Blaming Batman for the Joker

I'm sorry about this I-can't-sleep-rant' but I'm really sick to the both-sides crap.

It's bullshit.

There is one party who for the last 20 years who has worked hard against ordinary Americans. There is one party who has made sure anything that would help anyone one below millionaire status would fail. There is one party that has worked very hard to make sure that the economy under Obama would drag and under Trump would favor billionaires... and it wasn't the Democrats.

No, the Democrats need a swift, hard kick in the ass, god knows. They have forgotten all about the middle class while focused (on the deserving) fringes. They are way too focused on petty BS right now to get the job done. But they are actually doing things.

But there is only one party plotting to destroy democracy, one party so fixated on their legitimate loss (which they are screaming was fraud) that they are setting up plans to overthrow the next election. Democrats ate not saints, but they are trying to make sure everyone who can vote should vote.

Only one party is trying to make sure legitimate voters can't cast a ballot. And why? Because they cant win if everyone casts a ballot, and they know it.

That's the GOP. Politics is a problem, but the biggest problem for democracy right now is the GOP and has been for the last three decades.

It was the Trumpers who screamed to kill the VP, tried to kill democracy and helped kill five people on January 6th, it wasn't the Democrats.

If you say it's both sides. it's like blaming Batman for the Joker's crimes.

Do As I Do, Not As I Say: Vaccine Edition

Endorsed by Steve Doocey. What could be better?

Ben Shapiro, Mitch McConnell, Sean Hannity, Steve Scalise, Steve Doocey all have one thing in common (besides being horrible people) they've suddenly all come out and admitted they were (or are about to be) vaccinated and are encouraging others to get the shots.  

This is after several of them, and the organizations they work for and with, have been spreading mass disinformation about the vaccines. Some are now even praising Biden's vaccine rollout. Color me stunned. You even get Bill Hemmer on Fox News dragging out Marc Siegel, one of their top medical contributors, and allowing, practically begging him, to rhapsodize about the efficacy of the vaccine.

“The vaccine works, right? We haven’t budged on that, have we, doc?” Hemmer asked.

“The vaccine works extremely well even against the delta variant, preventing infection in 90 percent of cases,” Siegel reported.

He had been set free to tell the truth without hedging around it, or Trump’s precious feelings, or insulting politics. Free at last! Of course, Fox has a vaccine mandate for their staff, but they don’t tell you about that.

What is going on? They could have been doing this months ago, helping their viewers and followers get the protection they needed. But they didn’t. Why now?

It's like the bat signal went up, and the word went out. It reminds me of the threats of lawsuits that made the networks change their tune on the Dominion voting machines, issuing awkward apologies read on air. Are they covering their asses against class actions? Are they spooked by the Dow crashing as it did this week? Worried about voters blaming the GOP for more deaths, more shutdowns and more economic pain to the country? 

Or maybe they're just trying to do the right thing.

Nah.

It's probably a combination of the money and the votes, and fear of being held even more accountable than they already are. The GOP has a lot of blood and violence that can be directly attributed to it; the mismanagement of the pandemic that resulted in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, the stupid and selfish misinformation designed to politicize the virus which is still adding to the death toll, the encouraging of  far right violent groups and militias which have led to hate crimes against people of color and the deaths of protestors and law enforcement, bringing us the January 6th insurrection, where this has all been leading for the past several decades.

Up to now (and I doubt the right’s new community spirit will last before being shouted down by their own brain-scrubbed supporters) the right has been like people trying to kill safety inspections after major crashes, like someone decrying the use of life boats after a cruise ship sinks, or mocking the installation of fire alarms after a school burns. At every point in this pandemic they have mocked precautions, complained about the least of them, refused to cooperate when that cooperation would help save lives, and refused to acknowledge the danger their behavior was not only to themselves, but to everyone around them.

And they were proud of it, even as bodies piled up in refrigerated trucks in parking lots.

But hey! That’s in the past!

The problem, of course, is that no one will believe this nervous about-face. The people who can, who have been following the science and keeping up with the news have already gotten the vaccine. There are some who can’t because of medical reasons, and some communities who have a justified mistrust of a mostly White medical community who have not always acted in their interests in the past. Hopefully that can be overcome.

But the people these Republican leaders are talking to are the same ones who they’ve been working on hard to spread their own viral pandemic of lies since February of 2020. And it worked. Too well it worked. The GOP realized they’re losing the voters they need to keep sticking it to America. Now they’re trying to undo the done.

At this point, they've got people so worked up that only God coming down out of heaven and telling them to take it would work.

Of course, several would ask who God thinks he is to trod on their rights. Their God-given rights.

I wish it was only them that they were screwing, but we’re all on this planet together.

We’re all stuck in the Eagle’s Hotel California, on pandemic lockdown:

Welcome to Feb, 2020, we didn’t miss you but we’re not allowed to leave.

All the Godfather’s Capos

Trump’s Capos, ready to do the orders of their ‘Don’.

It’s a classic scene in almost every mob movie of the past century: someone inside the mob was ratting out the Outfit, being a cheese eater against the Godfather. So, the Don calls his boy in, his capo, and tells him to ‘take care of it’. The capo nods, kisses the ring, and is off…

… To subpoena Apple for phone and email records. Of course we’re talking about Donald Trump. Yes. there have been a lot of half-jokes about Trump being a 'mob boss' and the head of a crime family, but as the revelations show, it's not a joke. Trump used the Department of Justice, under both AG Sessions and Barr to go after political enemies and their families, including minor child.

A child.

Barr and Sessions have tried to blame others, (of course they did) but they were the people in charge of an agency that decided to heavily politicize their operations, and the denials they’re issuing now of Trump's non-involvement in going after Democrats and reporters is laughable nonsense. Trump was constantly calling for investigations of those who dared to criticize him (“Enemies of the People” after all), and the DOJ responded and bowed to his will. Trump lives for that crap. The demands for records went out when Devin Nunes was head of the investigative committee, and some people investigated were his colleagues on the committee (Rep. Adam Schiff, lead Democrat). As Nunes was constantly issued threats and lawsuits against anyone who crossed him (including a couple parody Twitter accounts, like ‘DevinNunesCow’), I doubt this was a coincidence. Trump’s supporter’s are as thin-skinned and paranoid as their leader.

Trump’s DOJ 'investigated' journalists and Democrats. It was all political. And Trump was the smiling cobra at the center of it all, grinning and directing behind the scenes. He's the Ernesto Blofeld of the GOP, stroking his cat (he hates cats) and directing his minions to hurt and kill but keeping his own hands clean. Of course, he can never really keep them clean, his pudgy fingerprints are all over this political payback.

The closest thing in recent history to compare it to would be Watergate, but this isn’t all that close. This is beyond 'Watergate'. John Dean, former Nixon lawyer who famously turned on the president, testifying for hours before congress, called Trump's actions, "...beyond Nixon, yes. It's Nixon on stilts and steroids." 

Nixon on stilts and steroids.

What else will turn up, now that Trump sycophants no longer control access to the files, now that gag orders imposed run out, now that former aids and insiders write their books or donate their papers?

My guess we’ll be seeing a lot more revelations coming out, and probably even worse than what we’re currently seeing. And we really haven’t even started on things like an involved investigation into the leaders behind the January 6th insurrection. Lord knows what will be found there, but it won’t be pleasant.

So many rocks to turn over, so many things trying to scuttle off to the protection of the night. It’s take years to turn them all over.

Trump may be out of office, but he is not out of influence. He may have led the party when they lost the White House, the House and the Senate, but he is still the head of the GOP, the most popular member to the membership. He may be a loser, but he still calls the shots. And the GOP is desperately trying to please him

And that's the problem, isn't it?

Trump doesn't care if he burns down the country, as long as he doesn't have to admit he lost the election to Joe Biden. He just doesn't care. Trump is all, and Trump only cares about Trump. He will do anything to prove himself right. If he destroys the country doing so, that's fine with him. And the GOP is more than ready to help him.

As long as he wins, it doesn't matter.

Let the country burn.

The flames won't reach Trump Tower.

America Didn’t Elect This Joe

Trump and Manchin. Looks like a Junior Prom photo.

I had hoped after I finished my last article on West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin I was done talking about him, just like I had hoped we were all done talking about Donald Trump after November 2020.

But here we/I are, talking about both Joe and Donald still, one for being obstinate and clueless, refusing to let the outdated past go and the other…

Well, for pretty much the same thing.

This weekend Trump gave what had to be the laziest, more low energy speech I’ve ever seen him give, playing the hits for the crowd (stolen election, covid not his fault, Trump good, Biden bad) like a 60s band of on the second to last date of a year long 50th Reunion Tour of dive bars; tired, bored of their own crap, and ready to go back to the greenroom party. Really, I think Trump is a horrible human being, but he can fire up a crowd, and play it like Satan’s golden fiddle. This time, he seemed to be playing Satan’s cousin’s borrowed tambourine. Dead, boring, droning and not wanting to be there. Even Fox News didn’t bother showing it, one of the few times I’ve agreed with Fox.

Trump made no real news, said nothing that wasn’t predicted by nearly everyone, and the biggest takeaway seemed to be that he was wearing something beneath his pants. Maybe an adult diaper, maybe not, but still odd. Can’t say I really care. We’ll see what kind of things he says at the rallies he’s starting to book, to the people who show up to worship His Orangeness. He’s down, but his not out.

Fucking Joe Manchin.

Really, so tired of this man. The world’s most aggravating politician, friend of Donald Trump, shooter of bills he doesn’t like, and almighty Emperor of Bipartisanship, Manchin has now fully come out against the Democrats voting rights reforms, stating he refuses to modify or “weaken” the filibuster, that undemocratic relic that has been used to stop progress for decades. Seriously. Joe Manchin is more interested in protecting the rights of the minority in the Senate, than protecting the rights of minority voters. A bill that protects the voting rights of the American people is too ‘partisan’.

