Tag Archives: republican party

But Who Plays The Wolf?

Posted on by under Environmental Issues, guns, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

The Boy Who Cried Wolf  … from Aesop’s Fables

There once was a shepherd boy who was bored as he sat on the hillside watching the village sheep. To amuse himself he took a great breath and sang out, “Wolf! Wolf! The Wolf is chasing the sheep!”

The villagers came running up the hill to help the boy drive the wolf away. But when they arrived at the top of the hill, they found no wolf. The boy laughed at the sight of their angry faces.

“Don’t cry ‘wolf’, shepherd boy,” said the villagers, “when there’s no wolf!” They went grumbling back down the hill.

Later, the boy sang out again, “Wolf! Wolf! The wolf is chasing the sheep!” To his naughty delight, he watched the villagers run up the hill to help him drive the wolf away.

When the villagers saw no wolf they sternly said, “Save your frightened song for when there is really something wrong! Don’t cry ‘wolf’ when there is NO wolf!”

But the boy just grinned and watched them go grumbling down the hill once more.

Later, he saw a REAL wolf prowling about his flock. Alarmed, he leaped to his feet and sang out as loudly as he could, “Wolf! Wolf!”

But the villagers thought he was trying to fool them again, and so they didn’t come.

At sunset, everyone wondered why the shepherd boy hadn’t returned to the village with their sheep. They went up the hill to find the boy. They found him weeping.

“There really was a wolf here! The flock has scattered! I cried out, “Wolf!” Why didn’t you come?”

An old man tried to comfort the boy as they walked back to the village.

“We’ll help you look for the lost sheep in the morning,” he said, putting his arm around the youth, “Nobody believes a liar…even when he is telling the truth!”

We are so bombarded by lies every hour of every day told by Republicans that if, by some miracle, one of them ever tells the truth, we will discount it as just another lie.  The “Grand Old Party” has lost its integrity, its reputation, and sold its values to the highest bidder.  Collectively, they are the little shepherd boy in the fable, and the people who watch Fox “News” are the sheep, while those of us who recognize a lie when we see one are the ‘woke’ villagers who are trying to ignore the lying, cheating likes of George Santos, Matt Gaetz, Marge Greene, Lauren Boebert, Kevin McCarthy, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and all the rest, while realizing the potential for danger.  And the wolf?

Well, you see, the little shepherd boy crying wolf are the Republican politicians and media clowns who are painting Democrats as the wolf, but when the real wolf shows up, they may be surprised to find it isn’t at all who they thought.  The real ‘wolf’ is a combination of climate change, guns, racism & bigotry, wealthy corporations, technology, and a few others.  And yes, the wolf is really there, creeping ever nearer, unimpressed by the deniers and the conspiracy theorists who have laid the path, allowing him to creep forward at an even faster pace.

“Verdant canopy of lies” – resume inflation is growing

Posted on by under education, Election 2022, Free Press Issues, History, Political commentary, Re-blogs, Social commentary

Lies, lies, and still more lies. There is a very real danger in the recent spate of lies by our elected officials, the very people to whom we entrust our lives. When we become inured to all the lies, when we come to EXPECT politicians to lie about anything and everything including who or what they are, then we no longer vote based on qualifications, but rather on personality. That, my friends, is dangerous, as we saw so clearly in the 2016 election. Keith’s post today highlights a few of the many lies that have been told by politicos recently and addresses the issue of trust. Thank you, Keith, for this timely post.

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Jack Shafer of Politico wrote the following opinion piece earlier this week that should concern each of us called “Opinion | The George Santos Caucus Is Growing – Resume inflation on Capitol Hill is getting out of hand.” Here is the first few paragraphs, with a link to the article below.

