Welp, I’m planted in front of the teevee watching democracy melt.  It ain’t pretty.

The proposed House rules for the 118^th Congress gives the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee the power to review calls for a constitutional convention and/or propose amendments to the Constitution.

This is to give conservatives the power to actually call a constitutional convention to, you know, do away with democracy as we know it. First they will kill it and then they will eat it at Jim Jordan’s backyard barbeque and corporate power auction.

Over at the New York Times, they outline a plan hatched up by some goofy Texas congressfool and Rick Santorum. (There is no explanation of why Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay weren’t involved in this scheme.  My bet is that their wives have them chained to a wall somewhere and I am deeply appreciative of that.)

Santorum was pushing for Pennsylvania to become the 20th state to formally call for a convention in recent years, out of the 34 states required. But it is not clear exactly how many states have weighed in, since not all have adopted the same language and some petitions were submitted decades or longer ago and may even have been rescinded.

Texas congressidgit Jodey Arrington believes that when pending petitions are fully tallied, the 34-state goal might already have been exceeded. His legislation would require the archivist to “authenticate, count and publish” applications by the states, forcing Congress to act.

Keep a side eye on this one.  It’ll be worth your trouble.

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the first election that I ever voted in. It was the election where I was introduced to Lena Guerrero. She had a promising political career for awhile. She served in the Texas Legislature and had been on the Texas Railroad Commission. She was now running to be the head of the Texas Railroad Commission. It’s not an insignificant position. It involves a whole lot more than just trains. She was a Democrat and therefore seemed destined to get my vote.

Unfortunately for her, the news dropped before the election. She said she had a honors degree from the University of Texas. In fact, she had no degree at all. It would be the only race where I explicitly voted against a Democrat. The funny thing is that this is still true to this day. I don’t know what makes people do these things. It’s not like she simply said she had a degree. She could have listed any institution or none at all. She could have simply said she had a degree and left the rest of the details purposefully vague. Nope. She had to say it was a degree and a degree with honors from the University of Texas.

As everyone knows, George Santos is the latest to get caught up in a web of lies. Of course, to call it a web would likely be generous. His lies haven’t even been all that coordinated. The explanations haven’t been that coordinated either. He didn’t get a degree when he said he did. His background in terms of ethnicity and religion has been either falsified out of thin air or tremendously exaggerated. His work history was also falsified. Even the details of his personal life are a work of fiction. His mother died twice. As works of fiction go, his lies have been whoppers.

I mention Guerrero for what should be obvious reasons. She was a Democrat. She lied about her education. She had attended UT. She just didn’t graduate. She not only lost the election, but she never participated in politics again. It is easy to make the point that one party lies more than the other. Maybe that’s even true, but that’s not the point of this particular screed.

The people that represent us in city hall, county court, the state legislature, state offices, and in Washington should be the best among us. They should be made from the finest parts of our national character. It isn’t necessarily about degrees, past positions, or anything else. We should be able to trust that whatever is on that resume is something you’ve actually done. We should be able to trust that what you say you know and what you say you are good at you are actually good at.

George Santos perpetuated a fraud on the people of his district. Nothing substantive that he has told the voters about himself has turned out to be true. Now, maybe he still wins. We know full well that most voters pull the lever (figuratively) for the party and not the individual. Yet, occasionally something so shameful occurs that people don’t. I didn’t vote for Lena Guerrero and I still wouldn’t.

It isn’t simple enough to simply redo the election. Sure, voters probably would vote differently now that they know the truth, but that sets up a dangerous precedent. When exactly do we know that a fraud has occurred and that it is so egregious that another election should be held? Who decides that? Sure, Kevin McCarthy and the GOP shouldn’t seat him. Yet, they have a very narrow majority and losing even one seat is a bitter pill to swallow. I don’t know the answer for them. I know the status quo is untenable. Maybe they simply don’t give him any committee assignments. The likely result is they just hope we forget. I’ve never forgotten Lena Guerrero. I’m not likely to forget George Santos anytime soon.

I’m obviously late to the party with this one. As everyone knows, Governor Greg Abbott sent his own version of a Christmas gift to Kamala Harris when he sent upwards of 50 migrants in a bus to her Washington D.C. residence. I can easily go in any number of directions here and most of them are visceral emotional reactions to the story. Most of these visceral responses are the kind of responses that MAGA folks want us to say. It’s almost like a Pavlovian response. They do something outrageous and we respond with outrage, Mission accomplished.

