Maine secretary of state bravely fires second salvo in war against fascism

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows has done a favor to the United States by forcing the U.S. Supreme Court to soon demonstrate once again that when faced between choosing the plain language of the U.S. Constitution and putting a Repugnican in the White House, the corrupt, treasonous U.S. Supreme Court will choose putting the Repugnican in the White House over the plain language of the U.S. Constitution every fucking time.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution reads, in part:

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.

The language could be clearer, but to me the key words of the amendment in the case of treasonous former “President” Pussygrabber and his attempted insurrection against the United States government of January 6, 2021, and his other felonious and treasonous attempts to remain in office after more than 7 million Americans voters had voted for Joe Biden over him in November 2020, are:

No person shall … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States … who, having previously taken an oath, as … an officer of the United States … 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.

Jesus fuck, Pussygrabber & Co. still give aid and comfort to the mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging criminals who perpetrated J6 when they refer to them as “political prisoners” and the like.

Meanwhile, it’s pathetic and sad that so many Americans claim to love their country so fucking much but are too ignorant of the workings of their own fucking government to understand the actual implications of Colorado and Maine having declared (Colorado via its state Supreme Court and Maine via its secretary of state) that the Fourteenth Amendment makes Pussygrabber ineligible to run for president ever again.

First off, Pussygrabber could be kicked off every blue state’s 2024 ballot and it wouldn’t change the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, since he couldn’t win a blue state anyway and since the Electoral College is a winner-takes-all system in which whichever presidential candidate who gets the most votes gets all of that state’s electoral votes, with the exceptions of only Maine and Nebraska, which divvy up their electoral votes by congressional district. Under the Electoral College, whichever candidate gets 270 or more electoral votes wins the presidency. (Nebraska and Maine, by the way, together have a total of only nine electoral votes.)

Only if the presidency were determined solely by the popular vote — as should be the case in a nation that calls itself a “democracy” (the antiquated, anti-democratic Electoral College, which put the loser of the popular vote into the White House in 2000 and in 2016, sorely needs to be abolished) — could it harm Pussygrabber to be removed from a blue state’s presidential ballot.

But moreover, no state’s Supreme Court or secretary of state is the last word on whether Pussygrabber may appear on that state’s ballot. Of course this will go to the United States Supreme Court, where the “justices,” one third of them imposed on us by Pussygrabber even though then-President Barack Obama treasonously was denied by traitor Yertle McConnell an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court in his last year in office, will have to pause corruptly taking expensive gifts and perks from their far-right-wing sugar daddies long enough to have to actually decide if the plain language of the U.S. Constitution actually means what it plainly says it means.

And, of course, I expect the U.S. Supreme Court’s “originalists” and “strict constructionists” to rule that of course the Fourteenth Amendment doesn’t mean what it plainly says when it comes to whether or not an insurrectionist, treasonous Repugnican presidential candidate may remain on the ballot.

This is why the corrupt, treasonous U.S. Supreme Court’s approval rating is at 36.4 percent, with 53.7 percent of Americans disapproving of it. With an approval rating that low, the current court’s long-term composition just might be in jeopardy (it should be in jeopardy, anyway; no corrupt, anti-democratic court should be allowed to continue to erode a democracy, as that is treason).

Still, just because we have a dysfunctional, treasonous U.S. Supreme Court that is bought and paid for right-wing interests and that never can be depended upon to actually uphold the U.S. Constitution and support democracy doesn’t mean that the rest of us can’t call shit like it is, such as Colorado and Maine have done.

I think it’s great that the U.S. Supreme Court now has to actually fucking do its basic fucking job of interpreting the plain fucking language of the U.S. Constitution.

I fully expect the Repugnican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court to rule in Pussygrabber’s favor on whether the Fourteenth Amendment against insurrectionists being allowed to hold any state or federal office pertains to him — and to thus hasten the end of this illegitimate court’s rule.

If our democracy survives, we will have to thank true patriots like Shenna Bellows and the justices of the Colorado Supreme Court who ruled correctly on whether the Fourteenth Amendment — you know, the rule of law — applies to would-be fascist dictator Pussygrabber.

Florida Man’s anti-freedom mind-control agenda must be quashed

Associated Press news photo

“Freedom from indoctrination”? No, it’s that we’re to practice the Repugnican-fascists’ blatant indoctrination. Their backasswards, far-right-wing indoctrination is so good and true that it’s not indoctrination, you see, and every other viewpoint is “indoctrination.” (Repugnican-fascist Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a serious threat to our freedom despite claiming to be all about freedom, is pictured with his human props pushing his anti-freedom agenda in April 2022.)

Growing up in the Arizona public school system in the 1970s and 1980s, I was, indeed, indoctrinated.

Among much other bullshit, I was taught, at least indirectly if not also directly, that homosexuality is bad — sick, criminal, sinful, etc. (Mostly, it just wasn’t brought up at all — the erasure of an entire group of people is fun!)

Today, of course, we have same-sex marriage as the law of the land — and he-man Nick Offerman just very effectively played a gay man in a long-term same-sex relationship (with Murray Bartlett of the first season of “The White Lotus”) in the zombie-apocalypse TV series “The Last of Us,” a turn that no television show ever would have taken when I was growing up* — and in many if not most parts of the United States, many if not most of the homophobes who still remain among us keep their ignorant, hateful, bigoted, homophobic thoughts to themselves in polite company.

I was taught in the public school system that capitalism is perfect — Godly, even (in high school I had to take a pro-capitalist course propagandistically titled “free enterprise”) — and essentially I was taught that there is no viable alternative socioeconomic model, and that you’re crazy and/or evil for even suggesting (or even thinking) that there could be or should be (Love it or leave it, Commie!).

Seriously, though — how nice it is for the sociopathic profiteers among us to ensure that our public schools teach that our socioeconomic exploitation, in which millions of us are just wage slaves who in a nation whose beyond-ludicrous degree of income inequality grows larger and larger with each passing year are barely surviving, is the only option available to us.

This degree of mass mind control is nothing if not fucking Orwellian.

American history was taught to me in public school as an ever-progressive** march forward by overwhelmingly white people with a few minor oopsies and boo-boos along the way, but overall, God bless (white [that part always was understood if not always spoken aloud]) America, land of the free!

Conservatism, being all about keeping the stupid white man firmly entrenched in power and dominating the rest of us in perpetuity, still believes that today’s public school students should have the same experience that I did in the 1970s and 1980s. (Well, actually, I’m sure that even the public education that I received in the backasswards state of Arizona in the 1970s and 1980s is too “liberal” for them.)

It’s funny, because despite the right-wing attempt to indoctrinate me with the “right” sexual orientation, I’m nonetheless an out gay man in a long-term same-sex relationship. The years-long attempts to indoctrinate me didn’t succeed; apparently I am immune to such toxic indoctrination. (I’m an atheist, too, so “Christo”fascism, of which homophobia is part and parcel, didn’t get to me either; “God” and “Jesus” to me are on par with other mythical figures, such as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny…)

And for decades I have had deep issues with capitalism — which for the most part is just systemic, legalized thievery that so often results in injury, destruction and even death — and I would much prefer to see a hybrid socioeconomic model in which the essentials of life are not for-profit and in which OK, sure, the non-essentials, including the luxury items, can be capitalized. (And I’m a strong supporter of Bernie Sanders, of course.)

And yes, American history, as it is taught in our public school system, is, of course, whitewashed, to say the least; I seem to remember one U.S. history textbook with the maudlin title of The Pageant of American History or the like. I’m sure that Nazi Germany taught the history of Germany something like this: The nation was forged by strong, manly, God-supported white men! Get in line behind God’s soldiers or die, unGodly bitches!

