Tag Archives: the Republican Party

The Most Dishonest People In America

Posted on by under Election 2024, Free Press Issues, Political commentary, Social commentary

Way back in the day, political campaigns were based on a set of plans and ideologies.  A candidate spoke to the people about his vision for the country and about how he planned to achieve that vision.  He might talk about building up the military or enhancing social welfare programs or cutting taxes or raising the minimum wage or expanding on public education … things that actually had the potential to become policy, things that mattered to everyday working people.  Though those politicos often exaggerated, or embellished the truth, at least they had a platform, a set of goals and ideas on how to achieve those goals.  That has all changed, at least for one of the only two viable parties in the U.S., the Republican Party formerly known as the GOP (which once stood for Grand Old Party).  Today, the Republican Party has no platform, or its platform is whatever the presumptive nominee at this point wants it to be on any given day.

Yesterday, the headline in Axios read …

“House GOP plots lengthy probe on Biden’s age to keep it in spotlight”

A few snippets from the article …

Why it matters: Sources close to House GOP leaders are blunt that they don’t think it even matters what they find. These sources think that any fight will make the White House look bad — and keep a huge Biden vulnerability in the headlines.

  • The GOP planning includes hearings and possibly even subpoenas for documents and recordings.

Three House committee chairs wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland last evening to demand a transcript — plus any recordings — of Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur.

  • Hur wrote he won’t charge the president with mishandling classified documents, but wrote that Biden suffers from a “poor memory.”

Next, we’re told, House Republicans plan to seek testimony from Hur — and would ask him both about how Biden’s storage of sensitive documents could have hurt national security, and about the president’s mental acuity in the interview.

In other words, there is no smoking gun, but there are lots of smoke and mirrors that will be used by unscrupulous Republicans to attempt to keep negative stories about President Biden front and center in the news from now until November.

Two things here:

  1. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!!! Donald Trump is only what … 3 years younger than President Biden, and his mental acuity has never been sharp, but has gone downhill dramatically in the past 9 years since we’ve come to know him.  Hell, he keeps thinking he ran against then-President Obama in 2016 … has said so on more than one occasion, and he frequently gets names, dates, and places wrong.  Not to mention the fact that he just makes stuff up, like saying he is responsible for Taylor Swift’s career success.  President Biden may forget things here and there, but heck … look how much the man has to worry about and keep up with right now … wouldn’t you forget a few things?  Bottom line … if Joe Biden is too old to be president, so is Donald Trump.  Biden is far more fit both physically and mentally than Trump was even 20 years ago.
  2. Donald Trump knowingly stole classified documents and refused to return them when caught. He also shared the information in some of those documents with people not authorized to have that information.  The documents that President Biden kept at the end of his vice-presidency were inadvertently taken, discovered by Biden’s own staff, and immediately and voluntarily returned!  Donald Trump had to be forced to return the documents he took.  Again, the pot is calling the kettle black here!

Robert Hur’s report was designed for just this purpose, to give red meat to the Republican Party that they could use to distract from the very fact that they have no agenda, no platform, no idea how they will govern if they win in November.  Instead of trying to think and develop an ideology, a set of values, it’s far easier just to paint the other guy with a target on his back, then give the media a truckload of arrows.  They don’t have to win … all they have to do is make the other guy lose.

Meanwhile, while the Republicans play their dangerous games, the clock is ticking … just 16 days now until a potential government shutdown and to the best of my knowledge, the House has not done a lick of work on a single appropriations bill to try to fund the government beyond the March 1st deadline.  Governance???  HAH!!!

Sadly, this is the sort of unscrupulous crappola that the mainstream media feeds on and they will no doubt keep the story front-and-center, just as they did Hillary Clinton’s emails back in 2016, playing into the hands of the Republican Party and its evil nominee.  I wish I had faith in an honest media and/or an intelligent voting public come November.  Sadly, I have neither.

Open Letter To ALL Elected Republicans

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

Sometimes the angst builds and one just has to let off a bit of steam.  This is one of those times.  This letter is intended for Republican members of Congress, but also governors, state legislators, and ALL elected representatives who are failing us.

It’s sad that so many people have put their lives in your hands, yet you are playing Russian roulette with them.  You have betrayed the people you claim to represent, worse yet you have betrayed this nation while convincing the masses that you are acting on their behalf while filling your own coffers and laughing all the way to the bank.

Voting rights … as a citizen and taxpayer I demand the two bills that failed last year be re-visited and passed.  You say unfettered gun ownership is a constitutional right?  I SAY voting is a much more important constitutional right!!!  Those guns you are so damn protective of have killed 8,607 people so far this year, more than 300 of them children under the age of 17, and yet you say this is the “price we must pay for freedom”.  Bullshit!

