REPUBLISCUM - HOW LOW CAN YOU GO EDITION

 

Just when I think that the Republiscum Party can't sink any lower they appall by sinking so low we're wondering if their politics rather than nuclear core meltdowns is the true "China Syndrome". 

After each appalling descent into deeper and deeper fascism hopeful newscasters opine that the Republiscum in Congress have reached a line of madness that they will not cross. The hope is that reason and decency will prevail over fascist ideology and power madness leading many Republiscum to decide that they will go no further down the anti-democratic road of insanity and blind ambition. Barely are the words out of the mouths of some otherwise sane and decent commentors than the Republiscum en masse demonstrate that there is no depth to which they will not descend.

The latest proof of Republiscum commitment to a fascist take-over of the United States is the farrago that an impeachment trial of The Orange Führer is unconstitutional. Twice now a majority of the Republiscum Senators has gone on record claiming that The Orange Führer's treason can't result in a trial for that treason. They claim this despite the fact that President Grant's Secretary of War, William Belknap, was impeached and tried by the Senate in 1876 after he had resigned his office. To be honest, Belknap's case is not a total refutation of the unconstitutionality argument because some Republiscum of the day disputed the constitutionality of the impeachment and trial at the time even after the Senate voted that Belknap could be tried and that his impeachment and trial did not violate the Constitution. Ultimately Belknap was acquitted because the Senate failed to meet the required two-thirds majority for conviction. Of the sixty-six Senators conviction required forty-four votes. Only thirty-seven, a majority but not two-thirds voted to convict him for bribery and corruption, a less than ringing endorsement of Mr. Belknap.

A group of Republiscum forty-five strong (since shrunk by just 1 to 44) voted that an office holder no longer in that office cannot be tried by the Senate for high crimes and misdemeanors simply because those crimes and misdemeanors committed while in office aren't being committed any longer. By that reasoning, Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who murdered 9 people at the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina should never have been convicted and imprisoned because he's stopped killing people after those 9.

 I suppose it would be rude to note that these same Republiscum who feel that The Orange Führer must evade all responsibility are members of the party of "personal responsibility". That means that people who have neither boots nor the money to buy boots should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps while a criminal president who tried to end American democracy shouldn't be held responsible for his actions in inciting a riot. That's pretty much the same as deciding that $1,400 more to individuals in fear of losing their homes and not being able to feed their children are ballooning the deficit while tossing a few superfluous millions to millionaires so that they can redecorate the ski lodge in Aspen is an investment in growing the economy.

Of course, some of these Republiscum are the same scum who acquitted the traitorous Orange Führer of obvious treason in 2020 and supported a challenge to the accurate and correct votes of the Electoral College, encouraged The Orange Führer's attempted coup on January 6th and who supported Supreme Court nominees who just decided that, "Meh! Emoluments, smoluments! So what if it's a crime specifically designated in our Constitution. Just fogeddabout it!"

I have long said that the only good Republiscum is a dead Republiscum. I mean no personal or physical harm to the current Republiscum. What I did mean is that there were plenty of good Republicans in the past - Abraham Lincoln, Robert M. LaFollette, Margaret Chase Smith, Millicent Fenwick, Elliott Richardson and William Ruckleshaus are names that immediately spring to mind. Of course, I was wrong. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and several other office holders turn out to have moral compasses that can't be bought or threatened out of existence. Still we have examples aplenty at the national level of Senators and Congresspersons who are unworthy of their offices and the public trust. Specifically the 7 who supported the invasion of the Capitol and the attempt to undermine certification of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris' win by the Electoral College.

For example, there's Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri the first senator to endorse throwing out the certified votes of the Electoral College who saluted the insurrectionist thugs on January 6th and supported the lie that there were election irregularities that should overturn the vote of the people to give The Orange Führer at least another 4 years in the White House and possibly make him and his vile kin America's hereditary monarchy. 

There's also Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas (where else!, except Alabama or Mississippi). Ted is such a vile waste of oxygen that most of his Republiscum colleagues hate him. Imagine that! A pretense of a human being so awful that even the scum of the earth think he's scum! As if that weren't enough, some of the seditionists who assaulted the Capitol on January 6th were rifling through senators' desks and planning to bring their finds to Ted Cruz.

Florida has placed 2 neo-fascist prizes in the Senate. There's Rick Scott who looks and acts like one of the invasive, tropical snakes infesting the Everglades. The difference between Rick Scott and one of those invasive snakes is that the snakes have some principles.

His bookend is Marco Rubio who doesn't know his position on anything until a lobbyist writes it on his hand as a reminder. I include Rubio here though he did not vote against certifying the Electoral College vote. He has since sought to justify the insurrection and absolve The Orange Führer claiming that impeaching a man who tried to end American democracy is "stupid". 