So of course I oppose Repugnican-fascist Ron DeSantis’ fascist attempts to control what is and what is not taught in the public schools of Florida — in the name of “freedom from indoctrination.” (Indeed, you’re free to believe and to teach whatever you want — as long as stupid, evil white man Ron DeSantis agrees with it. Freedom! Yay!)

If our public schools don’t give our students the tools they need to be well-adjusted and successful in modern life, then our schools are failing them (which, of course, they are, but that’s another blog piece…).

And teaching like it’s still the fucking 1950s is not setting up our students for success. It’s setting them up for failure as future wage slaves to our corporate overlords, believing that the socioeconomic exploitation of them is what God wants and is the only kind of life that they ever can have.

On a related note, Advanced Placement courses are high school courses for the college-bound and are voluntary, and so their curricula should be hands fucking off to opportunistic political swine like the First Amendment-hating and freedom-hating Ron DeFuckingSantis, whose attack on the Advanced Placement black American studies course induced the College Board, which created the course, to water it down.

Of course, what DeSantis would prefer is that black Americans (as well as other non-white and LGBT Americans) just be erased entirely, so I doubt that the AP’s watering down of its black American studies course will please Gov. Florida Man.

As the Advanced Placement cave-in demonstrates, DeSantis already is winning his war to control all American minds.

Obviously I agree with age-appropriate teaching; of course your average kindergartener won’t understand the nuances of human sexuality, socioeconomic systems, the good and the ugly of U.S. history (including, of course, racism and the struggle for women’s rights and for LGBT rights as well as for non-whites’ rights), debates around religion, etc.

But an Advanced Placement student should be mature enough to handle the more adult topics, and further, DeSantis is trying to limit not just what Florida’s public elementary and high schools may teach, but what Florida’s colleges and universities — which are supposed to be bastions of independent thought and free speech — may or may not teach.

Former “President” Pussygrabber, at least, is so juvenile and self-absorbed (he’s the fucking poster child for the baby boomers) that he doesn’t bother to attack our public schools and universities; he’s too busy pettily attacking his legions of enemies (and as it is with every dictator and would-be dictator, it’s very easy to get on his shit list: just refuse to ardently lick his ass) like a petulant, perpetually miffed teenaged girl, apparently unaware that the majority of the nation is way, way beyond his endless grievance bullshit and knows fully well that he lost the 2020 presidential election.

That Ron DeSantis wants to institute mind control not only in the nation’s third-most-populous state, but in the entire nation as president, makes him much more dangerous than is Pussygrabber, in my book.

DeSantis’ goal is to indoctrinate all Americans into believing that any kind of life outside of the fascist hellscape that he has in mind for all of us — with him as our Dear Leader, of course — is our only fucking option.

Thankfully, barring one of the many criminal probes into his many crimes actually taking mob boss Pussygrabber down within the next two years or so (I’m not holding my breath), I expect Pussygrabber to win the 2024 Repugnican presidential nomination.

Why?

Because too many other deluded narcissists within the Repugnican Party apparently also are going to run for the Repugnican presidential nomination for 2024 — including people who have a snowball’s chance in hell, such as Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence — and, because the Repugnicans anti-democratically award all of a state’s delegates to the Repugnican National Convention to whichever Repugnican presidential candidate garners the most votes in that state, in 2024 Pussygrabber would benefit from a crowded Repugnican presidential field, just as he did in 2016.

Could Pussygrabber win in November 2024, though?

Um, he lost the national popular vote by millions of votes not only 2020, but in 2016 as well. History, methinks, is a guide on whether or not Pussygrabber could win back the White House in 2024.

Further, Pussygrabber eked out a “win” in 2016 only because of the anti-democratic Electoral College — and he did even that well only because at that time he was largely unknown, as least as a U.S. president.

Two impeachments, the deadly January 6, 2021, insurrection that he treasonously led, and innumerable investigations into his mob-boss-level criminal activity later, the kind of “president” that Pussygrabber was and would be again no longer is an unknown; we know the treasonous asshole abundantly well.

Therefore, no, I can’t see Pussygrabber winning the presidency in 2024. (Well, maybe he could if he were running against Kamala Harris, who we’re still waiting upon to finally find her political legs, but that’s another blog piece…)

Pussygrabber and 2024 aside, Ron DeSantis must never be president of the United States of America — and so I hope that Pussygrabber beats DeSantis for the Repugnican presidential nomination, because I can’t see Pussygrabber winning (well, “winning”) the White House ever again.

I can, however, see a fascist demagogue like DeSantis, who offers cut-and-dry, “common-sense” “solutions” to our problems and who freely and giddily scapegoats others for his own political gain, winning the presidency, especially when as a president he is unknown, as Pussygrabber was in 2016.

Our freedom of thought, on which all of our other freedoms depend, depends on those of us who truly value freedom — including, ironically, freedom from (fascist) indoctrination — stopping the fascist, anti-democratic, freedom-hating DeSantis in his fucking tracks.

DeSantis is a cancer that must not be allowed to spread outside of the backasswards state of Florida. He must be contained within that fucking swamp.

—

*Seriously, though, the only reason I started to watch HBO’s “The Last of Us” is that it received good reviews, and I find the angle of zombification via fungal infection to be an interesting twist on a worn-out genre. (I tried to get into “The Walking Dead” several years ago but just couldn’t; I found the zombie genre to be tiresome already.)

So after two episodes of the establishment of the fungus zombies in “The Last of Us” (an aside: Can you kill them by spraying them with an anti-fungal, such as for athlete’s foot or jock itch?), I was surprised to see this “Brokeback Mountain”-like storyline plopped into the middle of the zombie action, and it actually works.

And while I had known that Nick Offerman would be in the third episode, I’d had no idea of the direction in which they took his character.

I mean, I imagine that plenty of homophobes have stopped watching the show after that third episode replete with man-on-man action, but to me, if you can drop in a gay love story in the middle of a zombie-apocalypse story and do it in a way that’s not too cheesy and actually works, then you’ve reached peak TV, in my book…

**”Progress,” you see, was white people taking over more and more of the nation under “manifest destiny.” The land’s natives had to be dispensed with and their territory taken from them, slaves from Africa had to be instrumental to profiteering, environmental destruction for the purpose of profiteering had to be done in the name of “progress,” etc., etc.

Mississippi is still burning

AFP/Getty Images news photo

“President” Pussygrabber appears with appointed Repugnican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith at a rally in Mississippi in October. He stands behind her not only literally but also figuratively.

Some who have read my rants against identity politics might conclude that I don’t take racism and sexism (and other bad -isms) seriously. I do, which is why I have a problem with identity politics, which too often devolves into anti-white racism and misandry, but right now we’re talking about white racism.

We’re talking about Repugnican Cindy Hyde-Smith, who on Tuesday will vie in a run-off election in Mississippi to finish out the U.S. Senate term of Repugnican Thad Cochran, who retired on April 1, citing health issues, and whose unfinished term ends in January 2021.

Upon Cochran’s resignation Hyde-Smith was appointed to the U.S. Senate by Mississippi’s Repugnican governor in April, but she had to face the voters earlier this month in order to keep the seat until it comes up for election again in November 2020. Because no candidate won more than 50 percent in this month’s election, the run-off is on Tuesday.

First, Hyde-Smith drew attention to herself when she said of a political supporter, on video, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.”

