The Coming January 6th Anniversary

If you have not followed the investigation and documentation of the attack on Capitol Hill, please spend some time at Wikipedia and read what is known.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_United_States_Capitol_attack

In summary, former President Donald Trump AND his wannabees crafted a plan they called “The Green Bay Sweep” to disrupt the Electoral College. The purpose was to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

When Vice-President Mike Pence declined to participate in the nefarious Green Bay Sweep, President Trump and his wannabees launched Plan B to physically disrupt the Electoral College, by using right-wing organizations to breach Capitol Hill security.

Plan B was effective and involved a three-hour battle in the Capitol Building, a delay in providing National Guard support to the Capitol Hill police, and the ongoing promotion of a lie that the national elections were rigged for Joe Biden to win.

The one-year anniversary of the Electoral College disruption is approaching. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, and President Joe Biden are planning a remembrance ceremony to educate the public at large about former President Trump’s planning and preparation for events surrounding that day.

Ex-President Trump is planning to speak publicly from Mar-a-Lago in advance of the remembrance ceremony and is expected to denounce Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, the Select Committee that is investigating the event, and finally, he will continue the Big Lie that the election was stolen.

It will be interesting to see if any political parties make public announcements or not. And it will be interesting to see how the news media covers this event with interviews of politicians, celebriticians, and other key political figures.

The legacy of President Trump’s term in office is already tarnished with two impeachments. His legacy included the establishment of the Space Force, re-shaping the Supreme Court, establishing a new US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, providing more tax relief (which increased the National Debt), reducing taxes on the wealthy, increasing cybersecurity, promoting permanent federal funding for black colleges, and setting standards for federal grants. And that’s about all that he did.

There were failures, too, but they pale in comparison to his attempt to thwart the Constitution and disrupt the Electoral College. There’s no need to pour salt into the wound by listing his failures.

The Republican Election Steal

You can read about it at The Daily Beast or you can click it here:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-advisor-peter-navarro-lays-out-how-he-and-steve-bannon-planned-to-overturn-bidens-electoral-win?ref=home

One thing that most people don’t get is how the Republican oligarchy actually operates. Whether they prevent people from voting, or from buying homes, or causing them to live in certain areas, whatever. The Republican oligarchy manipulates the law to work in their favor. And because this manipulation is lawful (at times borderline illegal), the Party of Elite Wealth creates a process or a situation that benefits them.

In the article, if you read it, one of the leaders and influencers of the Republican Party outlines how they intended to steal the election from Joe Biden: create a false concern about fraudulent voting, delay the Electoral College from certifying the election, and use VP Pence in the process.

“This last-minute maneuvering never had any chance of actually decertifying the election results on its own, a point that Navarro quickly acknowledges. But their hope was to run the clock as long as possible to increase public pressure on then-Vice President Mike Pence to send the electoral votes back to six contested states, where Republican-led legislatures could try to overturn the results. And in their mind, ramping up pressure on Pence would require media coverage. While most respected news organizations refused to regurgitate unproven conspiracy theories about widespread election fraud, this plan hoped to force journalists to cover the allegations by creating a historic delay to the certification process.”-Peter Navarro

One routine tactic of the Republican Party is to accuse Democrats of the exact same objective that the Republicans are putting in place: stealing the election in this case.

The beauty of the Republican plan was they already had 100 Congressmen signed up to go along with their perfidy. They didn’t need the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys invading the Capitol but this is what Donald Trump wanted. When VP Pence declined to participate in the Republican Party initiative, Plan B was put into place to seek revenge against Pence. It was Trump’s Order of the Day.

And we know how that turned out.

Emperors are naked! Send Clothing!

Yikes! The Jan 6 House Committee is shouting that NONE of the Right-Wing Emperors have clothes!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/destroying-his-legacy-fox-news-hosts-urged-white-house-to-act-during-jan-6-riot-committee-reveals-012345866.html

Not Trump, not his top advisers, and not the right-wing media. Liz Cheney is stripping the invisibility and invincibility from all Trump acolytes. We are seeing the height of their perfidy and their involvement in trying to overturn the 2020 election results.

