Texting, Texting, One Two Three

So Fox “News” knew it was lying about Trump’s election lies. It’s an important insight into today’s eroding political landscape, raising questions for which there may not be time to answer, much less rectify, before democracy dies, beginning in homes where Fox blares nonstop and unquestioned.

It’s not the revelation itself that’s significant; after all, people having observational abilities within two standard deviations of the median reckoned the network’s mendacity ever since “Fair and Balanced.” Fox is to news what prison food is to fine dining. It's why I’ve never written Fox “news” without quotation marks.  

Dragged from the darkness by the $1.6B Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against Fox, texts between Carlson, Hannity, and Ingraham expose their unalloyed derision of guests pushing Trump’s claims of fraud. Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and others; even Trump himself. 

Worse, though, was their justification for continuing to lie, as seen in Tucker’s reaction to Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich, who dared to fact-check Trump’s claim of destroyed ballots. After the Foxified audience flooded their website with vitriol toward the truth-teller, Tucker texted to his co-conspirators, “Please get her fired. Seriously... what the f...? It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down.” There aren’t words strong enough for how shameful that is. Riches above all, democracy be damned. 

There are dire implications: Numerous studies have shown neurophysiological differences between the brains of liberals and conservatives. Different areas light up on scans when shown frightening or disgusting images, for example. The backfire effect, wherein beliefs are hardened after being presented with facts that disprove them, is more common in conservatives. Differences have been shown in empathy, openness to change, and more.  

Thoughts form within billions of neurons. Different thoughts could be expected to arise from separate areas. The question, then, is whether the divergent pathways are acquired, or inborn. As opposed to the so-called “Twitter files,” debunked laughably by self-inflicted wounds delivered from Gymnasium Jordan’s own subcommittee, the Fox files raise meaningful questions: Are Fox and similarly amoral media playing to a preborn audience, or creating one? Does the brain choose its source, or does the source produce the brain?

It’d be interesting to investigate. Babies aren’t born racist or homophobic or hateful of others, for instance. Those attitudes must be taught. What might we learn from studies done on people having “neutral” scans, if such exist? What if they were randomly divided into groups, one of which was constantly exposed only to right-wing media; the other only to, let’s call them, “honest” ones? If scanned again, sometime later, would those liberal/conservative neurophysiological differences have appeared? Would both brains have changed, or is “liberal” the baseline? Would changes be permanent? Would permanence depend on length of exposure? 

Given the plasticity of the human brain, its ability to repurpose remaining parts after a stroke, it’s likely the answers would be yes. If so, lying media, intentionally appealing to viewers’ worst instincts, keeping them constantly enraged, are causing irreversible damage in brains and, in turn, to America. Deliberately. For stock prices. 

The revealed texts won’t penetrate those brains. Fox knows it, and won’t stop. There’s big money in it. Consider the toxic train tragedy in Palestine, Ohio: Foxians immediately criticized Transportation Secretary Buttigieg’s and President Biden’s response, even though Governor DeWine acknowledged Biden offered help immediately, which he rejected. Tucker is mongering that it’s a result of anti-white, liberal racism. Nor have he or his accomplices mentioned Trump’s pigheaded killing of President Obama’s regulations intended to prevent exactly that kind of disaster. Did Trump, on his photo-op there? 

The harm caused by electing the Foxified is only increasing. Michigan’s GOP just chose as its president a rabidly election-denying anti-vaxxer, who calls evolution “one of the biggest frauds ever perpetuated on society.” Idaho’s elected a similar. Presidential candidate Nikki Haley had as her campaign-kickoff prayer-giver “Pastor” John Hagee, who blames natural disasters on gays; and she enthusiastically accepted the endorsement of rabid election-denier, General Don Bolduc, who considers vaccines delivery devices for Bill Gates’ microchips.

Idaho’s GOP legislators want to criminalize providing vaccines. Arizona’s then-Attorney General had documents proving no election fraud and kept them hidden. MTG is babbling secession. Hannity likes it. Kevin McCarthy gave exclusive access to video of the insurrection to Russian propagandist and inveterate liar Tucker Carlson, who’ll now know the location of every security camera and safe room in the Capitol, while he creates out-of-context, edited compilations. Top to bottom, it’s dishonesty as policy.

Those inculpating texts won’t restore Foxed-up politicians and their voters to sanity. The slimmest of hope for democracy is Fox being sued into extinction or, improbably, rejoining America as a partner. Then, upcoming generations might rise above lesser forms of brainwashing, compared to the lies of Fox “news,” in whose victims truth-rejecting brain modification appears eternal.

I'm Not Crazy. You're Crazy!

 

I’ve said it before, and will again: our democracy works best with two viable, opposing parties, assuming both are committed to problem-solving, understand cooperation, accept democracy in the form of election results even when they lose, are favorably inclined toward reality, place a modicum of value on truth-telling, and are disinclined to elect and cover for rude, brazen liars.

Until a few years ago, I included most Republican politicians in that description. At this point, though, I can’t understand how anyone – and not just politicians -- who considers themself conservative can continue to support Trump and Trumpism. If “MAGA Republican” isn’t an oxymoron, “MAGA conservative” most certainly is.

In the latest of many examples, we’ve learned that after the 2020 election but before January 6, Trump engaged The Berkeley Research Group, an atypically (for him) reputable firm, to investigate his theories of how the election was stolen from him: fraud, dead people voting, two thousand mules, hacked voting machines, suitcases, etc.: the Trumpian disloyal flush. After characteristically thorough work, BRG found nothing of significance. Some discrepancies, in fact, favored Trump. So he buried the report and continued to lie, planning ways to overthrow the election and encouraging an insurrection.

He knew he was lying; but, because he’s a damaged person who probably initially believed if he lost it had to be fraudulent because he’s Donald Trump, he kept on doing it. Loved watching deluded followers ransacking our Capitol at his behest. Even now, he insists he won by “a landslide.” How can anyone who loves America not be outraged? How can they not comprehend his dangerous unfitness?

And what to make of the latest information about the depth of collusion with Saudi Arabia, resulting in personal riches for him and Jared Kushner? Billions for Jared; millions for himself. The money rolled in after, as Trump put it to Bob Woodward, referring to Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman, "I saved his ass.” Meaning supporting his regional corruption and letting him off the hook for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. "Tell Mohammed he owes us," he told his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo. Evidently, he got the message.