From Alabama we have Tommy Tuberville whose only qualifications for public office are being football coach, a right wing loonie who's played too many football games without a helmet and a football coach. Sen. Tuberville, to be fair, has a disability: bad weather affects his ability to read. Did I mention that he's a football coach? (nota bene: I despise footfall, not Colin Kaepernick and the many players who knelt during the national anthem to show their ire and disappointment at the way African-Americans are treated, just the game itself) 

From Mississippi we have Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, a racist Ms. Hyde without a single iota of mitigating Dr. Jeckyll. 

What's the matter with Kansas? Well one festering, suppuration is Sen. Roger Marshall who still supports the lies and conspiracy idiocy that continue to infect our nation.

From Wisconsin we have Sen. Ron Johnson  who became the 2nd neo-fascist senator to sign on to overthrowing American democracy. Sen. Johnson has also gone on record claiming that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom the insurrectionists on January 6th were trying to find and hang, was responsible for the attempted putsch by supporters of The Orange Führer.

Beside these traitorous senators 139 members of the U. S. House of Representatives supported overturning the will of the people to keep The Orange Führer in power. Of those, the majority came from the states of the old Confederacy. That is not at all surprising since those are the most racist states where CHRISTIAN evangelicalism is the strongest and, hence, ignorance is most prevalent. Other significant numbers of traitors came from the old border states of Kentucky, Missouri and Kansas, the deep Bible belt state of Oklahoma and the neo-Nazi dominated state of Idaho. We also must not forget Indiana, the home state of Mike Pence and the only midwestern state to have surpassed most southern states in Ku Klux Klan membership. Then there is also Pennsylvania which was the scene of the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. President George Washington personally led troops in putting down that insurrection. More recently James Carville's accurately assessed the state as "Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and Alabama in between." I have some familiarity with Pennsylvania and consider Carville's characterization more apt than not.

I am being somewhat unfair in painting whole states with the neo-fascist tar brush but only somewhat. We have some scum who truly stand out as lower than a rattlesnake's belly and many times as poisonous to our democracy. The stand outs at the moment some of whom I need to list because they are so richly deserving of our disdain.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, (R-Ga-14) Ms. Greene is the QAnonsense nutcase who thinks that pretending that the mass shootings in Newtown, Connecticut and Parkland, Florida either didn't happen or were the work of pro-gun control advocates trying to make the NRA look bad. Of course, like most lunatics, Taylor Greene doesn't understand that the NRA does a perfectly adequate job of making itself look bad without any help from outside. Ms. Taylor Greene, thanks to her entirely imaginary knowledge of physics, believes that space lasers rather than climate change are responsible for wildfires in California and is a vocal proponent of killing many of her House colleagues as well as a supporter of the traitors who invaded the Capitol on January 6th. She may be the most perfect representation of the Republiscum Party on the national scene.

Lauren Boebert, (R-Co-3) Rep. Boebert's initial act on becoming a Congressperson was to publish a video of her touring Washington, D. C. illegally carrying a pistol. Of course, once it was noted that her lunatic expression of a 2nd Amendment "right" she didn't have was to say that she actually didn't carry the firearm she was shown carrying in her video. I'm sure that she's a great proponent of "personal responsibility"...for others.

Madison Cawthorn, (R-NC-11) Mr. Cawthorn is paralyzed from the waist down and gets about in a wheelchair. He has claimed that big, macho Madison would have been fine during the Capitol putsch on January 6th because he was armed on the floor of the House, a place where firearms are prohibited thanks to several nasty incidents in the 19th Century. Mr. Cawthorn lately has taken great umbrage at having to pass through metal detectors before entering the floor of the House that were placed at the entrance specifically to keep lunatics like Mr. Cawthorn, Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene from shooting some fellow Congressperson that they dislike. Mr. Cawthorn also likes to pad his resume by claiming that he's trained for the Special Olympics when he's done no such thing.

Matt Gaetz, (R-Fl-1) has publicly asserted that he is so totally committed to The Orange Führer that he could be mistaken for a pimple on The Orange Führer's ample ass. Don't we elect representatives to represent the people of their district, not suck up to one, failed dictator?

Mo Brooks, (R-Al-5) I think that the only thing we need to say about Rep. Brooks is to note that fellow neo-fascist, Ali Alexander, has claimed that Brooks, along with Paul Gosar (see below)  and Andy Biggs (see also below) helped organize the attempted putsch on January 6, 2021

Paul Gosar, (R-Az-4) Mr. Gosar was the first to object to certifying the votes of the Electoral College but even more than that his 6 siblings recorded advertisements during his election campaign urging voters to reject Mr. Gosar because he is such a vile human being. If your brothers and sister consider you unfit for public office maybe you really are unfit for public office. Mr. Gosar's behavior since the election has only underlined how correct his siblings were.