Too partisan.

Making sure people can exercise their right to vote, that states will have to be free and fair in their districting, that they must be answerable to the Constitution, is ‘partisan’? That’s nuts. It makes no sense, unless bowing to the GOP’s screwing of those who dare not vote for them is somehow ‘non-partisan’.

Insanity.

I don’t understand his endgame here. Does he really believe his own crap? Is he really thinking the Republicans are operating in good faith? Where are his ten Republicans, good and true, who are ready to help Biden fix this country?

They aren’t there, and won’t be.  

I’m sure Joe believes he’s the hero here, the one saving democracy from those damn liberals intent on destroying it, hell, we’re all the hero in our own Hollywood screenplay. But the nation did not elect Joe Manchin. For the past ten years, with McConnell in the Senate, (and then Trump in the White House) we have had a minority-ruled government, where people not elected by the majority of Americans, thwart what the majority of American voters want. The minority gets to say ‘no’ to the majority, over and over again. With little to no consequences. They have done this with the filibuster, using this archaic instrument to smash and kill everything not proposed by them.

Long past time for that to change.  

I don’t think Joe’s a stupid person, in fact, I think he’s fairly intelligent. This is all about being a Democrat in a deep red state. If he can stall the popular Biden agenda with silly ‘bipartisan’ nonsense, it gives him cover at election time. Maybe I’m wrong, but I bet I’m not. A political calculation is holding back the necessary reforms needed to keep this ‘American Experiment’ safe and functioning. Much like his Friend Trump, he’s willing to gamble country for reelection.

But if he really wanted to do something about the filibuster, but keep it in place, he easily could.

He could have proposed a ‘talking’ filibuster, as used to be the case (see ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington’, no, really, go see it), or he propose could flipping the vote requirements. Right now, the majority has to get 60 votes, but the minority doesn’t have to do anything, nada, squat. Make the minority prove they have the 40 it would take to uphold their filibuster. Make them gather them up for every vote, and then spring votes on them, make them work to keep their filibuster going. My bet is they’re going to get sick of the whole thing pretty quickly and give in.

There are ways to fix it and still keep it, lords knows why.

But Manchin has proposed nothing. Nothing. He made a couple feints at the beginning of congress, sounding almost reasonable, and but just wants to stamp his foot and hold his breath. If this were a terrible sitcom, we’d have a shot of Manchin, arms crossed and shaking his head, saying “You can’t make me, you can’t make me!” and then cut to him voting ‘yes’ on the bills.

But this isn’t ‘Gilligan’s Isle’, and we’re all the worse for it. At least Gilligan listened to his Skipper.

Manchin has proposed nothing but hope. He ‘hopes’ he can get more of his bipartisan, Republican pals to come to his party, over time, but until then he’s going to keep the rec-room lights on, the punchbowl filled, the chips and dip laid out, and Buck Owens on the turntable. And he’ll sit in that old recliner (with the handle on the side), just waiting for his buddies to leave the frat and show up.

Like we have all the time in the world to save democracy.  

What the F**k, Joe Manchin?!!!

WV Senator Joe Manchin, contemplating how he’s going to screw the Democrats.

I don’t get it.

Seriously, I really don’t.

Senator Joe Manchin just announced for Biden’s Infrastructure bill to pass, it has to be ‘bipartisan’. Yes, you saw that, ‘bipartisan’. Joe seems to think the GOP is ready and willing to pass anything that might help average Americans, and thus maybe reflect well on President Joe Biden. No, Joe, that won’t happen, ever, not if the Republicans can help it. And Hey! With the help of their buddy Manchin, they can help it!

Joe Manchin is helping to kill the very popular agenda of a Democratic president, a member of Manchin’s very own party. This is a bill that would greatly benefit his own constituents, the very people who elected him to help them!!!

I…It’s just that... It’s like…

I got nothing.

It’s just fucking insane.

I’ve been buying this ‘man of the Senate’ crap, at least for a while. I gave him some line... Let it play it out... Thinking, ‘Well, maybe he’s sincere about this’ but now… gotta cut that line. He’s not interested in actually helping people, even those back in his home state. He seems to care more about burnishing his own brand than helping his voters. He’s playing to his base, without actually delivering for that base. He’s David Copperfield, preforming the illusion of legislating while actually just waving his hands and throwing up smoke.  

In other words, he’s a Republican.

He was already in cement up to his knees with the ‘no tampering with the filibuster’ pledge, now he’s up to his neck, dead set on killing the infrastructure bill, hell, the whole Biden agenda, unless ten Republicans sign on.

I don’t understand what his game is here, unless he’s playing a re-election game with the people of West Virginia, polishing his ‘bipartisan, man-in-the-middle’ image at the expense of, well, our democracy. Kyrsten Sinema’s game is more transparent and pretty damn disgusting, but comes down the same thing, but with more “maverick” trimmings ala the rep John McCain was supposed to have during his senate tenure. Could it really be that openly callous? Or is he actually that clueless as to who and what the current bunch of radical Republicans are? They’re not conservatives and haven’t been since Reagan; they’re insurgents, radicals pretending to be ‘conservative’ but unable to define what they are for, only what they are against. And what they are against is allowing Democrats air to breathe… literally.

Senator, we need to talk.

———————————————-

Dear Joe, old buddy, ‘ol building-and-loan-pal,

Well, Joe, where are they? Where are the Magical Republicans, ready and eager to sign on to help save the crumbling physical and mental infrastructure of America? Where are the ten brave GOP souls who want to bust out of Mr. Mitch’s Reform School for Trumpaholics (secret cure, more Trump), step into the sun and proclaim they want to help Americans?

Yes… that is the sound of crickets, and not the cool Buddy Holly kind.

Joe, if you want this bill to be bipartisan, why don’t you and Kyrsten get out there and convince those ten to step forward and vote with you? Frankly, because you can’t. I do believe if the filibuster weren’t in play (though it always is, isn’t it?) you just might get those votes. But, since this is the party of Trump, and especially the Senate of Mitch McConnell, (Minority Leader be damned) you won’t get them. You know it.

You know it, Joe.

Time to pack it up. You lost this one. Time for the agenda that 80 million people voted for to go forward. Time for you and Senator Sinema to accept the fact you’re being/been played. Time to help the people of West Virginia get their roads, bridges fixed, get the childcare they need, and help with their aging parents. Time to give them the relief promised. Time to be a different kind of hero, Joe, one that gets things done for the people who elected him.

Time to deliver for the people.  

Magical Republicans be damned.

Coup, Coup Summer

Sown in the fires of Armageddon, or some such nonsense. Can’t even with these guys…

So.

So… sigh…

About the coup that General (retired) Flynn, Sydney Powell, Mike Lindell, Donald Trump, and pretty much all of Qanon is calling/praying/screaming for.

Ain’t gonna happen. At least not the way the way the Qer’s think it’s going to happen.

The military is not going to arrest Joe Biden, round all the mean ‘ol Democrats, and re-install Donny as president. In fact, I’m betting the leaders of the military were relived when Trump lost so decidedly. While Trump pretended to ‘respect’ for the military, he really has respect only for those named ‘Donald J. Trump’, or those at the heads of other countries who wield ‘ultimate’ power (murderous dictators). This is why he sucked up to Putin, to Kim, to MBS and Saudi Arabia, to China, (until his advisors told him to knock it off during covid), he likes those who strut and those who kill. Who kill reporters and protesters, that is. He’s just mad he can only strut. No, he has no respect those he can’t understand, those who seem to be sacrificing for others with nothing in it for themselves. If the answer to the question ‘what’s in it for me?’ is ‘honor and duty to country’, that’s a hard pass.

So, no, I really don’t fear the military rising up to help a man who insulted them as “losers” and “suckers”, no I fear the followers. The army of the deluded dead-enders, the ones still holding boat parades, still plotting on Parler and Telegram, the people who have been going on a four-year gun buying spree to arm themselves for the day when their particular ‘skills’ would be needed. Call it ‘boogaloo’, ‘race war’, ‘Armageddon’, or just ‘Civil War’, they’re down will alllll that. They desperately miss their guidance from Donald and especially from ‘Q’, and have been wandering around, seething and straining, fighting any battle they can (masks, vaccines) waiting for the bat-signal that will allow them to descend on America and ‘take back their country’. They’ve been waiting for a long time.

Trump, Flynn, Powell, Lindell (the Three Stooges and a spare), are giving it too them. They’ve giving them a date, a month at least; August. Don’t worry, Trump will be back in August, now please give us money. The Qanoners believe this stuff, like they believe Tom Hanks kills babies to drink their adrenaline. They think the military and Trump are actually running the country and that Joe Biden is either a clone, a doddering old man who has no idea where he is while Kamala Harris runs things, or was illegally installed and will be forced out. Or all of it, or bits of it. They’re nuts, what can I say?

Many Trump supporters are waiting, wanting, eager, and trembling to be part of a violent act in his name. Encouraged by Trump they have already committed violence in his name and are ready to do it again. It wouldn’t take much to do it again. Powell and Lindell, two people loved and respected in the cult, say Trump can be re-instated in August, Trump (the God of the Cult) repeats the August date, Flynn endorses a military style coup. If the military won’t step up to do its duty, the ‘anoners are very excited to do it for them.

 They are already plotting now. They haven’t really stopped in four years.

Trump gave them a month, they can figure out a day, a place and a time. He thinks with his announced rallies, his constant firing at them with fundraising emails, the constant repeating of the Big Lie and telling them he’ll be re-instated only if they ‘fight’ (you know that is coming) that his followers will bring about ‘the Storm’ (TM) (see video below), he’ll be back in power (and safe from prosecution) and they can round up all the ‘pedos’ together. They’ll all be the shining heroes they always knew they were. Jesus might even come back.

