator who created the doctrine of “secession” that ultimately led to the Civil War] as a traitor than for any other act in my life!”

If Donald Trump inherits control of America’s nuclear weapons, future historians—if there are any—may feel that Barack Obama should have done the same for Trump.

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REDS AND REPUBLICANS HATE THE SAME MAN: OBAMA

In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 12, 2016 at 12:22 am

Psssst!  The Republicans and Chinese Communists (“Chi-Coms”) have something in common.

They both much preferred the foreign policy of George W. Bush to that of Barack Obama.

It’s one of the many fascinating revelations offered in Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Uses of America Power.  

The author is David E. Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times.

Related image

Early in 2011, Sanger had lunch at the Central Party School outside Beijing. This is where the party’s leadership debates questions that are thought too controversial to air in public.

A retired general in the People’s Liberation Army sat down next to Sanger and, in a relaxed moment of candor, said:

“I sat through many meetings of the People’s Liberation Army in the 80s and 90s where we tried to imagine what your military forces would look like in 10 to 20 years.

“But frankly, we never thought that you would spend trillions of dollars and so much time tied down in Afghanistan and the Middle East. We never imagined that as a choice you would make.”

Chinese military parade 

And, writes Sanger: “Not so secretly, the Chinese were delighted by the Bush-era wars.  The longer the United States was bogged down trying to build democracies in foreign lands, the less capable it was of competing in China’s backyard.

“But now that America was emerging from a lost decade in the Middle East, the Chinese began to ask: How should China respond?  With cooperation, confrontation, or something in-between?”

And the Chinese were equally thrilled that the United States had squandered so much of its treasury during the eight-year Bush Presidency.

In the decade following 9/11, the Pentagon went on an unprecedented spending binge. The defense budget grew by 67%, to levels 50% higher than it had been per average year during the Cold War.

According to Sanger: “An estimate [the New York Times] put together for the tenth anniversary of the [9/11] attacks suggested that the United States had spent at least $3.3 trillion.”

These monies had gone on

  • securing the country;
  • invading and trying to rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq; and
  • caring for wounded American soldiers.

“Put another way,” writes Sanger, “for every dollar al-Qaeda spent destroying the World Trade Center and attacking the Pentagon, America had spent $6.6 million in response.

“The annual Pentagon budget of $700 billion was equivalent to the combined spending of the next twenty largest military powers….

“The world had come to expect that America would underwrite global security, regardless of the cost. Obama was determined to change that mind-set.”

In short, America became financially and militarily vulnerable during the Presidency of George W. Bush.

And this flatly contradicts the standard Republican line: Obama is a weak President–and is betraying us to the (pick one or both) Muslims/Communists.

It also speaks volumes that the two most important members of the George W. Bush administration declined to attend the 2012 Republican National Convention. Just as they declined to attend the 2016 one.

That, of course, meant former President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney

And why was that?  Perhaps it’s because polls show that a majority of Americans continue

  • To blame Bush for lying the country into a needless, bloody and expensive war with Iraq.
  • To blame him for presiding over the 2008 Wall Street meltdown.
  • To see Dick Cheney as the Dr. Strangelovian manipulator of George W. Bush.

Even former President George H.W. Bush said he wouldn’t attend the convention.

It’s possible that Bush, Sr., didn’t want to serve as a reminder that his son left the White House with the lowest popularity rating of any modern President.

And that was just fine with those planning to attend the convention–especially its nominee-to-be, Mitt Romney.

They wanted to do with George W. Bush what Nikita Khrushchev and his fellow Communists did with the embarrassing Joseph Stalin: Bury him far from public view.

Romney certainly didn’t want the viewing audience to be reminded that the United States sharply declined in wealth and prestige during the eight-year reign of George W. Bush and a Republican Congress.

Romney and his fellow conventioneers also didn’t  want to remind the country of something else: That Obama has spent most of his own Presidency trying to undo the harm his predecessor did, in both foreign and domestic policy.

Thus, now approaching the 2016 election, the Republican party finds itself torn.

Its leaders want Americans to believe that Barack Obama is the worst President in the history of the Republic. Donald Trump, its nominee for President, has even accused Obama of being “the founder of ISIS.”  