“The verdant canopy of lies tended by Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) requires no summary here. They’re so thick and leafy that they now block the sun from the forest floor. But he’s not the only freshman member who struggles when self-reporting. According to a recent Washington Post investigation, Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) can’t keep her ethnicity straight, claims to have grown up destitute and neglected when she didn’t, and appears to have incorrectly portrayed herself as the victim of a home invasion. (Luna has contested the Post story and won one correction and a clarification.) Meanwhile, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) has…

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Letter To Incoming Senator J.D. Vance

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Economic issues, education, Election 2022, Environmental Issues, guns, Law and justice, Political commentary, Social commentary, voting rights

What follows is the letter I wrote to incoming Senator James David (J.D.) Vance, the man elected to replace outgoing Senator Rob Portman of Ohio.  Feel free to alter and use, if you feel so inclined.

Senator James David Vance

448 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington DC 20510

03 January 2023

Dear Mr. Vance,

At noon today, you will take your Oath of Office whereby you will say …

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.”

I hope that you understand the tremendous responsibility you are taking on with those words.  Your responsibility is not only to the people of Ohio, but to every living being in the United States, and around the globe.  It is a solemn responsibility, not one to be taken lightly, not one to be made a mockery by playing political games.

You are new to government and have no previous experience.  For that reason, as well as some of your more questionable views and associations, I did not vote for you.  However, I believe in democracy and that the results of a free and fair election must be honoured by all, for if they are not, then our democratic foundations will crumble.  And thus, for better or for worse, you will represent the people of Ohio in the United States Senate.  I ask you to consider a few things as you take your seat.

  • Your commitment, your obligation, is to We the People, not to the Republican Party. The GOP as it is otherwise known, has largely set aside such things as values and integrity, opting instead for putting on a show to please a, shall we say less-educated, base.  I hope you will not fall into this trap, for this nation is struggling in several areas and we need serious lawmakers who come to Congress in order to address problems, to look after the best interests of the nation and its people.
  • Please do not be conned into a false set of priorities by others in your party. The things that matter most to this country are such things as the environment, gun violence, education, civil rights, wealth inequality, affordable healthcare, voting rights for all, and more.
  • Remember that your job is to legislate. Some in your party believe that their job is to seek retaliation against those in the opposing party, and to spend the bulk of their time campaigning for their next re-election bid.  This is not a playground and you are not a 6-year old child, so please try to remember that and take your job seriously.  We the People elected you and we work damn hard to pay our taxes that pay your salary.  In return, we expect you to do the work of the people, not the work of your political party, per se.

I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican, and I see both parties clearly, not through a partisan lens.  I have voted for members of both parties throughout my lifetime, but today I see a Republican Party in chaos, a party that has no platform, no ideology, no concern for the people, only for their own wealth and power.  If you follow along those lines, you will be a huge disappointment to the people who hired (elected) you and who pay your salary.  So please, try to take your job seriously.  If you do, you will succeed.  If you fail to, then you will be hearing from me and others and in six years (or less) you will be unemployed.

I wish you the best.

Sincerely,

Jill Dennison, citizen, taxpayer, voter

The Next Two Years …

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Election 2024, Free Press Issues, History, Political commentary, Social commentary, voting rights

Looking ahead to the next two years in the United States Congress, I think we all foresee chaos.  I don’t anticipate that the work of government, the work of We the People will be done, since the Republican-led House of Representatives has already told us they have no intention of doing their jobs.  They have made it clear they plan to obfuscate and obstruct the will of the people by impeaching not only the president (not for any crimes, real or imagined, but simply in retaliation for the twice-impeached former guy), and then they plan to defund the FBI, but only after a lengthy, costly investigation led by the likes of Gym … er, Jim Jordan, himself a criminal.  So, it would be easy to slip into despair, wondering why we are even bothering to pay taxes to keep the government running if they aren’t planning to do a damn thing about such important issues as the environment, guns, healthcare, education, voting rights, women’s rights, and the multitude of things that we hired them to address.  But Robert Hubbell has a slightly different take, one which I think deserves some pondering.  Here is a portion of his post …

The next two years.