All they have to do is fight.

“Fight For Trump!”

Oh good, another summer made interesting for all the wrong reasons.

Crazy Qanon video below, shown at their conference last week where Flynn made his coup endorsement.

He Won’t Let Us Walk Away

Wouldn’t you like to see that last of this face?

Here we are.

Six months from the defeat of Donald Trump, and we can’t walk away from him. Why is that? After we got rid of the last awful, destructive administration (yep, it was George W.). We talked about him, but we moved on as quickly as we could. Bush helped by staying out of sight and not popping up to swing at every pitch thrown at the backstop.

Trump has no such problem. He issues opinion and edicts, scorn and ‘blistering’ takes on everything thrown his way, and always ties it to either; how great he was and how everyone sucks, or how the election was ‘stolen’ from him and everyone sucks.

Rinse, repeat.

But that’s just Trump himself. We may have Joe Biden in the White House, but we are still living in the sulfur ruins of TrumpWorld ™, which threatens at all times to ignite into wildfire proportions. This is why we can’t rid the national psychic of the man and his followers. He may not have social media anymore, but he still has the entirety of the GOP to push and scream his message. Like an parasite, Trump has hollowed out the host GOP and now controls the party, making them more than happy to keep advocating his lies, keep swinging spiked baseball bats at the legs of democracy, keep riding that wave of Trump grievance into power.

We can’t stop talking about Trump not because he won’t go away (and he just won’t) but because we have to. He’s the toddler that heads right for the china collection the minute you look away, the dog who will pee all over the living room if you don’t pay an ever-increasing amount of attention. Only this time, the living room is our democracy.  

Look at Texas.

Texas has been descending into the fever swamps for years, but now they’re expediting it using Trump’s elections lies as an excuse. This past weekend, under a midnight deadline, the Texas house GOP was trying to ram though a particularly egregious voting ‘integrity’ bill. This was a bill that went into closed-door negotiations one size, and came out nearly double, with all manner of conspiratorial garbage shoved in. Like making it easier for a friendly judge to thrown out an election based on a ‘preponderance’ of the evidence of fraud, instead of actual evidence of fraud. Or limiting early voting to 1pm-9pm on Sundays. Or illegal to transport more than two non-family members to the polls. I wonder who that might be directed at?

Lots of crap like that. And they had the votes.

The Texas house Democrats (the minority, of course) though, after trying everything they could, just slowly, one-by-one, left the chamber. When the time came to vote on the bill, the Democrats were gone, denying the Republicans a quorum. The deadline passed, the bill died. For now. It’ll be back. But it’s still a victory.

The Democrats did two things here: they stopped a voter suppression bill and made headlines, and they took that ugly, racist and grotesque bill and dragged it into the sunlight for all to see. ‘This is what the Trumpublicans are doing! This is what we have to stop!’ and the Texas Democrats literally said “This is how we are fighting in Texas, why aren’t you fighting in Washington?”

They listened to Trump, just as the GOP is listening to Trump, but they acted to stop him. In DC, we have at least two Democrats who refuse to listen, who refuse to act and will likely continue to do so until it is too late. Joe Manchin, I think, has a stubborn if deluded sincerity to his insistence on a bipartisanship that hasn’t existed in decades, killed mostly by the grab for power by one party. The other, Kyrsten Sinema… Well, I have no idea what the hell Sinema thinks she’s doing. Arizona, her state, is a purple state where the GOP is screaming that it’s really dark, blood red if you only count the votes the right way. Maybe she thinks she’s keeping to the middle? Maybe she thinks she’s being a ‘maverick’ by acting like well, a jerk. She does admire John McCain she says, but playing cute games while the building is on fire is not the way to be a ‘maverick’, it’s the way to be a dead donkey.

And out of a job next election. If we still have elections by then.

No, we can’t look away from Trump and get on with our lives as much as we all yearn to do so, because he and his followers are still there, flicking matches into the pool of gas that is the country at the moment, trying to stay in power, or just to see what will happen if it all goes up at once.

Mitch Has a Message For America

Mitch might be putting up a thumb, but he’s really thinking ‘middle finger’.

There was a time, and I’m not completely crazy here, when politicians actually tried to help people other than themselves. Or at least they helped other people while helping themselves. Something got done, benefits at least trickled out occasionally to ordinary Americans and the country lurched slowly forward.

 Yeah, those were good… times?

All that’s done now, and has been for the last few decades. Helping people had its run, but we’re on to other things now. We’re in the age of announcing, via statements to the DC press, that we’re helping ourselves as policy and acting as if that is a benefit, as if that was what we were elected to do in the first place. Hurting the country and their own voters as if that is what those voters wanted all along. “Please, make sure our lives are harder, our struggles more painful so you win more power!”

“Can do!”

Kentucky Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is always one to put his own power and that of his party before the good of the country. We saw that under Obama with McConnell’s proclamation that his job was to make Obama a ‘one-term president’. Fought everything, from healthcare for the uninsured, to stimulus designed to get us out of a financial disaster presided over by Obama’s Republican predecessor. This opposition lengthened the recovery by years, needlessly causing financial pain to Americans. Now, he’s at it again.

This time McConnell has said “One hundred percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration.” Not on helping the American people, not on getting the country back to sanity after a devastating pandemic that killed well over a half million people, not trying to revive the economy, no. Petty politics is where his head is, preserving his own power at the cost of the country is his goal, but then it always was.

Not only did he try to kill the covid relief bill, now he’s trying to kill infrastructure, voting rights, and a bi-partisan investigation into the origins and happenings of the January 6th insurrection. After the Democrats gave basically everything the GOP was asking for, he proclaims it ‘not enough’. He not only is trying to kill it by allowing a filibuster, he’s also lying about the nature and makeup of the committee itself.  

Why?

He’s worried it could “could hurt the party’s midterm election message,” which is ‘Biden is horrible, he’s done nothing (because we made sure he could do nothing), he’s too ‘woke’, he destroying America, so vote for us’. He’s worried finding out the truth about an attack on the US Capitol would somehow hurt the GOP’s message. Scared of the truth.

Again, why? They claim it was ‘antifa’ and Black Lives Matter supporters, now is their chance to prove it.

Why is the GOP afraid of what a bi-partisan look at the insurrection would find? Well, they must know it was their supporters out there beating police, using the very Trump flags they were flying as blunt weapons to put cops in the hospital, smash windows, and use the shields stripped from the police to break down the doors of the Capitol. Instead of facing up to this fact, and dealing with the fallout and the lies that brought us all to that day and to this, to try to protect themselves and their colleagues from further attacks…

…they filibustered it. Ignore it, and the insurrectionists will just go away.

I hear Joe Manchin is oh so very shocked and disappointed. The very thing that nearly everyone told him would happen, that the GOP would block everything regardless of benefit no matter what, has happened.

And I hear there’s gambling in the back room at Rick’s.

And then McConnell announced opposition to police reform that does away with ‘qualified immunity’, the bizarre rule that lets police get away with civil and criminal acts (like killing people), upending negotiations his own party member Tim Scott is carrying on with the Senate Democrats.  

So, no money for crumbling infrastructure, childcare, elder care, no police reform, no voting reform and protection, no investigation into the threat against our democracy, all because it “could hurt the party’s midterm election message.”

The Republican message seems to be “Fuck You.”

And nothing has stopped them from getting that message out in the last 40+ years.

Are you finally listening, Senators Manchin and Sinema?

The Toxic Avengers Assemble

Doors open at 5, lyin’ begins at 5:01.

The Toxicity is the Point.

Let me explain.

The GOP is a toxic party that encourages and celebrates toxic people. It simply is. It’s like the GOP looks around for the loudest, most obnoxious person in the room, the person everyone just trying to have a civil conversation veers away from, and they point and scream “That’s the one!”. They then give that person a high-level job in the party infrastructure, make them a TV pundit for ‘balance’ on cable shows, or run them as a candidate for office. And since Republican legislatures have gerrymandered districts within an inch of their lives, they are gifted with safe havens, stone pulpits from where they can spew anything they want with impunity. All they have to worry about is getting ‘primaried’, but they can take care of that by running as far to the right as they possibly can. It’s the ‘No Daylight’ strategy, ‘let there be no daylight on the right’; and you’ll be safe.  

Doesn’t really matter if you help your constituents, if you write, sponsor, or actually pass bills (you know, do your job) as long as you say the right things and ‘own’ enough ‘libs’. In fact, you can be in trouble if you do pass a bill, because it could be easily used against you. Pass the ‘wrong’ bill, and you become part of the system, the ‘Deep State’ (TM and © GOP) or the oppressive ‘Big Government’ (TM and © GOP) and someone will pop up suddenly in your district (probably having recently moved there) and oppose your reelection. Yep, you’ve been primaried. Suddenly you will have to go to extraordinary lengths to prove your ‘rightness’. Maybe hang out at the border (even if it’s not your state) in front of the TV cameras and wrestle a few migrants to the ground to prove how right-crazy you are, or bow over farther to an out-of-work- grifter at Mar-a-Largo. The ushe’.

The GOP built a system that rewards extremism, and pushes, begs, for more while punishing any sort of moderation. It’s the system that ever since the founding of the John Birch Society (oh, you can go down that rabbit hole further to the Dixiecrats in ‘47, the OG ‘America First-ers’ in the 30’s and beyond, but this is an essay, not ‘Game of Thornes’), to their backing of failed presidential candidate Barry Goldwater leading to a far right thought takeover in the late 60’s to an Avengers Assemble moment in the 70s with the Christian Evangelist movement, finally to the presidency in the 1980s. Whew. Been a long, hard and ugly road to the disaster that was four years of Trump, but it was always on the horizon. Extremist movements always burn and consume themselves eventually, but they leave much ash and destruction in the path of their flames.

So here we are.