You roll back regulations designed to save lives AND the environment, and then you point the finger of blame everywhere but at yourself when a train carrying deadly chemicals derails or a bank goes under because of a lack of oversight.  Look in the mirror!!!  Therein lies the blame!  Regulations on business exist because people are greedy and the more they have, the more they want and when they want more, they don’t give a damn who they step on to get it.  THIS is part of the purpose of government, but you shirk your duty in the interest of your own bank account!

Too many people in power don’t give one damn about the people of this country.

You can dye your hair, but eventually your roots will start to show.  You can whitewash history, but our roots will out.  American history IS Black history.  The U.S. didn’t exist as an entity until 1776, but African slaves were brought here and put to work as early as 1619, more than a century earlier.  They were beaten, starved, their children taken from them and sold to the highest bidder to be worked literally to death, but today we are supposed to turn a blind eye, to pretend it never happened???

The joke’s on us … on me … on every person in this country who isn’t wealthy.  NO, DAMMIT … Trickle Down economics is a myth, a fairy tale, it DOES NOT WORK!!!  And yet, once again, that is what we are being told.  “Oh, just put more money into the hands of the wealthy corporations and it will trickle down and fill your pot!”  NO, IT WON’T.  It never has and it never will.  WHEN will we stop being told this mythical lie???  WHEN will you politicians realize that we’re smarter than you give us credit for being?  Meanwhile, your pots are overflowing with donations from the likes of Charles Koch, Bernie Marcus, Paul Singer, the DeVos family and more.  Rather reminiscent of that fable that Marie Antoinette once said, when told that people were starving and couldn’t afford bread, “Let them eat cake!”

And then you blame everything that goes wrong on those of us who have compassion, empathy, who care about such things as human lives, the planet, other species – you call us ‘woke’ and make it sound like the dirtiest word in the English language.

You would take away the rights of women, of Black and Asian people, of Jews & Muslims, of any and all who do not fall into that “white, Christian, male” category and turn this nation into something ugly.  Well, if you succeed, you can have your damn country, for I want no part of it!  I don’t share your vision, and neither do the majority of people in this country, but in your eyes, we are naught but tools to be used, manipulated, then thrown away when we are no longer of use to you.  Beware, for when people have nothing left to lose, they fight.  That fight will come and it will be on your shoulders.

DeSantis Is No ‘Golden Boy’

Posted on by under education, Election 2022, Election 2024, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

It seems that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is on the path to becoming the Republican Party’s next ‘golden boy’, now that the former guy has perhaps placed the final straw on the camel’s back with multiple losses in the mid-terms and then his meeting with the ignoble white supremacist Nazi, Nick Fuentes.  But make no mistake … DeSantis is not worthy, perhaps no more so than the former guy.  One of my favourite columnists, Frank Bruni, tells us why.

He’ll be sold as a paragon of reason. Don’t buy it.

By Frank Bruni

01 December 2022

Elon Musk is a geyser of gibberish, so it’s important not to make too much of anything he says. But a recent Twitter thread of his deserved the attention it got, if not for the specific detail on which most journalists focused.

They led with Musk’s statement that he would support a Ron DeSantis candidacy for the presidency in 2024. That obviously disses one Donald Trump, though it should come as no surprise: Magnates like Musk typically cling to the moment’s shiniest toys, and DeSantis, fresh off his re-election, is a curiously gleaming action figure.

But how Musk framed his attraction to the Florida governor was revealing — and troubling. He expressed a desire for a candidate who’s “sensible and centrist,” implying that DeSantis is both.

In what universe? He’s “sensible and centrist” only by the warped yardsticks of Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kari Lake and the like. But those yardsticks will be used frequently as various Republicans join the 2024 fray. And therein lies real danger.

Trump’s challengers will be defined in relation to him, casting them in a deceptively flattering light. They’ll be deemed steady because he’s not, on the ball because he’s out to lunch, enlightened because they don’t sup with Holocaust deniers. They’ll be realists to his fantasist, institutionalists to his nihilist, preservationists to his arsonist.

None of those descriptions will be true. Some will be persuasive nonetheless.

That dynamic is already doing wonders for DeSantis as he flies high over a very low bar. “Look!” say Republicans eager to take back the White House. “It’s Superman!” Hardly. But his promoters are hoping that the shadow of Trump produces such an optical illusion.

“Plenty of Americans across the partisan divide would have good reason to root for him,” Jim Geraghty, the senior political correspondent for the conservative journal National Review, wrote in a recent essay in The Washington Post that praised DeSantis. Parts of it made DeSantis sound consensus-minded, conciliatory. That’s some trick.

Geraghty added: “Given the bizarre state of American politics during the Trump era, DeSantis would represent a return to normality.” The “given” in that sentence is working overtime, and “normality” fits DeSantis about as well as “sensible” and “centrist” do.

It is not normal to release a campaign ad, as DeSantis did last month, that explicitly identifies you as someone created and commanded by God to pursue the precise political agenda that you’re pursuing. Better words for that include “messianic,” “megalomaniacal” and “delusional.”

