OK, I’ve got to do this: Here’s the definition of “Libertarian:”

libertarian /lĭb″ər-târ′ē-ən/

noun

1. One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state.
2. One who believes in free will.
3. One who maintains the doctrine of the freedom of the will (especially in an extreme form): opposed to necessitarian.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition 

Most “conservatives” consider themselves “libertarian” to some degree or another. And, yes, I’m talking about republicans – just look at the definition and that’s what they – still today – (unless you look at their “policies”) would call a “typical republican.” You know, less government, more individual “freedom.” So, let’s just take a bit closer look at what I’ve been referring to as “today’s republicans” for the past 20 years. (Keeping in mind the now infamous “Koch Brothers” – only one “brother” is left – have been funding the rightward “drift” of the republican party since David Koch received about 1% of the vote in 1980 as the VP candidate of the “Libertarian Party.”

The Koch’s supported the push which ultimately got Roe v Wade overturned by the right wing Supreme Court – pushed in that direction by a web of right wing “libertarians” who want the government to stay out of their business, but don’t hesitate to get into “yours.” We’re talking about not only the right of a woman to have control over her own body, but the hypocrisy goes well beyond that. So, with the present 6 – 3 right wing majority on the court we’re seeing one “right” after another being scaled back. It’s as if the Court wants to turn “we the people” back to the Gilded Age (or worse). I’ve said many times “It’s easier to lose a ‘right’ than to get it back!

Let’s take a one by one look at some of the classic republican hypocrisy. Of course, the issue that first comes to mind is the issue of abortion. Now, as I’ve explained here several times the “abortion” issue is far from “black and white.” We’re seeing one example after another of women/girls who find themselves in dangerous circumstances – with the “media” picking up on the examples where women have the wherewithal to hire a lawyer to help them navigate what amounts to, in many instances, a life threatening circumstance. The most recent example was Kate Cox in Texas who was carrying a dying/dead fetus and Texas Attorney General (corrupt) Ken Paxton refused to allow her to have the life saving surgery she needed – causing her to leave the state to receive treatment. I’ll put it this way – if you don’t believe in abortion, don’t have one. (Wouldn’t that be the “libertarian” point of view?)

“Maximizing individual rights and minmizing the role of the state?” you ask – of course not, just the opposite. This is becoming routine in the republican party – which was “libertarian” until, well, it wasn’t – which was NEVER! And, of course, as I always say, with republicans there’s always more. The other day I was watching a clip of Pete Buttigieg, the 19th Secretary of Transportation, a member of Naval Intelligence in Afghanistan, and the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. He came across in this interview (with Brian Tyler Cohen) as someone who’s VERY intelligent and who “knows his stuff” when it comes to the enactment of the so-called “Bipartisan infrastructure bill” passed in President Biden’s first two years “at the helm.” Listening to him brought some excitement to mind in an area which has been “left behind” for the past couple of decades.

America is falling farther and farther behind the rest of the world when it comes to our outdated and crumbling infrastructure. FINALLY, something’s being done about it. From the roads and bridges, to the build out of high speed internet into rural areas, to the EV charging stations (and the impending buildout of EV autos), to the high speed rail projects, and a whole lot more my aging mind can’t remember – it was MOST impressive. UNLESS, of course, you’re a republican. Republicans OPPOSE anything which is intended to mitigate the effects of the Climate Crisis. (Are you paying attention young Americans) And, more disgusting, republicans OPPOSE anything done by Buttigieg because, well, he’s – dare I use the term – “queer?” He’s “gay.” He’s got a gay husband and him and his husband have adopted a set of twins. OMG, that has set the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s and Donald Trump’s “hair on fire.”

In fact, Trump made a special posting on his (un)Truth Social (network) on Christmas day giving his example of “Christmas cheer.” I won’t try to paraphrase it, that wouldn’t do, so, here it is: After directing holiday wishes to world leaders “both good and bad” Trump aimed his vitriol at, well, among others, me – as follows: “None … are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA,” Trump finished his rant with “MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

I’ve got to spend a little time on that one (and, of course, he also attacked Joe Biden and Jack Smith, but, at this point, that should go without saying – that’s a daily ritual). First, our “borders” aren’t “open.” There are MILLIONS attempting to cross the border from Central and South America – but, President Biden can’t change the border laws – that’s up to Congress. The Biden administration is rejecting potential immigrants in record numbers – and, the idea they’re a bunch of “rapists, murderers, or terrorists” is not supported by the facts. Next, inflation his dwindled by about 70% in the last year – near the targets of the Fed. Plus, there have been record jobs numbers, record unemployment, and wages growing faster than inflation for the first time since, well, I can’t remember.

I’ll keep this one simple, the Afghanistan “surrender” was negotiated by, you guessed it, Trump. Trump essentially enabled the Taliban’s return to power – Biden simply attempted to carry out the task with the number of troops at hand (Was it awkward? Yes, but take a bit of time to check out our withdrawal from Viet Nam. It’s really hard to admit – when you’re the U.S. – you’ve been losing this “war” for the past 20 years. Next; The “Green New Scam” as Trump puts it just might allow our younger generation to have an inhabitable planet in another 30 years, just sayin…. although there’s a WHOLE lot more to do. Oh yes, taxes aren’t any higher today than they were when Trump was in office, in my view, unfortunately. I believe taxes SHOULD be higher in top incomes and, for certain, on Capital Gains taxes – which is how America’s filthy rich – yes, I’m talking about you jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. etc. – gain their “salaries.” Via “stock options.” People like Bezos and Musk and Zuckerberg can’t sell their shares fast enough to dwindle their holdings – i.e., they get more stock than they sell each year. Bezos actually moved from Washington State to Miami because Washington passed a Capital Gains tax. Yowee!!! GREED is a terrible thing!

There’s no energy independence because, despite the U.S. being the world’s leading producer of oil, it is sold on the international markets – i.e. to the highest bidder. Presumably much of it ends up in America’s polluting cars, but we produce more than we use. So, really, why do we continue importing oil from places like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, ect.? Click HERE. So, on this one, just like the others, Trump is, surprise surprise, full of Bull Sh*t, Not sure what he means by “Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran” other than on those topics he’s also full of Bull Sh*t. Suggesting we have a “woke” military infers we actually have leaders in the military who aren’t white – which is true. If you’re a white nationalist/supremacist like Trump, well, that’s an uncomfortable feeling. (If he actually has “feelings”)

Here’s where it gets really personal for me. When he refers to the “All Electric Car Lunacy” I do take that personally, I’ve owned TWO Chevrolet Volts – the one I have now has an electric motor along with a gas generator which runs the electric motor when I use up my EV miles. Depending on the time of year I get anywhere from 50 – 70 EV miles per charge – with an additional range of about 350 miles with the gas generator. To me, a great concept, but Chevrolet quit making them in 2019. In the 7 years I’ve owned this car I’ve put about 70 gallons of gas into the generator. It costs about $25 per month to charge it if I drive it at least 1000 miles. My wife is on her 2nd Nissan Leaf which is ALL Electric and this one gets around 250 EV miles per charge and also costs about $25/ month to keep charged. When I retired in 2014 I had 32 Solar panels installed on our outbuildings and we’ve produced over 90,000 KW. of power since then – about 10,000 KW. per year.

I don’t think people like me are trying to “destroy our once great USA.” In fact, I’ve gone to great lengths to point out the USA is great, has been great – despite ALL the “warts” (like what it’s been like if you’re not white) – except for maybe the four years when Trump was in the “White House.” I have to say it was no surprise to me Trump would say in all CAPS “MAY THEY ROT IN HELL” to, apparently, people like me. Of course, he then follows that up with “Again, Merry Christmas,” as if he’s already said it. Honestly, I have to wonder how his base is made up with “Conservative Christians.” Oh yes, that gets me back to my original point – the hypocrisy of “libertarian” i.e. “conservative” republicans. That kind of language doesn’t seem compatible with the Bible I read. (I’ve read it cover to cover a couple times)

Where was I? Oh yes, the Buttigiegs. Libertarians/Conservatives are looking to roll back the progress made in America to where people who are gay no longer have to hide in the shadows and can expect the same rights and privileges as the rest of us. I knew several students in my teaching career who had “two moms” and, in every instance, the families seemed “healthy” to me. I’ve never considered it “my business” to be probing into the personal lives of anyone else. I’ve got plenty to worry about managing my own life. My understanding is we’re all equal under the law. Correct me if I’m wrong. Of course, republicans are attempting to “turn back the clock” to when that was iess evident – however, I say we’ve still got a ways to go to live up to our lofty “ideals.”

What about, for example, Voting Rights? Of course, it’s republicans attempting to restrict voting rights in state after state because they believe the fewer the number of voters the better chance they have to “win.” (In essence, they’re a minority party, and CHEATING is the only way they can win) Civil Rights? Why do you think they’ve been programming their minions to hate the word “woke?” What do you think it means? Where does it come from? Well, It comes out of the experience of Black people of knowing that you have to be conscious of the politics of race, class, gender, systemic racism, ways that society is stratified and not equal. So, when you hear a republican use the term “woke” just substitute the word “Black” and you’ll get their “drift.” With republicans, every word is a “dog whistle.”

How about education? Certainly, “libertarians aren’t hypocritical there, are they?” Well, to make this easy on you, remember, “libertarians” are republicans – so, OF COURSE they’re hypocritical there, just like (well, just about) everywhere else. Let me remind you, if you’re a student, republicans want to determine which books you can read. They absolutely want to exclude Black History (ie “woke” history) from the curriculum and they’re actually BURNING some of the best books I’ve ever read. One of my favorites was “CASTE” by Isabel Wilkerson. It was a riveting history of SLAVERY in America like I’d never read before and, of course, it’s being banned in one “red state” after another. As a retired educator, my first thought after reading it was it should be required reading in High School classes across America. As the saying goes “you’ll never solve a problem until you understand the problem exists.” I’ll let you figure that one out.

I’ve sort of mentioned the Climate Crisis – and it IS a CRISIS. Yikes! in the stomach wrenching thought Americans would re-elect Trump to another four AWFUL years (and, who knows, maybe more if he pulls off his “dictator” thing) he’s promised to “only be a dictator on day one” – which would include the promise to “drill, drill, drill” (of course, to me, that comment is simply one more statement verifying Trump is an IDIOT – because, as I pointed out above, we’re already “drill, drill, drilling.” How would it be possible to “drill, drill, drill” on “day one.” Oh yes, I remind myself Trump believes his followers are, well, STUPID and they’ll believe anything he says. (Sadly, he’s correct)

I could go on and on – republicans say they believe in “law and order” unless they’re the ones breaking the laws. Likewise, they believe in the constitution – except where it doesn’t suit their purposes. They believe in “free markets” except where it interferes with their profiteering. They believe in lower taxes unless you’re a lower socioeconomic class American – then they want to make sure you’re paying enough taxes. They believe government should avoid interfering in business, unless they are unable to make up their own rules in running their own business. (ie, serving queer people, etc.) With republicans you can pick the issue and, in essence, the hypocrisy is a never ending cycle. Trump, in his business, is about to be adjudicated, once more, a massive fraudster – likely being kicked out of doing business in New York. He thinks he should be able to commit whatever FRAUD he wants and, of course, the government should stay out of it. Do you see how this works? Maybe this is a better way to put this – if republicans accuse you of doing something illegal, that means they’re actually doing it! For example, how many gay republicans have made their “mark” by bashing gays? Full Stop!

Final Thought: Do you still believe Trump “didn’t do it?” When it comes to the 91 FELONIES he’s been charged with? Really? OK, Do you still believe Trump was telling the “truth” when he said ALL twenty five women who came forward and claimed he’s sexually assaulted them were LYING? Really? Did the jury get it wrong when they said Trump was guilty of, in essence, raping E. Jean Carroll? You know the woman he said “is not my type” and then identified her in his deposition for the trial as his first wife. Really? (And OBTW – the next E. Jean Carroll trial will simply be for the jury to decide damages – this should be no surprise – right after Trump was declared guilty of “defaming” her by the jury – right on que he DEFAMED her once again. (I’m anxious to see if he’ll do it once again, a third time, after this next verdict.

Did you notice the punitive damages awarded the two Georgia election workers who were defamed by Rudy Giuliani? Should Trump be a bit nervous – we’re talking $10 MILLION plus potential punitive damages – which, if I understand it correctly, can be four times compensatory damages – the $10 MILLION. That could potentially be $50 MILLION! That, and in the middle to end of January, the verdict – meaning how much he’ll owe in DAMAGES – will come down in Trump’s FRAUD case in Manhattan. New York’s Attorney General has sued for $250 MILLION – I’ve heard reports the final amount could be between $500 MILLION and $1 BILLION. Will that be enough to shut Trump’s mouth – or will he have to be heading to jail to SHUT the f*#k up? The walls are closing in and the ONLY thing he knows how to do is to lash out and ATTACK his “enemies.” It seems to me he simply keeps COMPOUNDING his problems – while GRIFTING his minions – who he treats as if they’re STUPID – for even more of their hard earned MONEY! They keep paying, does that mean his right? Stay tuned……..

Why have Americans embraced so many toxic GOP scams?

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The GOP — to keep the support of “average” American voters while they work entirely for the benefit of giant corporations, the weapons and fossil fuel industries, and the morbidly rich — have run a whole series of scams on voters ever since the original Reagan grift of trickle-down economics.

