By Jeb Bladine • President / Publisher • 

Jeb Bladine: Two ‘train wrecks’ play on global stage

 

One “train wreck” event is one too many. But two of them currently compete for our attention: the death toll of the 2020 global pandemic, and the death throes of a disturbing presidential election challenge.

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Jeb Bladine is president and publisher of the News-Register.

> See his column

Wednesday’s report of America’s COVID-related deaths exceeded 3,100, soon to reach 300,000 overall. Globally, total COVID-related deaths are estimated at 1.6 million. Oregon reported 30 deaths Wednesday, now nearing 1,200 overall.

Vaccines are coming, but COVID-19 case counts, hospitalizations and deaths will continue surging if people don’t follow basic precautions: masks, aggressive social distancing, hand-washing. President-elect Biden is urging 100 days of masks for all; unfortunately, many Americans will resist that science-based advice.

Meanwhile, as President Donald Trump seeks to overthrow Joe Biden’s election, one death knell to that effort came in 18 words from the U.S. Supreme Court: “The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice [Samuel] Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied,"

One commentator called Trump’s attempted coup “a gigantic, clownish lie that has no merit whatsoever,” and yet it continues.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz wants to argue a last-gasp Texas lawsuit before the Supreme Court; Biden supporters urge a repeat of that 18-word Supreme Court rejection; most Americans, but still too few, are ready for an end to the politics of division.

Texas submitted its lawsuit directly to SCOTUS, as allowed with cases involving multi-state conflicts. Now backed by 18 other state attorney generals, the suit seeks to invalidate presidential elections in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on grounds that their respective efforts to expand by-mail voting were illegal.

The court gave those four defendant states until 3 p.m. Thursday (this week) to respond. Perhaps this desperate legal ploy will be over by the time this newspaper is printed – we can only hope.

We can’t escape the irony of Cruz trying to carry Trump’s case, remembering the senator’s description of Trump on May 3, 2016, just before Trump cinched the GOP presidential nomination:

“This man is a pathological liar; he doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies … practically every word that comes out of his mouth. The man cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist … a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen before.”

As it all unfolds on a global stage, we’re reminded that COVID-19 doesn’t care if you’re a conservative or a liberal, and that neither of those political ideologies deserves unilateral rule of America.

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