It is not sensible to open a new state office devoted to election crimes when there is scant evidence of any need for it. That is called “pandering.” It is also known as a “stunt.”

It is not centrist to have a key aide who tweeted that anyone who opposed the “Don’t Say Gay” education law in Florida was “probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.” Those were the words of Christina Pushaw, who was then DeSantis’s press secretary and “transformed the governor’s state messaging office into a hyperpartisan extension of his political efforts,” as Matt Dixon noted in Politico, adding that she “used the position to regularly pick public fights with reporters on social media, amplify right-wing media outlets and conservative personalities and attack individuals who oppose or challenge DeSantis.”

DeSantis’s response to her derisive and divisive antics? He made her the “rapid response director” for his re-election campaign. Because that’s the normal, sensible, centrist thing to do.

DeSantis used his power as governor to punish Disney for daring to dissent from his political views. He used migrants as political pawns and sent two planes full of them to Martha’s Vineyard. He pushed for an extreme gerrymander in Florida that marginalized minority voters. He’s a darling of the National Rifle Association.

And the signature line from his stump speech is that Florida is “where woke goes to die.” I’m with him on the destructiveness of peak wokeness, but base-camp wokeness has some lessons and virtues, which a sensible centrist might acknowledge and reflect on. Can’t Florida be where woke goes to decompress in the sun and surf and re-emerge in more relaxed form?

DeSantis himself might currently reject the labels that Musk gave him: It’s the right-wing-warrior side that promises to propel him most forcefully through the primaries, should he enter them. But he or any nominee not named Trump would likely segue to the general election by flashing shades of moderation.

In DeSantis’s case, there’d be chatter galore about his 19-point re-election victory as proof of his appeal’s breadth. But another Republican, Senator Marco Rubio, won re-election in Florida by sixteen points, suggesting that forces beyond DeSantis’s dubiously pan-partisan magnetism were in play. And Florida is redder than it used to be.

The extremists and conspiracists so prevalent in today’s Republican Party have distorted the frame for everyone else, permitting the peddling of DeSantis as some paragon of reason. Be savvier than Musk. Don’t buy it.

Time To Kick The Rubbish To The Curb

Posted on by under Election 2022, Election 2024, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary, voting rights

Will this year’s mid-term election finally break the grip the former guy has had on both the Republican Party and the media?  Somehow I doubt it, but time will tell, and for the record I certainly hope so.  Jamelle Bouie, writing for the New York Times has a few thoughts on the topic that I found interesting and share-worthy …

Republican Elites Might Be Done With Trump

By Jamelle Bouie

12 November 2022

After the results of Tuesday’s election, where Trump-inspired and Trump-backed candidates went down to defeat across the country, Republican elites are desperate to make Ron DeSantis happen. It makes sense. This right-wing, pugilistic governor of Florida won a smashing victory in his race for a second term, albeit against a lackluster opponent — the former governor and perennial candidate Charlie Crist — and a moribund, uninspired Florida Democratic Party. But a 20-point margin is still a 20-point margin, even if you run virtually unopposed.

DeSantis, for his part, has national ambitions. He wants to sell himself to voters as the nation’s foremost defender of freedom (terms and conditions apply). He wants to lead the Republican Party back to the White House. And many of the most influential conservatives are eager to hand him the reins. But first, they have to clear the field.

Which is why the morning after Election Day saw a full-scale assault on Donald Trump’s position as leader of the Republican Party. The Wall Street Journal, for example, ran an editorial blasting him as “the Republican Party’s biggest loser” and urging Republicans to move on from the former president.

“Trump is a bust for Republicans,” wrote Rich Lowry, editor in chief of National Review, for Politico magazine. “He picked the candidates who lost. He helped make himself an issue. He changed what should have been a pure referendum on Joe Biden into what was more of a choice between Biden and a Trumpified Republican Party that couldn’t make itself palatable enough to suburbanites and independents.”

Even Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, took a (veiled) shot. “Conservatives are elected when we deliver,” he said on Twitter. “Not when we just rail on social media.”

There is a good case to make that all of this will work. The chief problem for Republican elites in 2016 was that they could not coordinate around a single candidate for president. In the absence of a figure who could unite the entire party establishment, Trump steamrollered through the competition, even if he never claimed a majority of Republican primary voters.

A unified party establishment is a powerful thing, and there’s real reason to think that Republican elites could muscle Trump out of his position if they committed to the aggressive, scorched-earth tactics it would take.

But there’s an issue. The idea that Republican elites could simply swap Trump for another candidate without incurring any serious damage rests on two assumptions: First, that Trump’s supporters are more committed to the Republican Party than they are to him, and second, that Trump himself will give up the fight if he isn’t able to win the party’s nomination.