This ignores that ISIS didn’t join Al-Qaeda until October, 2004–more than a year after Bush invaded Iraq. And that it was Bush’s destruction of Iraqi stability under Saddam Hussein that enabled ISIS to spread like a cancer throughout Iraq and Syria.

So while Republicans rail that Obama is the worst President in American history, they know that most Americans believe that title goes to the last Republican one.

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TRUMPING–AND DUMPING: PART ONE (OF THREE)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on March 7, 2016 at 12:23 am

In 2011, Donald Trump, the egocentric businessman and “reality star” of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” was toying with the idea of running for President in 2012.

On April 17, 2011, Trump said this about Mitt Romney, a possible rival and the former Massachusetts governor and front-runner GOP candidate: 

“He’d buy companies, he’d close companies. He’d get rid of jobs. I’ve built a great company. I’m a much bigger businessman and have a much, much bigger net worth. I mean, my net worth is many, many, many times Mitt Romney. 

“Mitt Romney is a basically small-business guy, if you really think about it. He was a hedge fund.  He was a funds guy. He walked away with some money from a very good company that he didn’t create. He worked there. He didn’t create it.”  

Donald Trump

Trump added that Bain Capital, the hedge fund where Romney made millions of dollars before running for governor, didn’t create any jobs. Whereas Trump claimed that he–Trump–had created “hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

So at least some observers must have been puzzled when Trump announced, on February 2, 2012: “It’s my honor, real honor and privilege, to endorse Mitt Romney” for President.

“Mitt is tough. He’s smart. He’s sharp. He’s not going to allow bad things to continue to happen to this country that we all love. So, Governor Romney, go out and get ’em. You can do it,” said Trump. 

And Romney, in turn, had his own swooning-girl moment: 

“I’m so honored to have his endorsement. There are some things that you just can’t imagine in your life. This is one of them.”  

Mitt Romney

Throughout the 2012 Presidential race, Trump continued to “help” Romney–by repeatedly accusing President Barack Obama of not being an American citizen.

Had that been true, Obama would not have had the right to be President–since the Constitution says that only an American citizen can hold this position.

Of course, that was entirely what Trump wanted people to believe– that Obama was an illegitimate President, and deserved to be thrown out.

Come election night–and disaster for Romney–and Trump.

When it became clear that Romney was not going to be America’s 45th President, Trump went ballistic on Twitter. 

Among his tweets:

  • More votes equals a loss…revolution! 
  • Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice!  The world is laughing at us.
  • We can’t let this happen.  We should march on Washington and stop this travesty.  Our nation is totally divided! 
  • The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation.  The loser one! 
  • He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election.  We should have a revolution in this country! 

To put Trump’s rants into real-world perspective:

According to Trump, the electoral process works when a Republican wins the Presidency. It only doesn’t work when a Democrat wins.

“We should march on Washington” conjures up images of another Fascist–Benito Mussolini–marching on Rome at the head of his Blackshirts to seize power. 

“The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. The loser one!” 

This is startling, on three counts:

First, the 2012 Republican Platform spoke lovingly about the need for preserving the Electoral College: “We oppose the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact or any other scheme to abolish or distort the procedures of the Electoral College.

“We recognize that an unconstitutional effort to impose ‘national popular vote’ would be a mortal threat to our federal system and a guarantee of corruption as every ballot box in every state would become a chance to steal the presidency.”

Second, the loser didn’t win: He lost.  With votes still being counted (as of November 8) Obama got 60,652,238. Romney got 57,810,407.

Third, in 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote (50,999,897) to George W. Bush’s 50,456,002. But Bush trounced Gore in the Electoral College (271 to 266).

Still, that meant Bush–not Gore–would head the country for the next eight years. And that was perfectly OK with Right-wingers like Trump.

It was only when Obama won the Electoral College count by 332 to 206 that this was–according to Trump–a “travesty.”

And Trump’s solution if voters dare to elect someone other than Trump’s pet choice: “Revolution!”

This comes perilously close to advocating violent overthrow of the government. Otherwise known as treason–a crime traditionally punished by execution, or at least lengthy imprisonment.

Fast forward, to 2016–and the relationship between Trump and Romney looks considerably different.

On June 16, 2015, Trump declared his candidacy for the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination. Since then, he has been the first choice among the Republican base.  

