Time to end the unconstitutional filibuster

Senate Republicans used the filibuster to reject a bipartisan Congressional investigation into the January 6, 2021 insurrection that attempted to overturn the election of President Biden.  The vote was 54 - 35 for the investigation, with only six Republicans supporting it, and thus fell short of the 60 votes needed.  This is just as disturbing as the attempted coup itself.  It shows that the coup is not over, but is still in process.

If Congress can’t even act in a bipartisan way to investigate the people who literally tried to kill the Vice President and Speaker of the House, there is no chance at all that this Republican Party will ever be bipartisan.  (Of course, a few Republicans have a lot to fear from an investigation because they were part of the attempted coup by conducting advance tours of the Capitol to give the insurrectionists a chance to case the place for their violence the next day, and some of them also communicated with the assassins as to where the Speaker and the Vice President were during the violence itself.)

And, indeed, the former guy is literally threatening the lives of any who contradict his Big Lie, according to Liz Cheney former number three Congressperson in the House who was deposed by a public voice vote in order to please their mob boss leader of the Party in Mar-a-Lago.

So, I think it is time to end the filibuster rule that requires a 60% vote in the Senate to pass any legislation.  The filibuster is not in the Constitution.  The Constitution expected that both the Senate and the House would have votes decided by a majority, not a supermajority.  The filibuster has a sordid past in that it was most often used by white supremacist southern Democrats to stop civil rights legislation. All they need is to keep the votes short of the 60 votes required to end the filibuster to stop anything. And it has become a way for the minority to rule the country. (By the way, the population of the Republican red states is about 42 million less than the population of the blue Democratic states)  It is now used by as few as 41 Republicans to block all Democrat bills.

The filibuster is unconstitutional and should be abolished in the Senate.

Trump threatens to kill Republican elected officials

 It is not a joke, Trump and his deranged cult actually threaten the lives of Republican lawmakers, according to Liz Cheney being interviewed last weekend:

"On ABC’s This Week, Cheney also repeated the information she gave last week: that Republicans were afraid to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial because they were frightened for their lives."

 Liz Cheney, of course, was the third ranking Republican in the D.C. House of Representatives who was forced out of that position with a voice vote (not by a secret ballot).  She is in position to know the deadly truth of that statement.

The common wisdom was that the cowardice of the elected Republicans was fear of losing their jobs, fear of being Primaried by a Trump Cult figure.  But, fearing for one's life is even more astonishing.  We saw for ourselves the Trump Cult force their way into the Capitol in an insurrection to overthrow the election on January 6 of this year.  Five people died - Died - Died.  We heard them call out to find Vice President, Mike Pence, and Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, to do them harm, and we saw the hangman's noose and gallows outside the building prepared for their necks. 

The Trump Cult has brought this violence and threat of violence to our democracy.  It is time for those who have been voting for Republicans to just turn away from the people who are extreme, violent, and dangerous. 

This is very disturbing.   

Trump wins over Cheney? How authoritarianism works

Discouragingly, Congresswoman Liz Cheney was stripped of her number 3 position in the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday for having the audacity to tell the obvious truth that Trump lost the election and it was not stolen by Biden.  But Trump says the election is stolen, and the Reps in the House were forced to agree with him.  So, Trump won.  Initially.  A couple of thoughts.

First, we are being given real time lessons in authoritarian rule. On March 2, 2016, after Trump won the Super Tuesday primary elections on the way to his nomination by the Republican Party I wrote that America had been lucky and had not lost its innocence, i.e. had never been under authoritarian rule.

"America has been very, very lucky so far.  We have not been guilty of electing monsters to be our leaders. There have been many presidents that have engendered a lot of opposition, but none have been actual monsters.

Other countries have to live with a past that includes monsters.  Italy had Mussolini (whom Trump consciously or unconsciously mimics in his face and body language); Italy also had Caesar; Russia had Stalin, (and Lenin, and Peter the Great, and now Putin), China had Mao Tse Tung (and a few thousand years of brutal rulers); Japan had crazed generals; and of course Germany had Hitler.  These countries all lost their innocence long ago.  They were seduced by authoritarian leaders who became monstrous despots..."

Well, America lost its innocence when it elected Trump, and empowered the monstrous Trump Cult, especially the White Supremacist and conspiracy mongers who are violent and dangerous.  And, even though the Former Guy never got above 46% of the popular vote he holds Republican elected officials firmly in his power via fear.

So, we see how the tyrant establishes his tyranny.  At least 95% of the elected Republicans in the House of Representatives know the obvious truth that the election was not stolen and that all that happened was that the Former Guy lost.  But, they are forced to lie.  The tyrant destroys the will and the spirit of his subjects by forcing them to say and do things against their own consciences - by forcing them to say things that they know are not true - by forcing them to lie.  Once they go along with the Big Stupid Lie they have lost their willpower, lost their integrity, lost their Spirit, and have bent their knee to kiss the ring of their Master.  For the ELECTED Republicans, Trump is their Master. (By the way, I believe the same can be said of the Former Guy himself as he has a long history of bending the knee and kissing the ring of his Master, Putin)

Secondly, one of the biggest losers in the history of American politics has managed to buffalo his party into following him without question.  Where is he leading them?  I still believe his is leading them off the cliff into oblivion, just as the white supremacist slave owners led the Whig Party into oblivion in the mid 1800s.