Mississippi had more lynchings than any other state, according to the NAACP, which puts Georgia at No. 2 and Texas at No. 3. Yet Hyde-Smith claimed that “this comment was twisted and it was turned into a weapon to be used against me.” It’s interesting how quickly wingnuts turn from casual victimizers to “the victimized.”

Then came the revelation from the Jackson Free Press, a Mississippi newspaper, that as a high-schooler Hyde-Smith had attended an all-white “segregation academy” whose yearbook was called The Rebel.

The newspaper reports:

U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith attended and graduated from a segregation academy that was set up so that white parents could avoid having to send their children to schools with black students, a yearbook reveals.

A group photo in the 1975 edition of The Rebel — the Lawrence County Academy yearbook — illustrates the point. High-school cheerleaders smile at the camera as they lie on the ground in front of their pom-poms, fists supporting their heads. In the center, the mascot, dressed in what appears to be an outfit designed to mimic that of a Confederate general, offers a salute as she holds up a large Confederate flag.

[Here is the yearbook photo the newspaper published:

Apparently the high-schoolers called themselves “the rebels.” Nice.]

Third from the right on the ground is a sophomore girl with short hair, identified in the caption as Cindy Hyde.

The photo, and the recently appointed Republican senator’s attendance at one of the many private schools that was set up to bypass integration, adds historic context to comments she made in recent weeks about a “public hanging” that drew condemnations from across the political spectrum.

Lawrence County Academy opened in the small town of Monticello, Miss., about 60 miles south of Jackson, in 1970. That same year, another segregation school, Brookhaven Academy, opened in nearby Lincoln County. Years later, Hyde-Smith would send her daughter, Anna-Michael, to that academy.

Hyde-Smith graduated from Lawrence County Academy in 1977, meaning she would have already been in school elsewhere at the time the academy opened.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court ordered public schools to desegregate in 1954 and again in 1955 to do so with “all deliberate speed,” Mississippi slow-walked the integration of its schools as long as possible, trying a variety of “school choice” schemes, state legislation and court cases to stop full integration, including arguing that white kids should not go to school with so-called “genetically inferior” black students. …

The [Lawrence County Academy] yearbook, provided to the Jackson Free Press by a former student who asked not to be named, is one of very few pieces of evidence still available that identify the segregation academy as the recently appointed senator’s alma mater.

While Hyde-Smith regularly touts her subsequent education at Copiah-Lincoln Community College and the University of Southern Mississippi, her high school has been conspicuously absent from the senator’s official statements, speeches and public biographies. Even her Facebook account suggests her education began with community college. …

Lawrence County Academy shut down in the late 1980s due to dwindling attendance — one of the now-defunct early [segregated] schools that sprang up in response to integration. Among those that survived, though, was Brookhaven Academy, where Hyde-Smith chose to send her daughter, Anna-Michael. …

As many have pointed out, Hyde-Smith might not have had a choice if her parents sent her to the segregation academy, but Hyde-Smith certainly knew what she was doing when she sent her daughter to a segregation academy.

And if there were no shame about having attended the segregation academy, then why does Hyde-Smith never divulge where she went to high school?

Tomorrow, “President” Pussygrabber, who has campaigned for Hyde-Smith before, is to headline two rallies for her in Mississippi.

Andd the Repugnicans complain that their party is so unfairly painted as racist and white supremacist.

No, it simply is that we judge you by the company that you keep.

One of the many reasons that I never vote for a Repugnican is that the party is the party of the former slave states that committed treason when they seceded after the election of Abraham Lincoln (my favorite U.S. president, I’ll add).

Of course, treason wasn’t the slave states’ largest crime; what they did to the black slaves — awful crimes against humanity — was their largest crime.

Any political candidate who associates himself or herself with the Repugnican Party cannot credibly dissociate himself or herself from the stances that the party has taken, which include white racism and white supremacism, anti-labor unionism and pro-plutocracy, misogyny and patriarchy, homophobia, xenophobia, anti-semitism, anti-environmentalism, etc., etc.

The Civil War never really ended, obviously, and we Northerners (literal and philosophical Northerners) must continue to fight it.

In the meantime, on Tuesday Hyde-Smith faces former Democrat Mike Espy, who is a black, and the Mississippi Clarion Ledger notes:

… National Democratic fundraising groups and leaders believe [that Espy] has a chance, especially after recent comments by Hyde-Smith talking about voter suppression and attending a “public hanging.”

They are pumping last-minute cash into the race, as prominent names such as Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker visited to drum up excitement for the former U.S. representative and U.S. agriculture secretary.

The last time a Democrat from Mississippi was elected to the Senate was 1982; the last time a black senator represented Mississippi was shortly after the Civil War.

An Espy win won’t give Democrats control in the Senate, but it could signal a larger political shift in the historically conservative South. Yet Espy often downplays the historic nature of his run.

“I’m proud of that but I’m not dwelling on it,” he said in another recent interview. “I want to be a senator for everyone. I’m trying to get votes from everyone, regardless of race, or age, or gender, or sexual orientation, or disability — or even party. I’m going to Republicans and Democrats talking about the issues that concern them.”

Despite a long-shot bid for any Democrat — Trump won Mississippi by 18 points in 2016 and has endorsed Hyde-Smith — Espy has generated several bursts of national attention and excitement on the campaign trail in recent weeks. Sometimes, they have been thanks to his opponent’s mistakes. …

Yes, but we’re still dealing with the South. In Florida, the purplest of the Southern states, Repugnican Ron DeSantis, running for governor against Democrat Andrew Gillum, who is black, infamously warned the state’s voters not to “monkey this up” by electing Gillum, and DeSantis still won (“won”?).

This Civil War has been a long, hard slog.

P.S. Peter Berkowitz is on the right, but I do agree with this take of his on identity politics (you knew that I couldn’t resist):

… Identity politics … directs students [and everyone else, I’d argue] to think of themselves as members of a race, class, or gender first and primarily, and then to define their virtue in terms of the degree of oppression that they believe the group with which they identify has suffered.

It demotes the individual rights shared equally by all that undergird American constitutional government, while distributing group rights based on its self-proclaimed hierarchy of grievances. It imperiously pronounces collective guilt and summarily rejects appeals. It nurtures a sense of victimhood in those it purports to protect and empower.

In the guise of fighting domination, it aims to impose its will on all. In these ways and more, identity politics trains students [and, again, everyone else] to turn up the heat of the tribalism that threatens to engulf the nation. …

The sister doctrine of intersectionality adds that all crimes and sins committed by the unjustly privileged oppressors — typically white men — are indissolubly connected while righteousness inheres exclusively in the oppressed, comprising people of color and women. … [I]dentity politics affirms that victims are neatly distinguishable from, morally superior to, and entitled to greater political power than, the villains. …

None of this is to minimize what historically oppressed groups — including mine (gay men) — have suffered throughout way-too-often-ugly American history. And I agree with only some of what Berkowitz has to say in his column to which I linked (his advocacy for home-schooling and for charter schools, for instance, I disagree with); and even though I agree with some of his points, which are logical and which jibe with my own observations and experiences, I do question his overall motives, frankly.

But this is to point out that it’s very, very easy, if we let them, for the victims (and the “victims” — that is, those who aren’t actually victimized today but who nonetheless cravenly falsely claim victimization for personal and political gain) to become the victimizers.

When we say that human beings shouldn’t be treated based upon their race or biological sex (or upon other demographics/traits), but upon the content of their character, we mean it or we don’t.

If we oppose oppression only when it’s our own group that’s being oppressed, then we are in the grip of toxic identity politics. And that is worlds apart from the true spirits of diversity and of liberty and justice for all.