Robert Hubbell

02 January 2023

As we enter 2023, there is no escaping the fact that we are beginning the long march toward the presidential election of 2024. As we start that journey, we have every reason to be confident about our ability to rise to the occasion. We did so in 2022, as we did in 2020 and 2018. The lesson of each of those campaigns is that our biggest challenge is overcoming the persistent media narrative that the Democratic Party is in disarray while the MAGA wing of the Republican Party is ascendant. That has not been an accurate description of the political dynamic in America since 2016, but the media has been like a dog with a bone—it won’t give up the negative narrative about the Democratic Party despite all objective evidence to the contrary.

          On the Democratic side of the scale are the results of the last three elections (or four if you consider the popular vote in 2016). On the Republican side are four losing elections and truly daunting challenges entering 2023. While we should never count on Republicans to defeat themselves, the narrative is misleading if we focus exclusively on the challenges facing Democrats—a favorite journalistic technique whenever a story is needed to predict doom for the Democratic Party.

          The stories circulating at the top of the news cycle this week highlight the challenges the Republican Party will face as it begins to awake from a six-year binge with a strange bedfellow whose appearance in the harsh morning light of 2023 should give the GOP a sinking feeling of regret and panic. Let’s see what the GOP sees in the mirror at the dawn of a new year.

The impossibility of breaking up with Trump.

          A sizable portion of the Republican Party is done with Trump—but it will be impossible for the GOP to break up with Trump. He will either be the 2024 GOP nominee, or he will destroy the party in the process of losing the nomination. Worse, just as MAGA extremism appears to have crested at the polls, Trump is forcing contenders for the nomination to “out-Trump Trump” in their quest for the 2024 nomination. See, e.g., Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, and Kari Lake.

          Trump began the new year by sending a warning shot across the bow of the Republican Party. Last week, Trump posted an article titled The Coming Split on his vanity social media platform, Truth Social. The article urged Trump to run as a third-party candidate if the GOP does not nominate him for president in 2024. See Huff Post, Trump Appears To Float Third-Party Threat If GOP Won’t Back Him | HuffPost Latest News.

          The author of the article, right-wing journalist Dan Gelernter, wrote the following:

Do I think Trump can win as a third-party candidate? No. Would I vote for him as a third-party candidate? Yes. Because I’m not interested in propping up this corrupt [GOP] gravy-train any longer. . . . What should we do when a majority of Republicans want Trump, but the Republican Party says we can’t have him? Do we knuckle under and vote for Ron DeSantis because he would be vastly better than any Democrat? I say no, we don’t knuckle under.

          As noted in the HuffPo article, current RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel told Trump that if he runs as a third party, “We [the GOP] will lose forever.” McDaniel is right. If Trump leaves the GOP, it will be nearly impossible for another GOP candidate to win in a general election. And the result will be the same if Trump mounts a third-party challenge or merely sulks at Mar-a-Lago, hurling insults and raising money for Trump-affiliated PACs that he spends on legal defense and tacky parties.

          Despite Trump’s weakened state from the midterms and mounting legal problems, Kevin McCarthy’s inability to secure the votes to become Speaker is directly related to Trump’s continuing gravitational pull on the GOP. The Freedom Caucus and assorted crazies in the GOP are demanding that McCarthy veer to the extreme edges of MAGA extremism to garner their support. For example, McCarthy has floated the idea of Jim Jordan leading a Judiciary Committee investigation into FBI Director Christopher Wray because . . . . well, you know. In MAGA-world, “FBI bad, Oath Keepers good.” Trump appointed Wray as FBI Director but has been highly critical of Wray’s unwillingness to pursue Trump’s revenge agenda against Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, etc.

          Likewise, Ronna McDaniel is trying to keep her job as the Chair of the Republican Committee by saying that the top priority of Republicans in the new congressional term is “getting to the bottom of Hunter Biden’s laptop.”  That should be a pretty easy task since Rudy Giuliani has had a copy of the hard drive from Hunter Biden’s laptop since October 2020. If there is anything on the laptop worth getting to the bottom of, it should have emerged by now. More importantly, the obsession with Hunter Biden’s laptop illustrates that the Trump revenge agenda is eclipsing the ability of the GOP to pursue a substantive agenda.