As House Republicans prioritize Hunter Biden’s laptop and pursue the prurient pixels of pudenda planted therein, will also they investigate Trump’s obvious jobbery? Is a polar bear black?

Now seems a good time to mention Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ “response” to President Biden’s State of the Union address. After admitting, last week, that I didn’t watch, I’ve since looked into it. Has anyone uttered more ironic, clueless, un-self-aware words, in the history of politics starting in ancient Athens, than “The choice is between normal and crazy”? Timed to perfection following Marjorie Taylor Greene behaving like a third-grader, and all of her party pretending that Biden lied when saying, truthfully, that some Republicans would cut Medicare and Social Security. It’s on tape, people. Rick “sunset” Scott, Ron “reauthorize yearly” Johnson, Mike “pull it out by its roots” Lee, and more.

And, oh, the ballooning hot-air conspiracies: aliens; false flag precursor to martial law; bowing to China... Such is the the party of Trump. And Tucker. Gosar. Boebert. Cruz. Gaetz. Normal? Ron DeSantis turning Florida into an education-killing, book-burning, Disney-ruling autocracy. CPAC honoring Kari Lake for “exposing” widespread voter fraud, if “exposing” means “insisting despite proof of the opposite.” Normal or crazy?

Ms. Sanders was right. Just got the parties backward. Avoiding meaningful policy like Alex Jones and vaccines, she railed mostly about “woke” without defining it, confirming that her party has nothing to offer except to embittered distractibles. When she bragged about killing CRT in her state without saying what the initials stand for, observers may be excused for assuming she meant “Clear Rational Thought.”

Normal versus crazy. When I heard of bumper stickers and T-shirts saying “Make America Florida,” I figured it was a joke. It’s not. There’s no doubt that there are plenty who love the idea; especially those who believe the election was stolen, that liberals groom children to become gay, trans, or mealtime blood donors, that teaching Black history harms white kids, and that education is elitist. People who couldn’t define communism or socialism or capitalism or liberalism (or conservatism) if you handed them a dictionary in a wet paper bag. Parents grateful to have their children grow up in a state where teachers are required to remove all books from classrooms, including one about baseball hero and devoted humanitarian Roberto Clemente because he wasn’t, you know, white. So the book might offend DeSantisoid sensibilities.

Florida: where an out-Trumping-Trump, autocratic governor threatens to end all AP courses and sex education, along with press freedom. Who hired as the state’s surgeon general a “doctor” who mysteriously made it through medical school without a kindergarten-level understanding of science. A snide, angry, bullying, self-important governor who was reelected in Florida by a landslide, which proves the point.

“Make America Florida” means electing a dictator, not a president, who’ll make sure citizens remain ignorant enough to keep voting for people like him. Unless he gets rid of voting altogether. MAGA: Make America Go Authoritarian. By all evidence, that’s what they want. And, unless unwoke citizens wake up and stop it, it’s exactly what they, and we, will get.

Pop Goes The Country

 

I didn’t watch President Biden’s State of the Union Speech. Unlike the majority of Americans who, according to a recent poll, think he hasn’t accomplished much, I’m aware of his many and impressive achievements, which have had an enormous, positive effect on economic growth, job creation, and the future of infrastructure and energy. I’m also aware of how Foxotrumpification infiltrates Foxified brains with falsehoods, removing truth-seeking neurons like brain-eating amoebae. 

I don’t miss seeing standing Os on the left and hand-sitting and the now-normal rude heckling on the right. I’ve read about disgusting rudeness from MTG and other believers, though; loved, no doubt, by MAGAs. I didn’t watch Sarah Huckabee’s response, either; but, as she tops the list of her party’s most shameless and facile liars --a very high bar – I admire the choice.

Speaking of lies: the balloon. We can speculate what China gleaned from hovering one over sealed missile silos for a few hours, but we know for sure what they did learn. They learned how easy it is to poke the eye of our already-blind partisan politics. They know the R party will embrace any opportunity to charge our president with treason. (At the last minute, they canceled plans to censure Joe for his handling of the incident. Are they eschewing looking ridiculous? Why now? It works so well for them.)

Chinese leaders learned which members of that party they can rely on to fan the flames of division. And they know if there’s ever another R president, they have a decent chance of killing American civilians by floating a few more, to be shot down with tough-guy immediacy over whatever land they may be hovering. The rest of it – several balloons unnoticed by the Trump administration, improved surveillance in Biden’s, the jamming of the balloon’s communications rendering it impotent till it became a safe and recoverable target, the potential information gained by finding it in one piece – that’s all been said.

So we float on. Beginning with the R House-members wearing AR15 lapel pins. Nothing more needs saying. It speaks for its disgusting self; who and where they are. Like MTG accompanying a balloon on her way to the SOTU. 

Speaking of disgusting, it’s now undeniable how dangerously regressive Trump’s federal judges are: specifically, the Trump-stuffed Fifth Circuit’s overturning of a law preventing convicted wife-beaters from purchasing guns. Since most people aren’t standing while reading, it’s probably safe to present their reasoning: Because women were essentially chattel in 1789, and since there were no laws against wife-beating, the court ruled based on the so-called Bruen test (gun laws must reflect regulations in place at the time of the Constitution’s framing). “Through that lens, we conclude that (the law’s) ban on possession of firearms is an ‘outlier’ that our ancestors would never have accepted.” Trumpic jurisprudence. Amazing.

Fully depleted of smackable gobs, we can only wish they’d follow their logic to view gun regulations as applying only to muskets. Be unsurprised when SCOTUS upholds the ruling, or when they decide that nothing, not just weapons, can be regulated if it didn’t exist when the Founders strode Philadelphia’s horse paths.

Another fibment fed by rightwing screamers: they’re coming for your gas stoves! Here’s what’s true: emissions from gas stoves can be harmful to some people with some pulmonary diseases, and precautions should be considered. And here’s what’s not true: plans to outlaw them. What’s also true: being untrue is a requisite for the screams of right-wing screamers. What’s also not true: it’ll stop anytime soon. Truthless Ted Cruz has promised to create the ”Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act.” If shortened to the “Free Range Act,” though, some liberals might get on board.

For performative Republican legislation, nothing beats the Republicans’ Condemnation of the Horrors of Socialism Act. Passed with the help of several weak-kneed Democrats, it was a cynical circus, an attempt to “gotcha” Democrats who refused to fall for it. A brave few stood up to say no one is advocating for pure socialism in the US, asking if they plan to defund America’s socialist programs, such as police, military, highways, dams, schools, the postal service, help for the needy. Rick Scott would add Medicare and Social Security.