I think these assumptions show a fundamental misunderstanding of the world Republican elites brought into being when they finally bent the knee to Trump in the summer and fall of 2016. Trump isn’t simply a popular (with Republicans) politician with an unusually enthusiastic group of supporters. No, he leads a cult of personality, in which he is an almost messianic figure, practically sent by God himself to purge the United States of liberals (and other assorted enemies) and restore the nation to greatness. He is practically worshiped by a large and politically influential group of Americans, who describe him as “anointed.”

It is one thing for Republican elites to try to break a political fandom. It is another thing entirely to try to break the influence of a man whose strongest, most devoted supporters were willing to sack the Capitol or sacrifice their lives in an attack on an F.B.I. office. Some Trump supporters will leave the fold for an alternative like DeSantis, but there will be a hard-core group who came to the Republican Party for Trump, and won’t settle for another candidate.

This gets to the second assumption: the idea that Trump would go quietly if he lost the nomination to DeSantis or another rival. Donald Trump might have been a Republican president, but he isn’t really a Republican. What I mean is that he shows no particular commitment to the fortunes of the party as an institution. His relationship to the Republican Party is purely instrumental. He also cannot admit defeat, as you may have noticed.

There is a real chance that Trump, if he loses the nomination, decides to run for president anyway. And if he pulls any fraction of his supporters away from the Republican Party, he would play the spoiler, no matter who the party tried to elevate against him. Republican elites might be done with Trump, but Trump is not done with the Republican Party.

What Do You Want: Governance Or A Show?

Posted on by under Election 2022, Environmental Issues, Free Press Issues, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary, voting rights

There are many policy and ideological differences between the two major political parties in the U.S., but as I was reading an article yesterday, one came to me that I had not thought of before:  Democrats in Congress take lawmaking seriously, while for Republicans it is a game, a show.  Republican voters seem to require a circus … the most ludicrous, most outrageous and loudest candidate wins with the Republican voters.  Democratic voters, on the other hand, prefer old school staid, nose-to-the-grindstone politicians who they can trust to make laws that benefit the nation and its people.  Don’t believe me?  Let’s take a look at one issue that exemplifies what I just stated … the impeachment of Joe Biden et al.

Already, even without a majority in either House or Senate, knowing their efforts would come to naught, numerous impeachment resolutions have been filed against President Biden, the first one coming less than 24 hours after he took his oath of office on 20 January 2021.  That one, House Resolution #57,   was filed by mad dog Marge Greene, claiming that the President had committed “abuse of power by enabling bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors.”  Wow … all that within less than a day of taking office!  Actually, she was referencing his time four years prior as Vice President, conjecturing something mysterious about his son, Hunter, and more of the right-wing conspiracy theories she’s picked up from her QAnon buddies and from watching the likes of Tucker Carlson over at Fox ‘News’.

Since that first resolution, there have been at least 8 more resolutions to impeach President Biden, and also one introduced by mad dog Greene’s best buddy, pistol mama Lauren Boebert, to impeach Vice President Kamala Harris!  And oh the irony here, but one of the bullet points in Boebert’s attempt to impeach Harris is that the Vice President “neglected her duties as Vice President by failing to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove President Biden from office due to his clear inability to effectively and competently handle his duties as Commander in Chief.”  Say WHAT???  Boebert wants to impeach the Vice President because she didn’t invoke the 25th Amendment?  OH THE IRONY!

None … not a single one … of these resolutions will lead to actual impeachment, for the Republicans don’t have the votes to get them through now, and in January when the next Congress is seated, these resolutions will all expire.  It’s not serious legislative work … it’s all for show, my friends.  The people whose salary YOU pay, wasted precious time and resources playing games that they knew had no actual meaning. They can then go back to their districts and yell and puff out their chests and say, “I wrote a resolution to impeach the President!” and their supporters will whistle, applaud, and cheer.  It is not governance, it is a circus.

And what should we look forward to come next year?  More of the same crap.  Already, they are gathering their resources, consulting with the Heritage Foundation, a Conservative ‘think tank’, and plotting ‘strategy’, such as it is.  They not only plan to impeach President Biden and Kamala Harris, but also Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.  I seriously doubt they will be successful, and even if they are, I would not expect the Senate to convict and expel any of these from their positions, but these faux impeachments, along with other of their clownish antics, will keep this nation in perpetual turmoil for the next two years, which may well be the goal of the soulless Republican Party.

  • Democrats talk about enhanced voting rights; Republicans talk about impeaching the President
  • Democrats talk about expansion of renewable energy sources to help save life on Planet Earth; Republicans talk about impeaching the Attorney General
  • Democrats talk about gun regulations to cut down on violent crime; Republicans talk about impeaching the Vice-President
  • Democrats talk about human rights – LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, etc.; Republicans talk about impeaching the Secretary of Homeland Security

Do you begin to see a pattern here?  Once again, my friends, repeat after me:  Republicans do not want governance, they want a show.  Vote for them and that is all you’ll get … a horror show.