In congress, we have some of the most aggressive, extreme, performatively ignorant (most of them aren’t that stupid, they’re stupid for pay and power) since the Civil War, when Democrat Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat abolitionist Republican Senator Charles Sumner with a cane, nearly killing him. Of course, from there to today, the parties are reversed. The difference being today the GOP mostly outsources its violence to their supporters, like the mob on January 6th.

These people are all stunt, not actual policy. Unless ‘owning libs’ can be a policy. Well, if not a policy it’s certainly a goal.

The new Preston Brooks’ of the GOP are people like Jim Jordan from Ohio’s 4th district, a district both famous for being far right and safe, and for being so gerrymandered and twisted (redundant?) as to resemble a duck. Jordan has a ‘colorful’ past in which he has been accused (pretty credibly) of ignoring sexual abuse as a wrestling coach at Ohio State. Several team members have come forward, saying they informed Joran directly about the abuse, and at least one referee claims to have confronted Jordan about it. Jordan claims he had no idea.

And he’s still in congress where he’s never written and passed a bill in his ten years there, he just holds them up, insults people and yells. And yells some more, all while refusing to wear his suit jacket, man-of-the-people that he is.

There’s Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, son of former presidential candidate Ron Paul, who has inherited his father’s aggressive style of ignorance. Paul’s biggest claim to fame is acting like a jerk during senate hearings, and trying to score stupidity points off Dr. Anthony Fauci. He’s yet another Republican who has nothing to fear from the electorate, as Kentucky hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since Wendell Ford, in 1992.

There’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right conspiracy nut serving from Georgia's 14th congressional district, yet another safe district. She ran unopposed, as the Democrat running against her received so many threats that he feared for his life, ultimately leaving the state. The vile threats she made against her congressional colleagues were so bad, they stripped her of her committee assignments and her power within congress, but not the GOP where she is a money raiser and ‘rising star’. Recently she compared the torture and deaths of millions of Jews in the Holocaust with her having to wear one of her ‘Trump Won’ masks on the floor of congress. And then doubled down on it. GOP leadership has been very, very silent on this. Her grotesqueness is only rewarded. I’m sure the fund raising off the ‘Cancel Culture’ (TM and © GOP) of people telling her she’s waaaaaaaaaay out of line here has already begun.

Right now, Taylor-Greene is on a ‘Summer of Hate 2021’ Tour (not official name) with another equally horrible person, Florida (of course) congressman Matt Gaetz. Gaetz is part of the ‘frat boy’ style of politics, like if one of the guys from Animal House, only with Red Kryptonite levels of evil, were elected to congress. He, almost more than his fellow Toxic Avengers, thinks stupid congressional pet tricks done in front of TV cameras equals ‘policy work’. He is the ‘policy wonk’ of dumb stunts, like leading a charge into a secure room where a meeting was being held, thus violating security and forcing the Capitol security team to perform a sweep and examination to re-secure the room, wasting hours and money, of wearing a gasmask on the House floor during a vote on covid relief while his constituents were literally dying in Florida. He’s just a petty, vile, smug jerk. There, I said it.

That’s not the worst. Gaetz has been accused of massive illegal drug use, paying girls for sex, statutory rape, human trafficking an underage girl, showing nude photos to his fellow frat boy congressman on the floor of the house, and for being a disgusting clown.

I can say he’s guilty of at least one of those.

I could go on, and that’s the problem, I could go on. I didn’t even get to Ron Johnson, Mo Brooks, Paul Gosar, John Kennedy, Lauren Boebert (who brags about illegally packing a Glock, because she’s an idiot), and the King Of Cynical Performative Toxicity (may not be real title), Senator Ted Cruz, who at least should know better. Probably a part two coming on this…

But that’s the point, you can’t tell the true believers from those just going along with the scam. How many actually believe Trump won the 2020 election? Even in their warped reality, probably very few. In the end, it doesn’t matter who among the GOP leadership actually believes the nonsense they vomit; because they’re all united in the message and in shouting it from whatever mountaintop they can find. They’ve convinced the majority of their voters it’s true, and that’s where the danger comes in. That’s where January 6th came from and it’s where the next January 6th will come from as well.

They restrict voting to gain power, they gerrymander to keep power, they lie to their supporters to maintain power.

They take that hate cannon they’ve constructed and aim it right at democracy. Because it’s in the way. The have toxic leaders because the system they’ve built rewards that very toxicity. Toxicity = Strength, and the more they show, the more money flows to them and that system is reinforced and grows stronger while their base becomes a reduction of intense hate.

Toxicity is the point, and will be until it finally breaks the party.

That can’t be soon enough.

Cover Your Neighbor’s Ass as You Would Cover Your Own.

Two people who should be out of a job.

Kevin McCarthy is screwed.  

Rightly so. How is he screwed? He just showed the country and his own party just how weak a ‘leader’ he is. He sent Rep John Katko (R-NY) to negotiate with the Democrats over the makeup and reach of the January 6th commission, adding a bunch of demands that McCarthy figured the Democrats would never go for; equal representation, subpoena power for both parties, with both the chair and vice-chair having to agree on the issuing of the subpoenas, you know stuff the GOP would never agree to. You just have to look at the biased Benghazi ‘investigations’, controlled by a Republican majority and designed to drive down Hilary Clinton’s polls numbers (which McCarthy admitted) for proof of what McCarthy thinks is a ‘fair’ committee. He figured the Democrats wanted a political witch hunt, because that’s exactly what he would do, so he would undermined it from the start.

While Katko negotiated in good faith, McCarthy gave him nothing but a bottle of what he figured were poison pills to offer the Democrats. The problem was, McCarthy was too cynical for his own good. He figured the whole investigation was a show, ‘insurrection theatre’ designed to just embarrass the GOP. He was wrong. The Democrats actually accepted the GOP demands. They wanted a bi-partisan commission, and they agreed to just that. Katko succeeded when he was supposed to fail, so that when he failed, McCarthy could show that the whole thing was a cynical ploy by Pelosi and the Democrats. Checkmate!

The political cynicism though was all on McCarthy, like pie on Stan Laurel. His version of 3-D chess was actually one-finger checkers, and he had just jumped himself. Hard. Now, he had to deny his own deal, lie about it, calling it a one-sided sham (it wasn’t), and throw his own hand-picked negotiator under the bus. And then back it up over him. He demanded his members vote against the bill, and the GOP House Whip, Steve Scalise announced he would whip his members against the commission.

Kevin and Steve failed.  

35 Republicans broke with their leadership to support the commission. 35. Might not seem a huge number (it should be much bigger, really) but to the credibility of McCarthy’s leadership, and to the extreme partisanship of the GOP, this is a foghorn, a wrecking ball, a Spinal Tap goes-to-eleven feedback blast.

It’s an embarrassment. And all poor Kevin’s fault.

Word is leaking out that many members were pissed off over McCarty’s shameful treatment of Katko, and they just couldn’t go along with the transparent nonsense of ‘peaceful tourists’ invading the Capitol on January 6th to take selfies and admire statues. They remember hiding behind seats, barricading themselves in their offices, fearing for their lives while armed officers kept the insurrectionists at bay with pointed weapons on the floor of the US House of Representatives. They remember calling family to tell them they loved them one last time.

Like the Democrats, those 35 Republicans want answers, Kevin McCarthy be damned.

But…

Oh, there’s always a ‘but’ with today’s GOP, isn’t there? 175 Republicans — That’s 84% of the Republican conference — voted to memory-hole the insurrection. Voted to shrug and walk away. Like they did at both impeachments, like they’ve done over and over since 2015 when Trump descended that ridiculous gold escalator and started his campaign against democracy. A campaign that in January turned into open warfare.

175 Republicans who would rather let Trump and his insurrections control their party than stand up for democracy, stand up to the very people who came to kill them. Make no mistake, the people who stormed the Capitol, by their own account, were armed and looking for blood. Trump has sent out his orders about the commission on his pitiful little blog calling it a “democrat trap” to “shut it down” and they bowed and tried.

Then Mitch McConnell joined in. Both McConnell and McCarthy after the insurrection, blamed Trump. Both said he was culpable. Both have now forgotten all about that, preferring to toe the Trump line and undermine democracy. It’s what Donny would do (is doing), after all. McConnell will now direct the Senate to vote against the commission because… vague reasons. He cited overlap with the DOJ investigation, which he knows is a criminal one, not one into the origins of the mob and the violence. He has no real reason or excuses, except protecting the guilty infesting his own party.

Cover your neighbor’s ass as you would cover your own.

It is essential not only for the GOP to kill the commission, but to hide why they want to kill it. They love to go on about ‘re-litigating 2020’ (isn’t that what these Republican demands for recounts are?), but what they’re really afraid of isn’t exposing the past, it’s the threat of daylight on their on-going campaign against democracy, to undermine confidence in our elections and their fairness. They are laying the groundwork, right in the open, to deny the electoral victory of a Democratic candidate and install a losing Republican one, regardless of the outcome.

They’ll do it, or will at least try.

That’s why the commission must die.

With the bill for the commission now passed in the House, it will go to the Senate, where it will surely be filibustered. If all the Democrats vote for it, that means they have to get 10 Republicans to cross party lines for it to pass. Don’t hold your breath. McConnell has a much better hold on his caucus than McCarthy, and few have shown much will to buck him. I can see a few that might; Romney, Murkowski, maybe Collins. Maybe there are enough secret, closeted Republican senators that will put country over party.

This is where we are, hoping that sanity will break out in the GOP, and enough will step forward to actually do the right thing.

This is where we are.

It’s Not You, Democracy, It’s Them

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, attempting to demonstrate with his hands how far the GOP is from reality. His hands can’t go that wide.

Kevin McCarthy needs to see if he can rent back his balls from Donald Trump long enough to support the investigation into the January 6th insurrection. After all, it was negotiated by his own representative, signed off on by him, and was supposed to move forward. But now?