It’s like Jim Jordan's show of requiring the Pledge of Allegiance to open his committee meetings. In a just world, he and his colleagues who voted to overturn the election and who still consider the insurrectionists patriots would be struck dumb as they pledged, heart-handed. (Of course, the dumb has already happened.) 

We can’t finish without noting Trump’s announcement that he could end Russia’s criminal war against Ukraine in twenty-four hours. Totally believable. Being a self-serving scammer, uninterested in saving lives now, he’s not sharing his plan. Totally on-brand.

So let’s urge President Biden to send him as a special envoy, on a twenty-four-hour trip (not counting travel time) to Kyiv or Moscow or wherever, promising fulsome praise, cash (his lifelong raison d’etre), and a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize if he pulls it off; boosting his presidential campaign, even if he’s running it from prison. If Joe does and Trump does, I’ll never write another bad word about him. That’s a promise. 

Joe Calling

President Biden hasn’t called me lately, but when he does, this is what I’ll tell him: DON’T.

Don’t yield to Republicans’ demand for drastic budget cuts while insisting that you do the math. It’s their politispeak, not yours. Their performance art and pretense. Don’t play their cynical game. They campaign-promised it, so make THEM tell voters what THEY want cut. They want you to negotiate? Fine. Tell them to open the bidding. So far, they’re dodging specifics like batters facing Randy Johnson’s 90 mph slider (those were the days!)

The closest anyone has come is Trump-fluffer, Santos-excusing, Congress-diminishing Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who’d cut “woke” Defense Department programs. She wasn’t asked to specify examples, of course (it was on Fox “news”), nor did she suggest how much would be saved. But that’s easy: Compared to the total budget, it’d round off to zero. 

Darn it, there I go again. I shouldn’t be so divisive, some readers tell me. We need healing. Stop driving wedges, they urge; speaking, most likely, from among the 48% of Republicans who inexplicably prefer Trump, winner of “America’s Most Indictable,” as their 2024 nominee. The non-divisive healer who just assured us, in what passed for a campaign speech: “We will stop the left-wing radical racists and perverts who are trying to indoctrinate our youth and we’re going to get their Marxist hands off our children.” That’s what he’ll run on. Wedgies? Sounds like he’s got them. When he’s not taking the Fifth.

If Republicans can’t end public education outright, they’d make it into a safe space to send kids of parents who’d prefer to keep them ignorant of everything but arithmetic and third-grade-level reading. Turning school board meetings into combat zones, they aim to populate those institutions with a blizzard of Foxotrumpists, the real snowflakes, more afraid of knowledge than Tucker Carlson is of M&Ms with feet.

And if they don’t succeed in reinventing public schools as groomatoriums for childhood ignorance, there’s always the Nazi-school option. And now they can buy their children the groomtastic JR-15, a kid-size AR-15. It’s America!!

Trump’s only the first to toss his scat into the ring. In MAGA world, no political hopeful can get far without plucking the same strings, repeating tried and true lies, proven to rile the rock-bottom remainders.

But Trump didn’t omit the other Fox-button issues. His “education” plan would cut funds for school programs that include “critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children.” As emperor, inappropriateness will be his to define, presumably.

And he’d have school principals elected by parents. Plus, lest he’d miss a favorite MAGA target, he attacked transgender youth. Because of course he did.

Any red-hat-tossing candidate will be expected to echo – amplify, more likely – the same. Nor could any of them hope to prevail without pushing the election Big Lie; now, per RNC Chair McDaniel, an explicit priority.

How stone-carved are Trumpists’ tendentious talking points? Has anyone apologized for their disgusting, conspiratorial lies about the attack on Paul Pelosi, now that video is available debunking them all? The opposite, in fact. Shown footage of the attacker using his hammer to break in, a Fox guest famous for claiming he was let in by Mr. Pelosi because something-something gay, still insisted his entry should be investigated. Nor has it made an impression that the attacker said he wished he’d been better armed in order to hurt more liberals.

Foxotrumpism is not only about ignoring facts: it’s about actively rejecting truth as if it doesn’t exist. Fox and Trump: hardening hearts against it like two-syringe epoxy. Which applies to investigatory R Congressfolk like Gym Jordan, as well.

If lies are the point, so is corruption. As Kevin McCarthy’s controllers ready their investigations into “weaponizing the government,” we’re learning more and more about Trump’s willingly weaponized Attorney General, William Barr. Those “investigations” will conveniently divert attention from how Barr (and, later, his hired hitman, John Durham) ended or muzzled investigations into Trump’s many crimes. Buried evidence, too. 

Newly unwedged, though, I won’t mention how MAGAgonists blame President Biden for fuel prices and lay egg costs on him, ignoring the massive 2022 profits just reported by both industries. Failings of liberalism or price-gouging? I hold my tongue.

Applying to real life the admonishments I’ve received, if I ever see someone setting a house on fire, rather than trying to arouse the people he put in danger, I shall point out that harnessing fire was a major step forward for prehistoric humankind; and that we must excuse the arsonist as we do Trump, because he was, in effect, just saying what was on his mind.

Is This R Future?

It’s a serious question, the answer to which is of consequential importance to our country: Is the Republican Party past the point of no return to normality? It feels impossible, by now, to think it ever could. What would need to happen?

Consider Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Suddenly powerful, the empress of election denial and vaccine refusal, she considered 9/11 an “inside job,” suggested no plane crashed into the Pentagon, blamed California’s forest fires on space lasers controlled by Jews. Who, the minute she slithered into D.C., filed articles of impeachment against President Biden, under whose leadership Trump’s failing economy has turned around (35% of America’s total debt was added during Trump’s single term), the pandemic was brought under control, unemployment is at record lows, who hasn’t yet fomented insurrection or tried to bully a foreign leader into getting dirt on an opponent. 

Plus, her posts on social media are among the most inflammatory, conspiratorial, and false of any right-winger. Which is a very high bar.

“I will never leave that woman,” said caponized Kevin McCarthy. “I will always take care of her...” What better example of decline is there than the elevation of such a person, not to mention McCarthy himself, to a position of controlling influence in that party? And whereas he has the title, having agreed to populate the Rules Committee with people of her ilk, he retains little of the power of the Speakership. “Rules” is the committee that, among other powers, decides which legislation makes it to the floor.

