Today is Tuesday, October 31, 2023. Happy Halloween, everyone! Today is Day 2 of the Chump disqualification trial in Colorado and an online article about the testimony heard today was written by Marshall Cohen for CNN entitled “What to know about Day 2 of the Trump disqualification trial in Colorado.” Here are some significant takeaways from Day 2.

In court, “an expert on right-wing extremism dissected Chump’s history of fomenting unrest and testified that Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021, was unmistakably interpreted by his most militant supporters as ‘a call to violence.'” This is a key key part of the challengers’ argument that Chump “engaged” in the insurrection and is therefore ineligible for office.

The battle over the insurrectionist’s spot on the ballot has now heated up. While the trial played out in the Centennial State, Chump filed a lawsuit to shut down a similar case in Michigan. And a major hearing is set for Thursday in Minnesota in another anti-Chump candidacy challenge.

The 14th Amendment does say that U.S. officials who take an oath of office to uphold the Constitution are disqualified from office if they “engaged in insurrection” or aided the country’s enemies. However, the details regarding how to enforce the ban are nebulous at best and it has only been applied twice since the 19th century. One would have to admit that the country has not been prepared for the likes of a Donald Chump ever before in its history, and maybe, we need to take unprecedented steps to prevent him from installing a fascistic government if he’s ever elected again in the near future. We do have to protect ourselves from the autocratic impulses of this one loathsome creature. I did listen to Republican presidential aspirant Chris Christie on CNN who spoke against the lawsuit being resolved in the challengers’ favor by removing him from the ballot and endorsed the people making the decision. My worry is that there are so many stupid voters in this country and if there’s a third plank of candidates out there like the ridiculous Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Cornel West running for the office, there could be an upset in favor of this Orange Menace. Even though he could face jail time with his many indictments and possible conviction from his 91 charges. How would he take the reins of government in that case? we wonder. From jail or from in-house arrest at Mar-a-Lago?

Anyway, from the trial, we got to hear the testimony of Peter Simi, a sociology professor at Chapman University who studies extremism, testified about Chump’s history of embracing of far-right violent groups like the Proud Boys, albeit with enough wiggle room for plausible deniability.

Even though Chump might have been using this language “with a wink and a nod,” Simi said, members of these extremist groups consistently interpreted his comments as a “clarion call” toward “anger, resentment and mobilization.” This sentiment ramped up in summer 2020 as Chump claimed he was being cheated in the presidential election, Simi said.

Eric Olson, an attorney for the Colorado challengers, played clips from Chump’s January 6 speech, where he exhorted supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell,” so they could “save” the country. How would anyone plausibly interpret those words, especially if Chump knew that these extremists carried some sort of weapons on them? Would you think the Orange Hemorrhoid was exhorting his angry supporters to have tea and crumpets with the members of Congress who were meeting to certify the election that they believed was stolen from their Dear Leader? I dare say, I don’t think so.

Simi said that these words were understood by these far-right extremists as “a call to violence.” The expert additionally said, “Within far-right extremist culture, fighting is meant to be taken literally . . . especially within the context as it’s laid out, that these threats are imminent, and that you’re going to lose your country. Then, fighting would be understood as requiring violent action.”

This relationship between the 2016 presidential winner and radical extremists was “unprecedented,” Simi indicated. He added, “Far-right extremists really were galvanized by his candidacy starting in 2015.”

The anti-Chump challengers said they’ll feature additional expert testimony from one of the preeminent scholars on the history of the 14th Amendment, Gerard Magliocca. He supports Chump’s disqualification and testified at a similar proceeding last year against GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. That challenge, unfortunately, did not result in her removal from the ballot.

After the challengers finish their testimony, it’ll be Chump’s turn to put over his case. But this case fails to significantly absorb the attention of the indictment-challenged former president who will be paying more attention to his more immediate legal woes: his $250 million civil fraud trial going on in New York right now. Thus he won’t be attending the proceedings and isn’t testifying. Who expected him to do? Not I. He couldn’t articulate what he did on that fateful day if his life depended on it.

Instead, he’ll send a lesser star to refute the charges of the challengers, Republican Texas Rep. Troy Nehls who will swear that there was no insurrection. Good luck with that position, Mr. Nehls. He called the present proceedings a “sham trial.”

How many of you agree that the system should not be interfered with here and that the American people should be the final arbiters of whether or not Donald J. Chump should be reinstated as emperor – oops, president – in 2024? Let me know.

