Repugnicans’ war on women is also a war on justice, decency and democracy

So very apt.

I am not a blind feminist — I refused to support Repugnican Lite Billary Clinton for the presidency just because she’s a woman, for instance, and being called a “Bernie bro” by so-called “feminists” did not shame me into giving a penny or my vote to a Repugnican Lite female candidate, and, on that note, I oppose rank misandry posing as “feminism” — but I am a feminist in that I believe in equality for women, who continue to be held down by a patriarchal society.

And, of course, as a gay man I am intimately familiar with how our patriarchal society denigrates and oppresses anything and anyone considered to be feminine, and how it blindly obediently vaunts all things “masculine.”

The fight over the nomination of drunkard and sex criminal Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court is not just about the allegations of his sex crimes in and of themselves, of course, but is part of the ongoing “culture war” in which the right believes that right-wing, straight, “Christian” white men should continue to subjugate the rest of us with impunity.

So important is it to the right wing that stupid white men continue to rule that even Repugnican women (who universally are afflicted with Stockholm syndrome) are now said to be more fired up to vote in next month’s midterm elections than they were before the Kavanaugh fracas.

This is some sick and twisted shit, of course, but then again the Repugnicans are a fucking sick and twisted lot, a true basket of deplorables (I have to agree with Billary on that, although I find her plenty deplorable her-presidential-nomination-stealing-self).

That said, we must continue to fight against the fascists, which includes voting on November 6. They will vote for evil, as they always do; we must vote for good.

And we can take some solace in the fact that the Repugnicans must cheat in order to “win.”

The Repugnican presidential candidate won the popular vote only once since 1992 (Gee Dubya “won” “re”-election in 2004 by only 50.7 percent of the popular vote; he had lost the popular vote in 2000, and Pussygrabber also lost the popular vote in 2016).

The majority of the American people prefer a Democrat over a Repugnican, which is why the Repugnicans must do everything in their power to subvert democracy and throw elections their way, be it via widespread voter suppression or via such fascist bullshit as Bush v. Gore, in which the Repugnican-appointed “justices” of the Supreme Court, not the American people, picked the U.S. president in 2000.

And look how much the Repugnicans have had to cheat brazenly in order to shove Kavanaugh through. First, they had to pave the way by reducing the confirmation vote for a Supreme Court “justice” in the U.S. Senate from 60 votes to only 51 votes, which they did for Neil Gorsuch — after they had denied President Barack Obama the right to name a replacement for bloated piece of shit Antonin Scalia even though Obama had had almost a full year left of his presidency.

In addition to his white-male privilege, Kavanaugh has benefited not only from the anti-democratic Electoral College that gave us Pussygrabber and from the craven new simple-majority vote requirement for a Supreme Court “justice” in the U.S. Senate, but also from a fucking sham of an FBI “investigation” into his sex crimes, in which the “investigation” was done within only a few days and in which key individuals weren’t interviewed by the FBI at all.

Just as I never will consider George W. Bush nor Pussygrabber to have been legitimate U.S. presidents, I never will consider Gorsuch or Kavanaugh to be legitimate U.S. Supreme Court justices. Never.

How you got there fucking matters.

What we, the people, need to ensure now is that the Repugnican minority no longer can treasonously cheat its way into dominating us, the majority.

The fascist traitors “win” because thus far we have let them. Indeed, they always have counted on us to do so, because while they are shameless, violent and craven, we lean toward conscience, peace and decency.

We already have the majority; the only question is how much we’ll fight for it.

On civility and the lack thereof

Updated below (on Thursday, June 28, 2018)

It’s feeling like it’s long past time to become “civil” again…

The writers of fivethirtyeight.com today posted an interesting chat on the topic of civility.