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 the late, not-great John McCain

The late U.S. Sen. John McCain has been lionized over the past week — when you die, you become a saint, even though everyone dies, just as everyone shits and pisses and farts — and I’ve yet to say anything about it. I don’t want to say all that much; he has received too much postmortem attention as it is.

John McCain, who was “my” senator (when I lived in the God-awful state of Arizona) from 1987 to 1998 (when I finally left Arizona), was not a great guy. He staunchly believed in American exceptionalism and imperialism and militarism and white-collar gangster capitalism. While perhaps McCain was not overtly racist, as American exceptionalism and imperialism and militarism and white-collar gangster capitalism always have vastly disproportionately benefited white Americans, there you go.

When I lived in Arizona I remember McCain’s television campaign ads. He used the Vietnam POW story endlessly. What’s the good in being a POW if you can’t exploit it for personal and political gain later? (He did ease off on the POW thing in his failed 2008 presidential run, but then again, the POW thing had gotten him that far.)

McCain left his first wife of about 15 years, Carol (she’s now 80), with whom he had a daughter (and he adopted her two existing children), to marry the younger, apparently much more attractive, and, perhaps most of all, quite rich Cindy (who now is 64), who had been a blonde cheerleader. According to Wikipedia, McCain’s first marriage “falter[ed] due to [McCain’s] partying away from home and extra-marital affairs.” (That link is to the reliable Arizona Republic, by the way.)

In his very first term in the U.S. Senate, McCain survived the savings and loan scandal (he was one of “the Keating Five”), which should have been the end of his political career. But: Arizona.

McCain was not a moderate. McCain was not bipartisan, even if that were a good thing. He was a Dr.-Strangelove-level fucking wingnut, replete with his chilling refrain of “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.”

McCain only pretended to be above it all. That made him only a sanctimonious prick, because what he actually stood for was quite dark. He knew that he himself, being an over-privileged white man whose lifelong opportunism had served him quite well, never would have to suffer the consequences of his own horrible actions and decisions. He ensured that he himself always would be quite safe and much more than comfortable.

No brand of Repugnican is good for the United States of America, be it the smug, Goldwater-style Repugnican that largely if not wholly died with McCain, or be it the openly craven, Pussygrabber-style of Repugnican that we see today. The two types differ only in style, not in substance.

I have two words for John McCain: Good riddance.

P.S. It always has struck me that McCain’s opposition to Pussygrabber was more out of sour grapes than out of anything like principle. McCain had wanted to be president for years, and lost in 2000 and in 2008, and then here comes the likes of Pussygrabber — not a Vietnam POW but a Vietnam draft dodger — to become “president.”

That drove McCain insane, methinks. He viewed it as a colossal injustice, I am confident.

Liz’s new gig: Being the only real Democrat in the room

Reuters photo

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts listens to U.S. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada as he announces the Democratic Senate leadership lineup for the two-year congressional session that begins in January.

We may never know exactly how or why it came to be that U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has been given a Democratic Senate leadership position created just for her. ABC News has described the position as “liaison to liberal groups to ensure they have a voice in leadership meetings and discussions, according to a source familiar with the role.”

The Huffington Post reported this reaction to the news:

“A liaison to liberals? I’ve never heard of such a thing,” said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), throwing his hands in the air. “I asked her about it and she said she was some kind of adviser. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what that all means.”

I’ll help Tommy Boy out:

With “Democrats” like, say, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, who apparently believes that the predictably environmentally disastrous and good-only-for-the-plutocrats Keystone XL oil pipeline should be shoved down our throats in order to help her win re-election that she very apparently cannot win anyway, um, yeah, it’s time for the Democratic Party to finally fucking return to its progressive roots, from which it strayed no later than during Bill Clinton’s presidency, in which he repeatedly sold out the American people for his own political convenience (“welfare reform,” NAFTA, DOMA, etc.).

Undoubtedly, a President Billary would sell us out just as her hubby did, and we’ll see how much the Clintonian Barack Obama will sell us out during his remaining two years in office.

It is long past time for what remains of the Democratic Party to come together and proclaim:

If you are a politician in a backasswards (redundant) red state (such as Landrieu is), then become a Repugnican already. Just do it. Don’t fucking call yourself a “Democrat.” Because if you are espousing right-wing causes (such as the construction of an oil pipeline that is only meant to make a few filthy rich people even richer, the environment be damned), then you are a treasonous wingnut, and your place is within the Repugnican Tea Party. Stop further tarnishing the Democratic Party brand name with your right-wing bullshit and join the enemy already.

I only hope that Elizabeth Warren, despite her assertion that “Nobody’s clipping my wings,” didn’t strike a deal with the devil – namely, such as with the Billary Clinton camp (perhaps even with The Horned One Herself); and specifically, a deal to not run against Billary in 2016 in exchange for the newly created Senate leadership position.

In any event, Warren apparently rejects her job description as a liaison to the liberals. Huff Po again:

“[Soon-to-be Democratic Senate Minority Leader] Harry [Reid] asked me to be a strategic policy adviser, because that’s what I talk about, I talk about policy — college affordability and minimum wage and Social Security,” [Warren] said. “And that’s what I’m supposed to do and that’s what I will do. That’s my portfolio.”

You say potato, I say potato.

The gargantuan problem of income inequality mostly has been ignored by the Democratic Party during Obama’s tenure (as it was during Bill Clinton’s), and while I think of the striving toward socioeconomic equality and socioeconomic justice as progressivism rather than as “liberalism” (really, “liberals” – DINOs – like the Clintons have given the word “liberal” a bad name), yes, indeed, the Democratic Party has come off the rails to the extent that it sorely needs to be put back on track.

So while I personally eschew the word “liberal” because many if not most of those who call themselves “liberal” aren’t at all progressive (they want to be selfish, evil assholes, but they also don’t want the stigma of calling themselves Republicans, since Republicans are so widely reviled, so they call themselves “liberals”), Warren’s new job description – in her own words – does indeed sound like she’ll be a liaison to progressives (at least in part).

Every Democrat in D.C. should be a liaison to progressives, but, I suppose, it’s better to have one than none.

(Well, we have some progressives in D.C., such as U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, but, interestingly, Wikipedia’s entry on the Congressional Progressive Caucus states that while 68 House members are part of the caucus, the entry lists only Sanders as the sole U.S. senator on the caucus. That’s way beyond fucked up. [Sanders, recall, calls himself a democratic socialist – and he’s the only such one in the U.S. Senate. He caucuses with the Democrats but does not call himself one, although he has considered running for the 2016 presidency on the Democratic Party ticket.])

We Americans still sorely need a new New Deal, which Obama at least quasi-promised but never delivered.

And without real Democrats/progressives like Elizabeth Warren – and Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich (whose “Inequality for All” you should watch if you haven’t already) – pushing for a new New Deal, with our help,  it won’t materialize, because the establishmentarian “Democrats” are too fat, lazy and comfortable feeding from the corporate trough to lift a fucking finger for the American people (except, perhaps, to extend their middle fingers to the American people) – which is why, I believe, they lose elections.

Maybe, just maybe, the elevation of Elizabeth Warren to a leadership post is at least the dim recognition of the Democratic Party hacks that without the party’s base on board, the party is weaker and is going to continue to flounder, at least in midterm elections.

What we progressives cannot allow Warren’s promotion to be is a substitute for the actual progressivism that the Democratic Party abandoned some time ago.

We allow DINO Billary Clinton into the White House at our own peril.

