Newly-elected congressional representative George Santos is a lying sack of shit.  There’s no other way to say it. He’s lied so much about his background that it’s probably easier to find what he didn’t lie about, but here’s what we know he did lie about – his family, ethnic background, his family in the Holocaust, his religion, his education, his work history, his business (it doesn’t exist), his finances, his residential status, and his sexual orientation.  He doesn’t even live in the district where he got elected.  During his interview on Fox Noise, Santos admitted to all of his lies and making excuses for his lies like “I didn’t say I was a Jew, I said I was Jew-ish,” whatever that means.  The Noise Machine, including him, have started calling these easily disprovable lies “embellishments”, as if embellishments were Okey Dokey.  And apparently to the RNC, it is.

The response from Kevin McCarthy and the RNC about their latest shitbag making the headlines? Crickets. Based on the deafening silence from the party, there is zero doubt that McCarthy is going to seat this guy in Congress and let him get away with massive lying.  It’s no surprise that’s going to happen, because power is more important than legality or democracy, but it just confirms yet again that the GOP is now the GLP (Grand Liars Party).

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I’ve never been much of a Twitter user, primarily finding it occasionally useful to follow breaking stories.  When Elon took over the platform, though, I decided to follow him and others to see the effects on the platform itself as he consolidated power in the company.  My conclusions, as you can imagine, are not good.  First, just an observation, and it’s no secret – Twitter is already an open sewer of nonsense, misinformation, and dumbasses who don’t know how many hours are in a day, those who can’t do simple arithmetic, and those who have very low reading comprehension.

Then Elon took over, and it’s gotten worse.  A lot worse.  First, Musk is as impulsive and immature as a high school freshman complete with erratic behavior and childish judgment.  Add that to the fact that he has no guardrails to guide him, and being the richest man in the world there’s no one around him to keep him from acting out his worst tendencies.  After the takeover on Thursday, he fired the senior management team including those in charge of moderation of the platform, and has been hinting at massive layoffs of other employees.  He’s also on record of being opposed to blocking racists, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists, anti-semites, and outright weirdos.  He’s more than hinted that he’ll let TFG and Kanye West back on the platform.  Use of the N-word on Twitter  is up over 500% since he took over.  Worse, he’s participating in misinformation himself retweeting, then later deleting an idiotic homophobic conspiracy theory that Paul Pelosi’s attacker was actually a male prostitute that Pelosi had brought to the house. His deleted retweet was directed at…wait for it…Hillary Clinton.  That’s right, the “Chief Twit” showed such poor judgment that he amplified this idiocy to his 112 MILLION followers.

Elon’s control of Twitter has a LOT more downside than upside for not only him financially, but for simple common decency.  Twitter is highly influential over global society and it’s critical that it gets it right between balancing free speech principles against threatening language and intentional disinformation.  He’s demonstrated that he has no qualifications to not just manage this issue, but even to recognize it exists.

I am not hopeful for any good coming from this takeover, and can only hope that twitter goes the way of MySpace and Lotus 123.

Texas has been in the iron grip of Republicans since 1995.  The results are obvious – total corruption of state leadership including a talk radio host and bar owner on the verge of winning yet another election for lt. governor, the top law enforcement officer who’s been under felony indictments for over 5 years headed for re-election, and hyper gerrymandered state house and senate districts that are non-competitive.  In the 27 years of GOP leadership in the state we have slid from US leadership in personal rights, education, science, healthcare, and livability to 49th, according to CNBC’s latest livability study.  Not surprisingly, Texas was ranked as 5th for business.

And, if people don’t turn out to vote, it’s going to get worse.  Texas Republicans, like those in over 30 GOP controlled states, have passed dozens of laws to suppress the right to vote and even take away the votes of millions if the party doesn’t like the result.  Using The Big Lie as an excuse, they’ve enacted crushing laws that make it harder to register, harder to vote, both in person and by mail.  In Arizona right now, armed thugs are “guarding” ballot drop boxes intimidating voters and following them home.

Texas won’t be saved from actual fascism if they don’t start voting.  I really don’t give a damn if they vote Dem or Repub, but they need to vote.  Single party control has never worked, and never will.  Texas and the US will never survive without a vigorous democracy that includes lively debate based on facts.  You can’t reason with radicals.  You have to just beat them at the polls.

Those of us who are paying attention to the January 6th Committee woke up yesterday to the strategy of these public hearings; well, at least I did.  The committee is clearly taking direct aim at TFG, heaping loads of evidence on the facts that he KNEW that he didn’t win; he KNEW there was no fraud that would change the outcome of any state result; HE whipped up The Big Lie and repeats it continuously, even today.  We all pretty much knew or suspected that all this lay at TFG’s feet.

