About an hour ago, House Republicans, on a chickenshit voice vote chose to oust Liz Cheney from leadership for her failure to embrace The Big Lie.  In doing so, they have chosen fealty to a criminal former president over the people they represent. In a fiery speech yesterday, and apparently again this morning, Cheney is unrepentant and continues to blast Republicans for their embrace of Trump and his lies.  As you would expect, the caucus actually booed her.  That’s right, on the House side of the US Capitol, Republicans actually loudly booed one of their own as she chose to speak truth to lies.

When she came out of the meeting, Cheny told reporters that she was going to do “everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets near the Oval Office.” She went on to say, “We must go forward based on truth.  We cannot both embrace the big lie and embrace the Constitution.”

I’ve never liked Liz Cheney or her war criminal father; but in this particular case, I admire her strength and steadfast principles.  I don’t agree with most of her principles, but in this case she’s done the right thing, and I personally applaud her for it.

At least one Arizona state senator has awakened from his stupid coma and realized how the botched and completely unnecessary “audit” of Maricopa County election ballots has made his state a laughingstock.  In an interview with the NYTimes, state senator Paul Boyer said,

“It makes us look like idiots.  Looking back, I didn’t think it would be this ridiculous. It’s embarrassing to be a state senator at this point.”

Well, no shit.  You’ve just now figured that out, Paul?  Just how ridiculous did you think it was going to be? What in ANY of your party’s efforts gave you the slightest impression that all of you wouldn’t look like idiots?  You approved an audit that hired an unqualified partisan company whose CEO buys into The Big Lie.  Then they didn’t hire anyone who’s ever audited an election.  Then you barred the press, and now keep the ballots in an insecure place.  No matter the result of this “audit” (and I know what the result will be), at least half of Americans won’t believe it because you made ZERO effort to make it even appear to be impartial. This “audit” is not about restoring faith in our elections, it’s about destroying faith in our elections so you and your other partisan pals around the country can justify passing voter suppression laws and even authorizing yourselves to TAKE OVER THE PROCESS if you don’t like the results.

So, FUCK YOU, Paul, and the partisan nag you rode in on.  You’re the problem and most certainly should have nothing to do with the solution.  Late repentance makes you yet another charter member of The Jeff Flake I’m a Coward Club.  You only speak out AFTER it matters.

That is all.

A great piece yesterday in the Washington Post talks about how a snake oil salesman, Russell J. Ramsland Jr, from Addison, a suburb north of Dallas, pushed the Big Lie as early as 2018, trying to recruit politicians to his narrative that there was as much as 68% error rate in electronic voting systems.  He gained traction in 2020 with none other than Trump and his deplorable cronies, including Rudy, Sidney Powell, and others.  HE’S the one who pushed the unfounded Venezuelan story.  The story will leave you shaking your head.  It’s a good read, highly recommended.

Having found nothing in their sham “audit” of 2020 election ballots from Maricopa County, they’re now using 5g cameras and black lights searching for bamboo in the paper of the ballots.  Because presence of bamboo is the smoking gun that the ballots came from China, right?  The Arizona GOP is hanging their entire Big Lie premise on the unfounded conspiracy theory that China flew in 40,000 fraudulent ballots on a Korean airliner on election day and then smuggled them into polling places all over Maricopa County.  No matter that China LIKED Trump being president since he handed them Pacific Trade dominance, international markets because of his idiotic trade war, and allowed them to run rampant in the South China Sea during his entire infestation of the WH.

Not only is the Arizona GOP’s efforts to overturn the election dangerous, it makes them look like idiots.

Mike Lindell, the founder of My Pillow, which sells ripped up foam in a bag, has been banned from Vimeo for posting content from another banned user, Trump.  Being de-platformed from other social media and cut off from major online sales outlets, Lindell is presiding over the Titanic of pillow companies.  His biggest problem is that he enthusiastically embraced the Big Lie, and is now paying the price, having to defend against a $1 billion plus lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems for perpetuating Trump’s lie, along with facing plummeting sales.

He’ll never learn, though, and will be just more cannon fodder for Trump’s reputational funeral pyre of formerly respected people who made the wrong choice.

Yesterday, Michael Gerson published a good piece in the Washington Post about how Republicans lying about the 2020 election are doing so with open eyes, and why that is corrosive to a free society.  He’s right in that Trump is a congenital liar, and everyone knows it.  The ones committing the most egregious lies are those enabling Trump’s lies, those party leaders and politicians who are passing the litmus test by knowingly telling the Big Lie to avoid the wrath and primary threats.

This lying, though, is not new.  Since Reagan, Repubs have made lying the foundation of the party.  Examples: cutting taxes increases revenue; cutting taxes for the rich trickles down prosperity to everyone;  “welfare queens” are lazy and always non-white; companies don’t need regulations since
the “free market” will drive them to do the right thing; Iraq was involved in 9/11; Saddam has weapons of mass destruction; if you’re opposed to war you “hate the troops”; Barack Obama was not born in the US; a gigantic conspiracy of thousands of poll workers, voting machine companies, elected officials from both parties, state legislatures, the US Congress, and even VP Pence caused the 2020 election to be stolen from Trump.  This last lie is now required to be told, and repeated, by all Republicans, no matter where they come from or role they play.  Those who refuse to tell the lie are censured or run out of the party.

When a party’s foundation is all based on a dictated lie as a litmus test, that party is dead.  The GOP has come a long way to this point, but I personally believe it has morphed from political organization to religious cult.  A lot of people reject drawing comparisons between the rise of Hitler to the rise of Trump.  I think they do that our of fear that it may be true.  I believe it’s absolutely the perfect analogy.  It’s well known that Hitler was a psychopath.  He tried to overthrow the Bavarian government in 1923 in the Beer Hall Putsch, which he planned to use as a springboard to take over the German government.  He was convicted of high treason, but during the trial became a national figure, and much of the public adored him.  Upon his conviction he swore to ignore the verdict saying he would be acquitted by the “Eternal Court of History”; indeed, Hitler served less than a year before he was released.  Eight years later he accomplished his goal in taking over the government, leading to World War II.  Hitler’s main weapon?  Lying.  Gargantuan lying, which he required repetition by his followers.  His lying lead to millions of deaths around the world and the collapse of Europe which took a generation to recover.

Trump is more like Hitler than anyone wants to admit.  He has the same personality traits including toxic narcissism and total disregard for human life.  Like Hitler, he freely used the levers of government to enrich himself, protect his co-conspirators, and punish his enemies.  He politicized everything from science to law enforcement.  If allowed back in, he will follow the same path as Hitler, and if we ignore it, the chance of history repeating itself is highly likely.

All the lights about Trump are flashing red, and his enablers are speeding along the road that will most certainly lead to disaster for all of us.