The Republican Party spirals down into overt Nazism at CPAC

 Just when you thought Republicans couldn’t get any more disgusting, we get CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference).  What did CPAC do to symbolically communicate to the world who they are?  Well...

First they created the stage in the shape of a Nazi rune... Nazi... Nazi...

Next they created a (this is so strange) Golden Trump Statue.... Golden Trump Statue... Holden Trump Statue...

See pictures.

Just because they are spiraling into oblivion doesn’t mean they aren’t still dangerous.  Watch out. When people lose power they often strike out to do as much damage as they can. Witness the murderous assault on the Capitol on 1/6/20 trying to overthrow the U.S. government.  

Did you hear what Trump DID today?!?!

Did you hear what Trump DID today?

Neither did I....

Isn’t that absolutely WONDERFUL? 

Cyber attack

My company is under a cyber attack.  My computer has been off for a week and my ability to do business is grinding to a halt.  I don’t know who the attacker is, but I am mindful of a huge story from December and January.

Russia successfully massively infiltrated America’s cyberworlds - the U S Military, State Department, White House, NSA, most Fortune 500 companies, the largest Accounting firms, Universities, etc.  It put a “backdoor” “zero-day” software into a product called “Solar Winds” routine update that affected 18,000 customers.  This happened in March 2020.  Catastrophic.  What else happened that March?

Oh yes, The Trump Administration dramatically slashed the budget for CISA (Cybersecurity And Infrastructure Security Agency).  I have long thought it was blindingly obvious that Trump was/is a Russian agent under the control of the FSR (KGB)

I have just started a book about Russia’s cyberwarfare - “This is How They Tell Me the World Ends” by Nicole Perlroth.  Terrifying.  

Russia warmed up and tried out their weapons on poor little Ukraine - shut down the power grid in December - twice,  shut down a nuclear power system to where they had no idea what’s was happening to the plant and couldn’t even measure radiation.  The plant tech got on a loudspeaker “...and told anyone who could hear to rip their computers out of the wall”

I don’t know that Russia is attacking my smallish corporation.  Maybe we are just collateral damage of a larger American target, or maybe it’s not Russia at all.  

But the recent devastation of Texas when Climate Change driven cold shut down their power, we can see how vulnerable our power grids are.  The trouble is a cyber attack won’t be cured by warm weather.  

With the COVID-19 pandemic, an attempted violent overthrow of an election, and escalating Climate Change America is in a strange place.

We are very vulnerable. 

Texas power needs to winterize

Climate Change’s effect in California has been to change the way the state deals with forest management to try to prevent endless firestorm seasons.  

Now Climate Change has pushed the Polar Vortex all the way down through Texas and is crippling the power grid.  The oil and gas industry is on a propaganda campaign to blame green energy like wind turbines, but that is just silly. 

Wind turbines work just fine in Utah, Minnesota, and Antarctica. They just have to be winterized - heated blades and antifreeze, etc. 

The bigger problem in Texas is apparently freezing natural gas pipelines so that the fuel couldn’t get to the gas fired power plants. It seems that Texas long ago created their own power grid so as avoid government regulation.  Too bad, could be that regulation might have forced more farsighted engineering.

Just as California has had to change its forest management policies, Texas and the South need to winterize their power generation and power grid. It would help, also, if Texas would open up their power grid to the U.S. so they could receive power from other states during an emergency, just like the rest of us do.  

It is commonly said that “No Man is an Island.” Same for states, we are all connected even if some of us think that it is some kind of failing to receive help.  Time for Texas to prepare for Climate Change. 

Just to finish with the obvious - the Polar Vortex instability is part of the Climate Change, which is caused in large part by burning fossil fuels.  I would like to see Texas be in the forefront of developing sustainable green energy that does just fine when it is below zero and when it is above 100, because that is the new climate for Texas.  

Careers can be had in green as well as fossil fuel industries.  

76.6 Million

By the way, the 57 Senators who voted to convict Trump during the impeachment trial represent 76.6 MILLION more people than the 43 Senators that voted to acquit.  The difference still falls short of 2/3 of the country, but it reveals a structural problem.

This shows a very real problem with the whole idea of the Senate. When a state like Wyoming with a little more than half a million gets two Senators, and California with about 40 million also gets only two Senators, you know that time has moved on to the point where the Founders’ vision has been distorted beyond what they would recognize and they would likely disapprove. As I have written before, I believe the invention of the Senate was a needed compromise to bribe the slave States to join the Union. It gave them disproportionate representation in the Federal Government. Then the expansion west into very lightly populated territories gave mining and ranching interests disproportional influence.

