I guess there is a method to the madness. With the holiday season upon us, the disruptor in chief is looking to wreak havoc into the last 30 days of his hold on power. Within the last few days before Christmas, he had managed to unleash so much chaos before rushing back to his Margo Largo hideout for the long holiday weekend.
Firstly, he refused to sign the Defense Spending Act on some unrelated reasoning and because he thinks they will change the names of some military bases. Then he threw the whole COVID19 relief package under the bus by insisting that the amount be raised to 2K. The missing in action president who had been busy playing golf and ignoring the pandemic for months has not lifted a finger to participate in the by-partisan negotiations to finalize the latest bill to provide relief to Americans before the end of the year.
Yet he now holds the whole process hostage as he drops a bomb on everyone. It is human cruelty at its best, to inflict pain at the worst moment to the most vulnerable. It seems that the timing of these announcements are not a coincidence as the senate and house will have 2 weeks to try to change or veto his decision. This ties perfectly into the Georgia elections in early Jan which will determine the fate of the senate for the 2 contested positions, whether it will go to the GOP majority or if the Democrats will win it.
By holding GOP hostage to the above, he will be able to command absolute loyalty from the party for him to give it a last shot to overturn the “illegal” election results. A memo had already been issued to the White House staff to stay on and to retract an earlier one that asked them to vacate the premises by 05 Jan to prepare for the inauguration of the new administration on 20 Jan.
He wants GOP to know who is the boss and see how badly they want to keep the senate. With little time left in power, he is making the most of his last days in a final push to stay in power, let the legal systems be damned. The long shot to overturn the results of the elections is still important because he is fighting for his personal survival.
The lawsuits will come for him swiftly and furiously the moment he leaves office. There are so many pending cases on his financial dealings and questionable business actions that will be probed after 20 Jan. His family affairs and tax evasion practices are also up for review plus money links to the Russians via Deutsche Bank will be exposed. His financial survival is at stake even as he raised more than $200+ million from supporters to fight the supposedly rigged elections.
The next masterful stroke is to begin his presidential pardons and issue them like candy to his cronies in earnest. Within the 2 days before Christmas, over 40+ have been issued. More than 80% can be linked to him for a personal or political reason. Criminals and murderers are being pardoned. Most have not even shown remorse or attempted to atone for their previous actions yet. A commentator did mention though that if they accepted the presidential pardons, then there could be an admission of guilt which could result in new charges to be brought to them.
The pardons seem to be a prelude to many more in the pipeline for him to execute and stretch the grey line even further. He probably has hundreds more to issue in the upcoming remaining days in office. Family members could be next. But what is there to pardon if they did not commit any crimes at the moment? Can they be pardoned for future crimes??? A free get out of jail card to be used when needed after Jan 2020?
Some even speculated that he plans to pardon himself to get immunity for life when he leaves office. If that is not possible, then could he step down suddenly on 19 Jan and get Pence to pardon him instead? He had been dangling the pardon card for years to buy loyalty. Now, it is the execution plan in play.
The pandemic rages on and no one is at home to watch the fire burning down the house. Travel for Christmas and New Year has now reached all-time highs for the year as the UK just announced a new and more contagious strain of the virus. This is a perfect storm that is looking to explode in all our faces even as the vaccines are being rushed out. A real mother of all shit shows is developing nicely along.
On the personal front, we are glad that my older son is back home and completed his SHN in a S’pore hotel on Monday. He had been in the UK for almost 3 months for his first term at Oxford as the COVID19 situation continues to deteriorate further. A new Tier 4 rating has just been created to plan for the worst. Infection rates are moving higher as the new strain spreads. Being home in S’pore is perhaps the safest bet for him for now.
The new Wonder Woman 1984 movie had started and we caught it during mid-week at the cinema. It was nice to be able to have a small semblance of the normalcy of watching a show on the big screen, just like the old normal again. The movie was delayed by more than a year already. New movies like this one will be streaming on various platforms like Netflix into 2021 as there is a huge build-up of a backlog of shows to be released.
As we start to celebrate the end of a terrible year that happens once in 100 years and start to welcome an uncertain 2021, many unknowns are still up in the air. While I am more optimistic that there is light at the end of the tunnel, I am not sure if the finishing line is near or there are many more months ahead.
Herd immunity via the vaccines will take months to achieve, assuming that everyone is cooperative and wants to take them. Politics, however crazy they become, will take care of itself. America is on a decline while Asia and China will rise. Brexit will be terrible for the UK eventually. Liquidity will continue to flood the markets as fiat currencies lose their value as central banks print like there is no tomorrow.
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