I agree, as usual, with Nate Silver’s take on civility (as I understand his take on it, anyway): There’s a huge difference between a full-on assault on democracy and merely rude words or actions.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders-Goebbels being asked to leave a quaint restaurant because she’s a Nazi spokesweasel, for instance: not actually a threat to the bedrock of our democracy. My calling Sarah Huckabee Sanders-Goebbels “Sarah Huckabee Sanders-Goebbels”: also not actually a threat to the bedrock of our democracy. (Neither is profanity, but over the years I’ve been slammed for my use of profanity here, even while our democracy is dismantled by fascist traitors, piece by piece, before our very fucking eyes.)

The Repugnican Party, under the “leadership” of Senate Majority “Leader” Yertle McConnell, refusing to allow former President Barack Obama to appoint a successor to the late U.S. Supreme Court “Justice” Antonin Scalia, even though Obama still had more than 11 months left in his presidency when Scalia kicked the bucket in February 2016, not only was uncivil, but it violated the nation’s preceding history and tradition, destroyed any trust that anyone possibly could have in the Repugnican Party to act in good faith ever fucking again, dealt yet another bloody blow to our democracy like the head of a helpless baby harp seal, and, in my book, violated the U.S. Constitution*, which all of the traitors of the Repugnican Party who participated in the Neil Gorsuch debacle had taken an oath to uphold, not to shit and piss upon.

Further, in my book, it was a treasonous act. Why? Because the majority of the American voters had voted Obama in for a second term in November 2012. (I was not one of them, but I recognize that he won the presidential election fairly and squarely, entirely unlike our last two Repugnican “presidents.”)

When the American voters gave Obama a second term, they knew fully well that the possibility existed that one of the members of the U.S. Supreme Court might die or otherwise become incapacitated during his second term. And they chose Obama, not Mittens Romney or the Repugnican Party, to be the one to make that decision.

But while the scaly Scalia’s body was still warm (well, the reptile probably never was warm, but that’s the saying), Yertle McConnell proclaimed, “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”

Acting as though he was following the will of “the American people,” Yertle McConnell of course instead was following the will of his own craven, right-wing, anti-democratic party. He chose political expediency over doing the right thing, and, again, in my view, because he brazenly subverted the will of the American people as they had expressed it in the presidential election November 2012, Yertle committed treason. The people had voted; he then told them to go fuck themselves.

(No, not literally. Because that, you see, would have been “uncivil,” and we cannot have any incivility! It’s perfectly fine to commit treason, you see, but to cuss is the worst thing that you can do [well, outside of tossing the hungry, hungry Sarah Huckabee Sanders-Goebbels from a restaurant].)

That’s how the Repugnicans operate: They fastidiously strain out tiny gnats yet gulp camels whole (except, of course, they find it in their three-chambered reptilian hearts to make exception after exception for “President” Pussygrabber’s incessant vulgarities).

And it’s funny — Pussygrabber recently called the 5-4 Gorsuch Court’s** ruling upholding his hateful, discriminatory ban on Muslims from the United States to be “a tremendous victory for the American people and the Constitution.”

Bullshit.

The treasonous (redundant) Repugnican Party, acting in bad faith and treasonously against the wishes of the American people that they already had articulated via the democratic process, denied our nation’s first black president the right that at least in modern history had been granted to every previous (and white) president without hesitation: the right to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Such a treasonous subversion of our Constitution and our democracy — and anything that stems from it — is no “victory for the American people and the Constitution.”

Neil Gorsuch, like “President” Pussygrabber, is illegitimate. Yes, it matters how you came into a position of power, whether you did it legitimately and fairly or whether you did it illegitimately and unfairly.

Millions of more voters cast their votes for Billary Clinton than for Pussygrabber, yet we tell our young people to vote, that their votes matter, even though at least twice in my lifetime, two of our “presidents” didn’t even fucking win the highest number of votes.

Because Obama was denied his constitutional right, as president, to fulfill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court when he still had more than 11 full months in office to go, Gorsuch always will be illegitimate to me, as will be all of his decisions, all of which only can be the fruit of the poisonous tree (even if he should ever make a decision that I actually agree with).

The only good news in all of this is that the Repugnican traitors have to cheat to “succeed.” They can’t win the popular vote (and have to have the help of Russia to even win the Electoral College, which should have been abolished ages ago) and they have to subvert laws and historical norms to get what they want.