Say what you will about Nancy Pelosi, considered, even by many on the right, one of the most effective Speakers in history, she’d have never let it happen to her. Will that group of hostage-taking radical nihilists ever produce legislation that becomes law? More importantly and even less likely, legislation that will benefit any but themselves and their dark money benefactors? We’ll find out soon enough. Enough, one expects, to turn control of the House back to Democrats in two years.

Because they can’t help themselves. Lies and promises of retribution (and sub-rosa deals) got them where they are. In their safely gerrymandered districts that elected them because of, not in spite of, their mendacious cruelty, there’s no going back. Their act plays well locally, but even with their nationwide voter suppression, to believe it’s winning national strategy is to have given up entirely on what’s left of American conservatism. Their trademark hypocrisy is already showing.

When Trump was “president,” the debt ceiling was raised three times without controversy. Now, presumably to cause economic pain for which they'll blame on President Biden for not “negotiating” with their hostage demands, they’re using it like kidnappers. And, as more documents are turning up in strange places, they’ve turned their hypocrisy up to eleven. Silent about Trump’s behavior, MTG said Biden’s is treason, a capital crime.

Mike Pence, who harshly criticized President Biden for having them, answered “I did not,” when asked if he took any classified documents home. About which Ted Cruz said this: “Oh look, the Mike Pence story, it’s still early. You know, Mike Pence, as you noted he is a good friend, he’s a good man. ... That is very different from what Joe Biden has done.”

But no one can flip the script like Trump, who counts on and still receives unwavering support from his party, if less unanimously than previously. When it was revealed that the FBI agent in charge of investigating Russian influence and found “nothing” was on the take from Russian agents, Trump shouted, on his “truth” platform, “The FBI guy after me for the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX, long before my Election as President, was just arrested for taking money from Russia, Russia, Russia. May he Rot In Hell!”

Think about that for a moment, longer than which it ought not take. Maybe Trump figures Hell is where they’ll meet so he can thank him. But he definitely figures MAGA Republicans will fall for his Orwellian double-speak.

Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis, number two in polling for 2024’s Republican presidential nomination, seems to believe even more than House Republicans, that authoritarian thought control is the road to power. In his Florida, teachers feel obligated to remove books from classrooms. Not “some” books. All. And AP courses on Black History are banned, “because lessons on race must be taught in “an objective manner,” and not “used to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view.” That slavery was bad, for example? 

What would need to happen to return that party to sanity? As red states continue efforts to suppress Democratic voters, actual conservatives would need to dissociate from the insanity and, if only for now, vote Democratic. 

Oh. No. Joe. Also, George.

The Biden documents thing is maddening, disappointing, frustrating. The obverse is that, for people as-yet unacquainted with the hypocrisy of Republican electeds and their media mouths, it provides an enlightening introductory course. Hypocrisy 101.

The best that can be said about President Biden’s situation is that it was careless. Unlike Trump’s, there’s no evidence (so far) of criminal intent, the critical criterion for prosecution. In fact, we only know about it because upon discovery, Biden did everything the law demands. Trump, by contrast, denied, lied, refused, excused, ignored, and stored; forcing FBIntervention.

But those differences don’t matter to the McCarthyite hostage-takers of Congress, who are in strategic, stratospheric dudgeon. Even higher are their media. Both, in times unmentioned, did everything possible to transport Trump’s criminality to Nothingburg, calling it a fake, partisan affair, saying he had every right to do what he did. Does that define hypocrisy? Answer correctly, show your work, pass the course.

If there’s a process for keeping track of classified government documents, it doesn’t work. If President Biden, now or as VP, checked out the documents as (you’d think) required, why wasn’t their non-return noted years ago? The ineffectiveness of whatever system exists, or doesn’t, needs critical attention. Who knows, after all, what Jared Kushner gave China and Saudi Arabia in return for the billions he got from them? And, as General Kelly worried, what secrets Trump shared, with whom and for what purpose. Or allowed easy access to at Security-sieve-a-Lago, as has been suggested.  

Because the two are separate, the to-be-determined but unlikely criminality of President Biden’s situation ought to play no role in the decision to prosecute Trump for his. That it might is what makes it so maddening, disappointing, and frustrating.

Therefore, preserving mental health, let’s consider another lesson with which the Republican Party has schooled us: the same party that, in the receding shadows of times past, got Richard Nixon to resign. It’s not mysterious why they’re refusing to chastise or expel George Santos. Who volleyballed so hard at a school he never attended that, unlike anyone else who ever played the game, he had to have both knees replaced. Maybe it was while recuperating from those operations that he became a leading contributor to the technology of carbon capture. 

Penalizing or expelling a man whose election depended on outrageous lies would be akin to praising Liz Cheney, a definitional, true conservative, for telling the truth. They can’t. It would call into question everything about the perfidious path they’ve taken to get where they are. Even more impossible, it would require abrogating their acceptance of Trump’s endless stream of lies, beginning decades before winning the Electoral College, after which his mendacity led, demonstrably, to thousands of lost lives; especially, ironically, among his believers. 

Truthfulness about their agenda is Republican legislators’ enemy: more tax cuts for the wealthy, cutting benefits for regular people, ending actions to mitigate climate change (that they state honestly, but it’s based on the homicidal lie that climate change is fake and fossil fuels are harmless). Because most Americans disagree with everything Republicans propose, the party recognizes the primacy of falsehoods to win votes. Case in point, as mentioned in last week’s column: fulfilling a hard-pushed, nationwide campaign promise, their very first legislative action was based on their thoroughly debunked IRS lie.

Less outlandish but no less effective than George Santos', such lies got them elected. He lies about himself; they lie about everything else. Especially Trump’s Big One, leading to aggressive and effective voter suppression, about which they’ve taken to bragging. 

Sometimes it feels like piling on poor George, though, as his lies bespeak a pathologically unwell mind. They flow through him like water from a burst dam. He should receive therapy, not security clearance, and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near legislation. Not even Trump’s confabulations are as bizarre. 

Republican legislative item number two was based on an even more contemptible lie: imaginary infanticide. Killing babies born alive after a failed abortion or with unsurvivable birth defects. Already illegal. Doesn’t happen. But, because they know their voters will believe any lie that stokes preprogrammed outrage, they touted their bill against the nonexistent as if they’d solved cold fusion.

Following suit, Arkansas’ new Governor Sanders’ first act was banning nonexistent CRT in schools. Shameless. And they’ve just put election deniers, 9/11 hoaxers, white supremacist coddlers, space laser believers, and insurrectionists on the House Homeland Security Committee. How reassuring.