Oddly, there’s nothing comparable on the Democratic side. No lies or BS to justify unjustifiable policies: Democrats just say up-front what they’re all about:

Healthcare and quality education for all. Treat all people and religions with respect and fairness. Trust women to make their own decisions. Raise the pay of working people and support unionization. Get assault weapons off the streets. Do something about climate change. Clean up toxic waste sites and outlaw pesticides that damage children. Replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.

Nonetheless, the media persists in treating the two parties as if they were equally honest and equally interested in the needs of all Americans. In part, that’s because one of the GOP’s most effective scams — the “liberal media bias” scam — has been so successful ever since Lee Atwater invented it back in the early years of the Reagan Revolution.

For example, right now there’s a lot of huffing and puffing in the media about how the Supreme Court might rule in the case of Trump being thrown off the ballot in Colorado. They almost always mention “originalism” and “textualism” as if they’re honest, good-faith methods for interpreting the Constitution when, in fact, they’re cynical scams invented to justify unjustifiable rulings.

Thus, the question: how much longer will Americans (and the American media) continue to fall for the GOP’s scams?

They include:

— Originalism: Robert Bork came up with this scam back in the 1980s when Reagan appointed him to the Supreme Court and he couldn’t come up with honest or reasonable answers for his jurisprudential positions, particularly those justifying white supremacy. By saying that he could read the minds of the Founders and Framers of the Constitution, Bork gave himself and future generations of Republicans on the Court the fig leaf they needed.

The simple fact is that there was rarely a consensus among the Framers and among the politicians of the founding generation about pretty much anything. And to say that we should govern America by the standards of a white-men-only era before even the industrial revolution much less today’s modern medicine, communications, and understanding of economics is absurd on its face.

— Voter Fraud: This scam, used by white supremacists across the South in the years after the failure of Reconstruction to prevent Black people from voting, was reinvented in 1993, when Bill Clinton and Democrats in Congress succeeded in passing what’s today called the “Motor Voter” law that lets states automatically register people to vote when they renew their driver’s licenses. Republicans freaked out at the idea that more people might be voting, and claimed the new law would cause voter fraud (it didn’t).

By 1997, following Democratic victories in the 1996 election, it had become a major meme to justify purging voting rolls of Black and Hispanic people. Today it’s the justification for over 300 voter suppression laws passed in Red states in just in the past 2 years, all intended to make it harder for working class people, minorities, women, the elderly dependent on Social Security, and students (all Democratic constituencies) to vote.

The most recent iteration of it is Donald Trump‘s claim that the 2020 election, which he lost by fully 7 million votes, was stolen from him by voter fraud committed by Black people in major cities.

As a massive exposé in yesterday’s Washington Post titled “GOP Voter-Fraud Crackdown Overwhelmingly Targets Minorities, Democrats” points out, the simple reality is that voter fraud in the US is so rare as to be meaningless, and has never, ever, anywhere been documented to swing a single election.

But Republicans have been using it as a very effective excuse to make it harder for Democratic voters to cast a ballot, and to excuse their purging almost 40,000,000 Americans off the voting rolls in the last five years.

Right To Work (For Less): back in the 1940s, Republicans came up with this scam. Over the veto of President Harry Truman, they pushed through what he referred to as “the vicious Taft-Hartley Act,” which lets states make it almost impossible for unions to survive. Virtually every Red state has now adopted “right to work,” which has left their working class people impoverished and, because it guts the political power of working people, their minimum wage unchanged.

— Bush v Gore: The simple reality is that Al Gore won Florida in 2000, won the national popular vote by a half-million, and five Republicans on the Supreme Court denied him the presidency. Florida Governor and George W. Bush’s brother Jeb had his Secretary of State, Kathryn Harris, throw around 90,000 African Americans off the voting rolls just before the election and then, when the votes had come in and it was clear former Vice President Al Gore had still won, she invented a new category of ballots for the 2000 election: “Spoiled.”

As The New York Times reported a year after the 2000 election when the consortium of newspapers they were part of finally recounted all the ballots:

“While 35,176 voters wrote in Bush’s name after punching the hole for him, 80,775 wrote in Gore’s name while punching the hole for Gore. [Florida Secretary of State] Katherine Harris decided that these were ‘spoiled’ ballots because they were both punched and written upon and ordered that none of them should be counted.
“Many were from African American districts, where older and often broken machines were distributed, causing voters to write onto their ballots so their intent would be unambiguous.”

George W. Bush “won” the election by 537 votes in Florida, because the statewide recount — which would have revealed Harris’s crime and counted the “spoiled” ballots, handing the election to Gore (who’d won the popular vote by over a half-million) — was stopped when George HW Bush appointee Clarence Thomas became the deciding vote on the Supreme Court to block the recount order from the Florida Supreme Court.

Harris’ decision to not count the 45,599 more votes for Gore than Bush was completely arbitrary; there is no legal category and no legal precedent, outside of the old Confederate states simply refusing to count the votes of Black people, to justify it. The intent of the voters was unambiguous. And the 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court jumped in to block the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court (in violation of the 10th Amendment) just in time to prevent those “spoiled” votes from being counted, cementing Bush’s illegitimate presidency.

— Money is “Free Speech” and corporations are “persons”: This scam was invented entirely by Republicans on the Supreme Court, although billionaire GOP donors — infuriated by campaign contribution and dark money limits put into law in the 1970s after the Nixon bribery scandals — had been funding legal efforts to get it before the Court for years.

In a decision that twists logic beyond rationality, the five Republicans on the Court — over the strong, emphatic objections of all the Democrats on the Court — ruled that our individual right to free speech guaranteed in the First Amendment also includes the “right to listen,” as I lay out in detail in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America and they wrote in Citizens United:

“The right of citizens to inquire, to hear, to speak, and to use information to reach consensus is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it.”

Without being able to hear from the most knowledgeable entities, they argued, Americans couldn’t be well-informed about the issues of the day.

And who was in the best position to inform us? As Lewis Powell himself wrote in the Bellotti decision, echoed in Citizens United, it’s those corporate “persons”:

“Corporations and other associations, like individuals, contribute to the ‘discussion, debate, and the dissemination of information and ideas’ that the First Amendment seeks to foster…”
“Political speech is ‘indispensable to decision-making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation rather than an individual.’ … The inherent worth of the speech in terms of its capacity for informing the public does not depend upon the identity of its source, whether corporation, association, union, or individual.”

They doubled down, arguing that corporations and billionaires should be allowed to dump unlimited amounts of money into the political campaigns of those politicians they want to own so long as they go into dark money operations instead of formal campaigns. What was called “bribery” for over 200 years is now “free speech”:

“For the reasons explained above, we [five Republicans on the Supreme Court] now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”

— Cutting taxes raises revenue: As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman notes, the idea promoted by Reagan, Bush, and Trump to justify almost $30 trillion in cumulative tax cuts for billionaires and giant corporations is “The Biggest Tax Scam in History.”

Reagan first pitched this to justify cutting the top income tax rate on the morbidly rich from 74% down to 25% in the 1980s, and it was reprised by both George W. Bush and Donald Trump for their own massive tax breaks for their well-off donors and peers.

The simple fact is that America went from a national debt of over 124% of GDP following World War II to a national debt of a mere $800 billion when Reagan came into office. We’d been paying down our debt steadily, and had enough money to build the interstate highway system, brand new schools and hospitals from coast to coast, and even to put men on the moon.

Since Reagan rolled out his tax scam, however, our national debt has gone from less than a trillion in 1980 to over 30 trillion today: we’re back, in terms of debt, to where we were during WWII when FDR raised the tippy-top bracket income tax rate to 90% to deal with the cost of the war. We should be back to that tax rate for the morbidly rich today, as well.

— Destroying unions helps workers: In their eagerness to help their corporate donors, Reagan rolled out a novel idea in 1981, arguing that instead of helping working people, corrupt “union bosses” were actually ripping them off.

Union leaders work on a salary and are elected by their members: the very idea that they, like CEOs who are compensated with stock options and performance bonuses and appointed by their boards, could somehow put their own interests first is ludicrous. Their only interest, if they want to retain their jobs, is to do what the workers want.

But Reagan was a hell of a salesman, and he was so successful with this pitch he cut union membership in America during his and his VP’s presidency by more than 50 percent.

— Corporations can provide better Medicare than the government: For a corporation to exist over the long term, particularly a publicly-traded corporation, it must produce a profit. That’s why when George W. Bush and friends invented the Medicare Advantage scam in 2003 they allowed Advantage providers to make as much as 20 percent in pure profit.

Government overhead for real Medicare is around 2% — the cost of administration — and corporations could probably run their Advantage programs with a similar overhead, but they have to make that 20% profit nut, so they hire larger staffs to examine every single request to pay for procedures, surgeries, tests, imaging, and even doctors’ appointments. And reject, according to The New York Times, around 18% of them.

“Advantage plans also refused to pay legitimate claims, according to the report. About 18 percent of payments were denied despite meeting Medicare coverage rules, an estimated 1.5 million payments for all of 2019.”

When they deny you care, they make money. If they ran like real Medicare and paid every bill (except the fraudulent ones), they’d merely break even, and no company can do that. Nonetheless, Republicans continue to claim that “choice” in the marketplace is more important than fixing Medicare.

With the $140 billion that for-profit insurance companies overcharge us and steal from our government every year, if Medicare Advantage vanished there would be enough money left over to cut Medicare premiums to almost nothing and add dental, vision, and hearing. But don’t expect Republicans to ever go along with that: they take too much money from the insurance industry (thanks to five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court).

— More guns means more safety: Remember the NRA’s old “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”? They’re still at it, and there’s hardly a single Republican in America who will step up and do anything about the gun violence crisis that is uniquely experienced by our nation.

Bullets are now the leading cause of death among children in the US, and we’re literally the only country in the entire world for which that is true. And a child living in Red state Mississippi is ten times more likely to die from a gun than a child in Blue state Massachusetts. But as long as the NRA owns them, Republicans will never do anything about it.

— The media has a liberal bias: This canard was started by Lee Atwater in an attempt to “work the refs” of the media, demanding that they stop pointing out the scams Republicans were engaging in (at the time it was trickle-down). The simple reality is that America’s media, from TV and radio networks to newspapers to websites, are overwhelmingly owned by billionaires and corporations with an openly conservative bent.

There are over 1500 rightwing radio stations (and 1000 religious broadcasters, who are increasingly political), three rightwing TV networks, and an army of tens of thousands of paid conservative activists turning out news releases and policy papers in every state, every day of the year. There are even well-funded social media operations.

There is nothing comparable on the left. Even MSNBC is owned by Comcast and so never touches issues of corporate governance, media bias (they fired Brian Stelter!), or the corruption of Congress by its big pharma and Medicare Advantage advertisers.

— Republicans are the party of faith: Republicans claim to be the pious ones, from Mike Johnson’s creepy “chastity ball” with his daughter, to their hate of queer people, to their embrace of multimillionaire TV and megachurch preachers. But Democrats, who are more accepting of people of all faiths and tend not to wear their religion on their sleeves, are the ones following Jesus’ teachings.

Jesus, arguably the founder of Christianity, was emphatic that you should never pray in public, do your good deeds in private as well, and that the only way to get to heaven is to feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick, and love every other human as much as you love yourself.

Republicans, on the other hand, wave their piety like a bloody shirt, issue press releases about their private charities, and fight every effort to have our government feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick, or even respect, much less love, people who look or live or pray differently from them.

— Crime is exploding and you’re safer living in an area Republicans control: In fact, crime of almost all sorts is at a low not seen since 1969. Only car thefts are up, and some of that appears to have to do with social media “how to” videos and a few very vulnerable makes of autos.

New FBI statistics find that violent crime nationwide is down 8 percent; in big cities it’s down nearly 15 percent, robbery and burglary are down 10 and 12 percent respectively.

But what crime there is is overwhelmingly happening in Red states. Over the past 21 years, all types of crime in Red states are 23 percent higher than in Blue states: in 2020, murder rates were a mind-boggling 40 percent higher in states that voted for Trump than those Biden carried.

— Global warming is a hoax: Ever since fossil fuel billionaires and the fossil fuel industry started using the legal bribery rights five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court created for them, virtually every Republican politician in the nation is either directly on the take or benefits indirectly from the massive infrastructure created by the Koch brothers and other fossil fuel barons. As a result, it’s almost impossible to find even one brave, truthful Republican who’s willing to do anything about the climate crisis that is most likely to crash not just the US but civilization itself.

— Hispanic immigrants are “murderers and rapists”: Donald Trump threw this out when he first announced his candidacy for president in 2015, saying, “They are bringing drugs. They are bringing crime. They’re rapists.” In fact, Hispanic immigrants (legal or without documentation) are far less likely, per capita and by any other measure, to commit crime of any sort than white citizens.

— Helping people makes them lazy. The old Limbaugh joke about “kicking people when they’re down is the only way to get them up” reveals the mindset behind this Republican scam, which argues that when people get money or things they didn’t work for it actually injures them and society by making them lazy. The GOP has used this rationalization to oppose everything from unemployment insurance in the 1930s to food stamps, Medicaid, and housing supports today.

In fact, not only is there no evidence for it, but studies of Universal Basic Income (UBI), where people are given a few hundred dollars a month with no strings attached, finds that the vast majority use the extra funds to improve themselves. They upgrade their housing, look for better jobs, and go back to school.

If the morbidly rich people behind the GOP who promote this scam really believed it, they’d be arguing for a 100% estate tax, to prevent their own children from ending up “lazy.” Good luck finding any who are leaving their trust-fund kids destitute.