Chris Christie has become the Repugnicans’ bridge to nowhere

Reuters photo

An aide to Repugnican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie very apparently orchestrated lanes of the George Washington Bridge, pictured above, to be closed in order to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey, for not having endorsed Christie’s gubernatorial re-election. The bridge, which connects New Jersey and New York City via Fort Lee, is one of the busiest in the world.

Any Repugnican, including the teatards, who celebrates the probable political downfall of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is a moron. (Well, they’re all morons, but still.)

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t want Chris Christie or any other Repugnican, teatard or not, anywhere near the White House, but recent nationwide polls have suggested that Christie is the only member of his party who can beat Billary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, in November 2016.

A CNN/ORC poll taken last month had Christie beating Billary by two percentage points, 48 percent to 46 percent. No big deal, you say, but Billary garnered anywhere from 52 percent to 58 percent against all of the other Repugnican candidates in the poll, including Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Prick Perry, Marco Rubio, Pretty Boy Paul Ryan and yes, Prick Santorum.

A Quinnipiac University poll also taken last month showed Christie beating Billary by one percentage point, 42 percent to 41 percent. No big deal, you might say again, but in that poll, Billary beat every other Repugnican — Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul — by 7 percent to 13 percent.

A McClatchy-Marist poll also taken last month showed Billary actually beating Christie by 3 percent, 48 percent to 45 percent, but in that poll, too, Christie fared much better against Billary than did any other Repugnican, all of whom lost to Billary by 10 percent to 23 percent (true, it was Sarah Palin who lost to Billary by 23 percent, and Palin very most likely won’t be running in 2016, but still…).

True, Christie would have had to overcome the right-wing extremists — well, they’re nutjobs; even “right-wing extremist” doesn’t capture their depravity, and even “nutjobs” doesn’t capture how dangerous they are (there are plenty of harmless nutjobs), so probably “fascists” and “‘Christo’fascists” are the best terms for these Orc-like “people” — to win his party’s 2016 presidential nomination, but I think that he could have done that.

Before now.

Before the news that, as The Associated Press has put it, “e-mails and text messages suggest that one of Christie’s top aides engineered traffic jams in the New Jersey town [of Fort Lee] last September to punish its Democratic mayor.” The AP adds:

… The messages do not directly implicate Christie, but they appear to contradict his assertions that the closings were not punitive and that his staff was not involved.

The messages were obtained by The Associated Press and other news organizations amid a statehouse investigation into whether the lane closings that led to the tie-ups were retribution against the mayor of Fort Lee for not endorsing Christie for re-election last fall.

“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Christie deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly wrote in August in a[n e-mail] message to David Wildstein, a top Christie appointee on the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

[Reuters reports that Wildstein’s e-mail reply was: “Got it.”]

A few weeks later, Wildstein closed two of three lanes connecting Fort Lee to the heavily-traveled George Washington Bridge, which runs between New Jersey and New York City.

Beyond the specifics of the lane closures, critics suggest the incident reflects a darker side of Christie’s brand of politics that contradicts the image he’d like to project as he eyes the presidency. …

“This completely inappropriate and unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge,” Christie has proclaimed, adding, “People will be held responsible for their actions.”

While I find it very difficult to believe that any of Christie’s staffers would have been so brazenly bold as to orchestrate something so large without Christie’s knowledge, if not also his consent, at the bare minimum, even if Christie is telling the truth, which I very much doubt, Bridgegate seriously calls into question Christie’s ability to keep his own flying monkeys in check.

Gee, what would President Christie do if he failed to get someone’s endorsement for his re-election? Send a killer drone after him or her?

I agree with the AP’s assessment that a criticism that could be made of Christie is that Bridgegate reveals “a darker side of Christie’s brand of politics that contradicts the image he’d like to project as he eyes the presidency.” Indeed, he reminds me of the revengeful Richard Nixon.

All of this said, while I can’t stand Billary, and while I doubt that as president she’d be significantly more effective or progressive than Barack Obama has been — and so I still hope that she faces a strong, actually progressive challenger for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination — of course I’d rather see Billary in the White House, if that is unavoidable, than Chris Christie.

And Chris Christie was his party’s best path to recapturing the White House.

But now, he has become his party’s bridge to nowhere.

P.S. Yes, Christie’s probable political ruin perhaps might help the likes of presidential wannabe Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, whom I despise probably even more than I despise Christie, but Walker is fairly unknown outside of Wisconsin, and could he beat Billary? I doubt it. I could see him winning his party’s 2016 presidential nomination, but I can’t see him winning the White House.

We still have no real national leader on stopping the use of killer drones

Associated Press image

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has aligned himself with the Repugnican Party, the “tea party” and the libertarians, filibustered on the topic of the use of killer drones from yesterday afternoon until early this morning. Unfortunately, Paul’s concerns about the use of killer drones apparently is limited only to their use on “non-combatant” American citizens on American soil, and it seems to me that the upstart Paul’s goal is to promote and position himself as a future president at least as much as it is to tackle the problem of killer drones.

It was a breath of fresh air to see Repugnican Tea Party U.S. Sen. Rand Paul filibuster on the topic of the use of killer drones, a topic that the spineless, useless Democrats in D.C. (who are only about protecting the brand name and who have no sense of right and wrong) have refused to touch, since Papa Obama wuvs his drones, and Papa Obama must not be crossed.

The first slaughter of a human being by a U.S. drone occurred in Afghanistan in November 2001, during the reign of the unelected Bush regime. Pretty much nothing but evil came from the unelected Bush regime, yet DINO President Barack Obama decided to continue with the use of drones as remote-controlled killing machines.*

Most of the the Repugnican Tea Party traitors in D.C. want to preserve the use of human-snuffing drones for use by future Repugnican Tea Party presidents, and while many if not most of the DINOs in D.C. probably have a problem with the use of drones to kill human beings, none of them has the balls to stand up to Obama in a public and meaningful way.

So it was great to see Rand Paul buck both party establishments and speak out against at least one of the obvious problems that the use of human-killing drones poses. (I might say that that problem is their “abuse,” but since I believe that they should not be used at all, I won’t say “abuse,” because that connotes that their use at all might be OK.)

Don’t get me wrong. I could never cast a vote for Rand Paul.

Among other things, he opposes a woman’s right to an abortion even in cases of rape and incest, but would leave it to each state to determine whether or not to allow legal abortion, Roe v. Wade be damned.

At least at one time he held the view that Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits private businesses from engaging in race-based discrimination, is unconsitutional, because a private business should be allowed to discriminate by race if it so wishes.

Although Rand Paul claims to be a strict constitutionalist, he doesn’t like the fact that the 14th Amendment makes anyone who is born on American a soil a U.S. citizen, regardless of the child’s parents’ citizenship status, and so he wants so-called “birthright citizenship” to end (he supports a constitutional amendment to end “birthright citizenship” if it can’t be ended otherwise).

Rand Paul apparently wants to pick and choose among the constitutional amendments, because he vehemently supports the Second Amendment, opposing all gun control. (As I’ve noted before, no civilian needs an assault rifle, and when the so-called founding fathers crafted the Second Amendment, no such weapons 0f mass destruction existed, so to claim that of course the Second Amendment extends to them is quite a fucking stretch.)

Rand Paul personally opposes same-sex marriage but is OK with allowing each state to decide the matter. (I have a personal problem with his personal opposition to it, with his ignorance and his bigotry on the matter, his heterosexism and homophobia, and I also disagree vehemently that any state should be able to decide whether or not to honor any U.S. citizen’s constitutionally guaranteed equal human and civil rights.)