If It Looks Like A Duck …

Posted on by under Election 2022, Election 2024, Free Press Issues, Global Issues, History, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, voting rights

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.  That’s an old saying that doesn’t need any further explanation.

The Republican Party has frequently given us hints that they are the party of white supremacy seeking to implement an autocracy here in the U.S. if they can manage to gain a majority in both chambers of Congress this year, and in the executive branch in 2024.  Donald Trump made no secret that his goal was to rule, not to preside, and that he has no use for any who are not white-skinned, straight Christian males.  When the Republicans invited Viktor Orbàn, dictator (official title is Prime Minister) of Hungary, to be their keynote speaker at the annual CPAC convention being held this week in Dallas, Texas, there could be little doubt left.  But any remaining shred of doubt was washed away when Orbàn, gave a speech talking his usual racist, homophobic trash-talk and thousands of Republicans gave him a standing ovation.  A standing ovation, my friends.

WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH THESE PEOPLE?????

Are they bored with a system where, at least theoretically, every person can vote, every vote is counted, and in this manner We the People elect the members of government who we believe will best serve our interests?  Are they tired of the relative stability of life in the U.S. as compared to countries like Turkey, Russia, DPRK, and Hungary?  Do they no longer support a free press, the freedom to believe or not believe in any or no deity?  Do they truly wish to return to a nation of slave-owners?  They claim to worship the flag, and to stand strong by the expression in the national anthem, “Land of the brave and home of the free”, and yet they would happily … enthusiastically even, give up that freedom in exchange for an authoritarian rule.

Is it requisite for a strong-arm authoritarian to be obese and show his fist often?

Orbàn recently came under fire in his own nation for a speech in which he declared “we do not want to become peoples of mixed-race.”  That speech led to outrage among his critics and the very public resignation of a long-time advisor who characterized Orbàn’s speech as “a pure Nazi text worthy of Goebbels.”  Anybody care to call me an alarmist for the many times I’ve compared Trump and others to Adolf Hitler?

Orbàn told the audience that they need to “coordinate our troops” in the fight against liberalism, exhorting them to gear up to remove Joe Biden from office (“you have two years to get ready”). The stakes, in his telling, are the very future of our civilization.  I’m surprised, actually, that he didn’t tell them they should overthrow the Biden administration.

“The West is at war with itself. We have seen what kind of future the globalist ruling class has to offer. But we have a different kind of future in mind. The globalists can all go to hell. I have come to Texas.”

The crowd cheered and gave him a standing ovation.  Disgusting.

Freedom of the press is gone in Hungary since Orbàn took over in 2010.  Immigrants are not welcome and Orban built a heavily patrolled barbed wire fence along a stretch of 325 miles that completely cuts off access from three countries:  Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia.  Hungary, once ranked a democracy, has been downgraded to a “hybrid regime” by Freedom House.  There are still elections, but they are heavily manipulated to ensure Orbàn and his cronies remain in charge of the government.  According to Wikipedia …

Orbán has passed laws, amended the constitution, and finally written a new constitution, allowing him to do what he wanted to do. Civic institutions such as courts, universities, and the apparatus necessary for free elections remain, but have been “patiently debilitated, delegitimatized, hollowed out”, controlled by Orbán loyalists. Domination of the media by Orbán prevents the public from hearing critics point of view. In 2022, Orbán’s opponent was given but five minutes on the national television “to make his case to the voters”.

And this is, apparently, what the ‘conservatives’ in this country would like the United States to look like within a few years.  Nothing … not one thing … that I have heard from the mouths of any Republican politicians, has convinced me that they aren’t seeking an authoritarian government where they make all the rules and our freedoms, our fair elections, our voices … simply disappear.

Yes, my friends, I believe it IS a duck.

Where’s The Justice???

Posted on by under Election 2020, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Rants, Social commentary

What is a life worth?  Well, it depends.  If you are a Capitol Police officer trying to defend the nation against a bloody coup attempt, apparently your life isn’t worth all that much.  U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick (say his name, dammit!) died on January 7th, 2021 as a result of injuries he sustained the prior day as thousands stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn our voices, our votes, our democracy.  Two of the men responsible for Officer Sicknick’s death are George Tanios and Julian Khater.  They brought pepper spray and bear spray, which they sprayed into officers’ faces, and it was this that led to Officer Sicknick’s two strokes that ultimately killed him.

Mr. Tanios was initially charged with ten counts, including felony charges of rioting, assaulting law enforcement officers and obstructing of Congress’s certification of President Biden’s 2020 election victory.  Yesterday, however, Tanios was offered a plea bargain which he gladly accepted, and the charges were reduced to two misdemeanors:  trespassing and disorderly conduct on restricted Capitol grounds.  The maximum time he will serve for Mr. Sicknick’s murder is a maximum of one year in prison.  He has served five months already, his sentencing hearing is scheduled for December, by which time he will have served another five months, so who wants to bet he will be home for Christmas?  The bastard viciously and without conscience attacked and murdered a Capitol Police officer, and he will walk practically free.