— Tobacco doesn’t cause cancer: Back in 2000, soon-to-be Indiana Governor and then-Congressman Mike Pence wrote a column that was published statewide saying, “Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill.” Pence’s family had made money off tobacco for years with a small chain of now-bankrupt convenience stores called “Tobacco Road,” but he was also being spiffed by the industry.

Similarly, George W. Bush pushed the “Healthy Forests Initiative” as president after big contributions from the timber industry: “healthy” meant “clear cut.” Bush also had his “Clear Skies Initiative” that let polluters dump more poison into our air. And the Trump administration, after big bucks and heavy lobbying from the chemical and Big Ag industries, refused to ban a very profitable pesticide used on human food crops that was found to definitely cause brain damage and cancer in children.

— For-profit utilities produce cheaper and more reliable electricity than government-owned and -run ones: This one goes back to the Reagan era, with Republicans arguing that the “free market” will always outperform government, including when it comes to generating and distributing electricity. In fact, each of us has only one wire coming into our homes or offices, so there is no possible competition to drive either improved performance or lower prices among for-profit utilities.

In fact, non-profit community-owned or government run utilities consistently produce more reliable electricity, serve their customers better, and charge lower prices. And the differences have become starker every year since, in 1992, President GHW Bush ended federal regulation of electric utilities. It’s why Texas, which has almost completely privatized its power grid, suffers some of the least reliable and most expensive electricity in the nation when severe weather hits.

— The electoral college protects our democracy: There was a time when both Democrats and Republicans wanted to get rid of the Electoral College; a constitutional amendment to do that failed in Congress by a single vote back in 1970. But after both George W. Bush and Donald Trump lost the White house by a half-million and three million votes respectively but ended up as president anyway, Republicans fell newly in love with the College and are fully planning to use it again in 2024 to seize power even if ten million more people vote for Biden this time (Biden won by 7 million votes in 2020).

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Republicans are now defending billionaires buying off Supreme Court justices and most recently Lever News found that they’ve been spiffing over 100 other federal judges — who regularly vote in favor of the interests of corporations and the morbidly rich — in addition to Alito, Thomas, Roberts, et al.

Republicans are also claiming that:

— Trump isn’t a threat to our democracy and his promises to be a dictator are “mere hyperbole.”
— Letting Putin take Ukraine won’t put Taiwan and other democracies at risk.
— Ignoring churches routinely breaking the law by preaching politics while enjoying immunity from taxes is no big deal.
— Massive consolidation to monopoly levels across virtually every industry in America since Reagan stopped enforcement of our anti-trust laws (causing Americans to pay an average of $5,000 a year more for everything from broadband to drugs than any other country in the world) is just the way business should be run.
— Teaching white children the racial history of America will make them feel bad, rather than feel less racist and more empathetic.
— Queer people are groomers and pedophiles (the majority in these categories are actually straight white men).
— Banning and burning books is good for society and our kids.
— Ending public schools with statewide voucher programs will improve education (every credible study shows the opposite).

I could go on, but you get the point. When will America — and, particularly, American media — wake up to these scams and start calling them out for what they are?

I’m not holding my breath, although you could help get the ball rolling by sharing this admittedly incomplete list as far and wide as possible.

Exposing the toxic Republican scams America embraced in 2023

Thom HartmannDecember 23, 2023 7:52AM ET  

Then-President Donald Trump is greeted by Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) before the State of the Union address in the House chamber on Feb. 4, 2020, in Washington, D.C. Leah Millis-Pool/Getty Images

The GOP — to keep the support of “average” American voters while they work entirely for the benefit of giant corporations, the weapons and fossil fuel industries, and the morbidly rich — have run a whole series of scams on voters ever since the original Reagan grift of trickle-down economics.

Oddly, there’s nothing comparable on the Democratic side. No lies or BS to justify unjustifiable policies: Democrats just say up-front what they’re all about:

Healthcare and quality education for all. Treat all people and religions with respect and fairness. Trust women to make their own decisions. Raise the pay of working people and support unionization. Get assault weapons off the streets. Do something about climate change. Clean up toxic waste sites and outlaw pesticides that damage children. Replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.

Nonetheless, the media persists in treating the two parties as if they were equally honest and equally interested in the needs of all Americans. In part, that’s because one of the GOP’s most effective scams — the “liberal media bias” scam — has been so successful ever since Lee Atwater invented it back in the early years of the Reagan Revolution.

For example, right now there’s a lot of huffing and puffing in the media about how the Supreme Court might rule in the case of Trump being thrown off the ballot in Colorado. They almost always mention “originalism” and “textualism” as if they’re honest, good-faith methods for interpreting the Constitution when, in fact, they’re cynical scams invented to justify unjustifiable rulings.

Thus, the question: how much longer will Americans (and the American media) continue to fall for the GOP’s scams?

They include:

— Originalism: Robert Bork came up with this scam back in the 1980s when Reagan appointed him to the Supreme Court and he couldn’t come up with honest or reasonable answers for his jurisprudential positions, particularly those justifying white supremacy. By saying that he could read the minds of the Founders and Framers of the Constitution, Bork gave himself and future generations of Republicans on the Court the fig leaf they needed.

The simple fact is that there was rarely a consensus among the Framers and among the politicians of the founding generation about pretty much anything. And to say that we should govern America by the standards of a white-men-only era before even the industrial revolution much less today’s modern medicine, communications, and understanding of economics is absurd on its face.

— Voter Fraud: This scam, used by white supremacists across the South in the years after the failure of Reconstruction to prevent Black people from voting, was reinvented in 1993, when Bill Clinton and Democrats in Congress succeeded in passing what’s today called the “Motor Voter” law that lets states automatically register people to vote when they renew their driver’s licenses. Republicans freaked out at the idea that more people might be voting, and claimed the new law would cause voter fraud (it didn’t).

By 1997, following Democratic victories in the 1996 election, it had become a major meme to justify purging voting rolls of Black and Hispanic people. Today it’s the justification for over 300 voter suppression laws passed in Red states in just in the past 2 years, all intended to make it harder for working class people, minorities, women, the elderly dependent on Social Security, and students (all Democratic constituencies) to vote.

The most recent iteration of it is Donald Trump‘s claim that the 2020 election, which he lost by fully 7 million votes, was stolen from him by voter fraud committed by Black people in major cities.

As a massive exposé in yesterday’s Washington Post titled “GOP Voter-Fraud Crackdown Overwhelmingly Targets Minorities, Democrats” points out, the simple reality is that voter fraud in the US is so rare as to be meaningless, and has never, ever, anywhere been documented to swing a single election.

But Republicans have been using it as a very effective excuse to make it harder for Democratic voters to cast a ballot, and to excuse their purging almost 40,000,000 Americans off the voting rolls in the last five years.

Right To Work (For Less): back in the 1940s, Republicans came up with this scam. Over the veto of President Harry Truman, they pushed through what he referred to as “the vicious Taft-Hartley Act,” which lets states make it almost impossible for unions to survive. Virtually every Red state has now adopted “right to work,” which has left their working class people impoverished and, because it guts the political power of working people, their minimum wage unchanged.

— Bush v Gore: The simple reality is that Al Gore won Florida in 2000, won the national popular vote by a half-million, and five Republicans on the Supreme Court denied him the presidency. Florida Governor and George W. Bush’s brother Jeb had his Secretary of State, Kathryn Harris, throw around 90,000 African Americans off the voting rolls just before the election and then, when the votes had come in and it was clear former Vice President Al Gore had still won, she invented a new category of ballots for the 2000 election: “Spoiled.”

As The New York Times reported a year after the 2000 election when the consortium of newspapers they were part of finally recounted all the ballots:

“While 35,176 voters wrote in Bush’s name after punching the hole for him, 80,775 wrote in Gore’s name while punching the hole for Gore. [Florida Secretary of State] Katherine Harris decided that these were ‘spoiled’ ballots because they were both punched and written upon and ordered that none of them should be counted.
“Many were from African American districts, where older and often broken machines were distributed, causing voters to write onto their ballots so their intent would be unambiguous.”

George W. Bush “won” the election by 537 votes in Florida, because the statewide recount — which would have revealed Harris’s crime and counted the “spoiled” ballots, handing the election to Gore (who’d won the popular vote by over a half-million) — was stopped when George HW Bush appointee Clarence Thomas became the deciding vote on the Supreme Court to block the recount order from the Florida Supreme Court.

Harris’ decision to not count the 45,599 more votes for Gore than Bush was completely arbitrary; there is no legal category and no legal precedent, outside of the old Confederate states simply refusing to count the votes of Black people, to justify it. The intent of the voters was unambiguous. And the 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court jumped in to block the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court (in violation of the 10th Amendment) just in time to prevent those “spoiled” votes from being counted, cementing Bush’s illegitimate presidency.

— Money is “Free Speech” and corporations are “persons”: This scam was invented entirely by Republicans on the Supreme Court, although billionaire GOP donors — infuriated by campaign contribution and dark money limits put into law in the 1970s after the Nixon bribery scandals — had been funding legal efforts to get it before the Court for years.

In a decision that twists logic beyond rationality, the five Republicans on the Court — over the strong, emphatic objections of all the Democrats on the Court — ruled that our individual right to free speech guaranteed in the First Amendment also includes the “right to listen,” as I lay out in detail in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America and they wrote in Citizens United:

“The right of citizens to inquire, to hear, to speak, and to use information to reach consensus is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it.”

Without being able to hear from the most knowledgeable entities, they argued, Americans couldn’t be well-informed about the issues of the day.

And who was in the best position to inform us? As Lewis Powell himself wrote in the Bellotti decision, echoed in Citizens United, it’s those corporate “persons”:

“Corporations and other associations, like individuals, contribute to the ‘discussion, debate, and the dissemination of information and ideas’ that the First Amendment seeks to foster…”
“Political speech is ‘indispensable to decision-making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation rather than an individual.’ … The inherent worth of the speech in terms of its capacity for informing the public does not depend upon the identity of its source, whether corporation, association, union, or individual.”

They doubled down, arguing that corporations and billionaires should be allowed to dump unlimited amounts of money into the political campaigns of those politicians they want to own so long as they go into dark money operations instead of formal campaigns. What was called “bribery” for over 200 years is now “free speech”:

“For the reasons explained above, we [five Republicans on the Supreme Court] now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”

— Cutting taxes raises revenue: As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman notes, the idea promoted by Reagan, Bush, and Trump to justify almost $30 trillion in cumulative tax cuts for billionaires and giant corporations is “The Biggest Tax Scam in History.”

Reagan first pitched this to justify cutting the top income tax rate on the morbidly rich from 74% down to 25% in the 1980s, and it was reprised by both George W. Bush and Donald Trump for their own massive tax breaks for their well-off donors and peers.

The simple fact is that America went from a national debt of over 124% of GDP following World War II to a national debt of a mere $800 billion when Reagan came into office. We’d been paying down our debt steadily, and had enough money to build the interstate highway system, brand new schools and hospitals from coast to coast, and even to put men on the moon.

Since Reagan rolled out his tax scam, however, our national debt has gone from less than a trillion in 1980 to over 30 trillion today: we’re back, in terms of debt, to where we were during WWII when FDR raised the tippy-top bracket income tax rate to 90% to deal with the cost of the war. We should be back to that tax rate for the morbidly rich today, as well.

— Destroying unions helps workers: In their eagerness to help their corporate donors, Reagan rolled out a novel idea in 1981, arguing that instead of helping working people, corrupt “union bosses” were actually ripping them off.

Union leaders work on a salary and are elected by their members: the very idea that they, like CEOs who are compensated with stock options and performance bonuses and appointed by their boards, could somehow put their own interests first is ludicrous. Their only interest, if they want to retain their jobs, is to do what the workers want.

But Reagan was a hell of a salesman, and he was so successful with this pitch he cut union membership in America during his and his VP’s presidency by more than 50 percent.

— Corporations can provide better Medicare than the government: For a corporation to exist over the long term, particularly a publicly-traded corporation, it must produce a profit. That’s why when George W. Bush and friends invented the Medicare Advantage scam in 2003 they allowed Advantage providers to make as much as 20 percent in pure profit.

Government overhead for real Medicare is around 2% — the cost of administration — and corporations could probably run their Advantage programs with a similar overhead, but they have to make that 20% profit nut, so they hire larger staffs to examine every single request to pay for procedures, surgeries, tests, imaging, and even doctors’ appointments. And reject, according to The New York Times, around 18% of them.

“Advantage plans also refused to pay legitimate claims, according to the report. About 18 percent of payments were denied despite meeting Medicare coverage rules, an estimated 1.5 million payments for all of 2019.”

When they deny you care, they make money. If they ran like real Medicare and paid every bill (except the fraudulent ones), they’d merely break even, and no company can do that. Nonetheless, Republicans continue to claim that “choice” in the marketplace is more important than fixing Medicare.

With the $140 billion that for-profit insurance companies overcharge us and steal from our government every year, if Medicare Advantage vanished there would be enough money left over to cut Medicare premiums to almost nothing and add dental, vision, and hearing. But don’t expect Republicans to ever go along with that: they take too much money from the insurance industry (thanks to five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court).

— More guns means more safety: Remember the NRA’s old “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”? They’re still at it, and there’s hardly a single Republican in America who will step up and do anything about the gun violence crisis that is uniquely experienced by our nation.

Bullets are now the leading cause of death among children in the US, and we’re literally the only country in the entire world for which that is true. And a child living in Red state Mississippi is ten times more likely to die from a gun than a child in Blue state Massachusetts. But as long as the NRA owns them, Republicans will never do anything about it.