Now he doesn’t like it anymore.

Evidently, he got another friendly call from Mar-a-Largo because Donny doesn’t want an investigation. Of course he doesn’t. And now Kevin doesn’t either. Not anymore, anyway. Trump is against it, as is most of the GOP, because they are complicit; they supported it, they either went along with the lies that inspired the mobs, broadcasted the lies themselves, or said nothing and hoped it would go away like a bill that comes due when your bank account is empty.  

If we just don’t answer the knocking, it’ll stop, they’ll just go away. But they didn’t. They came back with a battering ram, looking for blood. Not metaphorical blood, actual blood. McCarthy is guilty of going along, of trying to stop democracy, of voting to kill it before it threw his unpopular party and its equally unpopular president out of power. After a period of a day or so where they pretended regret, trying to see where political chips were going to fall, they’ve sprung back into ‘Big Lie’ mode, denying the insurrection and supporting Trump’s continued spewed lunacies.  

The ‘Big Lie’ of the stolen election is now the Republican battleplan of taking power in DC and the states; keep telling your voters they were cheated, that they have actual grievances, that the election and their rightful president were stolen from them. Keep the base angry, seething, ready to storm the polling places and vote for anything Trump and the GOP tell them. Get them angry and near violence and keep them there.

Just not too angry and violent. It’s a subtle and deadly dance, like a replay of the classic French film ‘The Wages of Fear’, only this time it’s not truckers hauling degrading nitro, it’s the GOP playing with the nitro emotions and violence that their most extreme voters are capable of, both already on abundant display long before 1/6.

The Democrats must move ahead on the investigation, without the GOP. They will never cooperate anyway. Hell, they only regret the insurrection didn’t succeed, democracy be damned. A new CBS poll asked GOP voters that if they were a party consultant, would they focus on developing a message and “popular policies and ideas” to win over more voters? Or would they prioritize changes to the voting rules in states and districts?

Almost half the GOP, 47%, went with screwing voters, with making sure ‘those’ people don’t vote. You know, you and me. 2/3rds pledged loyalty to Trump, and thought getting rid of Liz Cheney, a far-right conservative who voted with Trump some 93% of the time, was a good idea. Not loyal enough. Insufficiently ready to steal coming elections.

They are done with democracy. It’s no longer giving them what they need. No, it’s not you, democracy, it’s them. Totally on them, they’re done, they want a divorce.

It’s now up to the Democratic Party to show that democracy can be saved, that it can work. The 1/6 investigation is needed to show the agenda of the GOP, to show the country where the rot is and how deep it goes. The Democrats will have to stop playing nice as usual, stop playing defense and start playing offense. Nancy and Chuck need to go it alone, while they still can.

2022 is coming at us like a freight train, we can hear its mournful whistle in the distance and soon it’ll be too late to get off the tracks.

We have to make sure we’re on that train and not in front of it.

The Last Free Election

Vote here, while we still can.

 “When you give up integrity the rest is easy”.

- JR Ewing

Was our last free election in November of 2020?

It was if the GOP has its way.

What we are seeing right now is an extension of the January 6th coup attempt, a slow-motion insurrection going on in the states where the Republicans hold the legislature. They are purging the party of anyone who doesn’t at least pretend that Donald Trump won an election he lost by 7 million votes. They are working to suppress the votes of those who dare not to vote Republican, to remove barriers that hold them from throwing out the will of the voters, to make flesh the bones of what Trump tried to do in the months after he lost. To make the ‘Big Lie’ our new reality.

Georgia, for example, in 2020 had Brad Raffensperger as Secretary of State. He oversaw a fairly uneventful (as actual electoral problems go) election. It was after the call was made and the outcome was one not expected by Trump and the Republicans that the problems occurred. Now, for a bit of context here, Raffensperger oversaw an election system set up by the current Georgia Governor Republican Brian Kemp when Kemp was Secretary of State, a system designed to elect Republicans. Kemp threw every dirty trick he could in his run for governor and as Secretary, there were a lot he could throw.  

That is the system that Raffensperger oversaw. It should have worked, but it didn’t, at least not the way the Georgia GOP thought it would. Shock turned into anger, turned into accusations of fraud, fanned by the lies of Trump and his supporters. Raffensperger, to his credit, stood up to it, denied the lies and held open recounts of the votes. He didn’t try to ‘find’ the votes Trump demanded he find. He actually ‘stopped the steal’, the attempted theft of the election in Georgia by Trump and his supporters.

Yeah. Well, the Georgia legislature fixed that. They removed the Secretary of State as head of the board of elections, making that position a political appointment. No more Raffensperger getting in their way. They also gave themselves the power to remove local election officials and reject vote totals if they suspect ‘fraud’. How do they define fraud?

When Democrats win, of course. It is obviously a crime and cannot be allowed.

Silly voters, you got it wrong! Don’t worry, we’ll fix that for you.

They are tossing anyone who will not toe the Trump ‘Big Lie’ line, from local election boards (remember Republican Aaron Van Langevelde in Michigan, the election board member who voted to certify the Biden votes? They got rid of him) to national leaders like Liz Cheney. They are setting up the mechanics to deny any Democrat who would win the 2024 presidential election the position. What seemed like fantasy in 2020, refusing to certify the election and throwing it to a GOP congress who would then decide the election themselves, is now the goal. This is the Republican dream, power without having to actually rely on people voting for them. Why bother with voting when you can just take power? Why pass go to collect $200? Just reach over to the tray and take $200, or maybe more? Who’s going to stop you?

The GOP is a party that has given up on voters and democracy. As demographics change they see their base shrink. If this was a business, they would introduce new products, try to grow into new markets, try to figure out what the people want and work to give it to them. Identify the need, and fill it. The problem here is the majority no longer wants what the Republicans are selling. Lower taxes for the rich, fewer services, and no social safety net for Americans just isn’t a good sell (never was, which is why they push the never-ending culture war), and they’re slowly running out of angry White people, so do they change their message to appeal to a broader audience? No, they just won’t bother with that messy democracy stuff anymore, too uncertain. Better to just take power, to declare the opposition as ‘un-american’ and ‘enemies’ and any defeat of Republicans as ‘fraud’.

There will not be another national election, or probably even local, where if a Republican loses they will not cry ‘fraud’. It’s already happening, Trump has shown them the way, what they must do in the future, and that’s exactly what they will do. Why not? Who will stop them?

They will audition this in 2022 in the sticks to see how it will play. 2024 is opening night.

This is the worst kind of ‘doom and gloom’ porn, I know, where the writer pelts you with godawful news, hardballs thrown fast and furious, one smacking you as you duck the others. I know, but this is what is happening right now, as I type this in a slow dawning morning here in Seattle. A fix for all I write here is sitting in the US Senate right now, S. 1, about to be introduced by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, where it will die under the weight of a Republican filibuster. Right now, with this ‘Senate tradition’ the anti-democratic filibuster in place, celebrated by those who enjoy the fruits of nothing getting done, the proposed bill making it easier to vote will gasp and will die.

What to do?

We all know who is holding this up. Senator Joe Manchin claims bipartisanship is more important than actual reform, and his definition of ‘bipartisanship’ is not that the majority of the country (Democrats and Republicans) support it, it’s that the majority of his friends in the Senate support it, country be damned. Now that may be harsh, but I really don’t care. That is the motive I attribute to such an attitude that puts a Senate rule over the will of the people, over the health of our governing principles, our democracy. What else can we say about it?

We can say it to Joe, and the rest of the Senate. Manchin’s contacts are below. Letters are usually better than emails or calls, but anything will help. Mailing mine out later today.

We’ll talk more tomorrow.  

https://www.manchin.senate.gov/contact-joe

A Party of Trolls

See the happy trolls. See them use Twitter! Troll them libs, trolls, Troll!

Remember when the Republicans put forth polices, proposed new bills, and fought for their passage? Remember when they composed a party platform that clearly stated their ideals, their values, and their plans for America?

You remember that?

Well, you’d have to be somewhere in your late 40s, because they haven’t done much of that since the 80s, and it wasn’t pretty even then. The 1980s was when the GOP’s ‘War on America’ started in earnest, with hacking at the social infrastructure, huge tax cats that were supposed to ‘kickstart’ the economy (they didn’t) and other draconian measures that undermined the middle class and increased poverty while increasing the number of billionaires.

More Billionaires demanding more tax cuts to be paid for by an ever-shrinking middle class.

Because more billionaires is just what the country needed, of course.

After a while of attacking the poor as lazy, cutting taxes for the rich, defunding or under-funding social programs, and starting wars based on lies (Thanks, George W.), the Republicans grew exhausted, (and lost the White House for eight years) and decided instead of trying to govern, which was hard, they would just… not. Not govern, not try to pass anything particularly helpful, even to their own voters (their donors are another story), just not really do much of anything except make sure nothing that they didn’t propose themselves (and they proposed next to nothing) would pass. Didn’t matter if it might be beneficial to the American people, if the Democrats like it, it must die. No Republican would be allowed to vote ‘yes’ on any Democratic legislation.

Mitch McConnell’s stated goal was to make sure Obama was a ‘one-term president’. If it hurt America in the process, well, tough. The stimulus Obama and the Democrats managed to pass after the crash of 2008 was too small, and everyone knew it. But it was all they could do because of McConnell and the GOP. The Republicans didn’t give a F. Economists now say it lengthened the recession by probably four years. That was McConnell’s plan, to screw the country to kill Obama and the Democrats to gain power, America was just in the line of fire. And it worked.

The GOP has passed one major piece of legislation in ten years, the Trump tax cuts which has already added trillions to the debt, and will add trillions more. As usual, they were sold as a revenue ‘enhancer’ and failed to be so. Sold on lies, just like everything else the GOP has advanced in the past 40+ years. Passed, btw, though reconciliation, which is good when they do it, but totally unfair when the Democrats do it.

