Before this week I had never heard of Jeffrey Clark.  Who’s Jeffrey Clark, you ask?  Clark is a Trump plant in the DOJ who conspired with him to insert the DOJ into The Big Lie.  Clark wrote the draft letter that he tried to get acting AG Jeffrey Rosen to sign alleging that the DOJ was investigating “various irregularities,” and, “…we have identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.”  The letter urges the governor to Georgia to reconvene the state legislature to reconsider the certification of the election for Joe Biden and choose a different set of electors for Trump.  Luckily for democracy, Rosen refused to approve the letter.  After his refusal, Clark then conspired with Trump to fire Rosen and appoint him as acting AG so he could use the DOJ to complete a coup against the duly elected president.

Even as we watched the train wreck of Trump’s attempt to overturn the election with The Big Lie, we didn’t know how close we came to a coup enacted by Trump plants not only at DOJ, but also DOD and other agencies.  And the terrifying thing is that NONE of these officials have paid any price for their treasonous conduct as employees of the US government.  That’s the shameful part.

This is the second excerpt from “I Alone Can Fix It”: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year, by Phillip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig, published in the Washington Post this week.  This excerpt is the account of events leading up to and including the insurrection on January 6, and it is chilling to the bone just how close we came to Trump and his goons taking down the government.  This is a must read.

Trust me.

Yesterday the NYTimes published an annotated video documenting in extreme detail the events of January 6, 2021, where thousands of insurrectionists attempted to stop the Electoral College certification in an effort to overthrow the US government and install FG as dictator.  It failed spectacularly, but, since one of our major political parties is trying to sweep this effort under the rug and continuing to pay homage to the criminal who incited the entire attack.  This is a must watch for the entire 40 minutes.  Send this link to everyone, especially those peddling the lie that this was “nothing”, because it most certainly not nothing.

NPR has just published a very good explanation of our problem in America, which is the cementing in of minority rule, and how its unsustainablity threatens democracy.  Over the years, especially since 2010, Republican gerrymandering has unfairly locked in Republic seats that are almost impossible to defeat by a Democrat.  Here’s the chart that shows the problem in the US House (click on the little one to get the big one):

This chart shows that since 2000, Republicans have controlled more seats than votes for them support and Dems much fewer.  Beginning in 2002 when states like Texas started mid-decade redistricting and using computers to do it, you can see the effect of the disenfranchisement of millions of voters all over the country by giving disproportionate representation to those who received less votes.  Only in 2008 when the Obama election turned out so many voters did the House come anywhere near parity between number of votes and seats won.  The problem WILL get worse with this year’s continued gerrymandering which the Supreme Court has condoned by turning a blind eye to the corrosion of partisan gerrymandering.  That’s how you get permanent majorities in states like Wisconsin and North Carolina where Republicans get over 70% of the seats no matter what the vote.

The Senate is worse.  You now have a situation where the majority of Americans are ruled by a minority of voters because each state gets two Senators no matter the population.  As population continues to move, you’ll have 30% of Americans controlling 70% of the representation in the Senate.

The system is broken and getting worse, and the US can no longer call itself a republic governed by democratic principles.  This is why electing autocrats, especially to the WH, is so incredibly dangerous.  Many state legislatures are broken, the Congress is most certainly broken, and the Supreme Court is broken if not outright corrupt.  The only tool that remains to keep us from sliding into the abyss of autocracy is the presidency.  That’s why keeping Republicans out of the WH is so critical and reform of our Democracy mandatory.

Republicans are flogging their latest fake outrage about “critical race theory”, turning a long used academic term into a boogeyman using their normal tactic, which is accusing others of doing precisely what they’re doing, which is dividing people by race.  In recent years, they’ve weaponized academic terms to politicize any thought that might vary from their narrow views, like “critical thinking”, last year’s boogeyman.  We’ll talk about critical race theory in a future post, but for now, let’s talk about their latest focus, critical FLAG theory.  During Trump’s 2016 campaign, he sold all kinds of cheesy crap from China with his name plastered all over the items, but there were two big sellers: MAGA hats and Trump flags.  Both really caught on, but the flags were the item that Trumpists LOVED.  They would put them on their trucks and race around in what they termed “Trump trains”, blocking traffic and doing their best to piss off everyone around them, which is usually the goal for most of them because “owning the libs” is a key tenant of Trumpism.  They also do Trump Boat Parades, which famously sank more than a few boats on Lake Travis last summer.  They seemed to believe that the more flags they have on their truck or boat, the more likely he would win the election, so Critical Flag Theory was born which translates as: Trump’s electoral win probability is directly correlated to the sum of the flags flown per vehicle multiplied by the number of said vehicles.  I’m not making this up.

This year, as Trump speaks of being “reinstated” to the Oval Office in August and Mike Flynn talks at a QAnon conference of a military coup to do that, the TRUMP WON flag parades have already started in an effort to increase the probability of it happening.  Trump’s reinstatement has been predicted through the latest devised Critical MyPillow Theory, promulgated by none other than Cheap Chopped Foam in a Bag founder, Mike Lindell.  Lindell announced last week on Steve Bannon’s HateCast that he has evidence that the election was stolen and when he takes it to the Supreme Court they will oust Biden and reinstate Trump.  Never mind that there is no mechanism to actually do that, even if it was remotely true; all the Trumpists have jumped on board:

Clearly based on the photo above, Trumpists are attempting to raise the value of Critical Flag Theory by squaring the total of flags flown.  Yep, that’s the ticket.

We had a quiet holiday weekend at home this year, similar to last year’s, but most certainly not as fearful as that one.  We binge watched television series, cooked, and went on walks with our dogs, even sans masks since we’ve both been vaccinated and continue social distancing from people we don’t know are vaccinated.  Ignoring the nonsense going on in Austin, we had a relaxing and less stress-filled holiday and I realized yesterday the main reason – no Trump Show.  One of the most infuriating intrusions Trump made into our lives for the last 4 years was his constant co-opting of holidays to draw attention to himself.  Besides his incessant tweeting, childish insults, and rambling press gaggles, he LOVED the self aggrandizing rallies he organized at every opportunity, especially national holidays.  For those 4 years, I couldn’t watch Memorial Day, 4 of July, and other national events because Trump turned them all into rallies for himself.  Not during a holiday, but he even turned the White House into a 3 ring circus during the GOP national convention which was an assault on everything from the senses to federal laws to common decency.  He was a one man shit show.

The pain of watching Trump turn the entire government apparatus into his own personal plaything has now been replaced by Biden’s quiet and steady leadership.  He has returned us to our traditions of wreath laying and serious speeches about public service, the courage of our armed forces, and the keystone of our country, democracy.  He never talks about himself, his personal grievances, or his political enemies.  He restarted the WH daily brief with a competent press secretary who answers all questions truthfully without the personal attacks on the press that were commonplace under Trump.  He’s played golf one time since becoming President as compared to Trump who had played at least 25 times at this point in his term.

What this weekend really drove home for me is that we must make goddam sure that Trump, or any of his Mini-Trumps, get anywhere near the Oval Office, ever again.  The toxic waste of the Trump presidency came within inches of actually destroying our government and our way of life and continues to corrode our institutions, even from his lair at Mar a Lago.  We must never let that happen again.