All in all, although the term “libertarian,” which Rand Paul uses to describe himself, implies a love of liberties and freedoms, with the libertarians (most of whom are right-wing white males), it is the same-old, same-old: These liberties and freedoms belong only to white, right-wing, “Christian,” heterosexual men (especially those who have power and money). They were the only ones who (regardless of what the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents proclaimed) had liberties and freedoms at the nation’s founding, and it should be that way forever, right? Just like the rich, white founding fathers intended!

That’s where Rand Paul is coming from. Indeed, he is considered a member of the “tea party” also. (I suspect that he just jumped on to the “tea party” bandwagon because the “libertarian” bandwagon wasn’t going to get him into the U.S. Senate, but if he says that he’s a member of the so-called “tea party,” and he does, then I’m going to hold him to that.)

While there is nothing that the “tea party” traitors believe that I also believe — far from being “revolutionaries” who are fighting for “freedom,” the “tea-party” dipshits support our corporate oppressors, which makes them treasonous fascists, not revolutionaries, and their belief system, if fully implemented, would bring about the even further enslavement of the American people, not our further freedom — the so-called “libertarians” are right on a few issues.

Rand Paul’s libertarian daddy, Ron Paul, for instance, although a patriarchal, misogynist homophobe also, opposed the Bush regime’s illegal, immoral, unprovoked and unjust Vietraq War, a rarity for someone aligned with the Repugnican Party.

Of course, Ron Paul’s reasoning for his opposition to the Vietraq War wasn’t the same as mine. My main problem with the Vietraq War was the carnage — thousands and thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians as well as more than 4,000 U.S. military personnel died pointlessly in the bogus war — carnage that benefitted only Big Oil and Dick Cheney’s Halliburton and the other subsidiaries of BushCheneyCorp.

From what I can discern, Ron Paul’s biggest problem with the war was not the cost in human lives, but was that the war, he argued in October 2002, was unconstitutional**; the U.S. Congress just giving the U.S. president carte blanche approval to declare war was akin to monarchism, he declared. I agree with that, but it was the foreseeable death and destruction, not the constitutional arguments, that were my biggest concern during the Bush regime’s run-up to its Vietraq War in 2002 and early 2003.

It also has been the gargantuan fiscal cost of the Vietraq War to the American taxpayers that has concerned Ron Paul and other libertarians — and that has been a huge problem, too, as the cost of the Vietraq War is a nice chunk of our federal budget deficit — but it troubles me that Ron Paul and his fellow libertarians haven’t focused on the human costs of such bogus warfare.

Still, I suppose, although we did our calculations very differently, at least Ron Paul came to the same, correct answer: The United States never should go to war unless it absolutely, absolutely is necessary, and, as the U.S. Constitution mandates, the U.S. Congress must keep the U.S. president in check when it comes to waging war, and must never abdicate its sole constitutional authority to declare war to the president, under any circumstances.

And wars of choice for war profiteering — robbing the U.S. treasury via bogus warfare — are intolerable. And they are treasonous. Knowingly taking the nation to war with another nation based upon lies cannot be anything other than treason, except, of course, also war crimes and crimes against humanity.

On the topic of the use of drones to slaughter human beings, Rand Paul, much like his daddy, at least partially comes to the right answer, but with calculations that are too cold.

In his nearly 13-hour filibuster, Rand Paul’s main or even only concern about the use of drones, I understand from the media coverage of his filibuster, is that killer drones might one day be used on “non-combatant” American citizens on American soil, in blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee that no U.S. citizen shall be deprived of his or her life or liberty as punishment for an accused crime or crimes without first having been granted a fair trial.

That’s way too narrow a problem to have with the use of killer drones.

Why should only American citizens be granted such fairness, decency and justice? Is not every human being on the planet worthy of such fairness, decency and justice, or are Americans superior to other human beings? Are only American lives valuable?

Further: Drones are a cowardly, lazy and sloppy way to kill, and their use quite foreseeably could explode to the point that innocent people all over the world (including in the U.S., of course) are being maimed and slaughtered by drones, like something out of one of the “Terminator” movies.

Therefore, the use of drones to slaughter human beings should be prohibited worldwide. Their use should not be prohibited only against American citizens, whether on American soil or whether on foreign soil, whether they are deemed “combatant” or “non-combatant,” but should be prohibited against any human being. You can’t trust the average adult with the “proper” use of a killer drone any more than you can trust the average child with the proper use of a shotgun.

Sadly, however, even Rand Paul’s public stance on killer drones is to the left of the public stance taken by the DINOs (which mostly is an eery silence).

DINO Nancy Pelosi, for instance, on the subject of the use of drones to slaughter human beings, to my knowledge only has offered a reassurance that of course Barack Obama never would use a drone to kill a “non-combatant” American citizen on American soil.

That’s not nearly good enough, Nancy.

Maybe Obama would not, but what if another election-stealing would-be war criminal like George W. Bush got into the White House? That could happen in less than four full years.

It would be wonderful if our “representatives” in Washington would actually lead, which means having an eye on the future — fuck, even the near future.

As Rand Paul stated himself during his filibuster, it’s not about Barack Obama (whose handlers constantly are asking us if we have his back when it sure would be nice if he had ours). It’s about the principle of the use of drones to slaughter human beings becoming so widespread and so out of control that we Americans or we human beings anywhere on the planet can’t fucking leave our own homes without worrying about whether or not a fucking drone might maim or kill us that day, accidentally or intentionally.

Neither Rand Paul nor any other member of U.S. Congress, to my knowledge, has stated publicly that that is the issue here.

And I’m still very leery of Rand Paul. I have no idea how much his filibuster actually was about the use of killer drones against “non-combatant” Americans on American soil and how much it was showboating because he has presidential aspirations.

It fairly clearly was such showboating when he remarked during a hearing in January to then-Secretary of State Billary Clinton on the subject of the September attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya: “Had I been president and found you did not read the cables from Benghazi and from Ambassador Stevens, I  would have relieved you of your post.”

He came off as a major prick because, well, he apparently is a major prick.

Although he’s only in his third year in the U.S. Senate, Rand Paul already was talking about his being president one day while he was attacking a woman who has been in national politics far longer than he has been. Would he have talked like that to a white male secretary of state? I doubt it. It was a sickening, nauseating display of that stupid-white-male sense of entitlement again.

While I’m glad that someone finally spoke out against the use of killer drones in some meaningful way in D.C., the patriarchal, misogynist, homophobic, xenophobic and apparently racist/white-supremacist Rand Paul would make as awful a president as his daddy would have, and, because he limited his argument against killer drones to the protection of only “non-combatant” American citizens on American soil — and, of course, whether or not someone targeted for slaughter by drone is a “combatant” or a “non-combatant” in many cases could be up for interpretation, and thus is wide open to abuse — we still have no real leadership in Washington, D.C., on the subject of drones used to slaughter human beings.

—

*DINO Barack Obama’s having continued the use of drones to slaughter human beings is one of the many reasons that I could not cast a second vote for him in November 2012. Obama is an immoral man, perhaps not immoral as most of the Repugnican Tea Party traitors are, but still immoral. The lesser of two evils is still an evil.

**In his October 2002 speech in which he stated his opposition to the U.S. Congress giving then-“President” Bush the power to declare war on Iraq, Ron Paul also stated, “There is no convincing evidence that Iraq is capable of threatening the security of this country, and, therefore, very little reason, if any, to pursue a war.”

That is common knowledge now, and during the build-up to the Vietraq War it was clear to me, also, as just a consumer of the news, that Iraq posed no threat to the U.S. and that the treasonous members of the unelected Bush regime were lying through their teeth (“aluminum tubes,” “yellowcake from Niger,” “mushroom clouds,” “anthrax,” etc.) and were dead-set upon invading Iraq no matter what.