Maybe it’s time to abolish the Senate? Won’t happen without a new Constitutional Convention, which won’t happen, of course. But there is a problem in our democracy when an unpopular minority runs the country. 

We need the Constitution to protect the minority against the tyranny of the majority. But we also need the Constitution to protect the majority against the tyranny of the minority. I don’t know how to do this.

I think it is just fine that the bulk of the Republican Party is still trapped in the slavish Trump Cult because I think that the Trump ship has hit a iceberg and is in the process of sinking. I hope that an honorable Republican wing can rise up and take over.  But I think the Party will just split and fade away. They cling desperately to power through blatant gerrymandering and blatant voter suppression but that can’t last for long. 

As I have mentioned before, there are deep structural issues we seem to unable to address - catastrophic climate change (Texas power grid failures due to unprecedented cold, California firestorms due to unprecedented heat and drought, hurricanes, floods, ice melts, etc.), and dangerously widening economic inequality (history showed us the French guillotine and the Bolshevik revolution as results of previous too much disparity).  We need very fresh approaches, but we seem to be stuck in a system that preserves both killing pollution and economic chasms.  

The Pro-fascists declare theselves - the ProFa Party

So the Republican Senators did what was expected (except for 7 who had the character to admit the undeniable).  They announced that the Republican Party now is actually the Pro-fascist Party.  Maybe they should name themselves the ProFa Party.  The Republican Senators showed that succumbing to the fascist wing of the Party, also known as the Trump Cult, they have declared themselves to be fascists themselves.  

Fascism:

Dictionary.com    --   Noun  - a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.

The evidence of the ex-president’s relentless stoking his cult to riotous anger, calling them to the Capitol on January 6, and sending them to the Capitol Building with orders to “be strong” was overwhelming and uncontestable.  The House Mangers made their case with more than was needed.  The defense tried to say it was freedom of speech to send rioters into the Capitol to kill people, and that to deny their fascist leader of that right was part of the terrible left wing “cancel culture”, and that the House used the wrong verb - "incitement" - in their charge.

Good grief.  It was pathetic.  But 43 Republican Senators gave their “terrifying” fascist leader a pass, and gave him and future wannabe fascists permission.

But, on the bright side, the Republican Senators did the most wonderful and needed thing that can be done in America, they destroyed the Republican Party.  Republicans will have to split in two – Republicans vs. ProFas.

Thousands of registered Republicans have left the Republican Party.  What’s left is the dregs. 

The newly formed ProFa Party can spend their time enthusiastically fighting the AntiFa civilians in public performance marches carrying confederate flags, Trump flags, white supremacist symbols, assault weapons, and baseball bats.  They can shout racism and threats.  They can display their manly manly manly tempers.  Oh my!

They won’t have a whole lot else to do because the Republican Party will oppose them as well as the Democratic Party, and they may get a few nuts into Congress but they will just become a worn out side show and people will grow tired and switch the channel and the show will be cancelled – just like Trump’s “The Apprentice” was cancelled for fizzling out.  

This will take a couple of election cycles, I suppose, but as with the Whigs...

What an appalling episode of Trump in America this has been.

Catching up on the Senate Trial - Even I am shocked

I have been following Trump's fascist attempt to stay in power pretty closely over the last year, but even I am shocked by the detailed evidence presented by the House Impeachment Managers yesterday.  I've been catching up on recordings of yesterday's presentations.

Trump's months' long incitement of his Cult to set the stage for his final call to action on January 6 with claims that the election would be and then was rigged was more than just a bad loser making an excuse for his loss.  He knew what he was doing and he called for violence to keep himself in power. He needed to stay in power, not just because of his psychopathic ego that can't admit defeat, he needed to stay in power to stay out of prison for his criminal career of tax evasion, bank fraud, money laundering, campaign violations, and who knows what else.

I knew all that.  But to witness the timeline of events, including the sustained and brutal violence by a well organized and well planned right wing terrorist insurrection is really disturbing.  I have wept in rage and sorrow, while watching, that one complete nincompoop of a man could cause so much damage to my beloved America.

The right wing terrorists were out to kill the Vice President, to please their cult leader, and to kill the Speaker of the House, to please their cult leader, and literally to kill anyone they could get their hands on.  They wounded 140 officers, killed one, two more died.  The Capitol Police were astonishingly brave heroes.  We saw video after video proving their heroism.