And I’m thinking that even given their reptilian brains, they have to know, in the back of their tiny little minds, that when they celebrate their “victories,” like today’s 5-4 Gorsuch Court summary execution of public-sector labor unions (which had been on the right-wing wish list for many, many years), it’s actually quite fucking hollow, because they had to fucking cheat to get those “victories.”

Another blog post, of course, is why we, the people, have allowed such bullshit as stolen presidential elections, bogus wars and stolen U.S. Supreme Court seats.

It might start with our apparent mass belief that we decent folk must at all times be “civil” — a belief that our treasonous, anti-democratic enemies on the right have demonstrated amply that they do not at all share.

Update (Thursday, June 28, 2018): I neglected to mention above that in April 2017, Yertle McConnell also had taken the “nuclear option” and changed long-standing Senate rules so that Neil Gorsuch could be confirmed by a simple majority of the senators instead of by 60 of them, as was the tradition. Gorsuch thereby was confirmed by only 54 votes.

Again, to get Gorsuch on the bench, the treasonous Repugnicans had to cheat — big time. I mean, it’s fucking uber-blatant: Losing? Just change the rules! Lower the bar so that you “win”!

Also, Yertle actually uttered these words yesterday after Supreme Court “Justice” Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement: “The Senate stands ready to fulfill its constitutional role by offering advice and consent … We will vote to confirm Justice Kennedy’s successor this fall.” (Was Yertle trolling us or is his pathological hypocrisy truly so egregious that he truly sees nothing wrong with it?)

So when the Repugnicans have the chance to fill a vacancy on the nation’s highest court, time is of the essence — the Constitution says so! But when a Democratic president (especially a black one) has the chance to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, he must be stonewalled for a year! It’s only fair!

The treasonous wingnuts among us treat the Constitution like they treat the Bible — they pick and choose, emphasize and ignore, based upon what is most politically and personally convenient for them at the moment. One moment it’s a sacred fucking document, and the next moment it’s toilet paper, to be used accordingly.

I always have been able to articulate exactly why I detest the Repugnican traitors (redundant) among us; for me it’s not rank tribalism. They get away with their treason only because we, the people, thus far haven’t done to them what they deserve to have done to them, but if they push the envelope much further — such as try to reverse Roe vs. Wade or actually try to revoke same-sex marriage — that might change.

Revolt always has been and always will be is a legitimate response to tyranny. When your democracy is being destroyed systematically by self-serving traitors whose lack of decency and lack of good faith know no bounds, it’s the only legitimate response.

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*Yertle McConnell’s only loophole is that the U.S. Constitution does not give the U.S. Senate an actual, explicit deadline to vote on a new justice/“justice” to the U.S. Supreme Court after a vacancy. Still, long vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court were common enough in the 1800s but have not been common in modern history; since 1970, the average court vacancy hasn’t lasted even a full 60 days.

McConnell & Co. certainly violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution, which grants the sitting (not the next) U.S. president the right to nominate a new Supreme Court justice/“justice,” and it’s sad that unless basic fucking decency is expressed explicitly in writing, craven traitors will subvert democracy to get their own way.

**I can only think of the current court as “the (5-4) Gorsuch Court” — because it contains an illegitimate “justice” named Neil Gorsuch, whose very presence on the court taints every court decision in which he participates.

I adamantly refuse to give the dint of legitimacy to those who are illegitimate, such as “President” George W. Bush, “President” Pussygrabber and “Justice” Gorsuch. You don’t reward the blatant theft of political power by doing anything to give it the air of legitimacy.

‘President’-‘elect’ Pussygrabber is illegitimate and should be boycotted

Updated below (on Wednesday, January 18, 2017)

It speaks volumes about the Repugnican (Tea) Party that since (but not including) 1988, its presidential candidate won the popular vote only one time (in 2004). This is a weak political party that should have been polished off long ago, and it still exists only because of the ineptitude and the cowardice of the Democrats. Thankfully, there is a good chance that Putin puppet “President”-“elect” Pussygrabber finally will do the job that the Democrats never did: destroy the Repugnican Party as we know it.