— The media has a liberal bias: This canard was started by Lee Atwater in an attempt to “work the refs” of the media, demanding that they stop pointing out the scams Republicans were engaging in (at the time it was trickle-down). The simple reality is that America’s media, from TV and radio networks to newspapers to websites, are overwhelmingly owned by billionaires and corporations with an openly conservative bent.

There are over 1500 rightwing radio stations (and 1000 religious broadcasters, who are increasingly political), three rightwing TV networks, and an army of tens of thousands of paid conservative activists turning out news releases and policy papers in every state, every day of the year. There are even well-funded social media operations.

There is nothing comparable on the left. Even MSNBC is owned by Comcast and so never touches issues of corporate governance, media bias (they fired Brian Stelter!), or the corruption of Congress by its big pharma and Medicare Advantage advertisers.

— Republicans are the party of faith: Republicans claim to be the pious ones, from Mike Johnson’s creepy “chastity ball” with his daughter, to their hate of queer people, to their embrace of multimillionaire TV and megachurch preachers. But Democrats, who are more accepting of people of all faiths and tend not to wear their religion on their sleeves, are the ones following Jesus’ teachings.

Jesus, arguably the founder of Christianity, was emphatic that you should never pray in public, do your good deeds in private as well, and that the only way to get to heaven is to feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick, and love every other human as much as you love yourself.

Republicans, on the other hand, wave their piety like a bloody shirt, issue press releases about their private charities, and fight every effort to have our government feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick, or even respect, much less love, people who look or live or pray differently from them.

— Crime is exploding and you’re safer living in an area Republicans control: In fact, crime of almost all sorts is at a low not seen since 1969. Only car thefts are up, and some of that appears to have to do with social media “how to” videos and a few very vulnerable makes of autos.

New FBI statistics find that violent crime nationwide is down 8 percent; in big cities it’s down nearly 15 percent, robbery and burglary are down 10 and 12 percent respectively.

But what crime there is is overwhelmingly happening in Red states. Over the past 21 years, all types of crime in Red states are 23 percent higher than in Blue states: in 2020, murder rates were a mind-boggling 40 percent higher in states that voted for Trump than those Biden carried.

— Global warming is a hoax: Ever since fossil fuel billionaires and the fossil fuel industry started using the legal bribery rights five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court created for them, virtually every Republican politician in the nation is either directly on the take or benefits indirectly from the massive infrastructure created by the Koch brothers and other fossil fuel barons. As a result, it’s almost impossible to find even one brave, truthful Republican who’s willing to do anything about the climate crisis that is most likely to crash not just the US but civilization itself.

— Hispanic immigrants are “murderers and rapists”: Donald Trump threw this out when he first announced his candidacy for president in 2015, saying, “They are bringing drugs. They are bringing crime. They’re rapists.” In fact, Hispanic immigrants (legal or without documentation) are far less likely, per capita and by any other measure, to commit crime of any sort than white citizens.

— Helping people makes them lazy. The old Limbaugh joke about “kicking people when they’re down is the only way to get them up” reveals the mindset behind this Republican scam, which argues that when people get money or things they didn’t work for it actually injures them and society by making them lazy. The GOP has used this rationalization to oppose everything from unemployment insurance in the 1930s to food stamps, Medicaid, and housing supports today.

In fact, not only is there no evidence for it, but studies of Universal Basic Income (UBI), where people are given a few hundred dollars a month with no strings attached, finds that the vast majority use the extra funds to improve themselves. They upgrade their housing, look for better jobs, and go back to school.

If the morbidly rich people behind the GOP who promote this scam really believed it, they’d be arguing for a 100% estate tax, to prevent their own children from ending up “lazy.” Good luck finding any who are leaving their trust-fund kids destitute.

— Tobacco doesn’t cause cancer: Back in 2000, soon-to-be Indiana Governor and then-Congressman Mike Pence wrote a column that was published statewide saying, “Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill.” Pence’s family had made money off tobacco for years with a small chain of now-bankrupt convenience stores called “Tobacco Road,” but he was also being spiffed by the industry.

Similarly, George W. Bush pushed the “Healthy Forests Initiative” as president after big contributions from the timber industry: “healthy” meant “clear cut.” Bush also had his “Clear Skies Initiative” that let polluters dump more poison into our air. And the Trump administration, after big bucks and heavy lobbying from the chemical and Big Ag industries, refused to ban a very profitable pesticide used on human food crops that was found to definitely cause brain damage and cancer in children.

— For-profit utilities produce cheaper and more reliable electricity than government-owned and -run ones: This one goes back to the Reagan era, with Republicans arguing that the “free market” will always outperform government, including when it comes to generating and distributing electricity. In fact, each of us has only one wire coming into our homes or offices, so there is no possible competition to drive either improved performance or lower prices among for-profit utilities.

In fact, non-profit community-owned or government run utilities consistently produce more reliable electricity, serve their customers better, and charge lower prices. And the differences have become starker every year since, in 1992, President GHW Bush ended federal regulation of electric utilities. It’s why Texas, which has almost completely privatized its power grid, suffers some of the least reliable and most expensive electricity in the nation when severe weather hits.

— The electoral college protects our democracy: There was a time when both Democrats and Republicans wanted to get rid of the Electoral College; a constitutional amendment to do that failed in Congress by a single vote back in 1970. But after both George W. Bush and Donald Trump lost the White house by a half-million and three million votes respectively but ended up as president anyway, Republicans fell newly in love with the College and are fully planning to use it again in 2024 to seize power even if ten million more people vote for Biden this time (Biden won by 7 million votes in 2020).

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Republicans are now defending billionaires buying off Supreme Court justices and most recently Lever News found that they’ve been spiffing over 100 other federal judges — who regularly vote in favor of the interests of corporations and the morbidly rich — in addition to Alito, Thomas, Roberts, et al.

Republicans are also claiming that:

— Trump isn’t a threat to our democracy and his promises to be a dictator are “mere hyperbole.”
— Letting Putin take Ukraine won’t put Taiwan and other democracies at risk.
— Ignoring churches routinely breaking the law by preaching politics while enjoying immunity from taxes is no big deal.
— Massive consolidation to monopoly levels across virtually every industry in America since Reagan stopped enforcement of our anti-trust laws (causing Americans to pay an average of $5,000 a year more for everything from broadband to drugs than any other country in the world) is just the way business should be run.
— Teaching white children the racial history of America will make them feel bad, rather than feel less racist and more empathetic.
— Queer people are groomers and pedophiles (the majority in these categories are actually straight white men).
— Banning and burning books is good for society and our kids.
— Ending public schools with statewide voucher programs will improve education (every credible study shows the opposite).

I could go on, but you get the point. When will America — and, particularly, American media — wake up to these scams and start calling them out for what they are?

I’m not holding my breath, although you could help get the ball rolling by sharing this admittedly incomplete list as far and wide as possible.

Something’s ROTTEN in America right now and, while I want to say you could understand it with the word TRUMP, the reality is there’s a significant percentage of Americans who aspire to the White Nationalist/Supremacist philosophy of neo-Nazi’s Trump, himself, is pushing. Is Trump the actual cause, or is he just the surface of the problem? Well, either way, what Trump represents in America is ROTTEN to the core. Listening to some of his supporters makes my stomach curl. As a former teacher I’m always wondering: “How could so many people be so STUPID?”

I’m coming from the perspective of someone whose father was in the Army during WW II. I’ve said this here several times, “Trump is coming closer to turning America into a fascist nation than Hitler ever did.” However, I still see this scheme to be much deeper than any of the aforementioned. For example, the Supreme Court has been right in the “cross hairs” of right wing republicans for years and, certainly, since the year 2000 the Court has been laying the groundwork for Trump. And, when you look closer you see the ROT has been permeating the republican party since the days of Newt Gingrich. (If my mother was still alive she’d say it was since the days of Herbert Hoover!)

Republicans have been slowly tilting farther and farther to the right since Gingrich introduced the “vote against everything” and “lie about everything” policy during the Clinton administration and, for me, the “icing on the cake” came when the SCOTUS “crowned” GW Bush/DICK Cheney as our president/vice president by refusing to allow a viable recount of the votes in Florida – with GW Bush’s brother Jeb conspiring to allow him to win an election where Al Gore got the MOST votes AND should have won the MOST Electoral votes had the Florida recount been allowed to go to a fair conclusion.

I started writing here about 15 years ago with the “main idea” being “we the people” need to vote republicans into the History books – this was well before Trump. I watched after Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 how MANY very wealthy Americans – led by the now infamous “Koch Brothers” (only one “brother” is left) – ginning up America’s white nationalists by “sicking” the so-called “Tea Party” on “we the people.” And, if you’ve paid attention to recent American History you know Trump saw his “opening” to enter politics via the phony “Birther movement” which was “spawned” by America’s leading racists suggesting President Obama wasn’t born in America. Trump was the PERFECT LIAR to lead that disgusting racist campaign – designed to, in the words of Mich McConnell, make sure President Obama is a one-term president.

So, here we are – and it’s ROTTEN and getting rottener. (Not sure if that’s a word) For anyone who’s paying attention Trump is busy convincing everyone who believes he doesn’t read they’re wrong – it appears, if nothing else, he’s read Mein Kampf – Adolf Hitler’s “handbook.” I’ve been writing for several years about Trump’s (and the republicans’) use of Hitler’s “Big Lie Theory” and their constant use of PROJECTION – both “strategies” right out of Hitler’s chief of propaganda Joseph Goebbels’ lexicon. But, now Trump is getting less subtle – that is, saying the “quiet part out loud.”

Over the past few weeks Trump has been complaining about “immigration” and suggesting immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of Americans. OK, once again, right out of Mein Kampf. But, was this some kind of misstatement by Trump? Nope! He keeps doubling down, apparently, to make sure all of us liberals get our “panties in a bunch.” Now, I’ve been making the “Hitler” references when writing about Trump for years. Of course as I’m writing this, we’re seeing members of the so-called “liberal media” acting as if they’re in “shock” upon hearing these overt references to Hitler. In fact, not only are “immigrants poisoning the blood” of Americans, according to Trump, but, additionally, “liberals” – and anyone who’s a Trump opponent, are “Communist, Marxist, Fascist (Projection) vermin.” Yep, there he goes again, Hitler!

But, as I always say, with republicans there’s always more. Not only have I referred to Trump as a “fascist” but on MANY occasions I’ve compared him to a “Mob boss.” It’s almost as if he’s reading my blog and attempting to make me look good. Just the other day, as he was complaining about the 91 FELONY charges he’s facing he tried to compare himself to the infamous Al Capone. He referred to Capone (who had over 200 people MURDERED) as “The great Al Capone” suggesting it was “bullsh*t” he was facing more charges than Capone. Apparently, Capone was SMARTER than Trump. I’ve just finished reading “Proof of Conspiracy” by Seth Abramson and, to me, the book just “cements” how ROTTEN Trump really is. He’s (allegedly) committed WAY more crimes than the 91 he’s now indicted for in various courts!

He’s facing more charges than “the great” Capone because he’s been violating America’s laws with impunity since well before he came down that escalator back in 2015. According to Abramson’s book (which he documents with real evidence) the “conspiracy” to “win” the “White House” back in 2016 went much deeper than simply the Russians. Bottom line, Trump has no compulsion to accept help from foreigners/foreign entities – he’s said that publicly on multiple occasions. And, as Adam Schiff promised us – “he’s going to do it again.” We all KNOW he’ll do it again – likely as I’m writing this. Facebook and Xwitter are both open for misinformation business. Do you think Trump and his sycophants/co-conspirators won’t take advantage of that? Do you really believe they won’t be using AI?

Trump’s schtick of late – from what I’ve been able to tell based on the amount of time I’ve been able to force myself to listen to him before I get sick to my stomach that anyone would be such a LIAR – is an absurd attack on our “Southern border” and the “15 – 17 MILLION illegal immigrants” Biden has let into the country to ‘poison the blood’ of our “people.” Now, think carefully, is the problem really at our Southern border? Or, is the problem in our Southern Hemisphere? Why do you think so many people from Countries in Central and South America are willing to risk their lives to get to America? A reminder: we are a “nation of immigrants.” Virtually ALL of us! (OK, you want to exclude “Native Americans” – but, the reality is they “immigrated” here something like 10,000 years ago)

In fact, Trump’s grandfather immigrated from Germany in the late 19th century and Trump is a second generation immigrant married to a first generation immigrant with a son who’s a son of an immigrant. (Born while his father was CHEATING on his Mom) And, for those who believe Trump when he says he hasn’t read “Mein Kampf” – and, I tend to believe him – keep in mind one of his closest “advisors” is Steven Miller- and, I haven’t the shadow of a doubt Miller has read “Mein Kampf” and Miller is one of Trump’s speechwriters. They’ve discovered the Hitler references actually gin up their “base” and he’s likely to keep repeating “immigrants are poisoning our blood” for the immediate future until he discovers it’s causing him to lose voters. Then he’ll say “just kidding.” This election is going to be hotly contested and I can guarantee you, when Trump LOSES there will be more right wing violence.

Trump’s PROJECTION is a critical part of their (republicans) media strategy – and, with Americans who actually believe this pathological LIAR (and his sycophants) – it’s working. This next election will be decided by the outcome in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. If either candidate wins all three they will be the next president. I believe Biden has a chance in several other “red” states because of, you guessed it, the abortion issue. Ohio, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and ???? Will women vote in large numbers? Then there’s the voter suppression efforts of the republicans. An appropriate example would be Wisconsin. In the 2022 Mid-terms a republican official bragged that republicans were able to block enough Black voters from turning out (in Milwawkee, I believe) to make the difference for Ron Johnson, one of the worst (and STUPIDEST) members of the Senate. I’ve been saying for years, with republicans “The end justifies the means.” It’s all about POWER!