The terrorists came within minutes and within yards of getting the VP, Senators, and Congress-people.  They clearly shouted their intentions to hang or kill them.

It was terrifying. And that is the essence of fascism, is it not?  To dominate with terror?  To seize power and keep it with violence and terror?

I have no idea how any Republican Senator could possibly vote to acquit the ex-president after seeing the detail of the time line in preparation for, prior to, and during the attack designed to find them and kill them.  

This is not an exaggeration.  To any who think this was just a mob that got out of control, or was some kind of spontaneous event that came from nowhere, the only explanation is that they have not watched the evidence being presented.  The ex-president is a psychopath and he tried to kill people to stay in power (correction, he did kill people to stay in power)

Find the ex-president guilty, please.  Prison for all involved, please.

Will the Republican Party declare their guilt?

I just saw the perfect summary of this week’s Senate trial of the former president.  It is a imaginary conversation where Piglet asks “If they don’t convict him does that mean that he is innocent?  Pooh Bear answers “No Piglet...it means they are all guilty”

It would mean that they approve of and want fascist terror to rule America. 

Lack of government was the problem

Ronald Reagan famously campaigned on the idea that "Government isn't the solution - government is the problem". And that idea stuck for decades. If he was right in 1980, Trump proved that idea catastrophically wrong in his four years of mismanagement horror.  

Most notably, his astonishingly incompetent federal response to COVID-19 has caused at least twice the number of deaths than would have happened if he had not largely dismantled the pandemic response team that had been set up by Obama, and if he had used the power and leadership of the Federal Government to provide masks, tests, and vaccines using tools like the Defense Authorization Authority of government to lead the country and the world in stopping the disease. 

But, we have a new government, and competence and skill are being put into place in Biden's appointments. People with experience, character, and commitment to the success of their agencies rather than inexperience, lack of character, and commitment to the destruction of their agencies.

His incompetent predecessor did what all tyrants do, he put political loyalists in place to run the government. And like political loyalists all across the world, they had little knowledge or expertise in the organizations they were in charge of.  An example of that is the tyranny in Venezuela, where the oil industry was turned over to men who did not and do not know how to run and oil industry but they do know how to kiss the ass of the tyrant.  Since Venezuela essentially has only one industry, oil, its economy collapsed long ago.

Biden is providing government leadership once again.  Thank goodness. There are many, many things that private enterprise never will and never can do - lack of government was the problem.  

Here are some of what he is doing, for which I am grateful:

COVID

• Require Masks on Federal Grounds and airplanes (just following the science)
• Stay in the World Health Organization (duh)
• Accurate virus data (Trump tried to force low virus numbers)
  
• Provide scientific guidance on opening schools (replace inconsistent state driven political whims)

• Student loan moratorium (Even Trump did this one)
• Coronavirus Testing Board (We need hundreds of millions of quick response tests)
• Temporary eviction moratoriums (pandemic compassion)
  

ENVIRONMENT

• Rejoin the Paris Climate Accord (catastrophic climate change is toooo real)
  
• Undo deregulations that harm the environment and cause catastrophic climate change (focus on climate change and polutution)
• Halts new oil and gas leases on public lands and offshore (time to stop government artificially propping up technologies that are causing catastrophic climate change and are being replaced by green technologies)
• Halting the Keystone pipeline (puts teeth into commitment to pollution regulations)

BIGOTRY

• Restoring DACA (they were raised as Americans and should be treated as such)
• Reverse attempt to defund "sanctuary cities (Undo the racist attacks)
  
• Prevent sexual and gender discrimination (macho man primacy is stupid)
  
• Reunite families separated at the border (trying to undo racist horrors of T)
• Cancel Trump's ridiculous emergency building of his border wall (just stupid pandering to racists)
• Honest census count (reverse previous unconstitutional attempt to exclude the undocumented)
  
• Re-establish fair housing policies (undo the racism)
  
• Reversing the ban on transgenders in the military (be thankful for patriotism)

SCIENCE

• Appointed a Director of Science and Technology as a cabinet level position (science to have a major seat at the table for decisions, what a concept!)

We had the misfortune of a president and a Republican Party dedicated to the destruction of government, and it was a nightmare.  Thank goodness for people who are public servants dedicated to the public welfare by providing things that only government can provide.  

Expertise is back.  I deeply hope that the Biden Administration can attract the expert scientists, diplomats, and government employees who were forced out of their key and vital jobs by the anti-government nitwits of the previous administration.