This weekend I was reminded of Liz Cheney’s words at the beginning of the January 6th committee investigation that they had a responsibility “…to make sure that Donald Trump is not our nominee, and that he’s never anywhere close to the reins of power ever again.”  TFG was in the Houston area on Saturday grifting money from stupid and corrupt fans, playing his Top 40 hits of lies and hate.  This time, though, he added a new promise to the menu – to pardon the insurrectionists who’ve been charged, convicted, and jailed for attempting to overthrow the US government.  That’s right, folks, even after reversing himself on vaccines, which pissed off the base, he terrified everyone else with his promise to pardon the criminals who did his bidding on January 6th.  On top of that chilling declaration, he called for his supporters to demonstrate in New York and Georgia should prosecutors bring charges against him and his family.

TFG’s profound corruption is back on public display where he demonstrated that nothing at all has changed; he puts his own welfare and wallet in front of all other priorities, including the public welfare.  He doesn’t care if you live or die, as long as the lights are always focused on him and his followers do his bidding without question.

The stakes have never been so high as they are right now.

Well, it’s an election year. Just like any other Texas election, the Republican candidates jostle among themselves to prove which of them is the meanest sumbitch. They pull no punches; in most districts, the winner of the Republican primary will be the de facto winner of the general election.

The race that caught my eye is for U.S. Representative for District 3. This is the district in which I reside and in which I must suffer to see the Republican yard signs in about 1 out of every 3 houses I pass. All of my adjacent neighbors, people I consider kind and often make small talk with, have signs in their yard that say SELF for United States Congress.

Self is challenging incumbent Republican Van Taylor, one of the two Texas Republican representatives that had the cojones to vote for the January 6 commission. This vote, along with the vote to certify the presidential election results (Note: Trump won Texas) has earned him a few primary challengers.

I haven’t seen any poll numbers, but I can tell you that the Republicans of Collin County have SELF yard signs. All of them. I’ve seen 50 or so signs for this guy and not one sign for Van Taylor or any of the other candidates that have declared. He is likely to win the primary based on this anecdotal evidence.

In a ploy to out-sumbitch the rest of the candidates, Self has decided to raise a fuss about a major donor to the Collin County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner. In this annual fundraiser, a dinner is catered and B list Republicans are often paid to headline the event. The 2022 Guest of Honor and headliner is Glenn Beck.

Keith Self wrote the following letter, in which he excoriates the Collin County Republican Party for taking money from a law firm that *checks notes* serves LGBTQ clients. The letter is so poorly written that it is difficult to follow. He is declaring his opposition to marriage equality, and somehow gets a couple of digs at his opponent and shows off his pro-life bonafides, all in one rambling letter. I’ve shared some below, with my comments in bold:

. . . I was disappointed to learn that one of the largest donors to the Collin County Lincoln Day Dinner is a law firm that seems to advocate, almost exclusively, on behalf of homosexual couples. It is not my intent to cast aspersions [That is literally the point of the letter] but I could not sit idly by without saying something. I also feel compelled to remind those in authority that our GOP platform recognizes marriage to be between one man and one woman.

Our faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior has guided Tracy and me throughout our lives. We had the opportunity to have children at one time, but we could not adhere to the rigid rules that the doctor imposed that could have required abortion. [Isn’t this kind of over-sharing? And completely irrelevant?] I share this with you because we deem every life precious, even the lives of those who do not share our values. [We value those who do not share our values, but don’t dare take money from people who are friendly to them?]

What we don’t view as precious are the agendas of those who use positions of power to advance agendas contrary to God’s word. God’s word is clear on homosexuality, but just as clear that Christ came to save.”

The law firm in question is called O’Neil Wysocki. Michelle O’Neil responded as such:

“I am stunned and ashamed for Keith Self and for those who support him in his hateful, bigoted, sanctimonious campaign. 30 years ago I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of this country. I have advocated for thousands of people from all walks of life who needed and deserved a voice in our justice system. I have advocated for those in the LGBTQ+ community to have justice in our legal system for literally longer than I have been a lawyer. I am proud that I have done so. I do not support HATE SPEECH or hateful thought or unconstitutional injustice to any citizen being cloaked in the name of the Christian faith OR a political party.”

Her response is nice, but why on earth are they donating to the Collin County GOP? I guess that’s a question for another day. If I was trying to raise funds for the Democratic party, now would be the time to call O’Neil Wysocki.

Keith Self might be just another sumbitch trying his damndest to appeal to the most hateful and backward of his political base, but his is a serious campaign. The “loud crowd” in Collin County are clear that they want Van Taylor gone. Van Taylor, who is just as anti-gay as the rest of them, signed an amicus brief in the Obergefell Supreme Court case declaring that just because Texas has to allow same-sex partners to marry, they certainly do not have to treat them equally or offer benefits that opposite-sex marriages receive.

Self’s strategy here is to position himself to the right of all of the other candidates. His website opposes Taylor’s membership in the Problem Solver’s caucus that “tries to negotiate big-spending agreements between Democrats and Republicans.” (Why is there a dash between big and spending?)

He is going to send even more National Guard members to guard the border AND close the border to commercial traffic altogether. He will oppose burdensome regulations on private businesses. He will pass regulations that ban private companies from banning Donald Trump’s speech. He will mandate that there can be NO mask or vaccine mandates and make sure doctors are “encouraged” to prescribe meds for COVID that are popular on social media and right-wing blogs. I think this week’s COVID cure from the right-wingers is to drink your own urine. I wish I was making that up. That link is from Reuters, for Pete’s sake.