“The number of Democratic members of Congress saying they will boycott Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday has increased to 26,” the BBC reports today, the highest count that I’ve seen thus far, but the BBC doesn’t list them all. (Yahoo! News apparently lists all or most of the boycotters here.)

The boycott apparently was jump-started* by Georgia U.S. Rep. John Lewis’ correct pronouncement this past week that Donald J. Trump is an illegitimate president (which of course drew the very predictable, very immature El Trumpo’s return fire on the very presidential platform that is Twitter).

Rep. Lewis cited Russia’s having tried to influence the presidential election as the source of Pussygrabber’s illegitimacy, but to that I would add the fact that Pussygrabber lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes, making him, in that sense, even more illegitimate than was “President” George W. Bush, who in 2000 lost the popular vote by almost 544,000 votes.

Of course the Repugnican Teatards aren’t at all concerned that Pussygrabber lost the popular vote by almost 3 million, aren’t concerned that the loser “won.” They weren’t concerned when this happened in 2000, either, because the Repugnicans are fascists, and fascists never care whether or not they actually win the most votes; they care only about taking power, with or without the consent of the majority of the American people.

This is why I also call these fascists traitors. They aren’t individuals who act in good faith with whom I simply disagree on politics, ethics and morality; they are actively anti-democratic and as such they are the enemy to all of us who actually value democracy, who believe that merely paying lip service to democracy isn’t nearly enough.

To attend “President”-“elect” Pussygrabber’s inauguration ceremony on Friday is to give him, at least tacitly, legitimacy that he does not have, and to give the dint of legitimacy to an unelected, treasonous fascist like Pussygrabber is to work against the nation’s best interests, whether one intends to do so or not.

(Those who argue that they are attending the inauguration ceremony in order to honor the office of the presidency rather than to endorse, by their presence, the specific individual who is taking over the Oval Office on Friday are trying to have it both ways — but they cannot. Their presence indeed will give Der Fuhrer Trump the appearance of legitimacy that he does not have and indeed will serve only to further normalize the infantilism, fascism and treason that are El Trumpo’s most prominent traits.)

To boycott All Things Pussygrabber isn’t to be a sore loser, since Pussygrabber didn’t actually win, but actually lost the election. To boycott Der Fuhrer Trump, then, is to be a sore winner.

Just as I never considered George W. Bush to be the legitimate president of the United States of America, I never will consider Donald J. Trump to be the legitimate president.

If the majority of the American voters had actually selected these inept fascists, perhaps I could get over it, but both inept fascists lost the popular vote and both had significant, extra-democratic help from others.

Bush Jr. had help from his brother Jeb!, who was then governor of the pivotal Electoral College state of Florida that Bush Jr. “won” also with the help of then-Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who just coinky-dinkily also had been on the committee to see Bush Jr. elected in Florida (no conflict of interest there!).

And, of course, the coup de grâce was when the “justices” of the U.S. Supreme Court who had been appointed by Repugnican presidents voted to stop the recount in Florida — by so doing to install Bush Jr. into the White House, the wishes of the majority of the American voters be damned.

All of this brazen corruption and these extra-democratic political machinations, yet we commoners were expected to accept George W. Bush as the legitimate president of the United States of America.

Ditto for Donald J. Trump, even when it’s evident that probably for the first time in our nation’s history, another nation — and historically (and presently) an enemy nation — probably was instrumental in helping their chosen Manchurian candidate “win.”

This is treason, and those who cooperate with “President”-“elect” Pussygrabber in any way are complicit in this treason.

No true patriot could support Donald J. Trump in any way, even by “just” attending his inauguration.

P.S. I have e-mailed my two California U.S. senators and my U.S. representative and asked all of them to boycott Friday’s inauguration ceremony. I encourage you to do the same, even if you think there’s no way in hell that any of your representatives to D.C. will do so.

