Archives for January 2021

Saturday January 9, 2021 ( Electoral College Certification Day -3, 

                                           Insurrection Day -3,

                                          Georgia Senate Election  -4 )

Election Day -67

11 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Now we are starting to see some action, and some reversing of positions. I love the Republican conservative Congressman who wants to talk about moving on and bringing the country together. Yeah, right. How about one of the four dead who put his taser between his legs so he could climb up and take Tip O’Neil’s picture off the wall? He ended up tasing himself in the nuts, his muscles clamped up causing his taser to continue to go off. He had a heart attack and died. Hey, is that a legal form of execution under the Bill Barr Justice Department guidelines?

Other strange things, we saw that guy with the buffalo head costume on, right? I got an explanation as to what that’s about. I don’t know if I fully understand or believe this but here goes. Apparently, there’s some kind of fantasy game you can play in the real world. (Hum, wait a minute. That doesn’t sound so odd. Well, I think I see people doing that to one degree or another all the time. Go on…) Yeah, so apparently you can be a “player” in this game interacting with the real world. Remember those people who did little editorials about how all the different things on your night stand (clock, radio, light, etc.) melded into one? Or how all the stuff on your desk melded into your phone? Yeah, well recently I have seen ads for Oculus Rift. That’s the 3D AI alternate reality life/game glasses. Just slip them on and you are in a Star Wars type world fighting Klingons or something. Or what about reality TV? The Bachelor. Or shows about other people’s lives? Alaska Gold Rush? 

Well what if all those mediums and content melded into an interactive scenario in the real world?

In a weird way this may help answer the question I have had about Satan and Rudy and Don Jr. when they were exhorting the crowd to go down to the Capital. I kept asking myself, “What did they expect?” What did they expect was going to happen? With Oculus Rift glasses you can take off the glasses, like the person does at the end of the ad and you can saw, “whoa.” When you are interacting with reality there are no glasses to take off. I guess that’s the lesson for the guy who fried his nuts and himself to death. Shocking. (I know. That’s terrible.)

So now the hunt begins. The guy holding Nancy Pelosi’s lecturn? Arrested.  I’m thinking 20 years in jail will wipe that shit eating grin off that fella’s face. Oh I can hear the plea now. He’s a dad. He was just funnin’ He didn’t think he was doing anything that wrong.

The guy with his feet up on her desk? Arrested. He’s apparently well known in the conspiracy activist circles.

How about the guy with the “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt on? Below that were the words translated from the German that were above the gate of that concentration death camp. Or the emblazoned shirts that had the code characters that translated “6 million was not enough”? Referring to the six million Jews who died at Hitler’s hands. Were these folks there for fun?

Or what about the fella jumping over the railing in the chamber with all those zipties coming out from his left sleeve. Was his intention to have a fun time?

One of the things Timothy Snyder wrote about in his book On Tyranny was the use of symbols and to abscond their meaning for other purposes. The use of the “Don’t Tread on Me” motif, the American flag and it’s many variants, The guy dressed up like a Minute Man etc. All to suggest that somehow what they were doing was a noble patriotic cause. It wasn’t. 

And now we are seeing some reality setting in as to what they did. Would you call taking down the flag of the United States over the Capital Building to raise the Trump flag a patriotic gesture? Oh gee, you didn’t mean anything by it? You were just, you know (nod nod, wink wink). No, regardless of what you were thinking the action is symbolic and seditious. Twenty years.

The machinery of disinformation must be disassembled. Look up “right wing media” and you’ll see a long list of disinformation sites, magazines, and media outlets. Don’t tell me about Freedom of Speech. This isn’t what they are about. Don’t tell me, “Well, everyone is entitled to their opinion.” Is that what the president, Rudy, and Don Jr. were doing the other day? Were they just expressing their opinions and everyone is free to do that? Bull. They were yelling fire in a theater and the kindling was laid for years by those right wing nutty alternate-fact sites. They must be shut down. Let them whine and phule about how unfair it is. In jail. If they have put up seditious statements they are complicit. Twenty years.

Hell, move them all to Guantanamo where they can learn to throw feces at the guards with the Muslim extremists that they have castigated for so long.

There is a core that will follow Satan no matter what. Some have suggested an Elbe Island type solution. I like it. Hey, is that island for sale? Can we rent it? Put them all out there, along with the last few from Guantanamo. Let ‘em free, to run wild. Lord of the Flies, Papillon and all that (look it up.) No internet, no twitter.