Yo!  Kevin McCarthy … you talk about respect for the police and how you support the police … where’s your outrage today?  Officer Sicknick was there to protect YOU, but I haven’t heard a peep out of you about this unconscionable plea deal!  Republicans?  Do you have nothing to say?  Sigh … okay, I get it … just more of the right-wing hypocrisy we’ve become used to.  Meanwhile, Officer Sicknick’s family will cry real tears for him at Christmas, while George Tanios will be laughing and celebrating with his family.  Where’s the justice?

Is “Infamy” To Become The New Normal?

Posted on by under education, Election 2020, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

Throughout history there are certain dates that stand alone, that in the retelling need no year for clarity.  December 7th, September 11th, and now January 6th … when we hear those dates, we automatically remember who, what, why, when, and where.  These three stand-alone dates all represent days when the United States was brutally attacked:  Pearl Harbour, World Trade Center/Pentagon, and the Capitol/Congress.  The first two differ from the third only in that Pearl Harbour and the World Trade Center were attacked by other nations or groups outside the U.S., while the attack on January 6th came from within, rather like having your son or daughter viciously burn your own house down with you in it.  In 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared December 7th to be “a day that will live in infamy.”  The same can and must be said about January 6th 2021.

So often we hear, “Well, whaddabout _____________?”, or “But both sides do it!”  And sometimes, to some extent depending on circumstances, that is true.  It’s call ‘moral equivalence’.  But there is not and cannot be any moral equivalency for what was done before, during, and after January 6th in an attempt to overthrow an election, overthrow a duly elected government, and destroy people’s lives.  This one, my friends, falls entirely on the shoulders of the Republican Party and their unofficial leader, one Donald Trump.  Kevin McCarthy said just this month …

“I think everybody in the country bears responsibility [for the January 6th attempted coup].”

No, Mr. McCarthy … YOU, and Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks, and most every other Republican in and out of Congress bear the full weight of this one.

Not only did Donald Trump, as we now know, incite the riot at the Capitol on January 6th, but was also plotting numerous other illegal and unconstitutional tactics to overturn the election and overthrow our voices, our justly elected president Joe Biden.  Democrats did NOT do this, Independents did NOT do this – it was done by and at the behest of Republicans.

But as if that weren’t bad enough … the average John Doe Republican voter caught the spirit of the moment and set out to destroy … property, the nation, innocent lives, and more.  If you watched the four people who testified in yesterday’s televised hearing, you had to be moved.  All four told heartbreaking stories about receiving threats of violence, not only against themselves but their families as well.  You will have seen Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers testifying that until very recently Trump supporters would drive around his neighborhood and falsely announce that he was a “pedophile” and a corrupt politician. He recounted an argument between a neighbor and a man with a pistol, and also talked about the reactions of his family …

“At the same time, on some of these, we had a daughter who was gravely ill who was upset by what was happening outside and my wife, that is a valiant person, very strong, quiet, very strong woman. So, it was disturbing.”

He fought the tears that we could see in his eyes.  What he didn’t mention was that his daughter died of her illness shortly thereafter.  My own eyes were suddenly in need of a tissue, as well.

The last testimony of the day was from Shaye Moss, a young woman who had been an election worker for some ten years prior to the 2020 election.  Ms. Moss was falsely accused, along with her mother, of carrying out a fake ballot scheme and Rudy Giuliani started the ball rolling when he called them professional vote scammers, allegations that led to death threats and intimidation, and forced them into hiding for a period of several weeks.  Both Ms. Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, spoke at the hearing yesterday and told of the ways in which they have been tormented and threatened.

“This turned my life upside down. I no longer give out my business card. I don’t transfer calls. I — I don’t want anyone knowing my name. I don’t want to go anywhere with my mom because she might yell my name out over the grocery aisle or something. I don’t go to the grocery store at all. I haven’t been anywhere at all. I gained about 60 pounds, I don’t do nothing anymore, I second-guess everything I do.  It’s affected my life in a major way, in every way. All because of lies for me doing my job, same thing I’ve been doing forever.”

And her mother, Ruby, said …

“There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the President of the United States to target you? The President of the United States is supposed to represent every American, not to target one. But he targeted me, Lady Rudy, a small business owner, a mother, a proud American citizen who stand up to help Fulton County run an election in the middle of the pandemic.”

This, folks, is what everyday Republicans are doing – to their own!!!  The first three to testify, Rusty Bowers, Brad Raffensperger, and Gabe Sterling were all Republicans!  The elected officials on the Republican side of the aisle keep the populace riled with hate-spewing rhetoric, but it is the average everyday white Republican who is allowing themselves to be manipulated into this horrific behaviour aimed at the very heart and spirit of the nation.  And in the past 24 hours, since yesterday’s televised hearing, there has been an increase in threats of violence against the members of the committee, leading to a security detail being assigned to each member.