At first, he was dismissed as a bad joke–by Republican Presidential candidates as well as Democrats. Surely voters would reject a bombastic, thrice-married “reality show” host who had filed for corporate bankruptcy four times.

Yet from the outset Trump dominated the field–and a series of Republican debates. The other Republican candidates watched him with envy–and desperately tried to steal some of his limelight.  

Making made one inflammatory statement after another, he offended one group of potential voters after another.  

These insults delighted his white, under-educated followers. But they alienated millions of other Americans who might have voted for him.

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WHEN FASCISTS WEEP

In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on February 11, 2013 at 12:03 am

It’s natural for a losing political party to look for scapegoats.  As political columnist Mark Shields said on the PBS Newshour on January 25:

“As far as the Republicans are concerned, they are simply going through the terrible stages that every defeated party does.

“And one side says we lost because we didn’t stick enough to our principles. And the other side we lost because we were too dogmatic and didn’t reach out to the undecided.

“And so the first inclination is always to blame your own candidate. You blame Al Gore if you are a Democrat in 2000, or John Kerry in 2004. You blame John McCain.

“The Republicans want to blame Mitt Romney. That’s fine. But Mitt Romney is more popular than the Republican Party. I mean, he got 47 percent. The Republicans are dead in the water right now.”

Consider the reaction of Ann Coulter, the Republican version of the Miss America Nazi.  Speaking on the November 6 defeat of Mitt Romney, Coulter whined:

“People are suffering. The country is in disarray. If Mitt Romney cannot win in this economy, then the tipping point has been reached. We have more takers than makers and it’s over. There is no hope.”

And what did she hope to see Romney do as President?

“Mitt Romney was the president we needed right now, and I think it is so sad that we are going to be deprived of his brain power, of his skills in turning companies around, turning the Olympics around, his idea and his kindness for being able to push very conservative ideas on a country that no longer is interested in conservative ideas. It is interested in handouts.”

Note the chief reason for her regret: Romney would have been “able to push very conservative ideas on a country that no longer is interested in conservative ideas.”

Or, as the Original Nazis would have put it: “You vill love it–or else!”

Unfortunately for Coulter, a majority of Americans rejected this mentality–and the repressive measures that would have accompanied it.

So, naturally, Coulter and her fellow Rightists feel dejected.

Comedian Bill Maher, appearing on the November 7 edition of “Hardball With Chris Matthews,” offered his own explation for the Romney defeat: The Republicans fell victims to their own lies.

MAHER: But, you know, I think it gets to a bigger point, Chris, which is that Republicans have to start getting their information from a better source than FOX News. I’m not kidding about this….

They believed it right up until the end. They were shocked by this election.

They have to somehow fix the way they get information, because they only talk to each other. And they don’t know what’s going on in the real world.

And they were rudely awakened last night.

MATTHEWS: What do you think it was like to be in that bubble with Mitt Romney in that time after it really–I called it the knockout, like the sixth round?

MAHER: I mean, I think they were still saying, “Yes, Mein Fuehrer, you have 12 divisions on the Eastern front.”

MATTHEWS: Anyway, Donald Trump took to Twitter last night, trashing the election returns. Here’s what he said.  On Twitter, in real time, to use your phrase. “He lost the popular vote by a lot.”

He’s talking about the president and won the election. “We should have a revolution this country.”

“This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy.”

“We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided.”

MAHER: I mean, it doesn’t deserve thoughts because these aren’t thoughts….

This guy only two years ago was like apolitical, right? I don’t even know what party he was. I don’t know if he knew what party he was.  Now he wants to march on Washington?  This is democracy–so it’s not democracy when your candidate loses?

* * * * *

Sixty-eight years ago, another fanatical, right-wing woman concluded: “There is no hope.”

She was Magda Goebbels, wife of Joseph Goebbels–Propaganda Minister for the rapidly-collapsing Third Reich.

Magda and Joseph Goebbels, with their six children and a uniformed friend

“I do not wish to live in a world without National Socialism,” she said.

And to make certain her six children didn’t, either, she gave each of them a powerful sleeping tablet.  Then she crushed a cyanide capsule between their jaws.

Finally, she and her husband died by their own hands–he shot her, and then himself.

