Here is what Lin Wood, the lawyer who’s advocating for Trump to overturn the election and steal the presidency for himself, was tweeting today:

That’s right folks, Wood is spinning a wild tale for how Trump is supposedly going to steal the election.  This wild tale contains several blatant falsehoods including:

• The Vice President, who also serves as President of the Senate, controls the Electoral College procedures in the House and Senate.  This is blatantly false.  The Vice President’s role is largely ceremonial.  McConnell controls the Senate, Pelosi the House.  In order to challenge the Electoral College votes in the states, one Senator and one Representative are required to both object.  That objection then causes a debate and vote separately in the House and Senate.  Both houses must agree by simple majority or the objection fails and the original electoral votes stand.  The Vice President has NO ROLE in the House vote, and an objection will fail.  Period.
• Wood is fantasizing that somehow, Pence is going to be jailed for somehow for treason, therefore forfeiting his Vice Presidency.  Then Pompeo would somehow ascend to that office and take control of the Electoral College process, which, as explained above, is not possible.
• Wood then says that Pence will be shot, and Meadows, and McConnell will then be arrested for treason.
• Lastly, the military will then side with Trump, take control of the Congress and the courts, awarding him the presidency.

In ordinary times, these would be the ravings of an unhinged madman, but in these times, there are millions of Americans who are actually following along on this lunacy and backing the notion that Trump can singlehandedly overthrow the US government and install himself as President dictator.

Fortunately for our democracy, this will never come to pass, but it’s terrifying we even have to consider its possibility.

Over the last 3 years and 7 months, Trump’s incompetence and abject corruption has laid bare many weaknesses in our democratic republic which used to be known as the leader of the free world.  5 million Americans have been sickened by it and over 160,000 have died because of it.  The one death we don’t talk about, though?  The myth that Libertarianism as a system of government works.  Libertarianism doesn’t work, has never worked, and never will work.  The problem is that a huge number of Americans and the majority of Republicans have bought into the myth, and that buy-in is literally causing one COVID death every 80 seconds.

Libertarianism now dominates the rhetoric of all Republicans, and many idiots like Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott spout bullshit in a continuous stream.  The ideology puts all responsibility on individuals, mistakenly asserting that the “free market” drives all aspects of society, therefore society will be most efficient in that free market.  That’s nonsense, of course, but that’s what they believe.  The problem is, though, that people who believe in this ideology have no actual understanding of markets and how they work.  Free markets require 5 factors to exist: The first two factors are parity between buyers and sellers where negotiations are on level ground.  There also needs to be active competition within the market.  The last two factors are readily available alternatives to buyers and low barriers to entry of new entrants.

These are the only conditions where a market can thrive and call itself “free”.  So, let’s look at a market, say, healthcare.  In the US, healthcare is employment based.  Your company determines your health care plan not you.  If you don’t have employment based healthcare, it’s worse; insurance companies have so much power that they dictate what you get and what you pay.  There’s no price negotiation as they wheel you in to the emergency room.  How about utilities?  Again, not a free market.  States like Texas claim to have an open market in electricity, but the choices are limited and larger power companies dominate AND own all the infrastructure to provide electricity.  Negotiation nibbles around the edges of a gigantic protected market.  I could go on and on, but you get my point.

So, any objective person who understands markets knows that Libertarianism is the snake oil of politics, and will NEVER work.  Ever.  And that truth is playing out daily in our lives as the US economy continues to stumble from one virus outbreak to the next, hospitals overrun and businesses destroyed because Libertarians stupidly believe that Trump is playing out their fantasies that global health risks will just solve themselves.  It’s the law of the jungle kind of thing, where only the strong survive.

Most other developed countries have figured out this problem.  Most of Europe is open and back to some level of normalcy.  Those countries, with functioning central governments, locked down early and longer (they listen to their scientists), beat back the pandemic, and are now open with some restrictions and rapid response to outbreaks.  Those countries also kept paying the payrolls of companies who were shutdown, preventing the grief and crisis created by our own non-functioning government of passing out short term pittance and sporadically ordering businesses closed with ZERO support.  It’s no wonder there is unrest among the unemployed and bankrupted businesses, but even those people tend believe the manure pumped out by Trump News Channel that it’s all somehow a hoax or the fault of the party out of power.

The actual fault for this continuing disaster lay in two places: Trump for sure, for his corruption, and incompetence; but worse, the Libertarians in the Congress and state governments who have abandoned their jobs and left individuals and companies to fend for themselves.  History will not be kind to the handling of this pandemic.