As progressives (ie “liberals) we need to fully grasp the reality that Trump’s “base” across the South is made up of direct (close) descendants of the racist Southerners who were the proponents of “Jim Crow” laws and the years of LYNCHING African Americans – with members of the churches gawking in crowds cheering on the TORTURE of Americans because of the color of their skin. Should it surprise any of us what is going on right now in this country. I have a former friend I used to have breakfast with who, after we lost touch because he became angry about Trump LOSING the 2020 election (obviously, he bought the “stolen election” koolaid), I’m periodically reminded of stuff he said which I didn’t pick up at the time. He had actually adopted three Black children and the first thing which stuck wrong with my “craw” was comments he made about his (Black) daughter, which came across to me as overt racism.

Then I began, as I thought about him and prayed for him, remembering stuff he said which now makes me understand why he allowed himself to get sucked into Trump’s CULT. He, on several occasions, said “I don’t believe in democracy.” (I would always explain we live in a “democratic republic”) He said, more than once Trump’s followers were going to start a “civil war.” (going to far right websites?) And, the last thing I remember was him demanding I “prove” that Joe Biden had actually won the 2020 election. I explained the entire process to him which he interpreted as “bullying.” I even pointed out January 6th was nothing more than a ceremonial counting of Electoral votes. Well, little did I know what Trump had up his sleeve. (My former friend has never responded to an email since that date.)

The border “bullsh*t” is going to be a constant refrain between now and the 2024 election and Trump will continue LYING about our “it.” There IS a record number of immigrants attempting to cross our Southern border from all I can tell, but there is ALSO a record number of immigrants being “rejected” and sent out of the country. As I said above, the problem isn’t a “Joe Biden” problem, the problem is what the hell is going on in the Southern Hemisphere which causes so many people to want to leave their homes and risk their lives to immigrate here? And, why can’t Congress devise an immigration bill? It really is on them.

I do have to add that we NEED many of these immigrants to come here because they’re willing to work in places most Americans are not – like in the fields of America’s farmers. Remember, if you’re a Christian – I point this out repeatedly here – Christ said, “what you do FOR the least of these you do FOR Me. What you do TO the least of these you do TO Me.” In my mind, the “Christian Right” in America has made a “deal with the devil!” Trump is ROTTEN to the core!

Final Thought: Not a day goes by I don’t think about what is going on in Ukraine and Gaza/Israel. When I talk about how “Rotten” republicans are, just take a good look at our House of Representatives. They chose to take a THREE week break (I think it’s more like four weeks) without approving military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine and without addressing the issue of Israel and the Palestinians. They remind me of Neville Chamberlain back in the early stages of WW II where he was appeasing Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Of course, we know how that turned out. (Or, at least, you SHOULD know) I’ve mentioned here Vladimir Putin reminds me of Hitler. (Maybe that’s why Trump is attempting to put himself in that same conversation) It’s DISGUSTING to me the republicans in the House who have been openly expressing their support for Putin. Voters MUST remember this next November!

When it comes to Israel, I “get” why “we the people” must be diligent in our support of the nation of Israel. However, that doesn’t, to me, mean we “must” be supporting Netanyahu. Netanyahu is CORRUPT similarly to Trump. He was attempting to “beat” the charges against him by subjugating Israel’s court system to his “government.” This is the classic playbook of a tyrant. Add to that the Israeli intelligence KNEW for up to a year the plans of Hamas’ surprise attack and FAILED to counteract what they KNEW was coming. (Netanyahu has actually supported Hamas in the past because he’s OPPOSED to the “two state solution.” I believe the Israeli people will rid themselves of Netanyahu as soon as this most recent war is “over.” (Until there’s a “two state solution” I don’t believe it will EVER be over – if then)

My point it it’s in Netanyahu’s interest to keep this devastation going on in Gaza as long as he can. However, in my mind, he’s just making his place in History worse. Most Israeli’s want the violence to end (I believe) and they want negotiations which return the hostages. Most Americans want the violence to end and to have the hostages released. There have now been over 20,000 Palestinians KILLED in Isreal’s “revenge” for October 7th – their point has been made. As far as I’m concerned it’s well past the point where the Israeli’s pull out of Gaza. Hopefully the U.N. can come in and help stabilize things and facilitate the reconstruction of all the destroyed infrastructure in Gaza. I believe just as Hamas will be accused of WAR CRIMES, unfortunately, so will the Israeli’s. I’ve had numerous conversations with my 34 year old son, and he’s become a supporter of the Palestinians as many of his online friends are as well. Biden has a lot of work to do to motivate these young Americans to understand the importance of them VOTING (for him) in the next election.

It’s all on the line for young Americans. Climate Change, Voting Rights, Civil Rights, the environment (things like clean water regulations, clean air regulations, etc.) Abortion access, Health Care (Trump still wants to eliminate “Obamacare” – ie “The Affordable Care Act”) Education, institutions like the Courts, the FDA, the CDC, institutions which Trump has claimed he’ll fill with “loyalists,” (The Supreme Court is already “stacked” for a generation – that alone should be enough to get young voters to the polls voting for Biden) I could go on and on, but “democracy” itself will be on the 2024 ballot (unless Trump gets “thumped” in the primaries – unlikely). Each election since 2018 I’ve referred to as “The most important election in my lifetime.” And, along those lines, nothing’s changed.

Just imagine where we’d be if democrats hadn’t taken control of the House in 2018, or where we’d be if Trump had managed to get re-elected in 2020. Republicans retaking the House in 2022 has created the WORST “do nothing” Congress in modern history after an historic first two years of Biden’s administration. The reality is 2024 IS the MOST important election in my lifetime – and, I don’t expect these right wing neo-fascists to go away even if (when) Trump is turned out to “pasture.” (Jail ???) Trump’s PROJECTION is so ROTTEN he’s convincing people Biden is turning America into a “third world country” while that is exactly his aim! The democrats messaging MUST improve! Stay tuned……

As a (liberal) Christian I’m not supposed to “hate” anyone and I’m trying hard to fulfill that part of my beliefs. That being said I’m going to attempt to choose my words carefully – I’m DISGUSTED with republicans. Now, I know a lot of republicans – in fact, my guess is a LARGE percentage of those who attend my church are republicans and I’m not disgusted with virtually any of them. I usually play it safe and don’t broach the subject of “politics” with any of them – and, in the rare cases where it comes up the conversations end quickly because it quickly becomes obvious the person I’m talking to is a purveyor of right wing media, usually Fox “news.” The last example, I made a “joke” about Trump going to jail and the response was “he’ll be there with the Biden Crime Family.” End of conversation!

Why am I “disgusted” with republicans? Let me attempt to “count the ways.” The first thing that comes to mind is the young lady in Texas who was, in essence, carrying a deceased fetus and the Texas Supreme Court – after an appeal of a district court decision – said this woman was not able to get a “D & C” (dilation and curettage) which is the “long term” for an abortion (or other “cleaning out of the uterus.”) I had no idea a “D & C” referred to an abortion until recently as the issue has become more “in the news” because of anti abortion laws spreading around the nation. This lady in Texas received THREATS from (CORRUPT) Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton as did with her doctors and the hospital she would have received this life saving care from – THREATENING felonies with penalties potentially of life in prison and fines up to $100,000. Pro life???

Fortunately, this lady had the means to leave the state to get the health care she so desperately needed but couldn’t get in her home state. In the last month she had been to the Emergency room four times. I will be watching to see what happens when she returns to Texas – or if she can return to Texas because I’ve read reports where they don’t consider leaving the state as making women protected from the Texas abortion law. Now, I’m not someone who would support an abortion (in my family) as “birth control” but I’m always reminded that the first time my wife became pregnant she had a miscarriage. She was actually prescribed a (cortizone) cream at the Emergency room which clearly caused the miscarriage – a “D & C.” was performed for her safety and to preserve her ability to have children in the future. I keep thinking had this pregnancy happened today and we lived in Texas her life would have been in danger. At the time we in no way had the means to leave the state to get the needed procedure.

The reality is, in places like Texas, becoming pregnant is potentially a “life threatening illness.” Women are forced there to carry a miscarriage to the point of becoming septic which is, in itself, life threatening. It was Donald Trump who proudly put three members on the Supreme Court (with the help of Mitch McConnell) on the court with the publicly stated expectation they would overturn Roe v Wade – the policy of the previous 50 years allowing women to be able to have needed medical care based on decisions they made with their doctors. Ironically, it’s become republicans who’ve decided they need to intervene in the private lives of the American people – completely OPPOSITE of their so-called “conservative/libertarian” beliefs. I’ve come to the conclusion they have no beliefs – other than doing what they believe will keep them in good standing with Trump.

Will the American public simply ignore the FACT America’s women will now have their personal health care decisions determined by (mostly) republican men like Ken Paxton? (His common denominator with Trump is they’re both facing charges of CORRUPTION – Paxton was actually IMPEACHED by the Texas legislature) Will the husband’s of American women accept that should their wives or someone else in their family have a similar experience to the above mentioned woman in Texas they should simply carry a dead fetus to term and “hope for the best?” In the case involving my own wife she was taken to surgery immediately because it was a serious threat to her health – PLUS – her future ability to have children. (I’m happy to say she, later, was able to carry two beautiful little girls to term – both who now have their own families)

It honestly makes me a bit angry everytime I witness (from afar, of course) another example of a woman going through pregnancy as a life threatening “illness.” (I really don’t know how else to say it) Think of ALL the women in places like Texas who don’t have the means to travel to another state to get the health care they need. Most women I’ve known WANT (or wanted – I’m very old) to have children. As a sixth grade teacher in a high poverty school I witnessed MANY children who had moms who desperately loved them but who – the circumstances varied greatly – were struggling to parent them. In almost every instance that comes to mind as I’m writing this I’m talking about single moms. Working hard in an attempt to survive financially without the means to afford child care would create incredibly difficult circumstances. I have etched in my brain a young boy telling me he and his mom had a package of hot dogs and a half a loaf of bread to make it until Monday (it was Friday) when his mom would get paid.

I’m in no way suggesting someone should get an abortion because – short of the circumstances I mentioned above – I would oppose it – in my own family. (Several years ago I came to the conclusion “if you don’t believe in abortion, don’t have one”) I just bring this up because the issue with this woman in Texas reminds me of why I’m disgusted with republicans. It was Donald Trump who – I remember this from an interview, I believe it was on MSNBC back in 2016 as they were attempting to “both sides” the campaign with Hillary Clinton, (which they’re doing once again) when Trump said “The woman who gets an abortion should be “punished.” Does that mean jail? he was asked if my memory is correct, and he answered in the affirmative. I don’t think he’ll be able to run away from the issue of abortion in the upcoming election and, remember, over half the nation’s voters are WOMEN! Remember, it seems as if these republicans have no intentions for the “men” to get “punished.”

Is the abortion issue the only reason I’m “disgusted” with republicans? Not even close. But there’s another one which was at the top of the “news” today and that’s the war in Ukraine. Shockingly, republicans are blocking further aid to Ukraine! I almost can’t even believe I’m being led to write this. Vladimir Putin is jumping for joy. Are the republicans going to save him? Why on earth would they do this? OK, anyone without their “head in the sand” knows Trump idolizes Putin. He envisions himself as being the American version of Putin by retaking the “White House” and, apparently declaring himself president for life – or something, something…..

Here’s the deal. Trump was hell bent on destroying NATO (as the greatest favor he could give to Putin) had he won the election in 2020. He was close to accomplishing that (TERRIBLE) goal prior to the pandemic. To make matters worse for Trump, Joe Biden not only has led the FIGHT to stop Putin in Ukraine (and, beyond had Putin been able to take over “in a matter of days” as originally planned – remember Trump referred to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as “genious”) but Biden has also pulled NATO back together and led a strengthening of the Alliance, including NATO adding Finland and Sweden due to their concern Putin could attack them as well. The thought republicans might actually BLOCK additional aid to Ukraine making it possible for Putin to potentially win the war makes my stomach curdle. Republicans actually want the Ukrainians to cede portions of their country to Russia in order to get the fighting to stop. Again, I’m having a hard time believing what I feel compelled to write.

So, abortion, Ukraine, is that it? Of course not! There’s not enough space in this document for me to list everything – and, if you’ve been around this site before you’ve got a good idea what’s coming next – but, I’m going to list a few more reasons why I’m “disgusted” with republicans – anyway, and, I don’t expect myself to go back to the days of GW Bush/Cheney or Reagan/HW Bush or even back to Nixon. (OBTW – Watergate “stuff” has been back in the news regarding Trump attempting to avoid accountability similarly to Nixon) Let’s start with the Climate Crisis. To Trump or to people like me (old people) the reality our young people are facing is, compared to what we’ve lived through, well, not even close to similar. The last I heard was we are already facing what Climate Scientists refer to as “Global Tipping points.” This from the “Guardian:” (To which I subscribe)

“Tipping points in the Earth system pose threats of a magnitude never faced by humanity,” said Tim Lenton, from the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute. “They can trigger devastating domino effects, including the loss of whole ecosystems and capacity to grow staple crops, with societal impacts including mass displacement, political instability and financial collapse.

The tipping points at risk include the collapse of big ice sheets in Greenland and the West Antarctic, the widespread thawing of permafrost, the death of coral reefs in warm waters, and the collapse of one oceanic current in the North Atlantic.