Fortunately, Ann Coulter has no children.  Nor even a husband who would willingly shoot her.

So if she truly believes she cannot live in a world where fascists don’t rule absolutely over America, perhaps it’s time for history to repeat itself.

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TEARS FOR THE MISS AMERICA NAZI

In History, Politics, Social commentary on November 13, 2012 at 12:15 am

History seems to be repeating itself.

Joachim C. Fest, author of Hitler (1973), writes of the surprise that awaited Allied soldiers occupying Nazi Germany in 1945:

“Almost without transition, virtually from one moment to the next, Nazism vanished after the death of Hitler and the surrender. It was as if National Socialism had been nothing but the motion, the state of intoxication and the catastrophe it had caused….

“Hitler’s propaganda specialists had talked constantly of invincible Alpine redoubts, nests of resistance, and swelling werewolf units, and had predicted a war beyond the war. But there was no sign of this.

“Once again it became plain that National Socialism, like Fascism in general, was dependent to the core on superior force, arrogance, triumph, and by its nature had no resources in the moment of defeat.”

The same appears to be happening with the would-be dictators of the Republican Party.

Consider the reaction of Ann Coulter, the Republican version of the Miss America Nazi.  Speaking on the November 6 defeat of Mitt Romney, Coulter whined:

“People are suffering. The country is in disarray. If Mitt Romney cannot win in this economy, then the tipping point has been reached. We have more takers than makers and it’s over. There is no hope.”

And what did she hope to see Romney do as President?

“Mitt Romney was the president we needed right now, and I think it is so sad that we are going to be deprived of his brain power, of his skills in turning companies around, turning the Olympics around, his idea and his kindness for being able to push very conservative ideas on a country that no longer is interested in conservative ideas. It is interested in handouts.”

Note the chief reason for her regret: Romney would have been “able to push very conservative ideas on a country that no longer is interested in conservative ideas.”

Or, as the Original Nazis would have put it: “You vill love it–or else!”

Unfortunately for Coulter, a majority of Americans rejected this mentality–and the repressive measures that would have accompanied it.

So, naturally, Coulter and her fellow Rightists feel dejected.

Comedian Bill Maher, appearing on the November 7 edition of “Hardball With Chris Matthews,” offered his own explation for the Romney defeat: The Republicans fell victims to their own lies.

MAHER: But, you know, I think it gets to a bigger point, Chris, which is that Republicans have to start getting their information from a better source than FOX News. I’m not kidding about this….

They believed it right up until the end. They were shocked by this election.

They have to somehow fix the way they get information, because they only talk to each other. And they don’t know what’s going on in the real world.

And they were rudely awakened last night.

MATTHEWS: What do you think it was like to be in that bubble with Mitt Romney in that time after it really–I called it the knockout, like the sixth round?

MAHER: I mean, I think they were still saying, “Yes, Mein Fuehrer, you have 12 divisions on the Eastern front.”

MATTHEWS: Anyway, Donald Trump took to Twitter last night, trashing the election returns. Here’s what he said.  On Twitter, in real time, to use your phrase. “He lost the popular vote by a lot.”

He’s talking about the president and won the election. “We should have a revolution this country.”

“This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy.”

“We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided.”

MAHER: I mean, it doesn’t deserve thoughts because these aren’t thoughts….

This guy only two years ago was like apolitical, right? I don’t even know what party he was. I don’t know if he knew what party he was.  Now he wants to march on Washington?  This is democracy–so it’s not democracy when your candidate loses?

* * * * *

Sixty-seven years ago, another fanatical, right-wing woman concluded: “There is no hope.”

She was Magda Goebbels, wife of Joseph Goebbels–Propaganda Minister for the rapidly-collapsing Third Reich.

Magda and Joseph Goebbels, with their six children and a uniformed friend

“I do not wish to live in a world without National Socialism,” she said.

And to make certain her six children didn’t, either, she gave each of them a powerful sleeping tablet.  Then she crushed a cyanide capsule between their jaws.

Finally, she and her husband died by their own hands–he shot her, and then himself.

Fortunately, Ann Coulter has no children.  Nor even a husband who would willingly shoot her.

So if she truly believes she cannot live in a world where fascists don’t rule absolutely over America, perhaps it’s time for history to repeat itself.