Devin Nunes, (R-Ca-22) Mr. Nunes' claim to fame is his investigation of the non-scandal at Benghazi, Libya. Mr. Nunes kept his "investigation" going long enough to help insure Hillary Clinton's electoral loss in 2016, then forgot all about it. Of course legitimate investigations had already found that Secretary Clinton could not have saved the American killed in Benghazi, but facts have never interfered with Mr. Nunes' sucking up to The Orange Führer. Oh! I almost forgot, Rep. Nunes, after a confidential briefing hopped out of a moving car to bring confidential information to The Orange Führer in the White House.

Kevin McCarthy, (R-Ca-23) Mr. McCarthy is the House minority leader. As such he has authority over the committee assignments of his fellow members. If there were no other reason to find Mr. McCarthy a walking, talking obscenity he assigned Marjorie Taylor Greene to the House Education and Labor Committee despite the fact that she has claimed that the mass murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and Marjory Stonemen Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida were perpetrated not by the actual perpetrators but by some mythical group that is simply trying to make the NRA look bad. She has also stalked and harassed David Hogg, a student who survived the shooting and became a gun control advocate.

Steve Scalise, (R-La-1) Mr. Scalise survived serious injury from a Leftist shooter in June, 2017. Let me state clearly that I oppose the death penalty in legal proceedings and even more strongly oppose anyone shooting people with whose politics he disagrees. Removal from office, banning from office for the rest of the person's life and imprisonment for crimes are the remedies I prefer. That said, Rep. Scalise hasn't done anything to make me feel that he's simply a Republican rather than Republiscum. He supported The Orange Führer's claims of election fraud and the attempted decertification of the Electoral College ballots. Scum is still scum.

Jim Jordan, (R-Oh-4) Mr. Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University from 1987 to 1995 during which time Dr. Richard Strauss, the team and student body doctor, serially sexually abused many of the 177 students whom he treated  during those years. The University was aware of Dr. Strauss' abuse and allowed it to continue. Despite credible testimony by several of the abused students that Mr. Jordan was also aware of the abuse and did nothing to stop it, Mr. Jordan claimed that he knew nothing of the abuse. Then Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, squelched an investigation of Rep. Jordan by the House Ethics Committee on the grounds that (this may sound a little familiar) that the criminal behavior happened before he was elected to the U. S. House. So Republiscum believe that criminal behavior (suborning sexual abuse of young men) before being elected to public office and criminal behavior while in office (suborning insurrection against the Federal government and attempting to overthrow American democracy) once one has left public office simply can't be investigated and punished. (poor, "innocent" Dylann Roof!)

Louie Gohmert, (R-Tx-1) Ah! What a piece of work is Rep. Gohmert! There has never been an idiot accusation or conspiracy that Louie Gohmert doesn't accept, hug to his bosom and spout like a backed up sewer. Rep. Gohmert signed onto the Texas v. Pennsylvania law suit that the Supreme Court dismissed once even The Orange Führer's appointees found it inappropriate. Not satisfied, Loopy Louie filed a suit against Mike Pence which was dismissed even faster as just plain stupid.

Andy Biggs (R-Az-5) Rep. Biggs has so much in common with his fellow Arizonan, Paul Gosar. They both tried to overthrow the 2020 election results. They both challenged the Electoral College ballots and, after January 6th, his brother's William and Daniel called for his removal from office. He has also claimed that the attempted putsch on January 6th, which he helped to encourage, was the work of "antifa". There's that "personal responsibility" again!

The Senate Republiscum are currently on track to acquit The Orange Führer in this his second impeachment trial. Please don't mistake their flag lapel pins for patriotism. The senators who vote against convicting The Orange Führer are voting against American democracy, against our Constitution, against their oaths of office and against reason and decency. Acquitting The Orange Führer gives an imprimatur to his attempt to overthrow our government that, we can be sure, another Republiscum candidate for president will use in another putsch attempt which may be successful and result in the end of democratic and Constitutional government in the United States. If 67 senators do not vote to convict The Orange Führer democracy in America will die after 233 years. I wish I could say that the Republiscum cannot sink that low.

RETHINKING WHAT IT IS TO BE AN AMERICAN

 

I was born in Connecticut almost 72 years ago. My mother was a direct descendant of immigrants William and Suzanna White through their son, Peregrine, who was born on November 20, 1620 on board the good ship Mayflower as it rode at anchor off the tip of what we now call Cape Cod. 