Feh.

The Republican party is not a party of policy, it’s a party of trolls. I mean that literally; they don’t live under bridges (if they did they would know how badly those bridges need repair and pass the infrastructure bill) but they live for bullying and trolling others, especially liberals and everything they classify as ‘liberal’. It’s not just the only thing they got, since they’ve abandoned policy (and don’t have the votes to shove through far-right judges anymore), trolling the libs is the only thing on their agenda, it’s what they live for. Troll tweets, troll appearances on Tucker, Hannity, and Pirro, troll bills, troll amendments to bills, troll commercials (that idiotic ‘taking-my-Glock-to-congress thing? What the F was that about?), troll signs outside congressional offices, troll calls for ‘debates’, even chasing after their fellow congresspersons in the halls to scream at them for the cameras. Liberal bait, thrown out to catch liberal outrage. Fox News is a 24/7 troll bait/outrage machine. It’s how they keep the ratings up.

Throw in some White grievance and you got yourself a network.  

The GOP is a proud party of proud trolls. Especially the ones elected in the last few cycles, the younger ones with social media savvy got themselves elected not to change the country, to make anything better, but to tweet, Facebook, Tic-Tok, Instagram, and get in front of as many cameras as possible. Screw policy, their job isn’t legislating, it’s being a media star and then moving on to a berth at Fox, or, in a pinch, OANN, or even NewsMax if they have to. Maybe they’ll start their own media empire using the taxpayer’s salaried position as a stepping stone.

That’s right, we’re funding their own little troll staircase to better things. This is where we are, an entire party that acts like a frat’s twitter account. All performative, all bad faith, all smug and snort, not an honest click of the keyboard among them.

Now this is the place I’d say what we should do to combat this. I don’t have much for you, except to ignore the worst of it, but that’s hard to do with the amplifiers they have. It’s not just the right-wing media turning up their volume, it’s also the left and the mass media helping spread their nonsense. The left gets pissed, and the MSM both-sides the ‘controversy’. Just hunker down and keep doing the work that makes them troll in the first place. Don’t engage. Be like AOC and keep walking. Let them collect their embarrassing campaign b-roll, they will anyway.

They’ll keep pushing until they humiliate themselves, if they can actually feel shame or humiliation.  

Ain’t No Civil War

Civil War? Don’t believe it.

I know. The press has to have their stories, with their storylines, ones they can see coming in advance, ones that fit past narratives and are easily pitched at the morning meetings. It’s very comforting, like a Simpson’s writing saying “Oh, we did something like that in season 12, but we can just give it a twist here. It’ll work!” A Republican civil war is an easy narrative, heck, you can just pull out and blow the dust off the ones from 2006, or ’12, or the summer of 2015. And the ones from 2015 have the advantage of not having to change most of the names, as many of the players are the same.

But that is just lazy, by-the-numbers sort of thing, above anyone but hacks on a deadline. Now, I can’t say anything about the ‘hack’ part, heaven forfend, but the lazy bit… well…

People love to see what they want to see, what they are expecting to see, and everyone loves a good fight. So, some Republicans are fighting some other Republicans and we’re all pulling up our lawn chairs (six feet apart, of course) and popping up the popcorn (salt, light butter) getting ready to watch the fight.

But there really isn’t one.

The fight is over. It ended with the nomination and election of Donald Trump. The professional sycophants (Cruz, Rubio, Graham) went from highly critical to embarrassingly praiseful overnight. It was like a photo-finish. I can see the 8X10, all three (there were more, but let’s go with the big three) in a leaning-forward run, lips outstretched, all aiming for Trump’s large ass.

The ‘civil war has been over for years. Trump swallowed the party whole. Oh, he burped out a few, Jeff Flake, Justin Amash, Republicans who couldn’t take Trump (but still voted for many of his policies) and left before the humiliation of their Trumpified voters kicking them out.

So, this isn’t a ‘civil war’, this is a purge. The last of the previous generation of Republicans, themselves heirs of a previous right-wing coup and purge (the ‘Reagan Revolution’), are now getting flushed out by the very radicals they nurtured, the vipers they thought they could control while they passed on to ‘elder statesman’ status. They were wrong. Vipers do what vipers do, they strike.

See, they have been striking for years, but with Trump giving the order that the ‘stolen election’ bullshit is now the Golden Rule by which all must be judged, the strikes, the Purge ™, has been increased in speed and scope; everyone who dared to question, dared to stop Trump’s steal must be cast out into the wilderness. They must be burned to the ground, and their cubicles and office mugs salted so no one who might question The Donald can grow there.

Liz Cheney? She’s just the most public face. The local GOPer’s, the ones who certified the votes, who oversaw the Republicans elections in reddish/purple states and followed the rules, all those Republicans who put in place all the rules designed to elect Republicans (that failed to elect Republicans this time), they’re either gone, or have had their power so curtailed they might as well be gone.

So, put away the popcorn, there’s no fight here. Everyone knows what’s up, everyone knows how this is going to go. Except those in the media who just don’t get it, or like the narrative too much to tell their editors what is really going on. The War is over, the War has been won, they’re dragging the bodies off the field.

The GOP is Trump’s party, has been for years, they’re just cleaning house. 100% Trump, or 100% gone.

Don’t Cry For Liz Cheney

Boom goes the dynamite. The Republicans continue their relentless march to turn Trump lies into the GOP reality, no matter who is in the way.

And just like that, Representative Liz Cheney is gone. If not in body, in power. She was the 3rd most powerful Republican in the House leadership and she lost that position for taking an odd, and at odds position to her colleagues; she insisted on telling the truth about the former president.

Nothing is punished so much as being right in a wrong world.  

She went down shooting though;

“We cannot embrace both the big lie and the Constitution," Cheney said on her way out the door. She says she'll do "everything I can" to ensure Trump never gets near the Oval again. "We cannot be dragged backward by the dangerous lies of a former president."

And then the door slammed on her, as a victory howl went up from Mar-a-Largo. High fives all around!

And she’s out, by a non-recorded voice vote, McCarthy and the House GOP were on-brand cowards to the end. This is what happens in today’s Republican party for daring to put your head up and say, “Hey, wait a minute, this isn’t right…” You get that head chopped off. Dare to admit Trump actually lost the election by 7 million votes (which he did) and you’ve suddenly got Donald Sutherland pointing and screaming at you.

This is also what happens when a party becomes not a political entity of like-minded people, formed with the goal of governing, but a personality cult huddled around one god-like (or maybe, ‘god-claiming) person from whom all favor flows. To speak against that person, to poke that bear, gets you the fate of most who do venture their hand into the den; you get eaten.

Trump has consumed the GOP, well, since he’s lazy as hell, they consumed themselves for him, re-making the party from the ground up in gold plate, velvet curtains, and long red ties. They had their chance to walk, and almost did so after Trump incited the riot on January 6th, even McCarthy briefly grew a spine and blamed the President for his actions… and then went to Mar-a-Largo to kiss his ass and tell him how sweet it tasted. He was quickly followed by Cruz (who never misses a chance at humiliating himself, seems to enjoy it in fact), Lindsey Graham, (who literally has no shame, probably born without it) and others who have made the journey in spirit if not action.

"We cannot be dragged backward by the dangerous lies of a former president." Cheney said.

Sure we can. It’s happening right now, aided and abetted by the entire Republican party. The GOP is already there. They took that one little step, that toe-in-the-water after 1/6, shivered and went back in the Trump cave, never to venture out again. “Dragged”? Hell, they’ll happily march in lockstep by Trump. They like it, they want it, and have for decades. Trump, and everyone who has eyes and a keyboard (hello!) has said this; Trump did not spring up suddenly and unexpectedly, and this is true. The GOP arrived at Trump. Trump had his arms opened wide, and welcomed them… home. You can finger-trace the curve from the John Birchers in the 50s, to Goldwater in the 60s, though the Nixon ‘Southern Strategy’ in the late 60s-70s, to Reagan (a darling of the far-right from his time as governor of California) and his embrace into the GOP of far-right Christianity, to the demagoguery of Newt Gingrich and the rise of far right media in the 70-80s, all of these elements joining together with Fox News and Rupert Murdoch in the 90s to drive the right’s narrative ever farther and farther right to end at the warm embrace of… Trump.

End of the line. Everyone out.

Trump became the vessel for all the worst of the GOP; all the bile and hate and grievance and paranoia had found an umbrella to shelter under, a home to put their feet up, relax and plan/plot. They had seen each other across a crowded room and it was love at first sight.

Yeah. Ick.

Do not cry for Liz Cheney, I know I won’t. She is a person who supported torture, and threw her own lesbian sister under the bus to advance her career. She is an extremist in her own right, and is now enveloped by the hate her party has been nurturing for decades. The burning to the ground of the GOP has been coming for decades and it’s not over yet. Just as the Reagan/Gingrich movement purged anyone thought of as ‘liberal’ from the party, they will now also be purged for the sin of blasphemy, the sin of pointing out the nakedness of their own emperor. The purge is had been going on in the states for the past couple months, Cheney is just the most public national example of it.

No, Liz will be fine. She might lose her seat in the next election, but she will be seen as a martyr to the cause, and have many high paying speaking gigs and consultancies with the old guard Republicans (the true GOP) to tide her over before her inevitable run for president as the ‘Sane Republican” ™. She’s good.

The problem isn’t her, the problem is the GOP, once again, straining to reshape reality to a more comfortable (for them) environment for them to thrive. They’re trying to terraform democracy by getting rid of the ‘democracy’ part and forcing the country to accept it, basically trying to ‘Cheney’ the entire country until the only votes that count will be theirs, the only laws they obey will be the ones they pass and force on the rest of us, backed by the judges they appointed.