While it’s most likely that none of my three D.C. representatives will boycott the inauguration, the most likely to do so, it seems to me, is the newly minted Democratic U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, who has been pretty good on civil rights. (Harris already has said that she will vote against Alabama U.S. Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III for U.S. attorney general.)

My other U.S. senator, “Democrat” Dianne Feinstein, is fairly worthless, and I expect little to nothing from her.

My U.S representative isn’t much better than is Feinstein, and I’d be shocked if she were to boycott, because that would be way too bold and courageous for her, as it would be for Feinstein.

I am glad and proud to see, however, that several U.S. representatives from California are joining the boycott.

Update (Monday, January 16, 2017, 9:20 p.m. PST): Slate.com now reports that 35 members of Congress won’t attend the inauguration on Friday, and lists them all.

I am pleased to see that new to the growing list of boycotters is Minnesota U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, whom I still support for the new chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Still no U.S. senator has said that she or he won’t attend the inauguration, and while 11 U.S. representatives on Slate.com’s list of 35 boycotters are from my home state of California, where Billary Clinton on November 8 beat Pussygrabber by about two to one, my U.S. representative (Doris Matsui) isn’t on Slate.com’s list….

Update (Wednesday, January 18, 2017): Now more than 50 members of the U.S. House of Representatives are boycotting Friday’s inauguration ceremony. No U.S. senator thus far has had the cajones to do the right thing and boycott. (The senators are D.C. elites, you see.)

Speaking of D.C. elites, as was entirely predictable, my lame U.S. representative, “Democrat” Doris Matsui, has chosen retaining her status as a D.C. elite over doing the right thing, and of course she will attend the inauguration.

“I love my country,” Matsui said lamely, like a junior high school student. “And our country is so important and critical in the world. I thought that my personal feelings about Trump should not prevent me from showing support for our democracy.”

No, she’s just showing up to show her support for election theft, treason and fascism. Because she loves her country.

(“It’s a serious occasion, the peaceful transference of power,” Matsui said of the inauguration ceremony, as though she were teaching civics to kindergarteners. “The rest of the world is watching, too. I think it’s important for us to look as unified as we can because we have to look forward.”

Just: Wow. “Looking” “unified” is the most important consideration here? No, cooperating with fascism is cooperating with fascism. This is why the “Democrats” lose: they continually sell out their base to the right in the name of high-mindedness while the Repugnican Tea Party never returns that favor. “Opposition party” isn’t in the DINOs’ vocabulary.

Speaking of which, Pussygrabber spokesnake Sean Spicer, like Matsui, also calls the inauguration ceremony a “peaceful transfer of power,” because we Americans all must be peaceful, you see, even though yet another presidential election has just been stolen. Peacefulness and the appearance of unity, you see, are far more important than are fair elections in which the winners of the most votes actually take office and in which enemy foreign nations don’t interfere.)

I didn’t vote for Matsui in November because of her blindly obedient, elitist support for her fellow DINO Billary Clinton, who obviously was the wrong presidential candidate to put forth in 2016, and I don’t see myself casting a vote for the Trump-loving, simple-minded, D.C. elitist, sellout Matsui ever again.

Update (Wednesday, January 18, 2017): Good Morning America now puts the count of boycotting U.S. representatives at a full 60 and lists them all. (Of course no Repugnican Tea Party U.S. representative dares to boycott Der Fuhrer Donald’s installation.)

There are 194 Democrats in the House of Representatives, so 60 of them boycotting means that 31 percent of the House Dems are boycotting. And 60 representatives is 14 percent of the full House of Representatives, which has 435 members in all.

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*The BBC reports that the first member of U.S. Congress to announce his or her boycott of Pussygrabber’s inauguration was Illinois U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, last month, but apparently the boycott didn’t catch fire until Rep. Lewis announced that he also would boycott.

Kudos to Rep. Gutierrez for having gone first in doing the right thing! I wish that he were my U.S. representative!