Unlike other changes to the climate such as hotter heat waves and heavier rainfall, these systems do not slowly shift in line with greenhouse gas emissions but can instead flip from one state to an entirely different one. When a climatic system tips – sometimes with a sudden shock – it may permanently alter the way the planet works.”

Keep in mind, Trump is a confirmed “Climate denier.” Part of his “Dictator on day 1” strategy is to “drill, drill, drill.” To me, the man is “disgusting.” Of course he is, he’s a republican! (And, of course, his “day 1” will last for, well, until he’s finally IMPEACHED and removed from office – that is if republicans ever get the “stones” to do so – although, I’m with Liz Cheney, “we the people” MUST make sure he’s NEVER close to the Oval Office EVER again!

At the recent COP28 United Nations Climate Conference – held in the United Arab Emerates – according to US negotiator John Kerry a “breakthrough agreement was reached.” The goal is to reduce the use of fossil fuels to “zero” by 2050. Obviously, people like me and Trump won’t be around at that time, but you can bet any agreement signed by the Biden administration will be “torn up” the day Trump re-enters the Oval Office if that terrible day ever occurs. And, the interesting thing about his “drill, drill, drill” promise is that the United States is already the world’s leading oil producer. (We’re also the largest oil “user.” We seem to like gas guzzlers)

That’s a lot of words to explain the previously mentioned “reasons republicans disgust me.” (Interesting fact: one in four billionaires gained their fortune via fossil fuels) In summary women SHOULD be voting against Trump (and republicans down the ballot) because of the attack on their bodily autonomy. “We the people” SHOULD be voting against republicans because they’re siding with Vladimir Putin in the Ukraine war. (Unthinkable to me!) And, all of us, especially younger Americans – like my children and grandchildren (only one who’s old enough to vote) SHOULD be attempting to vote out of office any republican we can because of the Climate issue.

As usual, with republicans, however, there’s always more! Across the country, states with republican led legislatures are also passing one law after another aimed at suppressing the vote. And, are you STUPID enough to think their aim is republican voters? Of course not! That is an issue that could possibly be fixed if “we the people” would give President Biden a Congress which has a larger percentage of progressive democrats – especially in the Senate where the filibuster has been a (Jim Crow era) “road block” to Voting Rights legislation. Which leads me to another reason why republicans disgust me and why “we the people” SHOULD be voting for democrats up and down the “ticket” for a generation. (Keep in mind, I’ve NEVER been a registered democrat – I’ve considered myself an independent since the first day I cast a ballot back in 1968)

The Supreme Court. Reversing Roe is NOT the only reason the Supreme Court is a dangerous co-conspirator with right wing republicans attempting to, in essence, overturn our constitution and turn America into, at a minimum, what I’ve called a Mussolini type fascist state – that is (and, some would suggest we’re already there) a corporate/government partnership. I mean, have you paid attention to what people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, etc. are saying and doing? The Court has made it possible for these filthy RICH Americans to just keep piling up the “dough” and find creative ways to avoid paying taxes. (Jeff Bezos recently moved from my state – Washington – to Miami, Florida because – well my state is expecting RICH people to “pay their fair share” of taxes. Disgusting, from my viewpoint)

Let’s start with the Court imposing the Bush/Cheney administration on “we the people” – which led to the DISASTROUS (and illegal) invasion of Iraq. (I won’t get into the TORTURE authorized by Bush AND Cheney). Then came the (disastrous) “Citizen’s United” decision which led Mitt Romney to (infamously) say “Corporations are people my friend.” A “headnote” in a decision back in the 1880’s was used by Sam Alito and John Roberts to turn corporations into people in the “Citizens United” case and the Court has been granting more “rights” to corporations, ‘inch by inch” ever since. Corporate money has FLOODED our electoral process since Citizen’s United to the point where “Super PAC’s” are commonplace and DISGUSTING! My point: The Supreme Court will have this right wing “bent” for a generation and “we the people” MUST vote AGAINST republicans for that issue alone. Can you imagine if the right wing majority became 7 – 2? (Or worse – at least now, the issue could be mitigated by expanding the court where there would be an equal number of seats to the number of Circuits – 13)

Civil Rights, Education, issues like College admissions practices, book bans, gun rights and gun laws, the right to be able to choose the person you love, and on and on. If you look at American History, virtually every “right” “we the people” seemed to have come to take for granted – the 40 hour work week, child labor laws, Food inspectors being regulated, Water quality being regulated, CO2 emissions being regulated, Car seats for children being regulated, Seat belts in cars (they weren’t there when I was young), Social Security and Medicare (which, BTW republicans want to tear apart instead of making them STRONGER), Women’s rights (remember women couldn’t even vote until about 1920), Hiway laws and regulations, the building up of the “commons” (schools, libraries, Post offices, Court houses, etc. etc. – virtually ALL of these are the result of “liberals” fighting for change.

And, I keep saying: “rights are much easier to lose than to regain.” Many of the people I know who are republicans have NO idea what they’re actually supporting. For example, many of them my age depend on Social Security (to varying degrees) and Medicare. I don’t think they support cutting them back as proposed by the new “Speaker of the House.” I don’t think many of them either understand what Trump is actually proposing (“I’m your retribution,” etc.) or believe he’d actually follow through on his “promises.”

I know several who don’t believe Trump committed any criminal conduct – let alone enough for 91 FELONIES. I actually know grown republican men who don’t believe there was a violent attack on the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. That, despite the visual evidence to the contrary. They watch Fox “news” and you can’t even talk to them about it or SHOW them the PROOF that THOUSANDS of INSURRECTIONISTS attacked the nation’s Capitol injuring over 150 police officers and leading to at least 7 deaths. And, despite taking part in the “Lock her up” chants regarding Hillary Clinton’s private email server they believe it was OK for Trump to have STOLEN hundreds of our nation’s top secrets and, apparently, shared some of those secrets somewhat routinely with others. (And, therefore, it was OK to refuse to return the documents when ordered to via a legal subpoena) Speaking of “Lock her Up” chants – republicans don’t see the irony in the Trumps, Kushner, and others in the “White House” using personal cell phones for communications likely listened to by the Russians. (Kushner was regularly using “What’s App” to communicate with MBS)

I’ve already surpassed the limit I had in mind when originally following this thought as I’ve – over the last week or so – watched republicans in Texas attempt to force a pregnant woman with a fetus which was dying or had already died to carry this, essentially, dead tissue to term. People like Ken Paxton (facing multiple indictments) and Trump (facing NUMEROUS indictments), well, I kept telling myself it’s wrong to “hate” them – and, I really don’t “hate” them – but, the truth is they and many of their brethren disgust me. The members of my church who’ve been “sucked in to Trump’s CULT don’t disgust me, because I really believe they don’t understand what they’re supporting as republicans – and they are constantly bombarded by bile (ie disgusting) propaganda because they get their “news” from Fox or Newmax or worse.

Should they be able to sort out the LIES from the “truth?” Yes, I believe they should – the people I’m talking about are “educated” adults. It’s just that when you learn about how effective the “Big Lie Theory” has been since the day Hitler came up with it you begin to understand why you can’t have a “dialogue” about politics with them. For example, if you point out how 25% of our national debt was accrued under Trump, they just won’t believe you – just like any other issue you attempt to have a rational discussion over. (Heck, they even believe Trump tells them the truth – that, honestly, makes me feel a bit hopeless in communicating with them – to me, that’s just stupid! It’s very similar to republicans voting against legislation and then taking credit for the good it creates “back home.” In this case, republicans I know take for granted “blessings” which resulted from “liberals” while telling me they “hate” liberals – calling them “socialists” or – whatever. Republican leaders have been working to convince their minions to “hate” liberals since the days of Newt Gingrich – to me, the “father” of all this division. Hopefully, you get my drift. I’m saddened my thinking has evolved to this place, but, “it is what it is.”

Final Thought: During this past week while House republicans were refusing to vote for aid to Ukraine (or Israel, for that matter) before giving themselves a four week “vacation,” many of the most DISGUTING members of their party were meeting in Washington DC with none other than Viktor Orban, the neo-fascist RULER of Hungary who’s attempting to prevent the EU from also sending aid to Ukraine. Putin has a bevy of “cheerleaders” around the world like Trump, Orban, Erdogan, MBS, MBZ (The Crown Prince of the United Arab Emerates), el Sissi in Egypt, and, to a degree Netanyahu – dictators (or wannabe dictators) all. You have right wing groups meeting, like Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA where the anti-semitism is so thick you could “cut it with a knife.” Steve Bannon’s lining up right wing neo-Nazi groups all across Europe (and, of course, in the U.S.A. – plus he’s back in Trump’s good graces) and who knows what Roger Stone is doing – although, we can assume it’s “no good.” Trump’s crowds cheer his references to Hitler in his recent speeches – which he continues to repeat – “immigrants are poisoning our blood” democrats are “vermin” and he’ll only be a dictator on “day 1.”

Here’s his view of “day 1:” day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, day1, etc. etc. OK, hopefully you get my drift! Stay tuned….

Thom HartmannDecember 13, 2023 7:00AM ET 

Another article by Thom Hartman – one of my favorite “thinkers” in America. I pulled it from “Raw Story” one of the online news outlets I subscribe to. Check them and Thom out!T 

Trump speaking at a rally in 2019. (Shutterstock.com)

Most people, particularly Democrats, would never speak of Donald Trump and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the same breath or context. But the very strategy that King used to help end legal discrimination in America is what Trump is today using to try to win back the White House in 2024: movement politics.

And if Democrats don’t figure out a way to match the passion and fervor (and organization) of Trump’s MAGA movement — yes, it’s as real a movement as was the Civil Rights movement — with their own passionate, broad-based, slogan- and action-driven movement, things could get very ugly for next year’s elections.

As of this moment, the biggest mistake the Democratic Party and most Democratic politicians are making is not realizing that political movements and political parties are very different things.

Barack Obama understood movement politics: he created a movement and it carried him into the White House. For the Democratic Party today, though, not so much…

Political parties deal with policy and practicality:

“How do we get healthcare for the most people in the most efficient way possible?
“What kind of legislation will best deal with poverty and make our streets safer?”
“How do we raise money to spread our message and get people out to the polls?”

Movements, on the other hand, deal with identity and passion. They spawn activists and evangelists:

“I’m in the street because I’m mad as hell that those idiots in the state capitol outlawed my right to healthcare.”
“Hey, buddy in the next booth over here in the diner, I just heard you mention Trump and I want you to know he’s a liar, con man, and rapist!”
“Officer, I believe that a new and better America is possible with the ideas of our movement, and I’m willing to let you arrest me for it.”

The Democratic Party of today is no longer involved in movement building.

It was building a movement during the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s, when millions showed up for FDR’s rallies or listened to his fireside chats on the radio, volunteered or joined the three-letter agencies to rebuild America, and helped the war effort to save the world from fascism.

It was engaged in movement-building during the Johnson administration, when the Party embraced MLK’s Civil Rights movement and passed a whole series of Great Society legislation, beginning with the Civil and Voting Rights Acts and then leading to Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps and others that lifted millions out of poverty and laid the foundation for our first serious step in generations toward a genuinely inclusive, pluralistic society.

As mentioned, Barack Obama created a movement and without it never could’ve gotten elected or passed Obamacare.

Part of the Democratic Party was definitely recruiting people into a movement during the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016 when tens of thousands of people showed up for rallies and Bernie himself repeatedly said:

“This campaign is not just about me. It is about building a movement of human solidarity…”

But since the Bernie movement was crushed by the Clinton machine and the remnants of Clinton’s and Obama’s neoliberal “New Democrats” in the 2016 primary, the Democratic Party has devolved into a safe and predictable fundraising and electoral-strategy institution. It’s left the movement building to us.

While many people, particularly women, supported Hillary, she didn’t run her campaign like a movement, probably because both she and her husband had been politicians their entire lives, rather than activists. The closest she came to it was the millions of women wearing “pussy” hats nationwide right after Trump’s inauguration, but by then it was far too late and that wasn’t even led by her.

My friend and SiriusXM radio colleague Joe Madison is fond of saying:

“The difference between a moment and a movement is sacrifice.”

Politics, and political parties, deal with moments. They raise money, push legislation, get people elected, popularize issues, and react to the challenges of the day and to other parties’ rhetoric.

People, not institutions, generally create and populate movements. And, as Joe Madison says, doing so requires effort, persistence, passion, evangelism, and, yes, sacrifice.

While Democrats decry “the cult of Trump” and the media often ridicules Trump’s “personality cult,” the reality is that there’s never been a successful movement in history that didn’t have a charismatic leader. The movement may have preceded the leader, but the leader and his or her charisma is what makes it so potent.

Trump is a rapist, grifter, criminal, and all-around-horrible human being. But, like many high functioning psychopaths, he has extraordinary charisma and can be very charming. He knows how to lead a movement, and that movement will be his main weapon next November.

I remember Bernie telling me in an off-line conversation years ago that most politicians — and some of the best and most effective politicians — are followers, not leaders. They look for a “parade” (the start of a movement, in this example) and, when the parade is big enough, they’ll run out to the front of it, lift its flag, and proclaim, “This is my movement!”

It sounds cynical, but it’s almost always true. And because the self-organization of the movement preceded the political leadership, it’s actually a rather organic process.

Certainly, that’s what FDR and LBJ did, as did Teddy Roosevelt back in the day. Each responded to movements that were already growing on the ground, ultimately leading those movements in ways that literally changed America for the better.