Don’t cry for Liz, she helped make this bed, She’s snug.

Cry for democracy.

All Because of a Lie

They came in answer to a lie, told by a tiny man with pointed them at out democracy and said ‘sic’ em’. Photo by Jessica Griffin.

2024. The election is a decisive one, the Democratic candidate wins the popular vote by some 8 million, the electoral by 30-40 points. Maybe even enlarging the senate control. Everything will be fine… right?

What happens when local GOP controlled election boards in both red and purple states decide they don’t like the way their own voters have voted, when Republican controlled state legislatures refuse to certify Democratic wins, sending instead their own slate of electors to Washington? What happens when a GOP House refuses to certify the presidential vote, when the GOP refuses to seat Democratic senators?

What happens?

Think this nightmare scenario can’t happen? Remember January 6th. We believed it couldn’t happen then. Well, maybe “believed” is too strong a word, “hoped” is better. We already had all the signs, the right-wing violence and threats against officials, the storming of state capitols and city councils, the lies from top officials, Trump on down. It was building, making the violent insurrection on the DC Capitol inevitable. It was a mad rush and build, an escalation to madness and attempted coupe, and then they all went home, contrite and regretful… right?

No. It’s not over. 1/6 was prologue. It was the person before the play, it was Shakespeare, sending his actor out on the stage to tell you what you will be soon seeing, that while you are witnessing this, there is so much more you don’t see. When you see fights, please, gentles all, imagine wars.

This is the GOP; they start fights but they are planning for wars.

All for a lie, all because the huge ego of a tiny man could not deal with the obvious fact that he lost an election, could not admit he was not the god of his speeches but the grifter and con man the election revealed him to be. So, he decided he didn’t have to admit it, didn’t have to accept it, and that his voters and members of his party would back him up. And they did, to the great disgrace of this nation and the weakening of our democracy.

A lie and a man’s ego has managed to kill people and brought us where we are today. It’s… crushing, the shear stupidity of it all. Here we are, still dealing with the muck and suck of the hate and violence. Because it ain’t over, as Yogi maybe said, ‘til it’s over.

Because the insurrection didn't end with the Capitol Hill police ushering the violent insurrectionists out of the Capitol. Like an out-of-control AI, they have learned, absorbed, pinpointed where they failed and are shoring up the weak spots; ridding themselves of anyone moral enough to say ‘no’ to Trump’s election lies, casting out anyone who might have enough principle to stand against a naked power grab, and readying for all-out war on a democracy that stands in the way of total power.

Citizens don’t want to vote for them? Fine. They’ll just take that little voting problem away, thank you very much.

No, the insurrection continues with the nearly 300 anti-democratic voting bills being introduced and passed around the country, with the 'forensic audit' being conducted by the GOP version of the 3 Stooges in Arizona for no other intention than to undermine a fair election and to bolster lies. This is all leading up to the 2024 presidential election where the GOP will try, once again, to steal an election.

This time, with those objecting purged, who will say no? That's a big thing that saved us; many in the local state GOP didn't go along. These are officials who I’m not so sure were brave, but defending a system that they set up to elect Republicans that failed to do so. Not sure much ‘brave’ as defensive and indignant. But they were there and they stopped it.  

Republicans are in the process of fixing that. Stefanik for Cheney, censure and eventual expulsion of anyone who pointed out the lies (listen, I have no love for Cheney, who supported wars and torture, but in this stand, she’s actually right) anyone who might slow the Trump train to election must be crushed, whether Trump is the engineer this time or not.  

The clear message the GOP is sending to its representatives is: you stand up for the Constitution and democracy, we’ll knock you down, hard. We’ll erase you not only from the face of the GOP but the earth. Scorched earth against their own party. The reps hear, and obey.

That's what this is about; hobble democracy with even more restrictive voting laws to make themselves completely voter-proof, and if somehow that's not enough, just take it. Claim victory anyway and this time with the entire GOP on their side, they're that much closer to succeeding. 2022, 2024, they will try until they succeed.

That's the plan; permanent Republican rule, voter proof. Will it work? doesn't matter, it's what they'll try. They've been setting it up for decades.

How can they be stopped? Through attention paid, taking them seriously and heading them off though public opinion and the courts (Trump and McConnell have made that much harder, but not impossible).

This is why there are and will be constant lawsuits filed against these bills, playing a legal whack-a-mole, that's why more grassroots are forming to re-register the people the GOP are purging from the rolls. It's why the spotlight has to keep shinning and pinning them down like an ant in the sun, paying attention to the state and national GOPs and their efforts to kill democracy and snatch power.

They love to work in the dark, the bright daylight gives them away.

They’re probably working on blocking the sun.

The Republicans Hate Our Democracy, They Just Hate it.

The poor, harried and over worked election officials of Clark County listen while a fool Trump supporter goes off on an angry, incoherent rant. They’s been hearing this cap all night at this point. He went away and they went on with their business.

2020, the year the GOP stopped trying to hide their slow destruction of democracy, and openly took sledgehammers, jackhammers, and bulldozers, setting them loose on the foundation of our country; specifically, our right to vote and have that vote counted.   

This is not new, the GOP has been suppressing votes and intimidating voters for decades (the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, used to challenge Latino voters who would dare to try and vote in Arizona back in the 1960’s), in fact, this was the first time in decades that the GOP wasn’t under consent decree to not intimidate voters. Oh, you don’t know about that? Okay, let’s have Politico explain it to you:

“The decree, which dated to 1982, arose from a Democratic National Committee lawsuit charging the RNC with seeking to discourage African-Americans from voting through targeted mailings warning about penalties for violating election laws and by posting armed, off-duty law enforcement officers at the polls in minority neighborhoods.” 

Yep, that’s true. The GOP posted armed ‘watchers’ at ‘certain’ (read ‘Black or minority) communities and were righty slapped down for it. 2020, that didn’t apply anymore, because (as Chief Justice Roberts reasoned in gutting the Voting Rights Act), since it worked, it’s not needed anymore. We don’t need to protect the votes of Black folks because you know, racism is gone, everyone will play fair and do the right thing… right?

Right.

As soon as that ruling was published, states rushed to pass laws they’d already written, restricting voting; shortening, or taking away early voting, requiring voter ID’s, requiring street addresses, passing ‘exact match’ rules on voter registration, blatant gerrymandering by race, doing away with polling places in poor and minority neighborhoods, all affecting those non-White voters who stubbornly refuse to vote for the one-true party, the GOP.

Trump has been setting his plan in motion for months by crippling the United States Post Office, lying about the ‘dangers’ of vote by mail, refusing to say whether he would abide by the results of the vote, questioning whether ‘late’ ballots (those postmarked by election day and arriving during the legal window) should count, and if we should just stop counting altogether at the stroke of midnight. He wants to disenfranchise millions of legal votes, and many ion the GOP are either actively helping, and trying to ignore it.

It’s insanity, and we would never allow any elected official to go off like this without serious consequences. Yet, there’s Trump, running down democracy for all the world to see. And the world is watching and wondering what the hell is wrong with us.  

Now, we and the world are seeing Trump not only refusing to concede an election he lost by 7 million votes, he is actively undermining the election and the election officials themselves by claiming massive ‘vote fraud’ (really election fraud) perpetrated by Democrats and Republicans somehow working with the Democrats (yet, somehow, the Democrats weren’t able to steal the senate outright? And down ballot races the GOP won are still good?). And he has plenty of help from far-right media such as NewsMax (rapidly growing as Fox can’t lie fast enough anymore) and OAN, an outlet that will say or do anything to support far-right power and Trump. The fact that this threatens to tear the country apart seems to be the goal; grab and hold to power, no matter what.  

For the Republicans, it’s always about power, whether that power be in the form of money, influence, threats, or armed far-right terrorists in the streets. Right now, they still control the presidency and the senate and will use them both as weapons against democracy. This minority government will work to undermine confidence in the vote, in elections, in government, in democracy itself because those institutions are a threat to their power, and a constraint on their permanent hold on that power.

Burrowing in for destruction

How will they continue their destruction once they are out of power? By making sure they are never out of power. They have been constructing a minority government and judiciary, impervious to votes and who or what the majority wants. Running down and choking the vote is just one way of doing it. Another is to take over the government itself without have to win any votes. To this end, Trump has stripped by Executive Order, thousands of civil servants of their job protections (ones that protect them from political whims) claiming them to be 'policy making' positions. Trump then demanded lists of those workers made up that fit his new guidelines. These lists are due by January 19th, the day before inauguration. The goal here is the mass firing of thousands of essential government workers, to be replaced by 'presidential appointments', basically turning purposely non-partisan positions into politically partisan ones. It is called 'burrowing', placing political allies into civil positions, but this is on a mass scale unlike anything ever done before, and of questionable legality.

Jason Briefel, director of policy and outreach for the Senior Executives Association, a professional organization for senior civil servants, called the order “a constitutional dumpster fire that everybody’s going to have to figure out how to put out together.”

Trump soaks the place in gasoline and throws a match on the way out the door.

Boom. Doesn’t care. Anything he and the GOP can do the destroy the place, our place, our democracy, they will do. It’s what they do.

This is a Republican takeover of the government, a government-wide minority power grab of a government they, by democratic vote, lost. They have to be called out, exposed, dragged into the sunlight to show everyone what they have been doing and how close we could be to losing our democracy.

The Republicans don't care about democracy if it gets in the way of their power. They will choose power over country every time.

Here’s the Deal

Judge Amy Coney Barrett, the end-dream of the far-right move to control the courts.

Here’s the deal, as Joe Biden would say. The moderates in the Democratic Party constantly complain that the progressive wing won’t support them, won’t turn out for elections featuring moderate candidates, and complain that the moderate policies they push are, well, too moderate.