The appointment of new House Speaker Mike Johnson who has earned the scornful appellation from Democrats of “MAGA Mike” is quite disturbing since more information about this little-known powerful member of Congress has been released since his elevation to the position. An article in today’s late edition of the Daily News lays out his woeful record of anti-LGBTQ+ positions since 1988. The article is by LZ Granderson of the Los Angeles Times and it’s entitled “GOP hate for LGBTQ+ people fueled Johnson’s rise to speaker.”

Granderson begins his piece on the far-right House speaker by quoting the late Maya Angelou who said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

In reviewing Johnson’s background, Granderson writes that the mild-mannered, Clark Kent type has shown who he is ever since graduating from law school in 1988, when he advocated for laws that banned two adults from having consensual sex in their own home. Thus Johnson has made “attacking the queer community a huge part of his life’s work.”

This writer believes that the collapse of House Majority Whip’s Tom Emmer of Minnesota was due to the fact that he supported same-sex marriage. Hmmm, could this be a coincidence or more?

It would seem that these conservatives tend to use Christianity as justification for antigay discrimination, but do not, however, take great issue with other “sins” such as adultery. In fact, Johnson is married (I checked on Google) and is in a very strict type of marriage with his partner Kelly. It’s called a “covenant marriage” and it prevents couples from divorcing until at least two years after their wedding and only under certain circumstances. These kinds of marriages are legal in only three states, including Louisiana where Johnson comes from. But if this guy is so anti-LGBTQ+, one must wonder what his ulterior motives are. Do we smell the scent of questioning one’s sexual identity here, as many of us were married once before coming out?

This acceptance of adultery among Republican politicians is written about by author Jeff Sharlet who has written about a collective of repugnican politicians sharing a townhouse in Washington that was not only the site of prayer groups but also apparently extramarital affairs. The New Yorker dubbed this group a “frat house for Jesus.” The group is called “the family,” which to me is so eerie (it reminds me of Charles Manson’s moniker for his hippie cult members) and it’s tied to passage of antigay legislation in Romania and Uganda, which now sentences LGBTQ+ people to death and imprisons anyone who fails to report a queer person to the government.

Not only is Johnson a foe of queer people, he is a Chump ally who tried to overturn the 2020 election on his behalf. As his seven core conservative principles, he listed the “rule of law” second among these principles. He listed “individual freedom” and “limited government” as first and third – despite urging laws be passed to ban sex between two consenting adults in their own home. With this asshole in the top echelons of power in Congress, we are not in 2023, but 1950 all over again.

Granderson points out that the year that Johnson graduated from law school, 1988, marked the same year that a gay man in Wyoming, Matthew Shepard, was brutally beaten, tied to a fence, and left to die. Johnson began his unholy crusade against LGBTQ+ people in the wake of that tragedy that dominated the news for months.

Thus Johnson has clearly shown us the person he was the very first time he burst on the scene and we must take Maya Angelou’s advice and believe him. I say, this bum has to go in 2024 and the whole repugnican caucus.

The LGBTQ+ community must monitor this guy very closely, I must say. Or our “rights” will be taken away just like women’s reproductive rights in 2022.

This story about Johnson delivered here in the Daily News is scarier than any Halloween story. As I said, I did not go into the city to watch the parade. It was too chilly. However, I did buy an apt magazine for the occasion called History’s Creepiest Ghost Stories at my local CVS. I’ve read some chapters already when I walked to Rego Park today to go to the library and to have lunch at the Rego Park Cafe. In the magazine, I read about ghosts haunting various stately homes across the country and one of thsse is the famous Breakers palatial home of Alice and Cornelius Vanderbilt II, located in Rhode Island (I think I’ve been there, but I’m not sure!) where the ghost of Alice Vanderbilt supposedly haunts the estate. Though she and her husband were fabulously rich, they suffered the terrible deaths of four of their children at very young ages. So after nearly 90 years since her death, guests have spotted her spirit – still dressed in period clothing – roaming around the mansion.

With The Breakers’ famous ghost, the 2022 HBO series The Gilded Age which was filmed at the estate, one cast member of the series, Louisa Jacobson has told podcaster Josh Smith that she could feel the ghosts in the room. Hmmm, isn’t this just so eerie? just what the doctor ordered on this holiday of All Hallows’ Eve. It’s also a coincidence that I borrowed from the Forest Hills Library Anderson Cooper’s memoir of his famous family, Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty, written with Katherine Howe. Or is it? I doubt that he mentions the ghost of Alice Vanderbilt roaming her former house in the book. Ooh-wee!

Stay safe and be well.