          So, there you have it. Trump won’t let the GOP walk out the door without starting an internecine war that may destroy the party. And even without Trump actively trying to destroy the party, he has unleashed reactionary forces that even he cannot restrain. Over the weekend, McCarthy reportedly offered a concession to the radical wing of the Freedom Caucus that would allow a handful of Representative to call for a “no confidence” vote on the Speaker—something McCarthy previously said he would “never” do. As a result, the extremists in the GOP, like Matt Gaetz, will be controlling the GOP agenda in Congress. See Newsweek,  Steve Bannon says Matt Gaetz Will Be ‘De Facto’ Speaker After McCarthy Concessions.

          [Update: McCarthy’s humiliating offer to allow a “motion to vacate” by five members was rejected in a letter by nine Republican members sent on New Year’s Day.]

          Whatever challenges Democrats face as they move toward 2024, those challenges do not include an inevitable struggle for control of the party that will inflict grievous injury no matter the outcome. Democrats face challenges, too, and we will be reminded of them early and often by the media. So, keep in mind that the next two years will be extraordinarily difficult for the GOP, even if the media fails to mention that fact.

Dealing with the polls over the next two years.

          It was not your imagination. Polling regarding the 2022 midterms was not only wrong, it was so wrong that it may have negatively affected Democratic prospects in some contests. The NYTimes published a lengthy analysis of the polling errors in 2022. See NYTimes, The ‘Red Wave’ Washout: How Skewed Polls Fed a False Election Narrative. Kudos to the Times for engaging in introspection about how the media amplified misleading polls. The Times does not mention its own prominent role in distorting the narrative to the detriment of Democrats.

          The lengthy analysis in the Times can be distilled to the following:

  • Polls are not elections.
  • In a closely divided electorate, polls communicate virtually no useful information.
  • Republicans have figured out how to manipulate polls.
  • Polling aggregators like Fivethirtyeight.com and the media amplify the misleading polls generated by partisan affiliates of the GOP.
  • Misinformation from junk polls depressed Democratic turnout in certain instances.

          The ability of Republican pollsters to distort the media narrative had real-life consequences on the outcomes in 2022. Democratic funders abandoned Mandela Barnes in his race against Ron Johnson when garbage Republican polls began to suggest that Johnson was pulling ahead of Barnes by five points (or more). In the end, Barnes lost by one percentage point. But the “negative narrative” resulted in a fundraising edge by Ron Johnson of $26 million.

          What if Democratic funders had not abandoned Barnes based on misleading polling? Would Barnes have fared better if the Democrats had not ceded the fundraising advantage to Ron Johnson? We will never know the answers to those questions for certain. But we can stop falling for the same stupid Republican games in the future.

          So, here’s the point: Don’t stress out over polls during the next two years. We must go about our business as if every vote might be the deciding vote in every election.

The New Kid In The Party?

Posted on by under education, Election 2022, History, Law and justice, Political commentary

A good governor … and here I am using the term more expansively to include all government decision-makers from state legislators all the way up through the U.S. Congress and even the president … will make every decision based on what is best for the country and for its people – ALL its people, not just white people or male people or Christian people or straight people.  They will sometimes err because they will rarely, if ever, have all the facts upon which to base their decisions, but they will be guided in making decisions by the facts they do have, and their conscience reminding them of their responsibility to the people of the nation.  Federal officials must remember that while they were elected by the people from their state or district, their decisions, their votes and their actions affect every individual within the country, thus they should act accordingly.