My father was born in Pennsylvania. His father came to the United States from Poland in 1913 and was immediately shipped off to Pittsburgh to work in the coal mines that fed the steel industry there. Because my grandfather could speak many languages he was recruited by the mine workers' union and became an organizer for them who was blacklisted and shot at by thugs in the employ of the mine owners.

My grandmother, from Eastern Poland, left there as the war clouds of World War I were lowering. She and her brother, Vincent, snuck across the border of Poland into East Prussia where they caught a Baltic steamer to Amsterdam from which port they sailed for the United States where they had a brother who had already immigrated and landed in Pittsburgh. Vincent was just another strong back to be sent to the mines in and around Pittsburgh but my grandmother was seen as a potential public burden. She was confined to Ellis Island for a month while pleading with her brothers to send her $10 that would allow her to be released into America. She and my grandfather met when she was called in to translate for my grandfather. He was in the Allegheny County Hospital having contracted Black Lung. My grandfather was fluent in Polish, German, Yiddish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Russian, and had some Czech as well but none of those languages was English, a language that my grandmother had picked up easily.

This woman that the Immigration Officials deemed a potential public charge went on to give birth to three American citizens: a daughter who became a registered nurse and one of the founders of the Connecticut Nurses Association, a son who was a tank mechanic in the 3rd Army during World War II and who was at the liberation of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp and another son who was a radio operator and waist gunner in B-17s honored for saving his entire crew when their first plane, The Old Shillelagh, was shot down over the North Sea following the Regensburg Raid and was wounded in bailing out of their second plane when it was shot down over southern France in 1944. He became a prisoner of war and wasn't repatriated until January of 1945. Because of the service of their sons to the nation both my grandparents became U. S. Citizens.

I am an American in every way one can imagine. I am the embodiment of 300 years of immigration to this great nation. I have ancestors who served in the Continental Army during our Revolution and who served in both World Wars. I have studied American history since boyhood, both the common history and many of the more esoteric parts of the last 2 and a half centuries of our nation. I have been to Gettysburg and Saratoga, Fort Ticonderoga and Lexington Green, to Concord Bridge and Antietam and to Fort McHenry. I have been to Washington, D. C. several times and visited the memorials there. I have been moved to tears reading Lincoln's words inscribed on his memorial and at  the sight of the Iwo Jima Memorial near the Arlington National Cemetery. My present for my 14th birthday was attending the Centennial reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg. I've been to the Smokey Mountains, Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Acadia and many of our great cities. I have thrilled to see the U.S.S. Constitution, Old Ironsides, under sail and reenactors of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry march down Beacon Street in Boston as if they were on their way to glory at Fort Wagner.

I am an American. I believe in our form of government as established by our Constitution, its amendments and the laws promulgated on that Constitution. I believe that the words of its preamble, as was intended, define the broad purpose of our democracy. That "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Because I am an American I can say without the least ambivalence that the 8 Senators and 139 Representatives who opposed certification of the votes of the Electoral College are not Americans. They have set themselves in opposition to the most basic tenet of American democracy: that the majority vote of the people determines our elected officials. I can also unequivocally say that none of the riotous mob of seditionists that stormed our Capitol on January 6, 2021, whether they entered the building or not, are Americans. Those traitors and insurrectionists acted in concert to undermine our "more perfect union". Those traitors and insurrectionists acted to promote injustice, disturb the "domestic tranquility", attacked those trusted with our "common defense", opposed "the general welfare" of the people and sought to take "the Blessings of Liberty" from "ourselves and our Posterity" by destroying the Constitution ordained and established for the United States of America.

No amount of quasi-patriotic rhetoric can absolve the Republiscum in the Senate and the House of attempting to impose a dictatorship on the United States. No flag lapel pin, no Gadsden flag, not even an American flag waved by coup plotters and participants can make these scum Americans. Certainly no one who waves the Confederate battle flag or the Stars and Bars anywhere in this land, let alone inside the U. S. Capitol, is truly an American. No con man usurper of the presidency can call himself an American by instigating an insurrection against the will of the people.

We, the people of the United States, need to look at our definitions of what we mean by "an American". In recent years we have heard scum from the Republiscum Party and ultra right-wingers in media attack the birthright citizenship granted by the 14th Amendment. Were it not for that birthright citizenship my father, the decorated World War II veteran, would not have been a citizen. I must grant that even the adherents of the Republiscum Party and The Orange Führer are citizens of the United States but they are most definitely not Americans. Not one of them should be allowed to remain in public office. Not one of them should be allowed to run for or hold public office ever. Nor should any of these fascist scum be allowed to serve in any branch of our military, police or other law enforcement forces. The danger to our democracy is far to immanent and great to allow these insurrectionists public office, public trust or firearms.