These are dangerous people, trading in lies, protecting liars, inflaming believers to violence. Next, we’ll learn whether they’re willing to cause worldwide economic collapse by using the debt ceiling to push their self-enriching, regular-American-harming goals. Predictions?

Rs In Charge

So obvious is the corruption of Kevin McCarthy and the process that dangled him above the Speaker’s podium fifteen times in four days, that everything about it has already been said. I disagree, though, with those saying he sold his soul. If any remained, that happened two years previously. For the briefest of moments back then, he blamed the insurrection on its source: Trump.

Only hours later, he backtracked and made tracks to Mar-a-Lago. And now, nearly his first words after glomming the gavel were in groveltude to Trump, whose pathological election lies are responsible for everything that happened before and since. Including Ashli Babbitt, who died for his sins.

Voters against certification of the fraud-free election, which includes McCarthy, now control the “people’s chamber,” representatives whose disrespect for democracy was and remains writ largesse. “It was democracy in action,” they professed, referring to the fifteen votes and physical confrontations preceding Kevin’s Peter-principled installation. Like the gerrymandering, voter suppression, and lies that elected them to Congress, it was, in fact, the opposite: a ten-percent minority demanding and receiving concessions they tried to keep secret. 

Tonguing Trumpofoxian lies one by one, McCarthy Speakered the scheme: We’ll defund those 87,000 IRS agents, he said, resurrecting the debunked. We’ll end “woke” grooming in schools. (Who groomed the six-year-old that shot his teacher? In Trumpist family photos featuring children holding ARs, who’s gr-zooming who?) We’ll close “wide-open” borders, he promised, repeating the lie that, every time it’s delivered, encourages more asylum-seekers, whose arrival Rs gratefully demagogue.

We’ll return to respect for law enforcement and the law, he mouthed, after he and the entire “Freedom” caucus boycotted President Biden’s ceremony honoring capitol police and other brave souls who didn’t capitulate to Trump’s illegality. And they’ll investigate “weaponization of the government,” which is what they call it when government enforces our laws; but not Trump’s DOJ firing US Attorneys investigating him and having his IRS punitively audit James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and others.

Newly-empowered Dentifricial-American Paul Gosar, whose siblings begged the electorate to reject him, announced, “We will conduct a real investigation into J6. The effort to attempt a coup between traitor General Mark Milley and Pelosi will be reviewed and exposed.” Sounds Q-legit. Like insurrection-planner Andy Biggs before him, just-elected Cory Mills made a crude joke about the attack on Paul Pelosi. Asked if being an election rejector was important to her base, MTG answered, “Oh, very important.” Deservedly under investigation, Scott Perry opined that Nancy Pelosi ran Congress “like a prison camp.” Preternatural liar George Santos, who’d have been expelled immediately by any party with a thimbleful of integrity, appeared to flaunt a white-power sign as he oathed another lie. These are but some of the quality people onto whose hands McCarthy grafted the levers of governance.

Then he kicked effective Democrats off important committees, putting subjects of investigations, who won’t recuse, in charge of investigating investigations. Want to see “weaponization”? Just watch. It’s all about protecting Trump and elected Trumpists. 

Fomenting lawlessness at the highest levels of government has other consequences, too. To the expressed disgust of leaders of every Western democracy, and after forceful condemnation from President Biden and Leaders Schumer and Jeffries, R leaders were silent on the Trump-inspired coup attempt in Brazil. Having gone all in with rejecting democracy, how could they criticize its direct result elsewhere? Admittedly, it’d have been interesting to see.

Who could miss the contrast between Trump’s people letting the insurrectionists disappear into the wind, leaving it for President Biden’s DOJ to bring them to justice, and how every Brazilian counterpart was arrested and cuffed on the spot? Which government showed more respect for the will of its people? It’s no mystery why Jair Bolsonaro fled to Florida, the swamp containing two of America’s greatest threats to democracy.

So, what shall we expect from House Republicans when they’re not busy “investigating”? Well, the first bill they passed, based on that “87,000 IRS agents” lie, cuts funding for the agency by $71 billion, which will decrease revenue by $186 billion. Wealthy tax cheats wouldn’t face audits after all. (It was never going to be regular income people.) Given their way, McCarthy’s controllers would make up the difference by cutting Social Security and Medicare. They’ve said so. 

Republican legislative priorities: benefitting themselves and their donors, not the majority of Americans from whom they’ve attempted to withhold the truth. They’re nothing new. They’ll go nowhere as long as Democrats have the Senate and White House, but there it is. Welcome to 2023.

Also: yes, it’s weird that ten government documents were found in Vice-President Biden’s old office, immediately reported and returned. And, no, it’s nothing like the hundreds Trump stole, hid, lied about, and refused to return. In case anyone’s wondering. 

42 And In With The New

Readers of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” know that the answer to the “ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything” is 42. It’s also the number that removed residual doubt that the radical right members of our Supreme Court have taken that body far beyond claims of “legislating from the bench” that conservatives liked to toss at more liberal courts, and about which they’ve gone mute.

Title 42 is the policy imposed during Trump’s “presidency” which suspended the legal asylum system at the height of the pandemic. It allowed expelling seekers without a hearing, to mitigate, purportedly, the spread of the virus. We won’t argue the effectiveness of Title 42; certainly won’t disagree that our asylum and immigration policies need fixing. But, because the CDC had ended various other protective requirements as the pandemic wound down, and because the legislative language justifying 42 was specific about the pandemic, the Biden administration, via the CDC, ordered its end.

Border states objected, and took it to court; not arguing pandemic protection: immigration issues. Correctly noting it was no longer being used as written, a US District Court agreed it should expire. On appeal, the Supreme Court, 5-4, ordered the policy continued; not bothering to pretend their decision had anything to do with the pandemic. Saying, in effect, if Congress won’t fix immigration, we will. Which isn’t the Court’s job, even if Congress won’t do its. That’s where the Court is headed: enrobed, autocratic law-making. But it provided an undeniably clever lead-in to this column. We agree on that.

If there’s no likely-to-happen recourse to the Court’s anti-Constitutional authoritarianism, there is to the coming legislative dysfunction, inevitable under Republican control in the House of Representatives. Namely, after witnessing their predictably kangaroid, non-stop “investigations” and non-start useful legislation, voting them out. If their uselessness isn’t obvious after two years of nothing but performative inaction, well... let’s not think about that.