In his speech Ron Paul also interestingly stated that the impending Vietraq War did not pass the “Christian” litmus test for a “just war.” He said:

First, it [the “Christian” litmus test for a just war] says that there has to be an act of aggression; and there has not been an act of aggression against the United States. We are 6,000 miles from [Iraq’s] shores.

Also, it says that all efforts at negotiations must be exhausted. I do not believe that is the case. It seems to me like the opposition, the enemy, right now is begging for more negotiations.

Also, the Christian doctrine says that the proper authority must be responsible for initiating the war. I do not believe that proper authority can be transferred to the president nor to the United Nations.

In his speech Ron Paul also, besides engaging in the usual libertarian United Nations-bashing (the U.S. should call the global shots, not the UN, you see), attacked the Bush regime’s neo-conservative concept of “pre-emptive war,” stating, “No matter what the arguments may be, this policy is new; and it will have ramifications for our future, and it will have ramifications for the future of the world because other countries will adopt this same philosophy.”

It’s too bad no one is that far-sighted when it comes to the use of human-slaughtering drones!

Four more years (of [largely] the same old shit)!

Reuters photos

I expect little actual progress from the pseudo-progressive President Hopey-Changey over the next four years, but at least during that time I’ll be spared of having to see the Ann-Cunter-like, bleach-blonde harpy Ann Romney trying to fuck us all repeatedly with her strap-on. (Yes, that’s an actual news photo, and so is that one, too.)

Oh, yeah, there was an election on Tuesday.

As I have noted, I voted by mail for Green Party candidate Jill Stein for president — yes, practically speaking, as a protest vote — but I knew that President Barack Obama would win my state of California by an overwhelming margin, and he did: thus far in California’s vote counting, Obama has 59.3 percent to Mittens Romney’s paltry 38.4 percent. (Stein, in case you were wondering, is at No. 4, with a whopping 0.6 percent of the state’s vote.)

What I didn’t expect, however, was that as a result of Tuesday’s election — elections, as they say, have consequences — the California Legislature would be on the verge of having a two-thirds “super-majority” in both houses, the state Senate and the state Assembly.

Wow.

This “super-majority” — if utilized — makes the Repugnican Tea Party traitors in the Legislature even more irrelevant than they already were before Tuesday.

Not that the Democrats will use their power, of course. Although “super-majority” power, if used to its full extent, would make even the centristy Democratic California Gov. Jerry Brown fairly irrelevant, since the Legislature could override his vetoes, there are plenty of center-right “Democratic” California legislators who could threaten any two-thirds threshold.

And, of course, already Jerry Brown has assured spooked California Repugnicans — whose registrants don’t comprise even a full 30 percent of registered Californian voters (the Dems, on the other hand, have almost 44 percent of the state’s registered voters) and whose party doesn’t hold a single statewide office — that his party won’t do too much to upset them, even though, of course, were the state’s parties’ positions of political power reversed, the Repugnicans would ram their right-wing agenda through ruthlessly.

When George W. Bush was “re”-elected in 2004 with a measly 50.7 percent of the popular vote, he called the election results a “mandate.” A “mandate.”

That’s how the Repugnican Tea Party traitors roll: They don’t care even if they don’t even win the popular vote (recall the 2000 presidential election) — they just want to be in power no matter fucking what. They want to shove their Randian, theofascist, neo-Nazi agenda down our throats whether we, the people, give them our permission, via our votes, to do so or not. (So of course if you’re perfectly willing to steal power even when you lost the election, 50.7 percent would be, I suppose, relatively speaking, a “mandate.”)

Votes remain to be counted, but right now Obama is sitting at 50.6 percent of the national popular vote to Mittens’ 47.9 percent. Obama on Tuesday sewed up 332 electoral votes to Mittens’ 206. Including the all-important Ohio and Florida, Obama on Tuesday won all of the states that he won in 2008 (when he garnered 52.9 percent of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes), except for two of them, Indiana and North Carolina, which aren’t exactly solid-blue states anyway.

(Indeed, in eight of the last 10 presidential elections, including Tuesday’s, North Carolina went for the Repugnican, and in nine of the last 10 presidential elections, including Tuesday’s, Indiana went for the Repugnican, so Obama’s win in those two states in 2008 was the exception, not the rule, and his loss in those two backasswards states on Tuesday was the rule, not the exception, even though the pathetically straw-grasping Repugnican Tea Party traitors have tried to make some hay out of the fact that Obama didn’t win those two states again on Tuesday. [Indeed, the bar, when it is set by whites, is always set higher for blacks than it is for whites.])

Cheer up, though, white-supremacist wingtards! Mittens did better than John McCainosaurus and Sarah Palin did in 2008. They garnered only 45.7 of the popular vote and 173 electoral votes against the guy with the Kenyan ancestry.

Of course, while George W. Bush in 2004 declared 50.7 percent of the popular vote to be a “mandate” and the fascist traitors who comprise his party talked of a “permanent [Repugnican] majority,” only two years later, in 2006, the Repugnicans lost the U.S. House of Representatives and Democratic California U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi became the first woman to become speaker of the House in U.S. history, and then two years after that, in 2008, Barack Obama, the nation’s first non-white president, won a higher percentage of the popular vote than either George W. Bush or even Bill Clinton ever had.

So some caution needs to be exercised before declaring a “permanent [insert party name here] majority,” or even a “mandate” based on not even a full 51 percent of the popular vote, but at the same time, to the victor goes the spoils, and the so-called “leaders” of the Democratic Party need to stop acting like losers even after they’ve fucking won.

(Yes, on the heels of his second electoral victory, Obama still is talking about cooperation with the Repugnican Tea Party traitors in Congress, even though the past four years have demonstrated amply that you cannot negotiate with such terrorists, because the assumption that they are rational creatures capable of compromise is patently incorrect.) 

The Repugnican Tea Party traitor-fascists act like winners even after they’ve lost, and if the damage that they’ve wreaked upon the nation is to be reversed (if that’s even possible at this point [it very most likely isn’t, perhaps especially in regards to global warming]), the Democrats really need to stop snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

I’m not holding my breath, however.

I expect the next four years to look and feel much like the past four, although I expect things here in California to improve more quickly than they improve — if they ever improve — nationally, since here in California we have demonstrated how to edge the Repugnican Tea Party traitors more and more closely to the endangered species status that they oppose so much.

As California goes, so goes the nation, it has been said.

I hope that that is correct.

P.S. Of course I’m happy that on Tuesday the voters of three states — Maine, Maryland and Washington — voted for same-sex marriage, being the first states to adopt same-sex marriage upon a popular vote, and pushing the number of states that have same-sex marriage from six (before Tuesday) to now nine. (The other six states are Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont. The District of Columbia also has same-sex marriage, as do two U.S. Native American tribes, apparently.)

The 2008 election results were a bittersweet pill here in California, because although Barack Obama had become the nation’s first black president based upon his ubiquitous campaign promises of hope and change (and to a large degree they were just that — promises — we know now), Proposition Hate had shot down same-sex marriage, which the California Supreme Court had ruled earlier in the year was every Californian’s constitutional right.

If same-sex marriage were put up to a vote again in California today, of course it would pass this time — even though, let me be clear, no one’s constitutional guarantee of equality ever should have to be put up to a fucking vote — and it’s gratifying to see that the Mittens Romney-Pretty Boy Paul Ryan ticket, representing the Mormon cult and the Catholick church respectively, were rejected by the majority of the nation’s voters, since the Mormon cult and the Catholick church were the biggest sponsors of Proposition Hate, in their attempt to shove their brand of theocracy and theofascism down our throats, Taliban-style.