Last but not least, Keith Self will demand an audit of the 2020 Presidential election in Texas, where Trump won by 5 1/2 points.

This might be amusing if every gay child in Collin County wasn’t passing dozens of homes with his signs in the yard on the way to school each day. Each house with a sign in the yard is one more voter who “opposes” who these children are, how they were born. I hope I am wrong in my prediction that Self will win the Republican primary in March. The race to the bottom continues each election, with no end in sight.

On Christmas Eve, Joe and Jill Biden live-streamed calls into NORAD’s Santa Tracker, talking to kids about Santa, what they want for Christmas, and other kid friendly topics.  It was all in good fun, right up until a smart ass named Jared Schmeck of Oregon called in with his 4 kids; Schmeck was pleasant enough making small talk with the President, but when signing off, he thought it was a great idea to say, “Let’s Go Brandon.”  That’s right, Schmeck used a euphemism to tell the President of the United States, “Fuck Joe Biden.”  To make matters worse, he videoed himself doing it, then he and his wife posted it to their social media accounts.  That wasn’t smart.

The metaverse did what the metaverse always does – it exploded.  MAGAts gloated with glee at the the insult lionizing Schmeck’s disrespect, but also something else happened.  Normal people were shocked at the insult and responded to the Schmecks’ posts, flooding their accounts.  Then, netazins started researching Schmeck and his family.  What they learned, and then published, was not attractive.  Turns out he works for his father’s electrician company, which claims to be a “Christian owned” company complete with a code of conduct which included treating everyone “with respect”.  It also turns out that his father was a Navy Seal when he was arrested for his involvement in a gun trafficking ring back in the early nineties.  It goes on and on, but I won’t repeat all that here.

Schmeck also did what all MAGAts do when caught doing something stupid or cruel and then shamed for it – he blamed everyone else for “attacking” him for exercising “free speech”, and then lied saying his insult of Joe Biden was “just a joke” and “innocent jest”.  It most certainly was not a “joke” and he was not  “just frustrated with his policies.”  It was the normal lame excuses always spoken by the guilty.

Schmeck is now learning that free speech goes both ways.  Sure, you can say what you want in public, even posting a video of yourself personally insulting the President of the United States on a public livestream.  But if you do that, expect a full helping of response to that insult.  This is the problem with living in an echo chamber.  Schmeck thought it was hilarious to insult the President and his friends likely did, too.  Now he’s shocked at the response of normal people.  What he and others in his echo chamber don’t understand is that fully more that HALF of Americans disagree with his politics and most certainly his smartassed disrespect of the President.  He’s now learning that lesson.  Maybe he’ll think twice before doing that again.  On second thought, I doubt it.

Remember back in 2008 when Sarah Palin’s lie about “death panels” in the proposed Obamacare legislation took on a life of its own?  How the entire red state noise machine took it and ran with it?  Well, irony kicked in this weekend when Palin, talking at the Turning Point USA convention brainwashing, said she’d get a vaccine “…over my dead body“.  The crowd of young conservatives fascists cheered, completely missing the irony of her statement.  Dana Milbank hit the nail on the head pointing out that Palin was an active participant in what can now only be called a death cult.

The death cult also showed its ugly head when the few people who actually paid for seats to the  Traveling Bullshit Tour stop in Dallas booed their Dear Leader, none other than TFG, when he told Bill O’Reilly that he got the booster to protect himself.  The Trumpified GOP is now actually getting people killed as the death rate from COVID in Trump counties is 5 times that of the death rate in blue counties.

The Darwin Club is actually a thing.

Well, the results of the AZ GOP led Fraudit are in, and guess what?  Biden won again, but by a wider margin.  What is this, like 6 times?  By my last count of counts, recounts, hand recounts, audits, and now fraudits, Biden has won something like 720 electoral votes.  Of course, The Former Guy is not letting up, now convincing Mini Me Greg Abbott to “audit” Texas (where he WON, BTW) grasping at any little straw to throw to his base, which is starving for more lies so they’ll go buy more cheap Made-in-China TFG flags to add to the already overflown collection on their trucks.

Trump will never give up, and short of his major health problem or felony conviction, he’s the candidate for 2024.  Come On, Cyrus Vance.

Right-wingers and Trump’s media loudmouths are howling after the Biden administration ousted 18 Trump appointees from service academy boards, calling the ouster a “power grab” and “politicizing the service academies”.  Well, it’s just the opposite.  What most media is not reporting is that Biden’s move is part of his effort to clean up the open sewer Trump left behind when he finally vacated office on January 20th.

The rest of this story is this – after Trump lost the election, his acting secretary of defense, Christopher Miller (you know, the guy who refused to send the national guard to the Capitol on January 6th), ousted dozens of academy and other board members and replaced them with Trump loyalists.  He packed the boards of at least 3 service academies as well as the Defense Business Board and added HUNDREDS of Trump appointees to boards within the DOD on 42 boards in all.  To contain the damage, new defense secretary Lloyd Austin suspended all board activities to do a “zero based review” of all the boards that Trump polluted with partisan, cronies, and loyalists. Biden’s move to oust 18 Trump appointees is just a part of the massive cleanup underway at DOD and other departments Trump infested.

Now you know the rest of the story.