I believe there are some in our government who actually do just this, make decisions based on what seems at the time to be in the best interests of the people … ALL the people.  Unfortunately, however, there are more than a few who make their decisions on the basis of what’s in it for them, of their own quest for power, for re-election, for financial gain.  Now, I won’t deny there are some on both sides of the aisle who have forgotten their responsibility, but over the last decade, the Republican Party, aka the GOP, appears to no longer care about either the country or the people.  They have sacrificed integrity.  Their forefathers must surely be doing that proverbial “rolling over in their grave” thing.

I could point to so many, such as Marge Greene who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives despite being a follower of QAnon, despite believing that Jewish space lasers (hint, in case any Republicans are reading this, there ain’t no such thing as Jewish space lasers) started the California wildfires.  Or the pistol-totin’ barhop, Lauren Boebert who proudly put a photo of all her children holding big guns on her Christmas cards.  And then, there’s Kevin McCarthy, vying to be the next Speaker of the House, whose only platform is revenge against any and all liberal democratic policies and those of us who support those policies.  But for now, I want to focus on one incoming member of the House, a person who will be seated in the House of Representatives next Tuesday, a person who has broken the boundaries of dishonesty:  George Santos.

I wrote about Santos just over a week ago, after the New York Times published a laundry list of the lies he has told … everything from his heritage to his education to his work history to his family to his criminal record to his financial situation … and more!  Last week, a day or two before Christmas, Santos was confronted about his lies and said he would talk about it all ‘next week’ … next week now being this week.  Well, he did.  He admitted to most of his lies, claimed the felony convictions against him for theft in Brazil were false, but the documentation proves the lie.  Did he ‘come clean’ with humility and shame?  Nope … just stated as a matter of fact that yes, he lied, but that he still has every intention of taking his seat in the House of Representatives next Tuesday!  The unmitigated gall left me speechless, but only for a moment.

This is a new low even for the Republican Party and if, in fact, they allow him to be seated in the House on Tuesday, it will be the most definitive statement yet that there is no conscience, no morals, no values, and no integrity within the Republican Party.  One lie of any substance would have disqualified any Democratic candidate, but Mr. Santos told lies about every single aspect of his entire 34 years!!!  I imagine there are some Republicans who are wishing they could crawl under a rock right about now – Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney – but the rest seem to be scratching their heads and wondering how to get this out of the news, how to make it disappear.  Not a single word from the otherwise garrulous Kevin McCarthy … funny that.

This is, for the Republicans, as bad a nightmare as the former guy, an egomaniac, planning to run for the Oval Office again.  I would pity the Republicans, but … they brought this mess on themselves when they first began letting unqualified circus clowns run for office.  It seems to me that a person who cannot even be relied upon to tell the truth about where he went to college (he didn’t), property he claims to own (but doesn’t), where he has worked, his ancestry, his criminal past, where he lives, cannot possibly be trusted to be an honest lawmaker!  I thought Herschel Walker told some mighty big lies, but Santos even makes him look like an amateur.  Santos is right up there with the former guy, who wouldn’t recognize the truth if it smacked him upside the head!  This is NOT what this nation needs … lawmakers who cannot ever be trusted, whose words and actions must always, always be fact-checked!  But alas, this is the new GOP – which, by the way, no longer stands for “Grand Old Party”, but rather for “Gaslight Or Perjure.”

Jaw-Dropping!!! 😲

Posted on by under education, Election 2022, History, Political commentary

In last month’s mid-term elections, a relatively unknown man named George Santos was elected to represent New York’s 3rd district in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Republicans will have a very slim majority of 4 seats in the House come January 3rd.  An article in yesterday’s New York Times about Santos caused my jaw to drop.  Apparently, Mr. Santos is a consummate liar and literally nothing on his resume is to be believed!  A few snippets from the NYT article …

    George Santos, whose election to Congress on Long Island last month helped Republicans clinch a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, built his candidacy on the notion that he was the “full embodiment of the American dream” and was running to safeguard it for others.

    His campaign biography amplified his storybook journey: He is the son of Brazilian immigrants, and the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent. By his account, he catapulted himself from a New York City public college to become a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” with a family-owned real estate portfolio of 13 properties and an animal rescue charity that saved more than 2,500 dogs and cats.

