“Not my job.”
“Nothing we can do.”
“Not our role.”
“Shit happens.”

These four statements are the total and complete strategy of the New Trumplican Party regarding public policy that protects the citizens they represent.  Politicians in the Trumplican party seek office for one reason and one reason only, and that is to grab, and then keep power.  There is no thought given to public policy that helps anyone (except for themselves and their patrons).  The public policy initiatives they pursue are purely cynical, designed to keep their gerrymandered base wrapped around the axle and ready to explode at any minute.  Their ENTIRE strategy is to keep their alternate dimension dark, dangerous, unstable, unhappy, and increasingly fearful.  That’s it, period, the end.

The key feature of this strategy, which I call The Dodge, is to do nothing to prevent massive tragedies, then heap blame on strawmen to deflect responsibility for their own negligence.  The most advantageous feature of this strategy is that nothing bad ever sticks to them.  From statewide power outages to mass shootings in schools, The Dodge allows those in charge of governing to brush those off to “free market” principles or “god given constitutional rights.”  “There’s nothing we can do because constitutional freedoms won’t let us,” is the rote answer to all gun violence.  The “free market” is also a common excuse; here’s one –  “healthcare must be free market.”  This Dodge allows insurance companies to overprice and deny health coverage to millions of Americans.  Another good one is, “We won’t talk about immigration reform until the border is 100% sealed and there are zero border crossings.”  Since “sealing the border” is impossible, they have the excuse to never have to do anything.

Abbott is masterful at The Dodge.  He paid no political price for his incompetence and corruption with both ERCOT and the PUC that caused the massive power outages that cost hundreds of billions of dollars to the economy and cost as many as 700 Texans’ lives.  “Free market” was his excuse as well as bald faced lying by blaming wind turbines for the outage.  He also did it during the pandemic, providing zero support for closed businesses to protect people from the spread, and then using economic deprivation as an excuse to open the economy far too early, even overruling local government officials actually trying to protect people.  After causing thousands of unnecessary deaths, Abbott then blamed the CDC, the WHO, China, Anthony Fauci, Peter Hotez, Lina Hidalgo, and other “liberals” to cynically gain political advantage using illness and deaths that he caused as a weapon.

We’re not surprised when shitbags like Abbott, Patrick, Cruz, Cornyn, McCarthy, and many others use The Dodge to avoid accountability for their own corruption.  However, the most shocking and disgusting abusers of The Dodge are the six SCOTUS judges that now say that the Court has no role to play in reining in massive extreme gerrymandering, protecting voting rights, stopping unlimited buying of elections by billionaires, preventing massive pollution enabled by their rollback of EPA regulations, stopping the rewriting of the Second Amendment to create a right for idiots to carry and use assault weapons in public, and protecting women’s right to equal protection under Roe v. Wade.

These politicians (I’m including SCOTUS justices in that description) use The Dodge to deflect all responsibility for their own incompetence and profound corruption.  And it works.  By continually piling on boogeyman after boogeyman they can blame everyone and everything for problems they create or fail to solve.  Such boogeymen include(d) gays, ACORN, those who “hate the troops”, immigrants, China, gays, “gun grabbers”, “welfare queens”, gangs, gays, drug cartels, old people, “radical Democrats”, gays, “voter fraud”, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, transgender kids, drag performers, gays, and, last but not least, wokeness.  Oh, and gays.

By creating these boogeymen, these politicians accomplish their key goal which is gaining and staying in power by avoiding accountability.  They couldn’t care less if you live or die.  The textbook examples of this callousness is their disregard of human lives taken my massive gun violence and their willingness to sacrifice the old and sick for the economy during the pandemic.  If you doubt any of this conclusion, I invite you to listen to Rep. Burchett (T) Tennessee:

’nuff said.

I have a tiny piece of advice for the Democrats. As I sit here, Kevin McCarthy has failed to gain the speakership after eleven ballots. The last time this happened (1923) the eventual speaker was elected after nine ballots. So, McCarthy has made history. Congratulations Kevin. Democrats have had their pictures taken with popcorn and thoroughly enjoying the whole spectacle. Tread lightly Democrats. The Republicans are disintegrating before our very eyes and you don’t want to be anywhere near them when they do.

No one likes a bully and no one likes someone that laughs at someone else’s misfortune. There is a time when the joke has gone on long enough and everyone wants to move on. The people see what is going on and the longer it goes on the less people need for anyone to spin it. The House of Representatives literally cannot govern until they elect a speaker and which each passing day the symbol becomes more and more emboldened.

Republicans are not interested in governing and they really can’t govern. Of course, one leads to the other, but I couldn’t tell you which one of those comes first. Think about Texas Republicans. They keep complaining about how liberals have ruined the state. They have been in power for 30 years. They’ve controlled the legislature, governor’s chair, and lieutenant governor’s chair every day this century. Yet, they blamed the power outage on renewable energy. It’s like the chef that goes to the market, buys the ingredients, preps the food, and then cooks the food blaming the meal on someone else.