Karma is a bitch.

(Just like Ann Romney is. I am sooooo happy not to have to see her fucking face as first lady for the next four years, by the way. Ann Romney reminds me of an Ann Cunter who actually ate something. Why are so many Repugican Tea Party women bleach-blonde harpies who act like sorority chicks who are getting revenge upon all of us for the ponies that they never got as spoiled little girls?)

P.P.S. For all of their post-election sore-loserism crying and whining, the white-supremacist Repugnican Tea Party traitors are fucking lucky that we are seeing a for-the-very-most-part bloodless, demographic revolution in the United States, and not (thus far, anyway…) the actual bloody revolution that the Repugnican Tea Party traitors deserve to have launched against them, a la the French Revolution.

After all, the “47 percent” that Mittens “Let Them Eat Cake” Romney talked about in May when he didn’t know that he was being video-recorded actually is a bit more than 50 percent, we see from Tuesday’s presidential election results.

Cunter: ‘tea-partiers’ ‘cheerful,’ liberals ‘violent’

I wasn’t going to blog anymore tonight. Then I read Ann Cunter’s latest lie fest.

Cunter tries to make the case that liberals are violent racists.

It’s funny. In a sick and twisted way. Does she believe her own shit or does she have full awareness that she’s lying through her venom-dripping fangs?

Cunter begins with:

While engaging in astonishing viciousness, vulgarity and violence toward Republicans, liberals accuse cheerful, law-abiding Tea Party activists of being violent racists.

Oh, fuck, I wish that we liberals were violent! (And that the “tea party” fascists truly were “cheerful” instead of hating upon everyone who isn’t a conservative straight white person who identifies as a Christian — you know, the way our tea-bagging founding fathers wanted it to be.)

We liberals should have killed someone when George W. Bush blatantly treasonously stole the White House in late 200o after having lost the popular vote and the state of Florida, of which his brother just coinky-dinkily was governor (and of which the chief elections official just coinky-dinkily also had sat on his election campaign committee). When the unelected Bush regime launched its bogus Vietraq War for Big Oil and for Uncle Dick’s Halliburton, we liberals should have gone on a murderous fucking rampage.

But we didn’t.

Actually, the “tea party” dipshits aren’t widely accused of violence, even though Cunter goes on to beat the “tea-party” spittle story to death. They are, however, accurately widely accused of being racist.

Look at how many non-whites attend “tea party” gatherings. Why, if the “tea party” is a such a big tent, is that tent filled almost exclusively with white people?

And the New York Times reports that less than 1.5 percent of the audience of Faux “News” (which we might as well call the Tea Party Channel) is comprised of black viewers, while around 20 percent of CNN’s and MSNBC’s viewership is black. Why, do you suppose, that is? (Oh, yeah: because blacks are racist. Andrew Breitbart says so.)

Cunter also proclaims:

We also have evidence of liberals’ proclivity for violence in the form of mountains of arrest records. Liberal protesters at the 2008 Republican National Convention were arrested for smashing police cars, slashing tires, breaking store windows, and for possessing Molotov cocktails, napalm bombs and assorted firearms. (If only they could muster up that kind of fighting spirit on foreign battlefields.)

There were no arrests of conservatives at the Democratic National Convention.

Hmmm. My understanding is that the vast majority of those who actually smash police cars, slash tires, break store windows, etc., are anarchists, not liberals, and while I don’t know much about the anarchists, my understanding is that by definition they don’t like liberals, considering liberals to be part of the broken political system that they despise. Actually, I think that they hate any and all political systems, broken or otherwise. (Any anarchists there, feel free to correct me in the comments section if I’m wrong.)

But that aside, again, I only WISH that liberals actually would wreak havoc like Cunter claims they (we) do. Instead, they tend to be notoriously pussy, usually not even fighting back when they are physically attacked. Fucking peaceniks. (And, as Cunter points out, liberals don’t even like to slaughter Muslim babies for the profits of Big Oil in the names of freedom and democracy and God and Jesus and puppies and kittens and fluffy little bunnies and butterflies and marshmallows and cotton candy. Fucking treasonous liberals!)

And if there were no arrests of conservatives at the Democratic National Convention, well, since conservatives tend to be overly comfortable, overprivileged rich fucks, since they tend to sit at the top of the hierarchy, shitting and pissing upon others, what, exactly, do they have to protest? (Oh, yeah: taxes, which the rich fucks’ corporations — which are people just like you and me, don’t you know — don’t even pay anyway. [Oh — and the black guy won the 2008 presidential election over the old white guy by 7 percentage points, when U.S. history clearly has demonstrated that only white men should ever be president.])

But wait. Cunter’s not done.

“It was a good day when George Bush was merely burned in effigy, compared to Hitler or, most innocuously, compared to a monkey,” she whines.

OK, so go to Google images — images.google.com — and look up “Obama monkey” and “Obama Hitler.” You’ll see lovely images like these:

(You can Google “Obama burned in effigy” on your own. And you know, you’re no one until you’re burned in effigy. Just sayin’.)

It seems to me that blacks are much more often compared to monkeys or other non-human primates than are whites, and that whites comparing blacks to monkeys is quite different from mostly whites comparing a white guy to a monkey*, and really, I don’t think that the right or the left has a monopoly on the trite Hitler comparison, although if Barack Hussein Hitler truly wants to round up and exterminate six million “tea-partying” wingnuts, hey, I’m down with that. (But that will never happen, the FEMA concentration-camp conspiracy stories notwithstanding, because, as I said, liberals are pussies.)

Cunter even manages to scrape together some names of Democratic politicians who have made racist or racist-sounding statements in the past, and, of course, she has to mention that the late Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd in his youth used to be a member of the KKK, which he spent the rest of his life regretting and denouncing. (Well, she doesn’t remind us that he was young and that he regretted it the rest of his life. An oversight, I’m sure.)

Cunter neglects to mention Repugnican racist politicians like Strom “Baby Daddy” Thurmond, Trent Lott (whose political career imploded when he stated that segregationist Thurmond should have been elected president in 1948), George “Macaca” Allen, Jeff(erson) Sessions, John Ashcroft, George Bush I (remember the Willie Horton ad?) and George Bush II (remember the robo-calls that John McCain had fathered a black child, which had Karl Rove’s greasy fingerprints all over them? And how helpful Bush II was to the black victims of Hurricane Katrina?), Katherine Harris (and her purging of black voters from Florida’s voter rolls so that Bush II could “win” Florida), and, of course, David Duke. (Cunter actually writes that we liberals “have zero examples of conservative racism.” Uh, smoking dope isn’t legal yet, Ann.)

And these “incidents”/incidents of liberal-on-conservative violence/“violence” that Cunter recounts are, as violence goes, pretty tame. And quite anecdotal — hardly a fucking national pandemic, unfortunately. The worst of them she recounts is that a guy at a MoveOn.org event bit off a portion of a wingnut’s finger.

Again, cool shit like that doesn’t happen nearly enough.

I wonder what one of Cunter’s fingers tastes like. Careful, though, my fellow violent liberals. I’m guessing that she has acid for blood.

—

*I used to love the comparisons of George W. Bush to a chimpanzee, although the comparisons were an insult to the intelligence of our closest living cousins.

The comparisons of Bush to chimps was a statement on his lack of intelligence, however. The prime aim of comparisons of blacks to non-human primates, however, is to suggest that they are subhuman — and thus, that it’s justified to treat them as such. 

Big difference. But just another innocent oversight on Cunter’s part, I’m certain.