Oh, my! Which political party will try to get Liz Cheney to run for office under their banner? It won’t be the Republican Party, for sure!

She is a firebrand and has set the former Executive Branch on fire with her investigation of perfidy at the highest levels. Just like every other investigation of ex-President Donald Trump, this one burns everybody around him. He may have been asbestos in Russia Gate but he is going to burn for his role in the events of January 6th.

There are way too many scandals involving ex-President Donald Trump and his attempts to usurp the US election process. How is it possible that the decent people in the mainstream Republican Party can continue to applaud, listen, and support ex-President Donald Trump?

I don’t know.

But I’m reminded of the Bible story about the prodigal son. I wish all the good Republicans would return home to the Party of fiscal responsibility and good governance.

I hope those Prodigal Sons and Daughters realize that HOME has a new address. HOME for good-governance Republicans is now the Reform Party of the USA.

It’s time to come home. The dinner bell is ringing. You are welcome to join us at the table of good governance and fiscal responsibility.

Can a very rich man defeat American democracy?

It appears there is no stopping ex-President Donald Trump in his efforts to secure POWER over American democracy.

First, he planned to simply not leave the White House. He purged a slew of generals and Defense appointees to put his own puppets in place. He tried to get the Attorney General and the Vice President to declare the election was fraudulent. They resisted. He met with people who would attack Congress and take over the Electoral College. Without Electoral College certification, he would claim the election fraudulent and assert himself as President until the Supreme Court ruled on who would be President.

Second, ex-President Trump withheld and stymied efforts for the military to quell the takeover of Congress. Some he did himself and some he did through acolytes.

Third, ex-President Trump used the Republican Party and its state-level adherents to attack the legitimacy and certification of state election boards. The purpose was to throw out a valid vote count and then use the Courts to reinstate him as President. He has failed in multiple attempts; however, he is using the state legislatures to draft new election laws that permit their legislatures to usurp vote results. The end game is to avoid Republican and Democrat Party lawsuits in favor of legislation that can simply declare the winner of a state’s electoral vote count.

The Fourth Wave of ex-President Trump’s efforts is about to unfold. The creation of a personal propaganda machine to promote Trump across the nation. Congressman Devin Nunes has been chosen to run Trump’s propaganda machine.

American democracy is at stake. Not just who will be President but who will control the country and choose its leaders at all levels of civic government.

Can American democracy win the war that ex-President Trump is bringing to America?

Can multi-culturalism be defeated by a single billionaire who intends to revert America to a single white corporate culture that existed in the 1950s?

There is no reason for ex-President Trump to cease efforts to control American democracy. Like most old men, he doesn’t like the changes that have occurred in America in his lifetime. BUT unlike most old men, ex-President Trump has the money to afford his civilian campaign to overthrow American democracy for a different type of government.

Remember Bolivarianism?

Prepare for the right-wing version known as Trumpism. One state at a time. One election at a time. Misery for people who don’t fit the mold.

There’s chaos ahead, my friends. Not control. Chaos in all of its faces.

Congressional Reform

Those who break it can never fix it. Is that a given?

I’m going to point you to this opinion piece by the CATO organization. It makes the case, far better than I can, about the need for a paradigm shift in returning Congress to its roots.

Congressional reformation cannot be accomplished by the Republican Party or the Democrat Party. They are embedded in the process and they are enablers of putting power into the Presidency, not curtailing it.

They are enablers of Judicial power, too. By failing to perform their role in crafting legislation and interpretation, they gift the power of interpretation to the Supreme Court.

Take a moment to read this and reflect on the boundaries each branch of the government should have. Then reflect on how the US government should evolve beyond the partisanship that exists and how more control is needed over the power of the federal government.

https://www.cato.org/commentary/its-time-make-congress-great-again#

Lock Him Up!