    But a New York Times review of public documents and court filings from the United States and Brazil, as well as various attempts to verify claims that Mr. Santos, 34, made on the campaign trail, calls into question key parts of the résumé that he sold to voters.

    Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, the marquee Wall Street firms on Mr. Santos’s campaign biography, told The Times they had no record of his ever working there. Officials at Baruch College, which Mr. Santos has said he graduated from in 2010, could find no record of anyone matching his name and date of birth graduating that year.

    There was also little evidence that his animal rescue group, Friends of Pets United, was, as Mr. Santos claimed, a tax-exempt organization: The Internal Revenue Service could locate no record of a registered charity with that name.

    His financial disclosure forms suggest a life of some wealth. He lent his campaign more than $700,000 during the midterm election, has donated thousands of dollars to other candidates in the last two years and reported a $750,000 salary and over $1 million in dividends from his company, the Devolder Organization.

    Yet the firm, which has no public website or LinkedIn page, is something of a mystery. On a campaign website, Mr. Santos once described Devolder as his “family’s firm” that managed $80 million in assets. On his congressional financial disclosure, he described it as a capital introduction consulting company, a type of boutique firm that serves as a liaison between investment funds and deep-pocketed investors. But Mr. Santos’s disclosures did not reveal any clients, an omission three election law experts said could be problematic if such clients exist.

    And while Mr. Santos has described a family fortune in real estate, he has not disclosed, nor could The Times could find, records of his properties.

But wait … it gets even worse!

    Records show that Mr. Santos’s mother, who died in 2016, lived for a time in the Brazilian city of Niterói, a Rio suburb where she was employed as a nurse. After Mr. Santos obtained a high school equivalency diploma, he apparently also spent some time there.

    In 2008, when Mr. Santos was 19, he stole the checkbook of a man his mother was caring for, according to Brazilian court records uncovered by The Times. Police and court records show that Mr. Santos used the checkbook to make fraudulent purchases, including a pair of shoes. Two years later, Mr. Santos confessed to the crime and was later charged.

    The court and local prosecutor in Brazil confirmed the case remains unresolved. Mr. Santos did not respond to an official summons, and a court representative could not find him at his given address, records show.

    That period in Brazil overlapped with when Mr. Santos said he was attending Baruch College, where he has said he was awarded a bachelor’s degree in economics and finance. But Baruch College said it was unable to find records of Mr. Santos …

The first question is … why are we only learning of this now???  How did he manage to bamboozle the Republican Party into the nomination, and why didn’t the Democratic Party do their opposition research homework?  The next question is … will he be allowed to take his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives on January 3rd, just two weeks from now?  The chairman of New York’s Democratic Party has called for an ethics investigation, but given the slim Republican majority in the House, best guess is that nothing much will happen … for now, at least. Mr. Santos is yet another example of what the Republican Party has become.  He should fit in really well with Marge Greene, Loren Boebert, Matt Gaetz and some of the others he’ll be serving with, eh?

I urge you to read the entire article … it’s a bit lengthy, but it is an eye-opener, a jaw-dropper!

WHAT A WASTE!!!

Posted on by under Election 2022, Law and justice, Political commentary, Rants

The total annual salaries for the 435 members of the House of Representatives is $76,300,300.  That’s just the salary, not including benefits, travel, and other perks, and not including all their staff!  When you add it all up, the total budget for the House of Representatives is $1.715 billion!  We the Taxpayers are the ones who pay these salaries.  Now, mind you, I don’t begrudge them their pay and relative to what the average corporate executive earns in a year, House members’ salaries are actually less.  But what I do mind is paying for people to do a job that they are not doing, but instead are spending their time and our money on pointless, stupid time-wasting games.

As the Republican Party leadership makes plans for their next session beginning January 3rd, 2023, we hear that their sole intent will be to impeach President Biden … multiple times if possible … for grounds as yet undetermined.  They play to spend their entire first year doing nothing but running investigations into every aspect of the Biden administration, including the president’s family members, looking for evidence of … what???