The progressive wing says that they have no seat at the table, that their ideas are consistently ignored, even ridiculed, and their support, when granted, is rarely rewarded. Why bother when they’re not listened too, are given no power in return for your support, and left out of major policy decisions?

In the past, campaigns have been won using the progressive’s ideals and style: Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign was a progressive (for its time) campaign, and Obama’s 2008, and especially his 2012 campaigns were as well. And then they turn into moderates. It’s almost a bait-and-switch. What happened?

Clinton ran hard into a wall GOP hate, constant bogus investigations, and he quickly tacked right. Obama was always more moderate than he campaigned, and was only too happy to run a center left administration. He also faced strong GOP opposition, taking too long to take their threats seriously, not believing the Republicans when they said they wanted to destroy him.

The deal is? The Republicans DO want to destroy you! Believe them when they say this, they’re serious. And they have been working towards this for decades. Denying Obama more than a hundred judicial nominees, and a SCOTUS seat, to pack the courts with far right (and unqualified) judges. It was a major, long awaited play for them and now this last rush to pack the Supreme Court is endgame, probably checkmate.

How does our moderate Democratic candidate want to address this? With a plan to take back the stolen courts with a legal expansion, to protect rights and laws that have been passed?

No.

He wants a blue-ribbon, bi-partisan committee.

Joe.

Pal…

No.  

Buddy, you’re a nice guy, I like you, already voted for you. But this is not the way to handle what the Republicans have been up to. This is pretty much what they (barring killing it altogether) want you to do. It’s like this; you know when you would ask your parents “can we go the movies” or “have pizza tonight” and they would say ‘We’ll see.” “We’ll see” was always “No.”

Always.

It’s a parent’s way of saying ‘no’ without have to disappoint expectant, hopeful faces by slapping them with a blunt declaration.

A ‘committee’ is the “We’ll see” of government.

This is just a way to get the subject off the table and kill momentum. This is exactly why the left has had it with the moderates and why the Democrats have gotten steamrolled by the right time after time. The moderates seem to think they're dealing with a reasonable, functioning GOP, and no amount of evidence will convince that they face a party of radicals, intent on destroying them and repealing the 20th Century. Haven't they been paying attention to the hearings going on right now?!

The moderates will dither, think, investigate and when they finally decided to act, it'll be a year too late. The right has no compunction to follow rules and will be throwing case after case at the now far-right SCOTUS to kill voting rights, healthcare, kill gun restrictions, and destroy protections for the LGBTQ community. They’re achieved their dream, and they’re giddy with power. They will move as fast as they can, while a bi-partisan, blue-ribbon panel meets, drinks coffee and snags Costco poppy seed muffins from the muffin basket. And talks and talks…

The GOP is seeing their electoral power shrink as the country changes and diversifies, and instead of trying to appeal to a larger majority, they doubled down on what they have, and threw themselves into a decades long quest to install their minority power in such a way that they can still control the country without being elected by a majority. Packing the courts (as McConnell himself called it) would do just that.

If the GOP insists on going forward and voting in this last attempt to killing the Living Constitution, the Democrats must take steps to reign them in, using every tool at their disposal. We have to hit the ground running, prepared to contain and repair the damage done by righting the system and restoring some fairness to institutions that have been deliberately broken.

We don’t have time to stop and think too much about it, and I doubt that are any sane Republicans who would participate in such a committee (the party would never forgive them).

It’s up to us, Joe, don’t tie our hands when we need them to fight.

Does Pence Dismiss All women, or Just These Two?

Sen Harris and VP Pence. The Somewhat Less-Rude Debate.

Did it ‘move the needle’ to use the cliché phrase of the debate watcher.

Probably not.

I say that as everyone is pretty much set, and many have already voted, so there weren’t a lot of minds changed tonight. The fact that this was done live with both candidates in the same room instead of in different locations (Mike Pence has been exposed to covid and should by all rights, be in quarantine), and the Pence campaign throwing a hissy about having a plexiglass shield gave it a bit of excitement, but that excitement didn’t really dhow up at the debate.

Well, the fly that crawled around Mike Pence’s hair for two minutes twenty seconds will probably will get more ink than Pence himself.

Sen Kamala Harris spoke well, smiled, and strongly made her points. Vice President Mike Pence frowned a lot, shook his head and… interrupted Harris and talked over here and the moderator, ignored his entreaties’ that his time was up, often talking for another minute. More than once Sen Harris had to remind VP Pence that she had the floor and she was talking.

This… was not a good look for Pence, he came off misogynistic and rude. This was supposed to be the ‘polite’ debate, the one that made up for the ‘shit show’ of Trump/Biden last week. Is this a purposeful tactic, or is Pence a guy who just doesn’t value what women have to say? I’m sure a lot of women saw that, and it reminded them a lot of what they’ve had to out up with for years.

So, who won?

Oh, Harris, walking away.

Really, Pence had a hard record to defend, 214,000 dead because of a disaster of a response to the coronavirus, economy cratered, huge virus outbreak at the White House that infected 34 people, including the President and the First Lady. America is a laughing stock around the world right now.

Defend that.

Harris did everything she needed to do tonight and did it well. She got her points over strongly, came off as warm and friendly, but direct and no-nonsense. Pence was... okay. He lied his ass off, and ran out of talking points halfway through and just started repeating himself.

Problem is, Pence needed to do better than 'okay', he needed to show he wasn't a raving lunatic like his boss, he needed to show some decorum, and he needed to convince people that all the crap that has happened under Trump is somehow Biden’s fault. He didn't really do that. How could you?

First off, he was rude, as I said. Harris had to swat him back a couple times for interrupting her, trying to talk over her, and just lying. Again, he talked over his time, ignored the moderator, talked over her as well, and acted like he was entitled to go over. It was rude, and it looked misogynistic.

Really, does he treat all women this way, as if what they have to say doesn't matter? After the horrendous bullying performance of Trump, Pence had to show he could follow the rules; he failed. He was stiff, boring and he had no real passion for what he was saying. He was... okay, and okay right now is a failure.

So, Harris for the win. I don't imagine it will move the needle much, one way or the other., but it shows there are sane people in the race, who actually care not to infect people.

And that should be something.

They Can Run…

Mitch, in the shadows, ready to jump out at democracy.

The GOP is showing how scared they are…

Right now, 66% of Americans want the selection of the next Justice for the Supreme Court to be done after the election, by the next president. 50% of Republicans think so as well. That’s according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Sunday.

It’s pretty obvious most American do not want Donald Trump anywhere near the next SCOTUS pick. Rushing a new nominee, and shoving it though in what would have to be record speed is incredibly unpopular. In fact, it’s suicidal to the GOP senate majority. This most shows the Republicans not only to be blatant hypocrites, but not caring in the least about the will of the people in replacing the most admired Justice on the Supreme Court. Don’t care, gonna do it anyway, screw you.

The GOP majority is near and dear to McConnell, why would he throw that away, and cause a (hopefully) ton of bricks to fall on him and his precious majority?

Joe Biden is ahead in the polls by 7 points, and he’s been leading since he secured the nomination. Trump has never led in the polls, unlike 2016 where it was close and leads traded a few times.

Never once.

That’s why: they think Trump is going to lose. Big time. If you going to get evicted anyway, why not burn the house down on the way out?

Over the weekend, from Friday when Justice Ginsburg’s death was announced and McConnell’s callus announcement minutes later that he planned to move forward with a nomination vote, ActBlue, a non-profit dedicated to helping Democratic candidates fund elections, raised over 100 million dollars. Individual Democratic candidates around the country saw their fundraising numbers shoot up. The GOP is defending 23 Senate seats this election year, with an incredibly unpopular president whom they cannot let go or their Trump loving base will turn on them. Many of those seats are underwater; Arizona (Martha McSally), and Colorado (Cory Gardner) look to be lost, Maine (Susan Collins) is behind, others like South Carolina (Lindsey Graham) are tied. South Carolina! With so many seats up, so many close or look to be gone, why do something that will make an already angry electorate even angrier?

Well, if you’re being evicted, and you are burning it anyway, might as well have something to show for it. The control of the Supreme Court, something the right has been wanting to decades, is that thing. McConnell must believe it’s worth killing his majority for that control (Trump doesn’t think that far ahead, it’s Mitch calling this one). Now comes the best, biggest, and baddest ‘own the libs’ campaign ever. They don’t need a senate majority now, they can have the SCOTUS kill anything the Democrats might pass.

This now puts them in place to destroy the ACA and take insurance away from millions, to finally kill abortion rights, the minimum wage, and all the other far-right things they have been promising since the formation of the Birch Society and the Goldwater campaign. I imagine they’ll try to repeal the entire Civil Rights Era, especially voting laws. Expect nothing the least bit progressive to be allowed to live for a generation. At least.

The problem is (there are many, but this is the biggest) these are popular programs with majority support. This new SCOTUS will not be the least bit interested in justice, but settling grievances with ‘libs’ and ‘atheists’ and host of others they feel have harmed them or their community. They will be going down a long list of perceived slights, gathered over decades, and start ticking them off one-by-one. We will have a Supreme Court not answerable to the will of the people, and, frankly, not ready paying any attention to precedent or settled law. It will be a far-right organization bent on repealing as much of the 20th century as it can get its hands on.

It’s Minority rule, basically what we’ve had in government for the past four years, but this time write large and lasting for decades. Now the GOP, who never liked governing anyway, can sit back while the SCOTUS, and all the federal judges they’ve appointed, do their work.

They don’t need a majority anymore.

This is why if the Democrats get control, they need to kill the filibuster, admit DC and Puerto Rico, and even the Virgin Islands as states, expand the federal judiciary, pass laws to kill partisan gerrymandering, and yes, expand the SCOTUS. The GOP will jump up and down, screaming, but let them. They don’t matter.

As they taught us, if you have the majority, the other side loses. Make them feel it.