We are at a turning point. Will we allow the seditious scum to continue to undermine our democracy and accept the probable dire consequences of their attacks on our Constitution, or will we decide that those who do not hold American values are unfit to serve the public at large? If we do not define them, as by their actions they have defined themselves, as opposed to everything that makes us Americans, we are undermining our democracy from within.

I am well aware that what I am calling for raises the vile shadows of HUAC, the Blacklist and McCarthyism. Let me point out that thousands of supposed "communists" never stormed the U. S. Capitol. No president of the 1940s, 50s or 60s every called for insurrection to keep him in office. Even Richard Nixon balked at that. We have allowed the McCarthites, the Goldwaterites, the Reaganites and the rest of the Republiscum, the militias, self-styled Minutemen, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, Klansmen, Nazis and right-wing evangelicals who hide behind religion to carry out their anti-American goals to grow and fester within our body politic until their attacks on our democracy metasticized into The Orange Führer and his seditious minions both in government and outside storming the Capitol. Let us not confuse a real cancer in our nation to an imagined and feared one. The answer to this cancer is radical surgery. Anything less begs for it to recur in a more deadly form.

THIS IS NOT WHO WE ARE

 

Wrong! This is precisely who we are. Some of us always and all of us at our worst.

The attempted coup by Fascists and right wing groups allied to The Orange Führer on January 6, 2021 is precisely who they are. The scum who caused five deaths in threatening our elected legislators are precisely the Nazis that marched through Skokie, Illinois more than four decades ago and the Nazis that marched through Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. The scum who attempted to end our democracy are precisely the people who hid and supported Eric Robert Rudolph, Olympic Park bomber and assassin. The scum who invaded our Capitol are precisely the people who bombed the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The scum who sought a coup to make The Orange Führer  president for another term and possibly for life are precisely the traitors and tax evaders who incited the stand offs at Ruby Ridge, the Bundy Ranch and the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. 

These scum are not patriots. Regardless of what flags they wave, they are not supporters of American democracy. It is a desecration of our flag to see these insurrectionists carrying American flags as if they supported what that flag stands for, a united nation.

I have noted several times in the past that Dr. Samuel Johnson, in his Dictionary of the English Language, defined Patriotism as "the last refuge of a scoundrel." A century later Ambrose Bierce noted Dr. Johnson's definition but insisted that, on the contrary, "it is the first." The traitors and insurrectionists on January 6th proved Bierce's gloss on Dr. Johnson. Although we must note that the grinning idiot Orange Führer hugging a flag is the paradigm for his imbecile minions waving a banner they too insult by their actions.

Many of my political stripe have thumped, foolishly, for elimination of the Electoral College. I understand their frustration because a 110 year old refusal to reapportion the House of Representatives based on a Census that showed that most Americans live in urban areas has biased the House and the Electoral College toward rural states. However, a Constitutional Amendment to eliminate the Electoral College is treating the symptom rather than the disease. The U. S. House needs to be reapportioned, as the Constitution intended, to account for the 340% increase in our population since the 1910 Census. The Electoral College is a part of our Constitution because its framers had a healthy mistrust of rabble rousers like The Orange Führer. To guard against such would-be dictators they created an alternate means of confirming election results to prevent the presidency from falling into the hands of demagogues of which there were plenty in their time and midst.

The United States of America is a great nation. Contrary to the message on The Orange Führer's red baseball caps, this 45th president has sullied the nation and its reputation worldwide. The Orange Führer and his Republiscum minions have made our nation more vile and venal, a nation to be pitied and derided, an example of how not to treat people both citizens and immigrants. That is not anything like patriotism. Wearing a flag lapel pin as one tears down our democracy is not patriotism. White supremacy is not patriotism. Supporting a would-be dictator and insurrectionist is not patriotism. Attacks on people of other religious faiths is not patriotism. Vilifying the duly elected representatives of the people  and exalting those who participate in insurrection is not patriotism. Fomenting dissention and discord on the public airwaves is not patriotism.

We cannot hide behind the easy disclaimer that "This not who we are!" It is exactly who some of us are. It is exactly who some 74 million of us are. If we refuse to confront the fact that many of us are these racist, vicious lunatics who would bring down our democracy in loyalty to on single con man then the next would be Führer may succeed in destroying everything that our nation has stood for for nearly 250 years. Should we allow that to happen by not rooting out the disease in our population, this will certainly be who we all are like it or not.