Speaking of that Satan has been kicked off Twitter forever. Some say he might move to Parlr, the twitter type site for even more extreme people (good people for sure: neo-Nazis, anti- Semites, etc.) Apparently, Apple and Google have dropped the Parlr app from their stores.

To those who say, “Why bother impeaching him?” Well, see, it’s like this. After he is impeached Congress can pass another law saying he can never run for office again. And for all you fiscally minded conservatives, he loses: his pension, his million dollar a year travel budget, and his protection services. That’s for starters. 

But here’s the real final blow. Olive Garden is working with the FBI to see if any of the protestors have their “Pasta for Life” privilege, if so it is revoked! They singled out one Sean Hannity as losing his privilege. Wow.

Now we’re talking.

PS No soup for you!

Friday January 8, 2021 ( Electoral College Certification Day -2, 

                                           Insurrection Day -2,

                                          Georgia Senate Election  -3 )

Election Day -66

12 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

There’s a grab bag of facts and observations, but I am struck by two things:

Video of men with high powered rifles walking around in the gallery of the Michigan Legislature,

Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and that of Sinclair, between the two of them they own many of the news outlets available to people. In rural areas and small markets Sinclair may be the only media outlet. 

What struck me about these two observations was that they are forms of tyranny. This did not become apparent until I was re-introduced to On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. Snyder is a Yale professor currently over in Vienna. The title sounds like something Thomas Paine would have written that is until you read the whole title “On Tyranny, Twenty Lessons from The Twentieth Century.”

What Snyder points out is that for tyranny and autocrats to succeed they need to tell a big lie and get people to go along with it.

This is nothing new. Snyder is merely pointing out this is how it works. The anecdote for this is the truth. 

Let’s set that aside for a moment and look at the reporting and analysis of what happened at the Capital the other day. Depending on where you listened to reporting you got much different outlooks as to what happened. In regular national media I saw pictures and some video of the mob and what they were doing with little sound. This was not the case with international media, which showed the actions of the mob with audio, full bore. The international reporting made it very clear how terrifying this was. The regular national media made it more antiseptic. What about the right wing media? From what I can discern they were dismissive and letting people comment that “it wasn’t them. It was someone else.” Ie it wasn’t Q-anon and Trumpers it was antifa, etc. This is laughable on it’s face because there were people photographed with sweatshirts with large “Q”s on the front and many flags, shirts, and hats with “TRUMP” on them. Okay, you can believe that a bunch of George Soros antifa folks dressed up in Trump paraphernalia attended a rally by the president and then marched on the Capital if you want. There are problems with that thinking. The people photographed are known to those who follow the Q-anon and other white supremacist hate groups. They are known  by name! 

This brings me to the question many have asked, “Why weren’t the police better prepared?” It’s not like this wasn’t known. It was all over social media for months. The president was tweeting about it long before the day. He held a huge rally behind the White House. It was covered on national media. Yet, the Capital was ready for a day like any other. This was compared to when the Black Lives Matter marches were held and phalanxes of police in riot gear with helmets, shields, and batons were deployed shoulder to shoulder around the capital and the monuments. 

Why wasn’t the mob dispersed earlier and quickly? They were able to clear Lafayette Square of peaceful protestors for a photo-op but not protect the Capital? What happened?

It also seemed that some of the police were on the side of the protestors turned insurrections by taking selfies with them and holding the door open for them. (I have not seen this video footage, but this is what is being reported.) How could this be?

Some answers are emerging and we’ll get to those soon enough, but let me return to the commentary by some journalists, most to them black, who said basically, “What did you expect? This is white supremacy plain and simple.”

Other comments were that the Republican Party is a cult of white supremacists masquerading as a political party. How does this stack up with what Snyder says about tyranny? It’s right in line.

For tyranny to succeed you need a big lie, an armed presence to suppress dissent, and people willing to believe your big lie.

Another point both Snyder and the black journalists made was that such authoritarians do is to use the freedoms and laws to gain control and subvert them.

Does anyone think that a man walking around a gallery of a congressional body holding an automatic weapon that can wipe out virtually everyone below in a matter of seconds is really expressing his freedom? His rights?

Does anyone think that a media outlet that continually lies is expressing their freedom of speech.