Head of the RNC, Ronna “What-middle-name?” McDaniel says their first priority ought to be Hunter Biden’s laptop. Because what else is that important? Maybe they’d start with whether it even exists and, if so, how Rudy got it. But, to Ms. McDaniel’s disappointment, that won’t be number one. Per the caucus of their craziest, to whom the term “far right” is wrongly applied, because they’re anything but conservative, “accountability” means pursuing every Q-anon hallucination they hold dear.

But there’ll be no accountability for themselves: their published legislative intentions include gutting the Office of Congressional Ethics, to which the J6 Committee had referred Jim Jordan and others for ignoring subpoenas, and which would, if truth mattered, expel mega-liar George Santos, who was welcomed, instead, with partially open arms.

Serious accountability would start with the derelict manner in which Trump and the man he went to, Jared, handled the pandemic. “Absolutely not” was Kushner’s response when asked by Dr. Deborah Birx if Biden’s transition team should be read into Trump’s pandemic responses. This we’ve learned from a recent tranche of documentation released by the J6 Committee. It tells us everything about the MAGA mindset: no concern for the well-being of the American people as long as they achieve power and vengeance, and score political points for themselves. Willingness, if acting would give the other side a win, to accept deaths. And not only from Covid: poverty, back-alley abortion, forced birth, lack of healthcare, pollution, climate change.

There’s an excellent argument to be made – it has been – that their deliberate downplaying of and lying about Covid-19 fulfills a legal definition of criminality. Homicide, even. So says Glenn Kirshner, former federal prosecutor.

There are, however, several less controversial crimes, easier to convict, committed by the former “president.” The definition of “clear cut,” those secret government documents he stole and lied about top the list. And Trump’s finally-released tax forms show how brazenly he’d lied about them: that he was under audit (like the rest of his corrupt top-level appointees, his IRS head ignored the law – in this case, requiring annual tax audits of presidents); that he’d given millions to charity and paid millions in taxes; and (no tax expert, I) the many questionable deductions he’d claimed, including, brazenly, the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels.

It’ll be a challenging couple of years, as the DOJ and state prosecutors in New York and Georgia decide about charging Trump for his cornucopia of crime, while House Republicans do everything they can to distract from it. Including, if the crazy caucus has its way, defunding the FBI and DOJ. They’ve already accomplished something, though: getting rid of metal detectors at the Capitol. When Joe shows up for the SOTU, they’ll be packing.

The Truth, By George

 

“Say hello to George Soros.” That’s how a less-than-love note was signed by a reader. The salutatory suggestion got me thinking. As with most things political, he and I view reality across an unbridgeable fissure. Other than what he hears from Fox and foxoid sources, I wondered, does he even know who George Soros is and what he does when not masterminding all international evil (Jew!!), as portrayed by the screamers of rightwing media? Does the man know where Soros’ money goes?

He might not like his politics. He might wish he gave millions to Republicans instead. Were he not so thoroughly Foxified, he might also challenge the many lies about him. Starting with being a Nazi collaborator.

There’s a fake picture still circulating, showing a person claimed to be Soros, in a Nazi uniform. But he was born in 1930, making him nine years old when WWII began. Like many Jews at the time, his father, having previously changed the family name from Schwartz to Soros, wanting to save his family from the Holocaust (which existed), obtained papers identifying George as Christian. Managed to get him a job, a teenager, accompanying a Nazi bribed to claim to be his godfather, but not, evidently, assisting him in confiscating belongings of fellow Jews. This he did to survive. Would you have refused, facing extermination if your true identity were known? At that age? Here’s an exhaustive exploration of that lie and related others, spread with enthusiasm on rightwing media and still believed.

As a hedge fund manager and currency trader, George Soros made a ton of money, most of which he’s given away, placing him far below the latest rightwing hero, Elon Musk, among the world’s richest (#345, says Forbes). And whereas it’s true he’s among the biggest donors to Democrats while other billionaires donate even more to Republicans, the bulk of his charity has gone to groups around the world striving for democracy.

Looking at the people and organizations who receive his money, his purpose becomes evident, the origins surely in his first-hand witnessing of Naziism and the Holocaust. The name of his main vehicle for giving says it: “The Open Society Foundations.” It’s not hard to understand, based on the title, how lizard-people-seeing Foxotrumpians translate that into “New world order” and “International cabal.”

What it means, though, is democracy; which, as we’ve seen well before President Biden’s win, is anathema to Trump and Trumpism. Likewise Soros’ support for truth in media and for debunking the disinformation which is the daily bread and business model of Fox, Newsmax, OANN, Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, etc., ad deplorablum. Opposite the likes of Toxic Tucker, it’s clear why he’s Foxic enemy number one. Via mediamatters.org and other platforms, here and abroad, he forces truth past lies.

It’d be nice if the following words from the foundation’s webpage would change minds, but, of course, they won’t: “Societies can only flourish when they allow for democratic governance, freedom of expression, and respect for individual rights—an approach at the core of the Open Society Foundations’ work...” Scurrilous, right? Given the expansive Trumpublican preference for authoritarian liars, the threat is evident.

Fact-checking lies is easy, as is discovering the causes in which Soros’ foundations have invested around the world, advancing democracy, supporting groups that resist tyranny. That he’s given, among others, to groups in America seeking accountability in law enforcement translates to “anti-police” in Foxotrumpified minds, when, it should be obvious, working to root out the few bad cops supports the many good ones. But, as with all conspiracy theories, the need to hold them close, unwavering, trumps long-since eliminated desire for truth.

So, why bring up George Soros at all, knowing no minds will change? Because of Trumpublicans’ increasingly anti-democracy, pro-authoritarian drift, including their inexplicable support of Vladimir Putin and his war crimes in Ukraine. Russian media are praising such lowlights as Carlson, Boebert, Gaetz, Gosar, and Greene, for their attacks on President Zelensky; the recipients seem proud of it. No wonder Foxotrumputinists hate Soros. 

Including the kind who loved Texas Governor Greg Abbot’s latest dump of 130 asylum-seeking adults and children, refugees from oppression and poverty, some wearing only T-shirts, on the coldest day on record, in D.C., on Christmas eve. Compare that reprehensible behavior to Soros, whose foundations aid similarly vulnerable people as they seek relief from abuse for themselves and their compatriots.

Who harms America more? How did truly evil Greg Abbott, who, simultaneous with his cruel stunt, issued a praise-Jesus Christmas message, beat Beto O’Rourke? And what’s the over/under on House Republicans seating Trump-level liar George Santos?