For the record, in case any Republicans, or any others who still believe the Big Lie and are enamoured of Donald Trump:

DONALD TRUMP LOST THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION!

Get over it and try to make something of your lives instead of living your life vicariously through your wishful dreams.

I hurt … I literally hurt for what this nation has become.  It’s like when Smokey the Bear used to say, “Only YOU can prevent forest fires” … only WE THE PEOPLE can turn this around.  And if we don’t, if we fail, then our children and grandchildren will pay the hefty price.  I leave it to your imagination to figure out what that price will be.

A Basket Of Deplorables

Posted on by under Election 2024, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

Remember back in September 2016 when Hillary Clinton, while running for president, was speaking at a fundraiser when she made her world-famous gaffe …

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?  The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”

Not the smartest thing to say when you want these people to vote for you!  She wasn’t at all wrong, but her comment was likely the very thing that may have cost her the electoral college vote.  (Note to readers … she won the election by more than 2.8 million votes, but lost the electoral college vote, primarily due to gerrymandering.)  The reason her comment was a defining moment in her campaign is simple:  many people saw themselves in what she said and believed she was pointing her finger at them, calling them ‘deplorable’.  And, of course, her opponent had a field day with it, never let it out of people’s minds for a single minute, and at the end of the day, it was likely the single most important thing that cost her the presidency.  Twenty seconds, forty-five words, was all it took to doom her candidacy.  Sure, there was Comey’s October surprise, and the fact that Hillary was … GASP … a woman, but I think those could have been overcome had she not uttered those 45 words.

So, you wonder where I’m going with this, don’t you?  Asking yourselves why I’m digging up nearly 5-year-old news.  Well, several things regarding Republicans in the news these past few days have immediately brought the word ‘deplorable’ to mind, and about the third time this happened, the light bulb came on and I remembered what Hillary had said, and I thought, “Y’know, she was spot on in her assessment, not only of Trump supporters, but today’s Republicans as a whole.”  Here are a couple of examples …

The glaring hypocrisy

Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, is considering a run for … wait for it … president in 2024.  Now, I respected Nikki as governor of South Carolina, but once she threw her lot in with the former guy, I lost any respect I had for her.  In my book, she sold her soul to the highest bidder.

Nikki does, however, have a conscience somewhere under all the rot, for after the January 6th attacks on the Capitol and on Congress, she seemed to push away from the former guy, even outright criticizing him the next day …

“He was wrong with his words in Charlottesville, and I told him so at the time. He was badly wrong with his words yesterday. And it wasn’t just his words. His actions since Election Day will be judged harshly by history.”

She went on to say in an interview a few weeks later that he had “lost any sort of political viability” and that she didn’t think he was “going to be in the picture” any longer, before adding: “He’s fallen so far.”

But, once she figured out that he IS still in the picture as far as the Republican Party and who they support, she changed her tune … not just a little, but by one hell of a lot!  Here’s what she said earlier this week when addressing a crowd at the Iowa Republican Party dinner …

“Thank goodness for Donald Trump, or we never would have gotten Kamala Harris to the border.”

And that statement is so utterly ridiculous that I cannot even dignify it with a response.  She went on to heap undeserved praise on him, saying that she “saw firsthand as ambassador to the United Nations that Donald Trump put America first” and telling a humorous story about Trump’s decision to label North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un “Little Rocket Man,” saying it showed how the former president had “a way of getting people.”

Oh yeah, she’s licking some big boots there, and there’s no guarantee she’ll be able to lick the stench off anytime soon, for the former guy rejected her request to visit him at Mar-a-Lago not long ago.  Hypocrisy?  Oh yeah … oozing from her pores.  Deplorable.

Rudy, Rudy, Rudy … what have you done?

Rudy Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York, is another who I used to have tremendous respect for.  In the harrowing days following the 9/11 attacks, Rudy held not only New York City, but the rest of the nation together.  But just like Nikki Haley, he sold out, he threw We the People to the lions when he cast his lot in with the former guy.  Rudy became one of many attorneys defending Trump in numerous legal areas, and he followed Trump’s lead … lie, cheat, and steal, do whatever it takes.

All Rudy’s lies finally came home to roost yesterday when a New York court ruled that he made “demonstrably false and misleading statements” while fighting the results of the 2020 election on behalf of Donald J. Trump.  Rudy Giuliani was once the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, was once known as a law-and-order crusader and whose creative courtroom tactics against mob bosses turned him into a fixture on national television.