This is not about Freedom of Speech, or Second Amendment rights. This is about intimidation, and deception for the express purpose of gaining and keeping power.

In the 1930s we passed legislation to prohibit the owning of machine guns by most people. In the 1950s we eliminated the Communist Party from running in elections because if they ever won they would seize power and destroy the means that they gained power.

There is nothing different today. It is time to dismantle these tools and instruments that spread lies and suppress people. It is time to do more than stand up to the falsehoods with truth. It is time to eliminate these vicious insidious tools used by a shadowy elite to suppress and misinform the public.

Miscellaneous tidbits:

The National Guard of Maryland was asked to come in by the leaders of the Senate and the House. The governor of Maryland needed permission from the Federal government to do that. Typically, this comes from the Pentagon. From the Secretary of Defense. The Secretary of Defense did not return the governor’s calls. Finally, an hour and a half later the Secretary of the Army called him back.

The rioters came with zip ties and pipe bombs. What would you need those things unless you were planning on taking hostages and blowing stuff up.

President Trump was reportedly enjoying watching the TV coverage of the insurrection. He was not willing to do anything to stop it.

Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education, and Elaine Chow, Secretary of Transportation and the wife of Mitch McConnell, have both resigned. They claim it’s over the riot. Most people, me included, don’t think so. In fact, the second I hear Chow was resigning I could only think that she did so to eliminate having to vote to remove the president from office via the 25^th Amendment. That and the fact that she’s happy to take our money and shovel projects to her husband’s state, but other than that what has she done?

Connor Lamb, Democratic Congressman from Pennsylvania, stood in the House chamber at 1:30 in the morning after the riot to speak. He had prepared remarks about how the election in Pennsylvania had been free, fair, and lawful. However, after 130 Republican members of the House repeated untrue conspiracy theories about the Pennsylvania election, Lamb instead called them out and told them what they were saying was a lie.

This is apparently a big no-no. You don’t call a fellow Congressperson a liar. The Republicans moved that his remarks be struck from the record. Pelosi refused. Then they decided to move across the aisle in an apparent attempt to attack Lamb. This ended when they were meet by a Congressman who was a former big time football player. 

This 130 House members and the handful of Senators who insisted on repeating the lies about the election and trying to overturn the election and the Electoral College should be thrown out of office, if not arrested.

In other news, a huge surprise. Mike Pence does not seem interested in invoking the 25^th Amendment to remove the president. In fact when the House Speaker and the Minority Leader of the Senate called him, his office put them on hold for 25 minutes before a staffer came on to say that the Vice President wouldn’t speak to them. 

Trump is considering self-pardoning. In a new twist on this, speculation was raised that this would increase the chances that the Biden legal team would investigate him. Why? Well, if you are pardoning someone they must have done something wrong. What was it? Inquiring minds will want to know.

Senator Josh Hawley has been notified by his publisher that they will not be publishing his book. (Pictured raising his fist in support of the insurrectionists before going into the Senate chamber to whine about the Pennsylvania election process.)

And finally, let this sink in. The Trump insurrectionists have managed to do what the Confederacy was not able to do. Take the Capital and parade their flag in the Rotunda and Halls of Congress.

Thursday January 7, 2021 ( Electoral College Certification Day -1, 

                                           Insurrection Day -1,

                                          Georgia Senate Election  -2 )

Election Day -65

13 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

He told you what he was going to do.

He did it.

And now some of you are surprised?

Please.

If the 25^th Amendment hasn’t been enacted; do it now. Get the nuclear football away from this man and then we can talk.

If you are a Trump supporter you have a choice: 

Stand with The United States of America,

Or

Stand with Trump.

Stand for Democracy,

Or

Stand for authoritarianism.

Stop. Don’t lecture me about socialism and the danger of Pelosi or AOC. Just stop.

He told you who he was and what he was long ago.

He used the same words to sell himself to you that he used to sell Trump University.

Ask yourself this, “What has he promised you that he has delivered on?”

The only people he delivered for were the ultra-rich whom he and his Republican enablers gave the largest tax break in history and deepened our national debt.

People who worked for him before he was president told you who he was.

People who worked for him when he was president told you who he was.

He told you who he was. He told you what he was going to do.

Now he’s done it.

Stop it. Stop him.

Enough.

We can not risk a day more of this.

Every time you think it can’t get worse it has.