The world needs more people doing what George Soros does, not fewer.

Rhymes For The Crimes And The Times

 

It’s common at this time of year

To spread around holiday cheer.

Recount every reason

That during the season

A reader should shed ne’er a tear.

Ordinarily you know that I’d lust

To report on the ravings of Musk.

But it mustn’t be now

To be pointing out how

He’s becoming the elephant’s tusk.

Nor will I opine, though she’s scary

On the loser whose name starts with Kari.

I’ll not be lent ears

From my like-minded peers.

I come just to praise her not bury.

If I can’t always say something good

My mommy said clearly I should

Speak nothing at all

So I’m making the call

To say all the nice things I could.

On the day before night before gifts

I’ll not be promoting more rifts.

I’ll be nice as pie,

My thoughts aiming high

So readers won’t leave feeling miffed.

I won’t take us in the direction

Of Trump’s clear-as-day insurrection.

The holiday spirit

Demands that I gear it

Toward ignoring his claim of election.

A landslide he’s calling it still.

His cultists were itching to kill

The people with guts

To point out he’s nuts

And that facts to support him are nil.

But far be it from me now it’s Yule

To remind us of law and its rule.

Or the party of law

Dislocating its jaw

Lest words pass it that prove he’s a fool.

Our stockings I’ll hang by the fire.

And won’t be bogged down in the mire

Of politics mean

Nor sully the scene

Of hope and the dreams we aspire.

So as we approach Christmas eve,

Let us hold in our hearts and believe...

Okay, who am I kidding? Watching the final January Six Committee meeting, as they recounted the catalog of Trump’s crimes and those of his henchflock, I recalled how it all began with the contemptuous lie he pumped well before the election. Because, in his destitute mind, Donald, who knows more about everything than anyone, could only lose by massive fraud. It’s conceivable he actually believed it; it’s inconceivable that anyone still does.

The hearings presented compelling evidence; not from libtard, Trump-hating commies or members of an imaginary deep state, but from his own team, some of whom, unlike their boss, improbably believed in Constitutional democracy.

One after another, they confirmed that he knew he lost, had been told repeatedly that there was no fraud, that he didn’t care, that he reveled in watching besotted supporters incriminate themselves, on video, as they trashed our nation’s capital, bewitched into thinking they were “stopping the steal.” Ruining their lives for his lies.

The committee’s report is encyclopedic, and includes much more. Yet House Republicans are planning their own “investigation,” aimed at discrediting the current committee’s findings. Findings, we’ve seen, based on irrefutable facts and sworn testimony. Taking millions of Americans along for the ride, they’ll engage in unprecedented, party-wide abetting of criminality and corruption.

Trump lost a fraud-free election. He refused to accept it. He chose lawbreaking on multiple levels in multiple venues to overturn the will of the people, subvert the Constitution, and end what remained of democracy after four years of ignoring it. No American should tolerate it; none who accept the requirements of citizenship in a democratic republic. Which excludes every remaining Trumpist, every rightwing media star, and almost every Republican member of Congress. Confirming everything we’ve known about what’s become of that party, Liz Cheney, as reliably hardcore, far-right conservative as it gets, lost her job by a huge margin to an election denier. It’s Jonestown, but slower.

But, golly, we hear, it’s unprecedented to indict a former president. It’ll tear the country apart. It’ll be divisive. Really? How can we be more divided, how much aparter torn by defenders of Trump’s crimes? Of course it’s unprecedented, and we’re lucky it is. Until Trump, no president had conspired to overturn an election, to upend democracy with outrageous lies and deceit. Long term, the consequences for democracy of accepting this egregious “presidential” criminality are far greater than freeze-dried, just-add-water Trumpfoxian outrage over punishing it.

How sad at this holiday time

To dwell upon obvious crime

While those in Trump’s thrall

Are excusing it all.

Their justice is not worth a dime.

A palinode I’ll not out-dole

Nor mention the secrets Trump stole.

I know it’s the time

To stop making rhyme

And to help make our country be whole.

So no, I will not have us sup

Or drink from reality’s cup.

I’ll say what the hell,

Everything is just swell.

Trump’s down but we must let him up.

It’s Christmas, after all.

Those Texts

The website Talking Points Memo, got hold of thousands of texts between Mark Meadows, Trump’s one-time chief of staff, and a basketful of members of Congress (34 of them) along with a bunch of other Republican role-players around the country. Tons of texts, 450 of which went to the 34, regarding the fair election Trump lost, and ways to overturn it; plus the runup to the failed January 6 insurrection, and beyond. It’s illuminating.

Reading the TPM series, there’s no denying the seditious depth of their intentions; their undisguised disregard for democratic processes; their willingness to turn to violence and totalitarianism. Perhaps surprising to people less intent on observation is the amount of paranoid, conspiratorial, uninformed insanity of those people. Elected people. Reelected; not, presumably, in spite of their derision of democracy, but because of it.

Key players included Jim Jordan (R-OH), Jody Hice (R-GA), Mo Brooks (R-AL), Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GA, Louie Gohmert, Ted Cruz (Rs-TX), and more. Maybe some of them actually believed the ridiculous “news” and theories they were pushing. If so, they’re too lacking in judgment to play any role in the future of our country. If not, they belong in prison. Well, prison either way, probably. Some examples:

From Texas Congressman/dental-American, Brian Babin: “Mark, When we lose Trump we lose our Republic... [We] refuse to live under a corrupt Marxist dictatorship. Liberty!” Seriously? Among the Foxotrumpified, he’s not alone in his delusion, nor in a lack of irony: corrupt Marxist dictatorship! From a guy plotting to overthrow a democratic election. Like a Marxist dictator. And, contra rightwing media screamers, absent anything to suggest impending Marxist dictatorship, if he even could define it. Same with those who believe that’s exactly what the Biden presidency is.

Paul Gosar, R-AZ, another dental-American who can’t separate tooth from fiction, forwarded a claim from a website named, not kidding, “Some Bitch Told Me,” that China had purchased Dominion Voting Machines for $400 million (false), proving dark deeds afoot.

Jim Jordon, R-OH, likely upcoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, quoted Alexander Hamilton, who wrote that if a law passed by Congress is unconstitutional, it can’t be valid. Therefore, he concluded, duly elected Electoral College electors must be invalid. The gaps in that brilliant extrapolation from A to somewhere weren’t filled in. He’ll make the Judiciary Committee great again, for sure.