So, where I choose to go from here is to a place where I am going to assume that one or more of them might stumble to this place and actually read these words. The regular readers already know this stuff, so you can treat this as more of a tutorial for other people. However, it is something I feel I need to say because I’ve seen the responses from both sides. Progressives respond with outrage as I suppose they should. Conservatives usually say something to the effect that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden need to solve the problem.

Let’s start with the outrage. All of us know about trolls. Essentially, mainstream conservatives are becoming an endangered species. In their place are what I lovingly call performance artists. If you think back to the scandals concerning the National Endowment for the Arts you will remember the different exhibits that caused so much consternation. There were sculptures of Jesus made out of dung or Jesus being submerged in human urine. These were all designed to create a visceral reaction. All forms of art are created to elicit a reaction. So, these maneuvers by Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis are created to elicit an emotional response. Again, mission accomplished.

Performance artists aren’t interested in solving any problems. Problems exist to be exploited. They exist for fund raising. They exist for sound bytes. They exist so that you can frighten your base by expanding and distorting the truth. Greg Abbott has no issue in solving immigration. He has no interest in helping migrants. He has no interest in adjusting policies so that the strain on our institutions and budget are alleviated. Of course, it could be credibly claimed that many progressive politicians aren’t interested in solving the problem either. They can fundraise against Abbott and DeSantis as easily as those two can fundraise themselves.

This brings us to the second point. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris can’t solve this issue on their own. It’s a problem with the low information voters. This is an issue that must be addressed in Congress. So, you can send these people to the White House or to Kamala Harris’ private residence, but the stunt doesn’t provide them any additional incentive to solve the problem. Harris literally has very little real power to do anything beyond helping those exact people. This is where you call or write letters to your elected representative asking them to work with other members of Congress to actually pass comprehensive changes to our immigration policy.

Whether one considers this just performance art or an act of cruelty, the end result is just the same. Someone decided that jerking these people around was better than actually helping them. At this point, I’m not going to judge if someone decides they can’t help them. I understand. We can’t help literally everyone that needs help and it can be hard to decide where that cut off should be. They are human beings. They deserve better than this. If we can’t help them then the least we can do is not hurt them. It’s one thing to have a sculpture made out of dung to enrage the masses. It is something else entirely to use actual living and breathing human beings for your performance art.

Oh dear.

Not only was there never an audit by the IRS while Trump was running for president, it’s even worse than that.

There is a mandatory audit of the president and vice president.  And there was none done and nobody seems to know why.

A key takeaway from Democrats is that the IRS mandatory presidential audit of Trump taxes was not followed. They said the IRS began the audit once Chairman Neal inquired in April 2019 about Trump’s returns. The audits of the requested returns were never completed.

Ho boy, I have some questions for Steven Mnuchin.

How come enemies of Trump, and off the top of my head I think of James Comey and Andrew McCabe, get audited but Trump never did? How’s that happen, Mnuchin? Dude, this stinks like fried gym socks.

They say they will put his returns online. This ought to be interesting.

You know those teevee commercials where somebody gets a fancy-pants car for Christmas and there’s a ridiculously large bow on top?

Yeah, I got one this year. Except better. No car, but a grand scale olympic size breathtakingly delightful girl fight.

Just in time for a major freeze in my town where we will be all be locked inside for a few days because none of us own a coat, I got an early present that I am already playing with. Think Wordle with diamonds, chocolate, and working electric grid all at once.

I swear to you that Majorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are gonna smack each other before this is over.

Ya throw two thunder-nazis in the ring of public attention and by gawd, there’s gonna all manner of tough totally chucklesome stuff.

And, to make it even more fun, they are fighting over Kevin McCarthy.  Honey, you gotta be scraping the bottom of the closing time barrel at the local honky tonk to be fighting over Kevin McCarthy.  There’s probably three women in all of America who would even have that man, much less fight over him, and as luck would have it, two of them are serving in Congress. One of them believes in Jewish space lasers and the other one believes in Donald Trump.

Thank you, Santa, for bringing me a grin.