Stop it. Stop deluding yourselves. Stop saying that it’s only a little more time.

REMOVE HIM NOW!

PS Ironically, I got this in the mail yesterday. I hope it is wrong and Biden is #47.

Tuesday January 5, 2021 ( 1 Day to The Electoral College Certification, 

                                          Today is the Georgia Senate Election )

Election Day -63

15 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Somehow I managed to flip the days on the Electoral College certification and the Georgia Senate runoff election. It has been corrected in today’s screed.

It hard to know where to begin. I received a seven page photocopied full paged collated and stapled which stated on page 1. “REPENT REPENT REPENT”

This was placed not in the mailbox but in the little opening below the mailbox where circulars are usually placed. I had numerous questions about this action:

Was I the only one who received this?

If so was it a mistake?

Or was it specifically for me?

Later on it stated that Trump was Satan.

I was beginning to warm up to this epistle. 

I hadn’t read more and mentioned to my wife that probably Putin was Lucifer. She confirmed this. What? Oh yes, it’s all in there.

I read more this morning. Lots of numbers. Turns out they are using gematria, a word I didn’t know. It’s a Hebrew numerology thing. A=1 … Z=26. You can then look at the letters in a word, assign numbers, add them up and reach startling conclusions. 

Those into pot will recognize this clever device because M=13 and that’s the first letter in Marijuana. Get it? Clever, no? No. Okay. Nevermind. 

Why curse someone when you can just say, “6+21+3+11 25+15+21”

(It is left to the student at lab time to figure out the answer.)

Some people just don’t know how to curse. Personally, I’d just say, “102.” Maybe, “41 61” because it’s two words. Kinda get a cadence going, “41 61 56 hut hut hut” I don’t know. It’s a lot of work. (56 is the total of 19+8+9+20 in case you wanted to know.)

Update: From the neighborhood Facebook group, “I see our overzealous, ultra religious nut job is killing trees again. Where can we burn this garbage?”

And I thought I was special.

Now we get to the Georgia runoff. It’s an interesting problem the Republicans keep putting them selves in. Kind of like painting yourself in a corner and then saying, “Screw it,” and walking on the fresh wet paint and tracking it all through the house.

First, they yell and scream that the election (or whatever) is a fraud. So they set up a commission or agency or deputy to oversee whatever it is. Then the event to be overseen happens and there is no fraud, but they loose. There has to be fraud they reason because they didn’t win. Therefore the loser attacks the people who oversaw the election. Now that person overseeing is a Republican. So the loser and the overseer are at each others throats. Nice.

In Georgia the Secretary of State and his deputy have had to continually defend the results of the presidential election to the president who lost. They’ve had the election, the first recount, the second recount, the audit, the court cases and the results have been the same. Satan lost. 

This Secretary of State in Georgia is not paragon of virtue. He’s been behind the usual and most egregious of Republican voter suppression tactics available to him. He’s thrown people off the voting roles, limited early voting, restricted voting hours and done all he could to assure a Republican victory. But, it didn’t happen and he has now defended the results. 

This has prompted Trump to call him up and ask that he find enough votes to overturn the election. 

This is illegal, both Federally and according to Georgia state law. There’s an attorney general in the county Trump targeted that said she’ll enforce the law. 

We’ll see.

So Donald is getting squeezed from the north in New York and now in the south from Georgia.

Apparently, he’s called all the swing states trying to get them to overturn their elections results. Will he succeed? In court he’s batting 0-59, so it looks bad for The Donald.

In fact, it looks real bad. However, he’s got a bunch of Senators and Congresspeople who are willing to vote against a free and fair election. There’s a name for that – Sedition. In fact, they are now called the Sedition Caucus. Hopefully they will all be tried, thrown in jail and kicked out of office.

Some ask, “Can the president be impeached again?” I say, “Hell, yes.” And we should do it. Apparently, if you are impeached and voted out of office you can’t run for office again. At least, that’s what some have said. I hope they’re right.

Okay. Enough. Now to – WAR! 

That’s right. There’s a war abrewing or afoot. Either way it could be messy (Getting your foot stuck in the brew is not a good idea.) McDonald’s started it by announcing a new chicken sandwich. How will the others respond? This could be “THE GREAT CHICKEN SANDWICH WAR of 2021”.

This raises the question of which party which sandwich or establishment backs. Chick-fil-a is believed to be Trumpers.