The New York State appellate court temporarily suspended Mr. Giuliani’s law license on the recommendation of a disciplinary committee after finding he had sought to mislead judges, lawmakers, and the public as he helped shepherd Trump’s legal challenge to the election results.  In part, the 33-page court decision read …

“The seriousness of respondent’s uncontroverted misconduct cannot be overstated. This country is being torn apart by continued attacks on the legitimacy of the 2020 election and of our current president, Joseph R. Biden.”

How low Rudy Giuliani has sunk.  I don’t expect he’ll ever have his law license re-instated, nor should he, for he is naught but a liar, a boot-licker, and a puppet.  Deplorable.

I could go on, for there are many more, such as Matt Gaetz, Kevin McCarthy, Lauren Boebert, Margie Greene, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis … so many deplorables all in one party.  So yes, Hillary Clinton hit the nail on the head when she called them a ‘basket of deplorables’ … she paid the ultimate price for her honesty, but at least she was honest, something that is not to be found anywhere within the Republican Party today.

Looking Forward Doesn’t Mean Forgetting The Past

Posted on by under Election 2020, Environmental Issues, Free Press Issues, History, Law and justice, Political commentary

The attacks on Congress and the Capitol on January 6th of this year are destined to become a notable part of the ongoing history of this nation.  We rely on the media to help us find answers to the ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions, but instead the press, whose independence we cherish and protect, is turning a blind eye, has moved on without delving too deeply for answers.  The GOP prefers to simply ‘move on’ and the press is giving in to them, it seems.  Robert Reich’s piece in The Guardian yesterday speaks to this issue …

Republicans tried to overturn the election. We can’t just forget that

Robert Reich

Americans like to look forward but the effects of Trump’s lies about Covid and the 6 January insurrection are still with us

America prefers to look forward rather than back. We’re a land of second acts. We move on.

This can be a strength. We don’t get bogged down in outmoded traditions, old grudges, obsolete ways of thinking. We constantly reinvent. We love innovation and disruption.

The downside is a tendency toward collective amnesia about what we’ve been through, and a corresponding reluctance to do anything about it or hold anyone accountable.

Now, with Covid receding and the economy starting to rebound – and the 2020 election and the attack on the Capitol behind us – the future looks bright.

But at the risk of being the skunk at the picnic, let me remind you: we have lost more than 580,000 people to Covid-19. One big reason that number is so high is our former president lied about the virus and ordered his administration to minimize its danger.

Donald Trump also lied about the results of the last election. And then – you remember, don’t you? – he tried to overturn the results.

Trump twisted the arms of state election officials. He held a rally to stop Congress from certifying the election, followed by the violent attack on the Capitol. Five people died. Senators and representatives could have been slaughtered.

Several Republican members of Congress encouraged the attempted coup by joining him in the big lie and refusing to certify the election.

This was just over four months ago, yet we seem to be doing everything we can to blot it out of our memory.

Last Tuesday, the Washington Post hosted a live video chat with the Missouri Republican senator Josh Hawley, a ringleader in the attempt to overturn the results of the election. Hawley had even made a fist-pump gesture toward the mob at the Capitol before the attack.

But the Post billed the interview as being about Hawley’s new book on the “tyranny of big tech”. It even posted a biography of Hawley that made no mention of Hawley’s sedition, referring instead to his supposed reputation “for taking on the big and the powerful to protect Missouri workers” and as “a fierce defender of the constitution”.

Last week, CBS This Morning interviewed the Florida Republican Rick Scott, another of the senators who tried to overturn the election by not certifying the results. But there was no mention of his sedition. The CBS interviewer confined his questions to Biden’s spending plans, which Scott unsurprisingly opposed.

Senators Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson and the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, also repeatedly appear on major news programs without being questioned about their attempts to undo the results of the election.

What possible excuse is there for booking them if they have not publicly retracted their election lies? If they must appear, they should be asked if they continue to deny the election results and precisely why.

Pretending nothing happened promotes America’s amnesia, which invites more attempts to distort the truth.

On Monday, Trump issued a “proclamation” seeking to co-opt the language of those criticizing his falsehoods. “The Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020 will be, from this day forth, known as the BIG LIE!” he wrote, repeating his claims that the 2020 election was stolen and that President Biden is illegitimate. Most Republican voters believe him.

Trump’s big lie is being used by Republican state legislatures to justify new laws that restrict voting. On Thursday, hours after Florida installed new voting restrictions, Texas’s Republican-led legislature pushed ahead with its own bill that would make it one of the hardest states in which to cast a ballot.

The Republican-controlled Arizona senate is mounting a private recount of the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa county – farming out 2.1m ballots to GOP partisans, including at least one who participated in the 6 January raid on the Capitol.

The Republican party is about to purge one of its leaders, the Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, for telling the truth.

It is natural to want to put all this unpleasantness behind us. We are finally turning the corner on the pandemic and the economy. Why look back to the trauma of the 2020 election?

But we cannot put it behind us. Trump’s big lie and all that it has provoked are still with us. If we forget what has occurred, the trauma will return, perhaps in even more terrifying form.