They at least can seat leadership. The House can’t even do that. Democrats passed numerous bills over the past two years with narrow majorities in the House and an even Senate. During the Trump years they literally passed only one landmark piece of legislation in four years. So, just stay out of the way. Do not call any attention to yourselves. Don’t get caught enjoying the moment too much. The American people will learn a painful lesson before too long. Republicans are not serious actors and they won’t get any serious policy ideas from them. They are performance artists, carnival barkers, and frauds. The people will see it. You don’t have to break your arm pointing it out to them.

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.

This is exactly what extremist Republicans are trying to impose on Americans.  The Handmaid’s Tale comes into actual life.

https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1521307942577790976?s=20&t=O1O5tDHFo1dgypg6Roy-ng

Two of my favorite songs on my playlist are “Vegetable Man” and “Scream Thy Last Scream” by Pink Floyd. They were not officially released until the last decade because the band didn’t want to make them available for public consumption. They represented a time in Syd Barrett’s life when he was in a really bad way. Roger Waters said that they were akin to showing naked pictures of an aging actress.

In a similar way, saying anything about the rise and fall of Hershel Walker feels wrong in many instances. You have someone that is very clearly not all there. You can’t know whether a former athlete has CTE until you do the final autopsy, but we are about as sure about this as we can of anyone that played in the NFL.

However, Walker represents something bigger than himself. Everything old is new again in politics. Those that know U.S. history remember learning about the Know Nothing Party. The similarities don’t just end with the name. The platform is also pretty similar when we consider the brand of conservative politicians coming out these days. Give those pre-Civil War guys Twitter and 24 hour news and I imagine they would have come up with something eerily similar.

What can we say about Walker? He said he graduated with honors from the University of Georgia. He didn’t graduate. He said he was in law enforcement. He wasn’t. He fathered multiple children out of wedlock. He didn’t tell us the truth about that. The children we do know about all seem to be coming out against him.

Finally, we get the news that he funded an abortion in 2009. Yet, this is where you get into a pickle if you are a true progressive. We want people to be able to have the choice to have an abortion. So, ultimately do we care whether he funded one? The quick and simple answer is that we don’t, but that isn’t really the point. The point is that you don’t get to run on a sanctimonious platform when you have entire collection of skeletons in the closet.

Watching conservatives fumble around with representatives and candidates that are clearly intellectually deficient is hilarious on one level, scary on another, and just pitiful on the rest. Whether it’s not knowing that “wanton” murder doesn’t refer to the soup found in Chinese restaurants or watching Walker be told that the lieutenant governor said something about him, watch him ask who the lieutenant governor was, be told who he was, and then ask what that guy was currently doing.

Commenting about such things is the true no win scenario. No one should make fun of half-wits. It would be akin to making fun of someone with a physical handicap. Yet, here we are and this is the field that the GOP has laid down before us. At some point we need to put the blame on the powers that be that parade these folks out there for us to exploit and laugh at. Laughing feels utterly awful, but at a certain point you just can’t help it.

We went on a family vacation to San Francisco. It used to be that you could go away and leave your troubles behind. With connectivity, all of our troubles seem to follow us everywhere. In the span of a week we saw two landmark Supreme Court cases hit the news.

Everything old is new again. It would be wrong for me to suggest the court is reaching new ground here. In a way it is, but for the most part we have been here before. Brown vs. Board of Education created new law back in 1954. It also likely went against what the majority of the population felt at the time. We had no public opinion polling back then, so that is merely a guess, but I feel like it is a good guess.

The court is there to interpret the constitution and not to bend to the whims of a fickle majority. I think we can agree with that much. However, it is fair to question whether following legal precedent matters and conservatives have long maintained a disdain for activist judges. The court (by vote of 6-3 both times) just actively created new law on both counts. They created two radically different interpretations of the constitution on both counts.

There is also no denying what they are after. Clarence Thomas mentioned gay marriage in his majority opinion and we know our very own John Cornyn mentioned Brown vs. Board of Education. It doesn’t take much of a stretch to include interracial marriages as well. We are literally going back a century on human rights.

In an odd way, the backdrop of San Francisco is kind of telling here. You have never seen a town more into Pride Month than San Francisco. You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a pride flag. Stores had pride messages painted on their windows. Different companies offered pride products. It was the most inclusive, welcoming environment I had ever seen. How does all of this happen in the same country?

It happens because a minority of citizens have managed to control government and the courts. The GOP has effectively won a majority in a presidential election once since 1988. Many of their politicians have suggested that we live in a center-right country right now. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that based on national voting records or public opinion polling. None.

What there is evidence of is plenty of gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics that have kept progressivism at bay. This is where things get dicey. It is fair for people to look at Democrats in general and liberals and progressives specifically and claim they have failed. They didn’t codify abortion into law. They have been ineffective at stopping gerrymandering and have allowed the courts to be dominated by conservatives. There is no denying that.

The question is what happens now. We can go down two roads. One road would be for enough voters to punish Democrats either by staying home or voting for third party candidates. That way, you’d insure a Republican victory. The second road is to recognize the threat and where it is coming from. There you would overwhelm the GOP with a blue wave and then slowly rebuild what they have broken.

There are some that think the first road is tempting. After all, maybe if things get really bad then systemic change will be easier to obtain. That thinking has two problems. First, you are hurting millions along the way and secondly you are assuming there will be a democracy left to get back. Clearly, the GOP doesn’t care what the majority wants. They never have. Your only real bet is to block them from tearing this thing down any further.