Obama, a uniquely brilliant politician who came up as an activist and community organizer, created his own movement from scratch and it carried him into the White House.

And movement building and leading are what Donald Trump has been doing — although not to better America — ever since he came down his escalator in 2015.

His pitch was about emotion, not detail; about tribe, not facts; about identity and values, not politics. It was the language of movement, not momentary politics.

Even today, Trump is engaging in movement-building — this time a new and more forceful movement than in 2016, that is well-armed and enthusiastic about using violence — as he repeatedly proclaims his intention to use it to become a dictator if re-elected.

It cuts both ways. In their early days, most successful modern dictators were first leaders of movements.

Mussolini had his Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, the violent street mobs that became the enforcers of his Fascist movement when it made the transition to becoming a political party. Hitler brought people into the beer halls and the streets from the very beginning. Franco called his Spanish fascist Falange party “The Movement” to his dying day.

Most Democrats are passionate about defeating Trump and defending democracy, and some issues like abortion, pot, and voting rights will get people into polling places, but where is today’s progressive movement?

Outside of the protests against the murder of George Floyd in 2020 (which were then demonized by the right, as they have every leftist movement in history), most on the left have been content to consign all that “sacrifice” to the Democratic Party.

Instead of talking about values — the “right” of people to vote, healthcare, quality free education, a stable environment, or abortion, for example — the Democratic Party’s most powerful and visible leaders, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Senator Schumer, talk about legislation and Republican obstructionism.

That’s all well and good, and people need to know those things, but details and information rarely motivate people the way a movement and its implicit invitation to membership, participation, and evangelism does.

When my old friend the late Tom Hayden helped organize Students for a Democratic Society, he and its founders envisioned it as a movement, not a party. I started showing up for the MSU chapter of SDS in 1967, hanging out repeatedly at the Student Union, for meetings off-campus, and in the streets, and ended up in jail for a week, shaved bald and beaten, for my efforts. Politicians don’t go to jail: movement participants (some of them politicians) do.

This comes out of something deep within our basic human nature.

As any psychologist or competent novelist can tell you, we human beings are story machines: we carry deep within us stories about our nation, about our lives, about ourselves and our place in family and society.

Those stories drive our behavior more than any amount of data or information. They transcend party. And they drive movements.

Deeply embedded into each of those stories are layers of emotion, identity, and a sense of self. It’s the stories that motivate us, which is why it’s always stories that drive movements.

Nobody ever got up off their couch and ran into the streets, particularly into a line of police or jeering militia thugs, because they were excited by a policy proposal offered in a boring floor speech read in a droning voice by the Senate Majority Leader.

Movement leaders know how to tell these stories to rouse people’s emotions and motivate them to action. It’s one of the keys to creating and sustaining movements.

From JFK calling a “new generation” to action, to MLK proclaiming a “promised land,” to Donald Trump saying “I am your vengeance,” movement leaders reach deep into the stories that underpin our sense of who we are and our understanding of how we got into the messes we confront.

They are usually driven by a deep longing for change, and often animated by wounds, unfairness, and grievance as much as idealism, hope, and a desire to embrace others. Witness the Act Up movement demanding action about AIDS during the Reagan administration when that homophobic monster refused to say the word “AIDS” out loud for eight long years, much less do anything about it as so many people (including three very close friends of mine) died an agonizing death.

Read the history of the labor rights movement, from the slaughters of the late 19th century to the Flint Sit-Down Strike to Shawn Fain’s brilliant leadership of the UAW today. It has waxed and waned for almost two centuries; it’s reviving itself as a movement again right now (and Fain has the talent to become a major force).

Movements can come out of pain, but they can also come out of hope. The belief that a pluralistic, multiracial society free of poverty was possible in America was, for example, the initial motivation and mission of SDS: that was the essence of Hayden’s Port Huron Statement. Its anti-war activity came later.

This movement requirement for narrative, for deep story that transcends mere details and summarizes entire complex issues into a single crystalized legend, is why movements so often have not just leaders but also martyrs. They are the yin to the yang of leadership and heroes, and for a movement to be successful both are often useful or even necessary.

Sometimes the leader and the martyr are the same; the persecution of Malcolm X, for example, or the repeated jailing of Martin Luther King. Hitler played that role when he went to prison in the 1920s for trying to overthrow the government of Bavaria; Trump plays it today with his candidacy for president overlaid by his victim routine about his 91 indictments and the daily drama of his legal travails.

The Civil Rights movement had Emmett Till and Rosa Parks, with other famous names in its deeper history. The women’s movement had Susan B. Anthony, who was arrested for voting-while-female in 1872 and thus became both the movement’s martyr and leader.

Hitler’s movement held up Horst Wessel, who was killed in his violent street-gang Sturmabteilung volunteer militia that was often, initially, met with violence by police and anti-Nazi mobs.

FDR had a generation of martyrs destroyed by the Republican Great Depression and brought to popular consciousness by John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie.

LBJ used the memory of the death of JFK to push through the Civil and Voting Rights Acts, and then he and RFK pointed to martyrs in the poverty-wracked South and a retiring WWII generation who couldn’t get health insurance in old age to build a movement for his Great Society programs of Medicare and Medicaid.

Tim McVeigh, who aspired to kick off a “new [white nationalist] America” movement blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building on the anniversary of the death of white supremacist David Koresh and in the memory of white nationalist Randy Weaver, leading Trump, today having seized the mantle of leadership of Koresh’s and McVeigh’s movement, to give his first speech as a 2024 presidential candidate in Waco.

Trump regularly honors Ashli Babbit (and trots out her mother), killed by a Black Capitol Police officer during January 6th, along with the imprisoned January 6th insurrectionists (and their chorus) the way Hitler did with Wessel and his early Munich brawlers who’d been arrested or killed. He mentions Babbit and sings along with a recording of the imprisoned traitors at nearly every rally.

Trump’s movement also has multiple spin-off but aligned astroturf movements, many funded to the tune of millions by oil, tobacco, pharma, banking, tech, and other industry billionaires.

For example, the Tea Party — funded by those billionaires — was successful in driving a nationwide movement to stop a national healthcare program and guarantee that Obamacare ran exclusively through the highly profitable insurance industry.

Moms for Liberty has chapters all across America and delights in harassing teachers and school boards while promoting the banning of books (except about threesomes?).

Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA has over 300 chapters on campuses across America and sponsors conferences around the country; their stated purpose includes “to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom…” Not a word in there about policy or even politics, although they’re having a huge impact on both.

There’s an entire infrastructure — capitalized to the tune of billions of dollars a year — that supports the white nationalist, low-tax, small-government, anti-union, anti-woman, pro-fossil-fuel, anti-public-school movements and all their branches and offshoots that Trump successfully captured and now leads.

It has over 1500 radio stations blaring hate and fear 24/7; three national television networks daily promoting propaganda friendly to their billionaire owners; newspapers, websites, and appears to even be embraced by the billionaire owners of America’s largest social media companies who refuse to make public their algorithms that drive public opinion and, often, public outrage.

It pays for the political campaigns of politicians who support it, funds outsiders like Manchin and Sinema who will betray and disrupt its enemies, and ensures total loyalty to the movement and its leader Trump with the promise of funding primary challengers against anybody who deviates even the slightest from its orthodoxy.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has none of this.

Its three most visible movement leaders of my lifetime, JFK, RFK, and MLK, were all murdered in the 1960s. SDS died in the 1970s when its violent offshoot, the Weather Underground, was finally brought down. The Civil Rights movement endures but never recaptured its vitality after the brutal murder of King.

When Bernie took up the progressive movement’s mantle in 2012 and 2016, he was opposed by the institutional Democratic Party in ways that leave his supporters bitter to this day and led former DNC Chair Donna Brazile to pen an apology to him in her autobiography and on multiple TV appearances.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the “Squad” had their moment in the sun, but haven’t caught on as national movement leaders; similarly, the short-lived Black Lives Matter movement caught fire after the murder of George Floyd but has now devolved into internecine warfare.

Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi did yeoman’s work overhauling the American economy and getting America back on track after the disastrous Trump years, but neither has the charisma (or youth or drivenness) to lead a new progressive movement.

Gavin Newsom is a fresh new face for much of America, and certainly mopped the floor with Ron DeSantis in a recent Fox “News” debate, but he’s yet to take the steps — and the chances/sacrifices — that could catapult him from politician to movement leader.

And it’s that risk-taking that almost always characterizes the difference between mere politicians and leaders of movements.

Politicians play within the system; movement leaders aren’t afraid to offend or even injure the system if it will advance the movement. Politicians follow the rules; movement leaders often intentionally break them, if for no other reason than to demonstrate the need for their reform.

Movement leaders — like true movements themselves — are disruptive. They lay down in the street, stand before lines of police, let themselves get beaten and arrested for a greater cause. They sacrifice.

The successful ones are almost always talented in the arts of mass communication, in public speaking, in organizing political and guerrilla theater.

For better or worse, from Gandhi to Trump, John Lewis to David Duke and Alex Jones, Gloria Steinem to Nick Fuentes, movement leaders defy the status quo and gain an almost mythic stature and power from the audaciousness of their insurgencies.

Heading into the 2024 election, Democrats are facing a massive, multi-faceted movement driving Trump’s faction, held together by white supremacy, authoritarianism, hate, and fear of the “other.” In response, Democrats are holding up their considerable accomplishments, but have yet to activate or find their own grass-roots movement in response.

The craving for movement and movement leadership on the left is palpable: look at how the country rallied around the Tennessee Three, for example. But their local activism hasn’t succeeded in going national and has only occasionally — and then with minimal national press — been replicated in state houses across the nation.

Similarly, the Occupy Movement had a powerful moment, until it was co-opted by a New York Maoist cult leader and collapsed.

There’s still a dramatic imbalance between the massive, organized, and well-funded “anti-woke” movement driving the politics of the right, and the scattershot state-by-state efforts at reform and to salvage democracy on the left.

The closest to movement politics we have at the moment are the millions of American women (and their male allies) who want control of their bodies and are outraged at GOP attempts to return them to the status of men’s servants and playthings, from the boardroom to the bedroom.

That movement is beginning to find its voice and even has a current martyr in Texas’ Kate Cox, the woman who the men running Texas threatened to force a doomed pregnancy to term at the risk of her own life.

Will it become organized and national? Will a charismatic leader emerge or step forward to carry the women’s rights banner?

The other issue that President Biden keeps trying to evoke movement politics around — so far with only lip service from the press — is the attempt to rescue American freedom and democracy from both the corruption of six billionaire-owned Republicans on the Supreme Court and a fascist demagogue who promises to become a dictator from “day one.”

A movement for democracy.

(Anand Giridharadas, one of America’s most thoughtful commentators, recently had a discussion about this very topic with Joe Scarborough that’s well worth viewing.)

The power of the freedom meme is so great that fossil fuel billionaires have hijacked it for decades, smearing the words “freedom” and “liberty” all over everything they do. It resonates deeply in the American psyche.

Will a progressive democracy movement leader emerge to take on the growing forces of fascism represented by the Trump and Qanon cults — and the handful of third-party wannabee movement leaders — in America?

Are there people with talent and charisma willing to risk the fate of JFK and MLK to take head-on the armed militias and algorithm-fueled haters who’ve sworn their lives and allegiance to Trump and his ideal of a Christian-only white supremacist nation?

And, if one or more does, will the institutional Democratic Party treat them as a threat, the way they did Bernie and Howard Dean before him? Or will they recognize that the only way to defeat a movement like Trump now commands is with another movement of equal passion and fervor — and to get behind it, collaborate, and use its force and energy to change policy and politics, the way LBJ did when he saw that MLK would never give up?

As Jen Psaki said on Morning Joe this morning about the great recent economic news:

“Data doesn’t move people, emotions do.”

She noted that its “never about the data” and the Democratic Party needs storytellers to convert Biden’s great economic data into narratives about “how this impacts you and your family.”

Similarly, should a movement and movement leadership emerge in the next few months that could inspire Bernie-like enthusiasm to drive millions to the polls, will the handful of billionaires associated with the Democratic Party, and the consultants who make their living on fees from conventional advertising, dismiss it the way they did Bernie, BLM, the Sunrise Movement, and the Occupy Movement?

Or have they finally learned their lesson and will thus embrace movement politics the way their rightwing peers did with the Tea Party, Trump in 2016, and continue to do today with all the spinoff “anti-woke” movements they fund?

The answer to that question may well determine the future of democracy in both our republic and around the world.

Honestly, at this point in time, I’m pretty sick of Trump. I SHOULD stop writing here if I were to listen to the pastor at our church this week. Apparently, I’m not able to listen to him because I just can’t bring myself to “forgive” Trump and I’m unable to accept what a second term would do to this nation. I’m already bracing myself for INSURRECTION #2 which will take place once he’s been SOUNDLY defeated once for all. Yes. it’s a bit alarming that President Biden’s “poll numbers” are historically low – you have to give republicans credit for their ability to LIE to the American people and, sadly, in my view, too many Americans – at this point in time – are thinking in terms of prices (which HAVE come down in many instances – gas, eggs, etc.) when there’s so much on the line in this upcoming election.

While I want to tout President Biden’s accomplishments (once again), which I consider historic themselves, I first have to focus on what it is that so many Americans, many of whom claim to be “Christians,” are supporting. Let’s start with the parallels to the Nazi’s coming from Trump and his supporters. Of course, lately, Trump has been saying the “quiet part out loud,” as he’s suggested “immigrants are poisoning the blood of Americans” which would be laughable on its face if it wasn’t so, well, NAZI. It’s almost as if Trump took the words right out of Mein Kampf – Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto – OK, I think he did. But, regardless, those are the same words Hitler used in his attacks on non-Aryan people. In fact, Hitler referred to these non-Aryans as “vermin.” Oops! ditto once again with Trump. Could we say his “Stand back and stand by” Proud Boys would be the equivalent of the “Brown shirts?”