These are just a few of the ‘investigations’ they are plotting:

  • They will seek to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of Homeland Security, not for misdeeds but because they are displeased that the Biden administration’s immigration policies are more humane than the Trump administration’s.
  • They’re planning to probe the alleged “politicization” of the Justice Department, claiming it is a hotbed of leftists and Democratic partisans. Additionally, they plan an investigation into what they claim is the ‘mistreatment’ of the January 6th insurrectionists.  Say WHAT???
  • They intend to investigate the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with the goal of gutting the IRS budget. President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act provided funding for additional IRS staffing to pursue tax fraud by corporations and the wealthy, but the Republicans want to ensure that doesn’t happen.
  • They say they plan to waste even more time and resources “investigating” the source of Covid, claiming that there was some vast ‘conspiracy’ involving none other than Dr. Anthony Fauci, responsible for the virus. They say they want to see Fauci imprisoned, or perhaps even executed for his alleged ‘crimes’.
  • And of course they plan to make President Biden’s son, Hunter, the subject of some massive investigation into his emails, his computer, his sexual relationships, and probably the brand of socks he wears! Funny the double standard here … Trump’s children were involved in a number of unsavory things, but not once was an investigation launched into their shenanigans.  In fact, they were given high-level security clearances against the recommendations of the White House personnel security office at Trump’s behest.

These are but a few of the pseudo-investigations that Kevin McCarthy, Marge Greene and others are rubbing their hands together and salivating over launching.  The end goal, as I mentioned, is to impeach President Biden.  Why?  Because he’s not a Republican, because he won the 2020 election, because he’s a man of conscience and integrity, unlike most of the Republicans.  And there may well be yet another reason … because Donald Trump asked ordered them to.

Now, we can shrug it off, for it’s unlikely with the slim majority the Republicans will have in the House that they will succeed in impeaching the president.  Surely there are at least a few who would be uncomfortable with such a dramatic and ludicrous move.  And even if they succeeded in impeachment, there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that the Senate would convict him.  But it is still important because it is a denigration of our entire government, turning the United States Congress into a circus act.  In my mind, at least, it signals the beginning of the end of a democratic system.  The Republicans are obviously not interested in earning their keep, in providing good governance, but are only interested in domination.  Then again, maybe part of the scheme is to deflect attention from their own crimes and those of their ‘leader’, Donald Trump.

What makes me furious is that the Republicans have absolutely no plan for policy-making or for legislating, which is what we hired them to do!  Their sole focus is going to be on trying to bring down the Biden administration and block any and all legislation proposed by the Democrats.  And for this … for this we are going to pay them $76,300,300!!!  I don’t know about you folks, but I’m sick and damned tired of paying hard-earned tax dollars and getting absolutely nothing in return!  I’d far rather my tax dollars go to help improve the lot in life of people who are struggling just to survive in this world than the already-wealthy bozos the Republicans have shoved into Congress!

How Dems Should Tackle Economic Issues

Posted on by under Economic issues, Election 2022, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Re-blogs, Social commentary

Our dear friend Gronda has returned!!! I don’t know about you all, but I’ve missed her so very much! And after her hiatus, she is primed and ready to go, her usual fiery self, as her post today shows us! Let’s listen to Gronda telling us what the Democrats need to do to get the attention of the people in the coming three weeks.

Gronda Morin

If Dems want to maintain their majority status in the US Congress in 2023, they cannot cede winning the debate on US economic issues to GOP MAGA candidates. 

There’re 2 things that Dems can do to successfully tackle economic issues head on. First Dems can start by trusting the intelligence of even GOP MAGA voters. No, Dems won’t move the needle by much, but any movement can make a difference in close elections. The second major argument is that if GOP prevail in winning majority power in US House and Senate, US economy including inflation will probably be made worse.

