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.

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?

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 Insurrection Was Live Streamed

Huh. Where is the tear gas? Why aren’t the cops beating these MAGA idiots with baton, hitting them with rubber bullets? Weird.

Here we are. Gil Scott Heron was wrong, the revolution, the insurrection really, was televised. The nation, the world saw it happening in real time. In real time we saw a group of speakers whip the crowd up over lies and fantasies of a ‘stolen election’ with the President aiming the angry thousands directly at his own Vice President. It is a stupefying fact that a sitting president of the United states tried to overthrow the government and install himself for another term as president is... well, is there a word to describe this? It's such an overwhelming thing, it beggar’s description.

Seriously, I am so angry, furious, and fascinated at the same time. I find myself pulled in every direction. Furious at Trump and his enablers, who have been building up to this since 2015 with his CYA talk of 'rigged elections' (in case he lost, which he expected to). Yes, something like this has been coming for years with the cynical exploitation of the fear and grievance of his base. But I am fascinated by the passion and anger that drives the 'disenfranchised' Whites to think a grifting 'billionaire' gives a damn about them.

I fully expected something like this insurrection to happen, but not so naked and raw, so exposed and open. It was a river of grievance and anger, flowing from across the country and firehosed by Trump and his enablers right at the seat of American government. We must hold these terrorists accountable, every last one of them to the full extent of the law, but they were following the orders of people like Trump and his sycophantic and cynical enablers. They are every bit as much to blame as the Trump insurrectionists themselves. All need to be dragged blinking into the light of justice, but blame should be apportioned to those who believed the lies and followed, and those who didn't but thought it would look good on their resume. Those who called to overthrow a government with their eyes on 2022, or 2024.

These are resume builders, the cynical enablers, the 'why not-ers' including most of the 147 Republicans who 'objected' to Biden's palpable win (the number went down, slightly, to 138 after the insurrection), to the process of democracy they took an oath to defend.  Yet, here they were, objecting to avoid mean tweets, to position themselves for whatever race was next, ignoring the Constitution to gain the favor of a man who also ignored the Constitution. 

And five people died.

Was it worth it?

The 'base' seems to think so, pledging their soul to Trump and his 'next term' that will never materialize, a phantom 'four more years' the promise of which Trump has used to suck 300 million dollars out of them. They are willing to destroy democracy in order to ‘save’ it, by installing the dictator of their choice. 

This is not who we are!

But really, it is

It's crazy, a plot of a movie review on a 'so-bad-it's-good' youtube channel, not at all the sort of thing you associate with America. But that is because I'm a middle-aged White guy. Black and Brown will tell this is the America they live every day. Angry White people shoeing their ability to do the things that any person not White would be killed for.

They see no irony in this. Angry Whites thinking they have the right to cut in line, say anything they want, do anything without fear of being shot and killed (screaming into a policeman's face, actually pulling them to the ground and beating them into unconsciousness with an American flag), yep, everyday reality to many. I look at this and wonder in horror, they look and nod in affirmation. I see sick aberration, they see nothing new. 

Trump and the GOP know this, and play hard to the fear, the hate, and anger of the dying light, the panic of the waning White power, they mine that fear like the desperate prospector chipping away at a played-out mine, knowing this is all they have. This is why they fall into line with Trump and 'Trumpism', because it has taken over the party.

Without that White anger, the GOP would be nothing.

On my other site (www.tompstewart.com) I write about pop culture, history, comic books, my life as an actor and writer, various odd things. I would like to get back to that, really. I would dearly love to write about 1960s Batman comics, but these are not the times for an in-depth discussion of Batman’s ‘New Look’ of 1964. I can’t look away from this shit-show that is the Trump administration, and neither can history. I have to look, whether I want to or not.

We must evaluate and assign blame, hold the guilty accountable, now, and in future elections.

It’s our duty as Americans.