I’ve been saying, here, for years, that Trump’s LYING (along with that of his republican sycophants) is right out of the Nazi’s “Big Lie Theory.” For some reason the “mainstream media” hasn’t picked up on this. This was another of Hitler’s “inventions” coming from Mein Kampf – “If you repeat a LIE over and over again, eventually people will believe the LIE to be “true.” This was the “strategy” put in place by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s “minister of propaganda.” Here is one of Goebbel’s more famous quotes: ” This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it.” Another of their (Hitler and Goebbels) “techniques” was “projection.” They believed in accusing their opponents of that which they were busy doing.

Here’s a few more Geobbels quotes: ” Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will.” ” A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.” ” Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.” And, ” We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection.” If you’re still reading I think you get my point. I’ve defined fascists here several times and all I’ll say is when Trump accuses people like me of being “Communist, Marxist, Fascist vermin” you can see where he gets the inspiration.

Keep in mind, Trump is DESPERATE. Not only is he weeks away from potentially losing his control over the “Trump Organization,” he’s facing several more legal challenges in the coming year (or two). Trump is in full “Roy Cohn” mode as he’s attacking the prosecutors, judges, families of prosecutors and judges, ANYONE he thinks he can get away with sicking his right wing sycophants onto in the hopes to spread FEAR among those who might sit on a jury or who might have the temerity to TESTIFY against him. He’s going to PUSH everything to the limit including the “gag orders” – DARING a judge (somewhere) to actually prove we don’t have a “two tier” judicial system and throw his ASS in jail. What other defendant could get away with the “deplorable” behavior he’s exhibiting while out on pre-trial release. There are untold THOUSANDS of indicted defendants across this land sitting in jail waiting their trials for FAR LESS than what we are witnessing from Trump.

Speaking of projection I almost have to laugh when I hear (read about) Trump or any of his “cronies” referring to the “Biden Crime Family.” This goes right through the republican party and their members of Congress – especially in the House. It seems obvious that these House members have to be smart enough to know their LYING would be an embarrassment if the stakes were not so high. They accuse the Biden Administation of “weaponizing” government – as if they still believe January 6th, 2021 was “normal political discourse.” All the while they are threatening a MASSIVE weaponization of government should Trump regain the “Oval Office.” And, please, enough already with the Hunter Biden “stuff.” (I predict he’ll be acquitted on all charges if they ever get that far) Let’s just compare Hunter Biden to Jared Kushner – someone who SHOULD be facing strict scrutiny.

Let’s just go over a bit of Kushner’s “schtick.” First off, he was integrally involved in the “real” FAKE NEWS which took place in the 2016 election. (Of course, a perfect place to check out Trump’s PROJECTION over the previous EIGHT years) Cambridge Analytica (CA) – an outfit put together by Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer – HIJACKED the data from 57 MILLION American Facebook users and organized it in a way to allow for targeted mis/disinformation during the 2016 campaign. What made it so much worse was CA shared this info with not only the Russians but (allegedly) also some Israeli intelligence officers who had “partnered” (secretly) with the Saudi’s, the Emerati’s, the Egyptians, Bahrain, and Israel – with Kushner’s help along with others in Trump’s campaign – based on info in Seth Abramson’s “Proof of Conspiracy.”

Additionally, Kushner spent almost the entire 4 years he was Trump’s “Senior advisor” communicating with Mohammed bin Salmon (MBS) using and encrypted device – in violation of the presidential records act. Kushner (allegedly) was behind the Saudi and Emerati blockade of Qatar out of retribution for their denial of bailing Kushner out of his failed investment at 666 (the number of the devil – just sayin) 5th Avenue in Manhattan. Curiously, as soon as the Qatari’s agreed to bail him out, the blockade was ended. None of this even brings up Kushner making repeated trips to the Middle East right before the end of Trump’s administration and the subsequent $2 BILLION he was GIVEN by MBS – who opposed his own investment people who recommended the money not be “invested.” Let’s get off the Hunter Biden stuff for good.

As I’m writing this I can still hear Trump (and Michael Flynn) leading his sycophants in chants of “lock her up” because Hillary Clinton “may have been” careless with Classified information by using a personal server when she was Secretary of State (just like Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell before her) Well, what about Trump and his HOARDING and attempting to keep – despite a subpoena – HUNDREDS of the most sensitive Classified documents – some of which there’s credible evidence he shared them. Yikes!!! And, getting back to Kushner, there are credible allegations he was reading the Presidential Daily Brief (when he wasn’t cleared to do so) and SHARING secret information with MBS – leading to the arrest and TORTURE of many Saudi’s the American intelligence Community had identified as opposed to the MBS – in essence – coup d’etat in Saudi Arabi – pushing himself above the true next in line to the “throne.”

Speaking of your “Crime families.” And, that’s without getting into the 91 FELONIES Trump has been (alleged) to have committed. In excess of 30 FELONIES in the Manhattan “hush money” case – which is rarely in the news these days, over 30 FELONIES in the Classified Documents case, I believe it’s 13 FELONIES in the Georgia case, and, of course, “only” FOUR in the January 6th, 2021 case. (And, this is not to mention the SECOND E Jean Carroll trial – which is only about how much he’s going to OWE her OR the several civil cases working through the system regarding the INSURRECTION)

Here’s where I believe Trump should be careful for what he wishes for. If you’ve been paying attention you know Trump MUST feel especially vulnerable from Jack Smith’s Jan. 6th case because he’s “throwing spaghetti against the wall” in an attempt to find a way to delay what is planned for a March trial date. If he succeeds in pushing that trial back that would simply mean the Manhattan “hush money” case could proceed in March as originally intended. And, it appears that Judge Aileen Cannon is doing everything she can to delay the Classified Documents case which, if she’s successful at pushing it back until after the election, THEN the Georgia RICO case will be able to be tried in around June or July of 2024 Here’s why I believe this is so critical – NEITHER of these two cases, the “Hush Money” case nor the “RICO” Case in Georgia are subject to whether or not Trump might regain the “White House.” In fact, at least in the Georgia case, ALL Americans would be able to WATCH the proceedings as that trial will be televised. If Trump is CONVICTED in either trial there’s NO ability for any federal pardon. He’ll be, what’s the word?, TOAST!!!

Should Trump be imprisoned, this would be another parallel to Hitler back in the 1920’s in Germany, except for one grave difference. First, the sentence could be much longer and Trump is ALREADY 77 and, from all intents and purposes, “losing his marbles.” He can’t even remember who defeated him in 2020 or who he defeated in 2016. He has trouble pronouncing any words that exceed two syllables and he confuses the dictators he admires with what country they’re actually “dictating” (not sure if that’s a word?) and, obviously, he hasn’t played “Where in the world is Carmen San Diego” because he mistakes where the boundaries of these INCORRECTLY described countries actually are. Have you ever watched him taking a drink when he’s speaking? He thought E Jean Carroll was his first wife. And, on and on. Somehow, republicans have the “mainstream media” focusing on “gaffes” by President Biden when the true “gaffe champion” is none other than Trump. He really is losing it!

His republican sycophants in Congress continue to badger the public into believing the budget deficits are the fault of Joe Biden when Trump may be the all time “king” of the budget deficits. When Biden took the oath of office approximately 25% of the national debt had occurred during Trump’s four years in office – led by the traditional republican giveaway er tax cut for the wealthiest Americans/corporations leading to record deficits during his reign. Barack Obama had spent 8 years working to reduce the deficits he (and Biden) inherited from Bush/Cheney and it didn’t take long for republicans to turn that “train” in an almost 180 degree direction. And, of course, republicans (along with Kyrsten Sinema) have made it more difficult for President Biden and the democrats to reduce the deficit even faster than they are.

So far, I’ve given a plethora of reasons why any sensible thinking American should NOT be considering voting for another Trump administration – and, I haven’t even gotten into the “saving democracy” schtick (other than pointing out Trump to be a fascist). Let’s talk about some policy issues. First and foremost in my mind – and, trust me, there are several issues which could occupy this “mantra” – is the courts. Yes, this could fall under the saving democracy spot in my “list” because, in my mind, sensible Americans can’t afford to elect another republican president for at least a generation because that’s how long this right wing court is going to last – short of “we the people” voting in enough progressives to IMPEACH at least TWO of the judges presently sitting on the Court. Personally, I consider Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito to be nearly as corrupt as the rest of the republican party. I probably won’t last more than, at most, a couple more elections – but, my children and grandchildren are in the same boat as other young Americans who face the realities of what this court is doing – and, it’s likely to get MUCH worse before it gets better.

Climate Change. To me, if you’re a young person your ONLY choice when going to the polls is democrats up and down the tickets because republicans refuse to even acknowledge the existence of the Climate Crisis. It’s time young people flock to the polls and vote out the republicans who seem hell bent on perpetuating the crisis. Let’s take a look at Florida, for example. Floridians voted overwhelmingly to re-elect one of the worst (in my view) politicians in America as their governor. Ron DeSantis is a complete Climate science denier. (As are virtually ALL republicans) Yet, every year there’s at least ONE MORE devastating hurricane hitting the state leaving the federal government to come to the rescue of the Florida people. If you live in Florida, it’s becoming almost impossible, for instance, to get homeowners insurance. Have you seen the devastation from these hurricanes? This goes for Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Texas – maybe not as regularly as Florida, but??????

If you’re a woman, why on earth would you vote for a republican – especially a young woman of child bearing age? Getting pregnant SHOULDN’T be a life threatening illness. And, I’m thinking of all the women who find themselves bleeding out and having a miscarriage only to discover the solution is, in essence, an abortion and if you live in say Texas, or Florida, or Mississippi, or Iowa, or any other state which prohibits abortions even to save the life of the mother you’re, well, (maybe an inappropriate term) screwed! There’s, right now as I’m writing this, a woman in Texas who has a pregnancy which is “non-viable” and the Texas courts are forcing her to carry this (likely deceased) fetus to term – at the risk of her life and, of course, her future fertility – as this woman WANTS to have another child. How many cases are there which don’t make it to the “liberal media?” Remember, republicans want their abortion bans to be NATIONAL. I’ve said here, many times, a “right” is much easier to LOSE than to regain. (This issue resulted from Trump “winning” in 2016 – lots of women either voting for him or a third party candidate or staying home – I recommend against any of that)

There’s Civil Rights, there’s Voting Rights, there’s education (including student loan deferrals – Biden needs MORE democrats in Congress for that one), there’s the Ukraine war, there’s foreign policy in general – are we going to support dictators or democratic republics? – and, what do you think would happen if Trump was president during another disaster like the pandemic? Look up Narcissist if you want a simple answer to that question. President Biden is leading a MUCH needed revitalization of our infrastructure (do you remember all of Trump’s “infrastructure weeks?”), manufacturing is increasing, real wages are increasing. and there’s a concerted effort for government to work “from the bottom up middle out.” I’ve been waiting YEARS to hear that from someone occupying the “White House” and “we the people” shouldn’t be failing to understand how important that is. I played basketball in college and I still remember the coaches saying we were no better than the last man sitting on the bench. For all those right wing “Christians” out there remember Jesus said, “What you do for the least of these you do for me. What you do TO the least of these you do TO me!”

President Biden has included more women and “people of color” in his administration and via appointments to the courts than maybe ANY president before him. Of course, to republicans this is a reason to vote against him – but I have to believe there are MORE Americans who want people to be judged by their abilities than by the color of their skin. Remember, despite there being someone who always holds that “Blacks for Trump” at his rallies, there were virtually NO “persons of color” in his administration. In fact, at some point take a close look at the members of Congress who make up the republican caucus. Here’s a photo of the republicans who voted for the 2017 tax cuts – (which blew a several TRILLION hole in the budget) – you tell me how many non-whites were in the picture. You’re looking at the republican caucus.

I “get” that Trump and many of his sycophants are undeniable white nationalists/supremacists and they would look at that photo and see nothing wrong. Here’s the reality – and what these republicans fear – America is not TOTALLY white. We are/have been/ and hopefully will remain a nation of immigrants. Not all of the immigrants (in fact, probably not many of them) come from Norway – as was Trump’s wish while he was in office. He complained of “Shit hole” countries – do you think that may have been racist? There are so many different examples demonstrating Trump’s racism I’m not going to attempt to list them here – if you’re interested it’s not hard to find. I’m just counting on there being enough people who don’t believe in racism, mysogyny, anti-semitism (OK, that’s racism), xenophobia, Islamaphobia, and cruelty to the LGBTQ community to make it so Trump can face his legal perils WHENEVER the trials take place – that is, stopping him from retaking the “White House” so he can try to continue what he’s done his entire life – evade accountability for his conduct. Stay tuned……

Final Thought: I mentioned above about how President Biden is leading a “revitalization of our infrastructure” and, I have to add, MOST republican members of Congress voted against the bill. (Yes, it was a bipartisan bill, especially in the Senate). What’s been most interesting is the number of members of Congress who DID vote against it attempting to take credit for the good it’s doing out in the “field.” Here’s a list of republicans MOST of whom voted against the infrastructure bill – it’s true some voted for it – or it never would have passed. (The bi-partisanship President Biden strives for) Almost all GOP members of the House voted against the bill as you can see here. These people have no bottom!