Democrats don’t chant like MAGA supporters do. More’s the shame, I guess.

In the 2016 campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump agreed with his MAGA crowd that Hillary Clinton should be locked up. Candidate Trump began a series of unfounded allegations that Hillary Clinton gained millions of dollars because she used her influence to steer a uranium deal to the Russians. The chant became a staple of his campaign as candidate Trump began calling her “Crooked Hillary”. NONE of those allegations were proven to be true. President Trump is a veteran liar. It’s likely he has awarded himself medals to his villainy.

The mountain of evidence continues to grow that President Trump was an actor in the events of January 6, 2021. The evidence shows that President Trump was unsuccessful in coercing state government officials to overthrow the election results of 2020. Knowing that his Attorney General Bill Barr refused to lie, knowing that the Trump campaign efforts to overthrow election results in 6 states were failing, President Trump applied pressure to VP Mike Pence to simply declare the vote count fraudulent during the Electoral College process.

Meetings in December 2020 and testimony from government officials demonstrate that President Trump was more knowledgeable about the attack on Capitol Hill than President Nixon was about the Watergate break-in. The failure of the Senate to convict President Trump for his role in the Capitol Hill attack is all about the Republican Party’s failure to hold one of their own accountable.

Will Democrats begin to chant “Lock him up?” Probably not.

But they should.

The Changing United States

We can simply forget the United States of the 40s and 50s , as well as , the US from the 80s and 90s. Those days and those ways are long gone. Unfortunately, we (and that includes me) don’t always acknowledge it.

The Nuclear Family with a “Father Knows Best Dad”, a “Claire Huxtable” mom and “Brady Bunch” kids , is pretty much behind us now. The values of a family have not changed because these are traditional values. However, they are now applied to single parent families, to mixed race families, and to extended and multi-generational families. It’s a different America at home and in the work place. Color and gender ceilings are broken almost daily.

What remains now is the blending of American and Rest of World cultures. Asian, Indian, Muslim, and other cultures are not melting into the American pot anymore but are becoming their own flavors of a new American dish. And we don’t recognize this is happening as well as we might. Yes, we have always had enclaves of different cultures but this is different.

Yesterday’s Blue-Plate Special of Caucasian America is changing and those cooks who have been making it for centuries are not adjusting their recipes. Call them what you will, but Caucasian primacy in America is devolving ever faster in both politics and the work place. Old timers like me can’t adjust fast enough. The attributes that guided us in the past six decades are eroding and being replaced with something new and it is a work-in-process activity.

President Trump, much to his dismay, is the second-to-last white male who will govern this country as though it were a single Caucasian constituency. Joe Biden will be the last one.

The model going forward will be multi-ethnic mixed-race candidates. We will be ahead of the European countries thanks to our history. The ruling Houses of Europe will be the last to adapt to the world.

Yeah, I know you other old timers don’t see it yet. Put your glasses on the next time you read the tea leaves. You will see what I see. A new America with a new vibrancy and a new kind of world leadership. We will not only embrace the ethnicity and culture within the US but we will embrace the Rest of the World, too.

Our manifest destiny is not over, we are extending it across both oceans until our fingers touch from around both sides of the earth. We will seek to blend in and not to stand out. It will become our new way.

Capitalism at your expense will give way to blended socialism. Much of that road has already been paved. We just don’t see it yet.

Portland: Protests vs Riots

I watched about an hour’s worth of Portland videos before writing this only to learn that my thoughts two months ago are still valid today.

a) The daytime protests are in line with non-violent protests I have seen for the past 50 years. Regular people wearing regular clothes singing, carrying signs, shouting their cause through megaphones and at the top of their voices. These are the ones who care passionately about reducing police brutality and preventing the death and injury of people being arrested for a crime.

b) Towards dusk and later, the crowds wear black, they don helmets, they hurl objects, and they attack bystanders as well as police and property. If I were to stereotype the Antifa, the violent people, the destroyers of social order, I would say that if they wear gas masks, wear black, shout their hatred towards the police, and taunt the police, these are the ones I would target for arrest as a police officer assigned to maintain social order.

