The Corruption of the Republican Party

I thought this was interesting. Not sure if I agree, though.

The Corruption of the Republican Party

The Republican party is going through death spasms, twisting themselves up into intense knots over ridiculous things: Donald Trump secretly won the 2020 election (and anyone who says different must be expelled), Dr. Suess is cancel culture, Biden wants to make it illegal to eat meat, Mr. Potatohead's nonexistent penis is sacred, and so forth ad nauseum.

The GOP is a party without a leader, which is a problem because in 2016 they gave up all their guiding principles to follow the Orange Julius Caesar.

I just have three questions:

1. Where the fuck is Dick Cheney?  He hasn't said Word One to defend his daughter.  I don't really care, because Liz is an ideologically batshit Trumpist and the House will be much better off for her absence, but it kind of surprises me her father is such a dickless coward.
   
   
2. Why isn't anyone talking about WHYYYYY the hapless Republicans are marching in lockstep off the edge of the cliff, opposing Biden's wildly popular legislation, restricting voting across the country (which is intensely unpopular), continuing to orally service the twice-impeached former president, and blustering about "stolen elections"?  I mean the reason is OBVIOUS: Putin is still funneling money to Trump and Trumpists, and Trump controls who gets on the KGB dole.  This has been exposed by the FBI and the CIA, yet none of the news services are talking about it.  I DON'T GET IT.
   
   
3. Republicans have expelled Liz Cheney for admitting the fact that Trump lost the election, yet they haven't even sanctioned Matt Gaetz for sex trafficking, or Marjorie Taylor Greene for promoting batshit Q-Anon conspiracies, or the 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the will of the voters and hand the election to the loser. Where's the accountability? I'd like to think not a single Republican senator or congressman will retain their seat in the next election, but I know the electorate -- the small minority who are still allowed to vote -- have been fed a diet of Russian disinformation and will probably vote to continue this farce.
   

Sounds like the Arizona Republicans are finally pulling their heads out of their asses and putting a halt to the CyberNinjas attempt to alter enough ballots to call the thrice-certified results into question. They had bragged that they were going to do the same thing in Georgia, in Florida, in Wisconsin and in some other state. Hopefully that plan is now scuttled, despite Putin's financial support for it (through the Heritage Foundation).

Next step is to disengage state Republicans from the toxic Agent Orange, who still enjoys Putin's patronage. That'll be somewhat harder.

More and more Republicans are talking about leaving the party. The sentiment is right, but the details about who should be leaving whom are backward.

"...it kind of surprises me her father is such a dickless coward."

He shot his shooting pal don't forget.
Maybe that caused repercussions.

35 Republican Senators just voted against a fact-finding commission on the most serious attack on our government since the Civil War.

I smell a filibuster vote.

I smell a presidential Executive Order.

I smell a lot of GOP Senators losing their seats in '22.

Quote :

House Democrats are actively considering mounting a probe of their own into the January 6 US Capitol attack, signaling they don't plan to let the issue go away in the aftermath of Senate Republicans derailing the creation of an outside commission to probe the deadly insurrection. If the House creates such a panel, it would give Democrats the power to issue subpoenas and schedule hearings and to drive an investigation into the causes of the attack and Trump's role behind it.

And it would prompt a backlash from Republicans, who are already trying to paint such an effort as a partisan endeavor, despite their own [partisan] role in scuttling a bipartisan panel ...

That's because they know the findings of such a commission will not, shall we say, "reflect kindly on them."

One proposal for amending the filibuster is to require the “no” votes to be present and accounted for. Apparently a number of Senators left Washington for the holiday weekend, allowing the vote to languish from inattention.

Eleven Senators were not present and did not vote. Three of them would have voted yes, and eight no. So the result wouldn't have changed.

But still, Congress only works about six months a year, only only four days a week during that. How hard is it to be present for one of the most consequential votes of our lifetime? I have already scolded my Senator, who was one of the no-shows.

Texas Democrats vacated the house, preventing a quorum, preventing Republicans from passing one of the most restrictive voting acts in the country.

Governor Abbott is threatening to withhold their pay.
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/31/1001940096/texas-governor-threatens-no-pay-after-democrats-stage-a-walkout-over-voting-righ

This would be LOL funny if our democracy wasn't at stake.  What a clusterfuck.

NoCoPilot wrote:

I smell a presidential Executive Order.

Pelosi wants to form a congressional commission to investigate the Jan-6 insurrection, but Rep. Gerry Connolly is calling on Biden to create a presidential commission, as I advocated. I think the presidential commission has a greater chance of non-partisan recommendations that are acceptable to both sides.

Blood will be shed however. Sedition is s capital offense.

Gotta give The Heritage Foundation credit, they're playing the long game.

State legislatures. Judges. City councils.

While Democrats are focused on the national races and the big ticket items, 'Pubs are whittling away at government from the bottom up.

Louie Gohmert has come out saying the insurrectionists on January 6 were actually Antifa protestors dressed as Trump supporters. He should be put under oath and forced to either disown that nonsense, or provide evidence of where he heard it.

Fucking moron. Somebody needs to yank his chain.

Republicans are no longer making a secret of the fact that they're against democracy.

Quote :

"The idea of democracy and majority rule really is what goes against our history and what the country stands for," the Kentucky Republican Senator [Rand Paul] told The New York Times in a story published Monday. "The Jim Crow laws came out of democracy. That's what you get when a majority ignores the rights of others."