Then there’s Rick Allen, R-GA. You’ll have to read it yourself, because I can’t even.

Ted Budd, R-NC, claimed all-powerful, all-knowing, has-a-plan-for-us-all George Soros manipulated the voting machines. Probably from space.

Three days before inauguration day, Ralph Norman, R-SC, wrote to Meadows, “... we are at a point of no return in saving our Republic!! Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!!...” MTG called for the same. It’s bizarre. It’s insane. It’s bad spelling.

There’s far too much to address in a single, space-limited newspaper column. Follow the link to TPM. Then consider the implications for the future of America. Ponder the delusional and dangerous depths to which the Republican party has descended. Mull the promise Kevin McCarthy has made to put the worst of the worst, including Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and others featured ravingly in the texts, on important committees. Chair them, even. The doodoo in which we find ourselves, thanks to them, is deep.

Embarrassing to the US as their behavior is on some level, and subject to ridicule, it’s also really, really scary. These are so-called Republican so-called leaders. About to take charge of half of a third of our government. Fully in the thrall of a sociopathic narcissist and his pre-packaged election lies, they were, like him, unable to accept that he’d lost fair and square.

When they’re in charge, we can hope they’ll reveal their unseriousness so undeniably that they’ll turn away enough voters to bring their party back to its former respectability. In preparation for that day, I’ll be selling umbrellas strong enough to protect from airborne Sus scrofa domesticus.

To a somewhat heartening degree, there’s evidence that, since the time of those texts, Trump’s star is waning among Republicans. But, lest we allow the cooling power of hope into our overheated minds, consider the person vying to be next: Ron DeSantis, currently following up on his derelict pandemic policies, which placed Florida among the states with the highest Covid death rates per population (red states all), by seeking a grand jury investigation of vaccines. And who believes attacking and lying about LGBTQ people, criminalizing teaching about gender issues, is winning political policy. This bodes well neither for his party nor for America.

But gas prices and inflation are dropping. Blamed by Trumpublicans for the rise of both, no doubt President Biden is about to receive accolades from the same people. So there’s that.

Constitution? What Constitution?

Last weekend featured the explosive, mind-blowing, scandalous, earth-shaking, unimaginably horrifying news that pre-Musk Twitter, following concomitantly-revealed discussions of its published content guidelines, agreed to a request from pre-president Biden’s campaign to remove pornographic photos and questionably-sourced Hunter Biden emails. They also took down a link (for one day!) to a newspaper story about Hunter. Not the story. A link. The article was and remains in the public domain.

Also in author Matt Taibbi’s pivotal tweetstorm was news that Twitter had similarly acceded to requests from Trump’s campaign. Not important. Same with Fox “news” and other right-wing media suppressing stories damaging to Trump while pushing lies favorable to him.  

The shocking revelations lit up right-wing media like the Boeing plant at night. With characteristic restraint, Tucker Carlson determined it to be “… a systemic violation of the First Amendment, the largest example of that in modern history.” Which begs the obvious: why is “Congress shall make no law…” so incomprehensible to Foxotrumpists? Like it or don’t, Twitter can publish or reject however it wants. It’s not Congress. It’s not our government; not yet, anyway. 

Unlike Russia’s undeleted fake posts, removing questionable content isn’t election interference, claims from the right notwithstanding. The First Amendment has nothing to do with Twitter’s or any private entity’s censorship choices. People who pine to peek at a presidential progeny’s penis must procure portals patiently, elsewhere. Helpfully, Ted Cruz immediately flashed his online fans with it.

It’s the scandal of Republican crackpipe dreams, a Trump-tax-fraud-ignoring excuse to continue fanning falsehoods while presenting no solutions to critically important issues: climate change, healthcare, energy solutions, child poverty, and more. Not even to the issues on which they ran: crime, inflation, “wide open” borders. To them, Hunter Biden’s genitals demand closer inspection than Jared Kushner’s gentle tales of receiving $2 billion from his pal, journalist-murdering, Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman. Or Ivanka traveling to China during Trump’s “presidency” to secure copyrights for her businesses.

Not one to share the spotlight, not even with his most fervid defenders, Trump had some randomly-capitalized thoughts: “So with the revelation of MASSIVE FRAUD AND DECEPTION ... do you throw the 2020 presidential election results OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER or do you have A NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution…” he truthed, socially. “Termination.” “All rules.” “Even those found in the Constitution.” Also: MASSIVE.

Plug your ears while giving Trump’s fulmination the consideration it deserves, lest your brain seeks an exit. A former “president,” psychopathologically unable to admit he lost a convincingly fraud-free election, would “terminate” -- not merely suspend! --the Constitution over what amounts to nothing. (He’s now truthing that he didn’t say what he said. In print.)

Predictably, Trumpists’ anger was white-hot. One, a former House candidate, wrote, "We can no longer get rid of tyranny by the ballots. It's only by bullets now." Tyranny! The danger of Trump’s present and lifelong disregard for the law couldn’t be more obvious. That he was ever his party’s choice is an indelible stain on America. That he could be again sullies us all.

How will the “party of law and order” react when Trump is indicted for multi-level law-breaking and repeatedly fomenting violence? A few lesser-known Republicans have spoken – mildly -- against Trump’s screed. Yet none, so far, have said they’d refuse to vote for him if he becomes their nominee. Other than principled Senator Lisa Murkowski, R-AK, and Representative Liz Cheney, R-WY, who rightly called him “an enemy of the Constitution,” how have Republican icons, like McConnell, Cruz, Graham, MTG, etc., condemned Trump’s anti-Constitutional tirade? For convenience, their words are collected and summarized here.

Stemming directly from Trump’s insane election lie, this is serious stuff. It ought to end his claim on his party, forever. Any remaining supporters must admit that, like Trump, the Constitution means nothing to them. 

For a clear and comprehensive summary, beginning with the laptop (which, by now, may be corrupted), continuing to the present, Robert Hubbell’s newsletter is worth your time. And this, from history professor Heather Cox Richardson.

But let’s not end on funereal news. Remember when Ron DeSantis proudly declared, “Florida is where woke goes to die”? Well, in a trial in which he’s being sued for his publicity-seeking, vote-chasing bullying of the LGBTQ community, the judge asked his lawyer to define “woke.” The unexpectedly truthful answer: "The belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them." 

Florida: where justice goes to die, from Tallahassee to Mar-a-Lago.