I read with disgust the statements of Mayor Ted Wheeler, Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury, and the Oregon Governor Kate Brown related to the death of a Trump supporter. They blamed the death of a Trump supporter on …the presence of Trump supporters… who the officials say were there to incite violence.

The Trump supporter was shot dead by someone in a red car. This is not intimidation, it is not Trump-oriented violence. It is an occupant of a red car who shot the man as he was walking in the street. The video is on the internet if you look for it.

When I read and hear what the officials of Portland and state government say, I am reminded of the expressions “Well that’s what she gets for dressing like this” and “well, what did you expect being there at that time of night”.

If any one needs to be “woke”, it’s the Mayor, the County Chair, and the governor. The violence does not stop until they make it stop. It is their job to provide for the safety of everyone. They have failed to do that. They are illegitimate as a government.

Trump may not do anything now, but if this is still happening on November 4th after the election, I expect the US Military to be on the streets of Portland to quell the violence. And I expect they will remain until January 20th if Trump is not elected to a second term… and longer if he is.

It is UnReasonable to permit civil unrest for social injustice to exist this long. The Governor, the Mayor, and the County have had four months to craft a new police policy as a way to stop the riots and they have not done a thing. Shame on their leadership. Shame on them.

Primary Chaos

Kentucky. Mitch McConnell’s state. A test for creating election chaos.

Any excuse will do. COVID works exceptionally well.

Having reduced the number of polling places from 3,700 to only 170 and using COVID as an excuse, can Mitch McConnell win in a ginned-up Republican primary? That is the question.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/22/politics/kentucky-poll-locations/index.html

What if the November election is chaos and the President claims the election results can’t be valid , will the Electoral College still meet? Could the President sue the Federal Election Commission and have a do-over election?

Probably not. The Constitution was written to have the House vote for the President and the Senate vote for the Vice President when the Electoral College vote fails to attain 270 votes for a President.

In all cases though, this President puts his thumb on the scale and distorts the truth of the weigh.

Who can the President fire and substitute a lackey to do his bidding?

Good question.

And now that the Attorney General is a new hired gun, will he obey the law or twist it to the President’s ends?

Another good question.

Can anyone vote Republican anymore?

There’s a title I never thought I’d write. And yet the rot and decay in Republican Party values has created an overwhelming stench.

Evidence demands a verdict. Consider the evidence:

a) A President who blames all his troubles on someone else. A President who demeans 49% of all Americans. A President who is actively wrenching Republicanism away from its core values of decency, respect, the rule of law and God, and replacing those values with buffoonery, humiliation, and maniacal tweets.

b) A Majority Leader in the Senate who perverted the impeachment process and emboldened and enabled a cover-up of criminal and unethical Executive Branch actions.

c) A federal Republican party that will not display nor support the humble and decent values of Ronald Reagan and countless other Republican presidents.  A congressional Republican Party that seeks to break the US Treasury during times of crisis.

d) A Republican Party that no longer believes in a Republic and instead seeks Presidential immunity from prosecution and immunity from congressional oversight,  a party who seeks a King to revere,  and a party who asserts that all accusations against the President are a crime.

How can and why should anyone vote for the rot in the Republican Party?

And how can anyone vote for the Democrat Party either? Socialistic, bleed-the-bank programs, corrupting the ethics of self-reliance, independent thinking, and the advancement of the greater good in all men, the Democratic Party has failed to engage its collective brain and has failed its mission to rear decent Americans.

If you believe in the decency of the common man, for goodness sake, vote for someone other than a Republican or a Democrat. If you want to save America, vote independently and vote for a different set of legislators.