For starters, democracy is not solely about majority rule. It is about the right of citizens to have a free and fair say about the way in which the country they live in is governed. That usually takes the form of representative democracy, like what we have in the United States -- including one chamber where majority rules (the House) and one where any single Senator has the ability to slow or stop action on a particular policy, thanks to the filibuster.

Then there's Paul's attempt to use Jim Crow laws as evidence of the dangers of majority rule. Which doesn't, candidly, make a ton of sense. Jim Crow laws -- passed primarily in southern and border states immediately following the end of the Civil War -- were primarily intended at lessening Black Americans' ability to exert influence and power over the political system. Jim Crow's root goal was to keep a small number of (white) people in power -- at the expense of Black majorities.

All 50 Republican Senators voted against the For The People Act. Joe Manchin’s frantic last minute negotiations came to naught.

Next step: Al Franken’s proposal to reform the filibuster must pass. It would require all filibustering Senators to remain in the chamber (not log out, go home, and filibuster by staying home).  It would require filibustering Senators to hold the floor with debate, the way they used to have to. It doesn’t eliminate the filibuster; it simply makes it more work than doing nothing.

Second: No Republican should ever win an election ever again, for any office.  To vote against one-person one-vote is an affront to democracy. The next ten election cycles have their political slogans already composed. Democrats need to push this, and push hard.

Today's GOP bears no resemblance to the Republican Party.  People should stop referring to it as "the Republican Party."

We have two (major) parties in this country.  Let's start calling them what they are:

• the Democratic Party
  
• the Anti-Democratic Party
  

NoCoPilot wrote:

Texas Democrats vacated the house, preventing a quorum, preventing Republicans from passing one of the most restrictive voting acts in the country.

Gov. Abbott called another special session to pass his pet bill, and for some reason (?) the Dems attended this one.  After a 15-hour filibuster it was passed along party lines.

Quote :

The Democrat, state Sen. Carol Alvarado of Houston, began speaking early Wednesday evening, clad in running shoes and a back brace on Day 5 of a special legislative session convened by Gov. Greg Abbott (R). She was not permitted to sit or lean against her desk, take bathroom breaks, eat a snack or drink water for the duration of her filibuster.

And yet, in the US Senate, Republicans are allowed to "declare a filibuster" and go home to their districts.  Whyzzat?

The Texas Power Grid Is Hanging on by Its Fingernails

Quote :

These changes, in many ways, were the bare minimum to address the harm done in February: the weatherization mandates won’t kick in until next winter, there are no infrastructure improvements for facilities like hospitals or nursing homes, and there’s no consumer relief provision to help folks saddled with monumental electricity bills from the storm. What’s more, the Texas legislature passed bills that would force wind and solar providers to pay extra money to counter government subsidies, furthering the narrative that renewables were solely responsible for the disaster in February.

NoCoPilot wrote:

That's because they know the findings of such a commission will not, shall we say, "reflect kindly on them."

Yep. Republicans are TERRIFIED of what the commission will find.

With good reason.

The commission is honing in on Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz and the other seditionists.

Blood in the water. Expulsion, criminal charges, hopefully leading to a firing squad. Ah, one can hope can't one?

NoCoPilot wrote:

Republicans are TERRIFIED of what the commission will find.

Kevin McCarthy is losing his mind.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kevin-mccarthy-jan-6-riot-investigation_n_612f1ed8e4b0aac9c0101f79

Kevin McCarthy threatened the telecom industry if they turn over his phone records to a lawful subpoena. Because of this, he's being investigated for possible obstruction, as well as threatening an industry.

As well as being complicit in the January 6 insurrection.

McCarthy cited as legal basis for the threat an Op-Ed by one of the FCC commissioners. Some reporters did a little digging and discovered this commissioner is married to Kevin's attorney... and among REAL attorneys, complying with a congressional subpoena is not only lawful, it's required.

Kev buddy you're going down.

I am so sick and fucking tired of Mitch McConnell's "anti-Democrat at any price, even if it burns down the country" stance, that I am spitting nails.

He CAN'T be this stupid.

His district got a HUGE investment from the Russkies, and he must be courting another one from the Chinese on the side.  Why else would be want to consign our country to 2nd or 3rd tier status in the world?

I don't think trial for treason and a public execution is asking too much.

"Censure" my left testicle.

Why isn't this grounds for immediate expulsion and federal charges?

Quote :

Asked by reporters about the censure resolution Tuesday, Ocasio-Cortez said, “I think that in a perfect world, he would be expelled.”

AND charged with a federal felony. Stop fucking coddling the right-wing extremists in the party.

Moscow Mitch McConnell won 1,233,315 votes in his last election.

Joseph R. Biden won 81,268,924 in his.

So why is the agenda of the former taking precedence over the agenda of the latter?

Wow, the 14th Amendment is as clear as day what has to happen to the 139 Representatives and 8 Senators who voted to overturn the 2020 election:

The Fourteenth Amendment wrote:

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Wikipedia wrote:

Soon after losing the Civil War in 1865, states that had been part of the Confederacy began to send "unrepentant" former Confederates (such as the Confederacy's former vice president, Alexander H. Stephens) to Washington as Senators and Representatives. Congress refused to seat them and drafted Section 3 to perpetuate, as a constitutional imperative, that any who violate their oath to the Constitution are to be barred from public office. Section 3 disqualifies from federal or state office anyone who, having taken an oath as a public official to support the Constitution, subsequently engages in "insurrection or rebellion" against United States or gives "aid and comfort" to its enemies. Southerners strongly opposed it, arguing it would hurt reunification of the country.