However, all this evidence is hard to use to get TFG convicted, much less even charged, so the committee is giving prosecutors a roadmap to get this sumbitch.  This roadmap is not going down the insurrection road; it shows the way down the wire fraud road.  Testimony revealed yesterday that using The Big Lie TFG raised a QUARTER OF A BILLION DOLLARS for the “Election Defense Fund”, which, wait for it…doesn’t and has never existed.  The Election Defense Fund was supposedly to be used to fight election fraud lawsuits, but the money didn’t go to that activity.  It went, instead, to TFG’s Super PAC, doled out to his hotels, family, and even Jr.’s girlfriend.  That’s wire fraud.  So now we have not only The Big Lie, we have The Big Grift.

There is clear and ample evidence that TFG and his cronies defrauded millions of supporters, and the good thing about this crime is that the attorneys general in the states where the donors live can also prosecute TFG.  On top of all the possible federal cases you can name, this wire fraud charge is serious with heavy penalties and up to 30 years in the slammer.  The states have similar penalties.

The committee is drawing the roadmap with turn-by-turn directions, making it easy for the feds to go after TFG and Corruption Inc..  If Garland lacks the will to prosecute, I know a bunch of states with aggressive AGs who would likely be happy to perp walk TFG live on television.

Tomorrow is the 1st anniversary of the attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters, but just commemorating that violent event is not enough and doesn’t address the real problem today in America.  The problem is much deeper than a couple thousand dumbasses brainwashed by a carnival barker and career liar.  Our system of government is now under constant threat.  That threat comes from what was once a national party that has morphed into a fascist regime which is striving for permanent power in defiance of the will of Americans.  THAT is the problem.

This has been coming for decades, fueled by increasingly radical media that is unconstrained by any regulation, especially the Fairness Doctrine that Reagan destroyed at the behest of Rupert Murdoch who was also provided fast track US citizenship and allowed to monopolize US media by a compliant FCC, also under Reagan.  That started the drain of fair journalism, and the rest is history.  Murdoch’s empire has rotted American democracy from the inside, moving from ranting about taxes at their historic lows to Bill O’Reilly’s idiotic “War on Christmas” trope to lying about everything not Right Wing Nut Job.  Murdoch offered up Fox as the official press office for TFG during his infestation of the Oval office, and still amplifies his lies ’round the clock.  The entire goal was to piss off one demographic, and that has succeeded.

We now live in a society where civil discourse and fact based policy decisions no longer exist.  Politics is now more than blood sport – it has become a death cult, from the radical gun culture that has successfully injected armed thugs into the political arena to losing candidates who will NEVER concede defeat, no matter how obvious that candidate’s loss is.  I recall 2008 when Al Franken beat incumbent Norm Coleman by 312 votes.  The votes were counted and counted and counted, and Franken’s win was close, but certain.  Coleman never conceded, fighting in court for 8 months until a 3 judge panel declared Franken the winner.  Since then, virtually no Republican has conceded defeat.  Every election is a battle to the death, and concession speeches from GOP candidates are almost non existent.  Trump has now normalized that behavior by lying and lying and lying and lying.  The Big Lie has now been embedded into the DNA of Republicans, and all over the country they are taking election administration out of the hands of non-partisans and putting it into the hands of radical partisans, even legislating overruling free and fair elections if they don’t like the results.

The real tragedy is that now both sides of the political spectrum have no confidence in the system.  Over 80% of Republicans have lost confidence because they believe The Big Lie and that the system is full of fraud.  Over 80% of Democrats have lost confidence because over 80% of Republicans believe The Big Lie and are trying to rig the system in their own favor.

All of this adds up to every election now being contested to the death especially if the Republican candidate loses.  Armed goofballs will show up at polls, counting locations, city halls, county seats, state capitols, and, yes, even the US Capitol if the election goes against their candidate.  Though TFG is the heartbeat of this massive delusion, it has now grown beyond his own cult of personality.  Oh, sure, every right winger will run to Mara Lago to kiss the ring, but The Big Lie is so engrained that it has taken on a life of its own.  People who were reasonable folks 10 years ago are now ranting maniacs spouting bullshit and even QAnon conspiracy theories.  All reason and critical thinking has all but vanished.

My greatest fear is that this won’t end well, and not until violence and fascism touches most Americans will people wake up and demand accountability from elected leaders.  Add the metastasized cancer that is TFG to the political mix, and the patient could easily die. That is the risk that we really face.

Several books, published and soon to be published, have reported how Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, fought a full time battle after Trump lost the election to keep him from using the military to attack Americans and even start a war with Iran to stay in power.  Even thought Milley hasn’t publicly confirmed this story, enough journalists have, including Susan Glasser of The New Yorker who independently confirmed what others have reported.  This story gave me chills down my spine.

Despite his supporters’ delusions and continued support of Trump’s Big Lie, the rest of us have to make sure that he never comes near the White House again.