Millions of Americans have known for decades that our government was broken, but I don’t think any of us realized just how badly is was broken.  The Trump infestation of the WH has exposed the manifest weaknesses in our system of government which cynical career politicians have exploited for personal and ideological gain.  When the Framers established our Constitution and supporting laws, the assumption was that that those who governed would uphold the public trust; if an elected official betrayed that trust, they provided a provision for impeachment and removal from office.  They didn’t envision a time that the majority of representatives would be abjectly corrupt.  We’re there.

The most shocking feature of the Trump regime is the amount of damage one president can inflict with virtually zero accountability.  In three short years, Trump took over the Republican party, the Congress, the courts, and even the Justice Department.  He has pardoned criminals, unilaterally withdrawn from longstanding treaties, started trade wars, attacked countries, disbanded entire agencies that blinded us to massive threats like the Coronavirus pandemic, has undone decades of environmental, education, employment, and safety regulations, wrecked dozens of alliances, sidled up to murderous dictators, and ceased funding global efforts that support healthcare, security, and human rights.  He illegally extorted a foreign leader for to damage a political opponent.  He is actively trying to whip up a scandal in the Obama administration which is invented from whole cloth with zero basis in fact.  He personally profits from his presidency on a daily basis, and makes public policy to advantage himself and his family.

Worse, anyone who gets in his way is either fired, slandered, or both.  He’s now fired an FBI director, two Attorneys General, and five Inspectors General.  He continues attempts to illegally out the whistleblower in the Ukrainian extortion effort.  His current AG is violating the public trust and the law by covering up major crimes and participating in smearing Trump’s political opponents by initiating “investigations” of non-existent crime. As he does this, he willfully ignores the tsunami of actual crimes being committed by Trump and his cronies.

How did we get here?  In a word, corruption.  The US is no longer a functioning democracy and the majority of our elected representatives no longer actually represent Americans.  Over the last 4 decades the money has gotten so big for congressmen and senators that making money has taken over from representation.  To avoid responsibility, congress has steadily ceded authority to the president.  For example, Article 1 of the Constitution specifically authorizes the CONGRESS to determine international trade policy, but for years that authority has been delegated to the president under “expedited” rules.   Trump has run wild with that authority, starting and inflaming global trade wars while the Congress (especially the Senate) just sits there doing nothing.  The Constitution also assigns authority to declare wars on other nations, but through legislation has also delegated that to the president, leading to never ending war and deadly attacks on other countries without so much as a “Go to hell” to the Congress.  It goes on and on, from selling off federal land to private interests to unwinding decades of environmental protections to shutting down agencies and engaging in abject corruption which lines the president’s and his children’s pockets with zero oversight.  Add all that to a now hands-off anything political judiciary and we don’t even remotely resemble the federal structure envisioned by the Framers.

The Framers designed a system of checks and balances to prevent rule by one branch and corruption.  Over the years all three branches have altered that design and what we now have is a zombie version of the federal system.  Add a profoundly corrupt president with evil enablers and you get what we see today, a president unilaterally wrecking the US government, the economy, the healthcare system, the federal safety net, anti-corruption legislation, international treaties, global alliances, and even the rule of law.

The system is broken.  Even when we rid ourselves of the Trump infestation, massive damage will have been done chances are remote that anyone left in authority will have incentive to fix it.  Yeah, it ain’t pretty.

Steve Stockman, disgraced former congressvarmint from the Houston metro area, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison yesterday for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars of charitable contributions.  He used the money for personal expenses and campaign money.  Stockman rode into DC on the coattails of Newt Gingrich; and you might recall that he was pretty quickly named Congressman Clueless by Texas Monthly the next year, 1996.  Worthless and crooked, Stockman is finally getting his after all these years.

You have to ask yourself –  what the hell is it about Trey Gowdy and his hair?  Is it just me?  Or does he have more hair styles than Cher?  Not only is this one of the goofiest sumbitches on Capitol Hill (not quite as goofy as Screwy Louie), he takes the cake for multiple goofy haircuts.  He goes from early Monkees one day to full on racist Nazi “high-n-tight” the next, to Gordon Gekko the following day.  Jesus, pal, pick a lane.

Here are some of my favorites:

Well, lookey here – Trey Gowdy, who dragged out the Benghazi investigation of Hillary Clinton for years and wasted millions of taxpayers dollars, used $150,000 more taxpayer dollars to settle a discrimination claim against him from a former employee.  Yes, this is the same Trey Gowdy who joined in with other goons in Congress to attack the FBI for…wait for it…corruption.  Maybe the FBI should take this opportunity to investigate Gowdy, eh?