It's not pretty to watch. And a lot is being destroyed as he and his lemmings charge so bravely and at such full speed toward the cliff of irrelevance.  But, I think more and more actual Republicans will follow my path and just leave the Republican Party, and leave that party to the white supremacist, white grievance folks like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, and Marjory Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert.  Just ugliness, whining, and threats - not exactly a dream of a positive future for America.

Russian Cyber warfare

 After reading the book "This is How They Tell Me the World Ends" I wrote that Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran are all at war with America - cyberwar.  And we do not have superiority in fighting this war.  Our missiles, aircraft carriers, bombers, tanks, etc. - all marvelous improvements for future WWII type conflicts do not protect us from Cyber attacks.  

Russia has struck America with a cyber attack by shutting down the biggest gasoline pipeline in our country, run by Colonial Pipeline.  Russia invaded America's infrastructure about a year ago and are into our electric grid, power plants, nuclear power plants, Pentagon, Media organizations, etc. etc. with an attack labeled "Solar Winds".  If they can shut down a pipeline, couldn't they blow up a chemical plant? or a refinery? or a nuclear power plant?

We have identified the attack from a Russian Cybercrime outfit using an attack called DarkSide.  Is there any doubt that Putin and the Russian government are not part of this attack?  

By the way, isn't Putin Trump's good friend?  Didn't Trump eliminate the National Cybersecurity Coordinator position in 2018?  And didn't Trump purge the Homeland Security Cyber Division in 2019?  And didn't he fire the National Cybersecurity Director in 2020?  Isn't it pretty obvious he did this at the command of his master, Vladimir Putin?  Doesn't the deliberate weakening of America's cyber defenses open us up to Russian control?  Isn't Putin a very happy man to have such a dupe under his control in the former president?  

We are very vulnerable, as this attack on our gas distribution shows us.  It would be so nice if the Trump Cult came to the realization that their political god is on the side of America's enemies.  Maybe they can have an awakening while waiting in long lines to get gas.

Greed and Bigotry

After the 2020 election I predicted that the Republican Party was on the path to splitting and disappearing, just like the Whigs did in the mid-1800s.  We are watching that now as Lynn Cheney, third ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, insists on telling the obvious truth that Trump lost the election to Biden and it was not stolen from him.  This is seen as heresy to the Trump Cult and they are in the process of stripping her of her position.  Trump is winning the first round of the Republican Party battle, and almost all elected Republicans find that they have little choice but to agree to the Big Stupid Lie that the election was stolen.  

If Trump represented some form of conservative ideology in opposition to orthodox Republican ideology this battle wouldn't be just an exercise in insanity, but there has never been any kind of Trump ideology, just a collection of moments of tweeting, off the cuff improvisations, and cruelties that the Trump Cult took as some kind of revelation from their demented god that must be swallowed whole and regurgitated ad nauseum into the right wing media fantasy bubble.

The only cohesion in the Trump mind is greed and bigotry.  Toss in endless cruelty and a total ignorance of what trade deficits mean, and that pretty much summarizes Trump and the Trump Cult.

So, will there be a split-off party from the Republican Party?  It looks like Trump sees no reason to start a third party since he clearly owns the Republican Party.

Will the not-insane-Trump-Cult-Republicans start a third party?  They would know that it could not win much since splinter parties never do, but some principled folks may do so out of their own sense of self respect and hope to plant the seed for the future on the pretty good bet that the Trump Cult Republican Party is doomed to more and more ignominious and disgraceful failure.

A party based on Greed and Bigotry is just a repeat of the oldest sin in American history, which just never seems to go away, the sin of White Supremacy - manifest as the slave owning South, and as the catastrophic Confederacy led Civil War, and as the Jim Crow terrors in the South, and as impassioned opposition to Women's Suffrage (they couldn't let "negro" women vote since that would "be the end of White Supremacy" as intoned by a Mississippi Senator at the time), and as the appalling voter suppression and gerrymandering by Republican White Supremacists across many states today.

I am betting that a political party based on greed (for the super-wealthy) and bigotry (for all beer bellied flag waving troglodytes) is not a party that has a long history in this country - the country based upon the glorious visions of Jefferson and Lincoln - a country destined to be like a "shining city on a hill" as expressed by President Reagan during his time.

It is hard to watch the depths the that the Republican Party, which I once belonged to, is sinking to, but I guess that is what is needed to finally kill off the cruel, racist, polluting, misogynistic, party of ignorance, greed and bigotry.  I just hope they are thwarted in their dedication to harm as much of the environment and as many human beings as they can before they become just sad footnote in future history books.