Just look at what happened in 2022 when a conservative UK politician enacted a favorite right-wing solution to any economic problem, widespread tax cuts which was the catalyst for a major financial meltdown. As per a 10/17/2022 Reuters report, “Under the new policy, most of (former PM) Truss’s 45 billion…

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Party Of “Law & Order”??? 🤣

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, guns, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Social commentary

The Republican Party has long claimed to be the party of “law and order”.  I have a little problem with that claim, given their behaviour and rhetoric of late.  Let’s take a look at just a few of the reasons I think it is a joke that they still attempt to lay claim to that title.

  • The biggest threat to law and order today is posed by people toting guns, by guns in the hands of people who should never be within a mile of a firearm. And yet, Republicans steadfastly refuse to legislate any form of gun regulations.  They refuse to even talk about a ban on military-style assault weapons that can mow down 30-40 people within a minute.  They refuse to put common sense gun laws into effect that would ensure expanded background checks, keep guns out of the hands of domestic violence abusers, make licensing and testing mandatory requirements, and more.  Most crimes … apart from white collar crimes … are committed with guns!  Doesn’t it make sense to regulate and limit them?  Apparently not to the party of ‘law and order’!
  • The unofficial ‘head’ of the Republican Party today is the former president Donald Trump who himself has a long history of breaking the law in the areas of tax evasion, civil rights violations, refusing to pay contractors for work done, employment violations, and more. And yet, the Republican Party bows to his will, supports him wholeheartedly, and plans to escort him back into the Oval Office in 2025.  And most recently, Republicans are outraged that the FBI executed a lawful search warrant in order to retrieve highly classified documents that Trump literally stole from the White House, stole from We the People.  How is that “tough on crime”?
  • After the January 6th insurrection/attempted coup which was extremely violent and resulted in multiple deaths and more than 100 injuries to the very law enforcement officers the Republicans supposedly support, the Party whitewashed the events of that day, even though the extreme violence had been recorded by many on video. Republican members of Congress referred to it as a “normal tourist visit”, and said the rioters were simply exercising their right to free speech.  Last February, the Republican Party officially passed a resolution declaring that the events of that day were “Legitimate Political Discourse”.  They refer to the rioters who have been charged as “political prisoners”.  Even the two minority leaders in Congress, Senator Mitch McConnell and Representative Kevin McCarthy, who spoke strongly against Trump and his role in the attempted coup initially, have now turned 180°, supporting Trump and echoing the ‘party line’.
  • Some in the party are calling for defunding or even abolishing the FBI, primarily because of the search of Trump’s home to retrieve the aforementioned documents. Others have called for abolishing all federal law agencies!
  • Certain Republican legislators have not-too-obscurely incited violence among the masses, with Lindsey Graham saying there would be “riots in the streets if Trump is prosecuted” and Trump himself saying that “Mitch McConnell has a death wish” for Mitch’s participation in an agreement to fund the government through December. Seems to me that the party of law and order would NOT be inciting … law-breaking and disorder!!!

So no, my friends, the Republican Party can no longer lay claim to being the “Law and Order Party” … in fact, they are so far from it that it would be a joke, except there is nothing funny about it.  Their claim to be “tough on crime” is convoluted and selective.  For example, an unarmed Black man having inadvertently attempted to pay for groceries with a counterfeit bill can be brutally murdered by white police officers and that is ‘law and order’ by the Republican’s definition.  But one of their own can do far worse … can incite a riot where lives are lost, and that’s naught more than ‘legitimate civil discourse’ and nobody should pay the price.

I’ve seen hypocrisy throughout my entire life, from small instances to large ones, but I have NEVER seen hypocrisy to the extent the Republican Party of the 21st century practices it.  The examples above are but a few of the many I could come up with, but they are the most glaring.  They don’t even bother to try to hide their hypocrisy any longer … it’s right out there for everyone to see.  Make no mistake … the are the party of Wealth and of Bigotry, but they are NOT the party of law and order!