Tomorrow is the 1st anniversary of the attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters, but just commemorating that violent event is not enough and doesn’t address the real problem today in America.  The problem is much deeper than a couple thousand dumbasses brainwashed by a carnival barker and career liar.  Our system of government is now under constant threat.  That threat comes from what was once a national party that has morphed into a fascist regime which is striving for permanent power in defiance of the will of Americans.  THAT is the problem.

This has been coming for decades, fueled by increasingly radical media that is unconstrained by any regulation, especially the Fairness Doctrine that Reagan destroyed at the behest of Rupert Murdoch who was also provided fast track US citizenship and allowed to monopolize US media by a compliant FCC, also under Reagan.  That started the drain of fair journalism, and the rest is history.  Murdoch’s empire has rotted American democracy from the inside, moving from ranting about taxes at their historic lows to Bill O’Reilly’s idiotic “War on Christmas” trope to lying about everything not Right Wing Nut Job.  Murdoch offered up Fox as the official press office for TFG during his infestation of the Oval office, and still amplifies his lies ’round the clock.  The entire goal was to piss off one demographic, and that has succeeded.

We now live in a society where civil discourse and fact based policy decisions no longer exist.  Politics is now more than blood sport – it has become a death cult, from the radical gun culture that has successfully injected armed thugs into the political arena to losing candidates who will NEVER concede defeat, no matter how obvious that candidate’s loss is.  I recall 2008 when Al Franken beat incumbent Norm Coleman by 312 votes.  The votes were counted and counted and counted, and Franken’s win was close, but certain.  Coleman never conceded, fighting in court for 8 months until a 3 judge panel declared Franken the winner.  Since then, virtually no Republican has conceded defeat.  Every election is a battle to the death, and concession speeches from GOP candidates are almost non existent.  Trump has now normalized that behavior by lying and lying and lying and lying.  The Big Lie has now been embedded into the DNA of Republicans, and all over the country they are taking election administration out of the hands of non-partisans and putting it into the hands of radical partisans, even legislating overruling free and fair elections if they don’t like the results.

The real tragedy is that now both sides of the political spectrum have no confidence in the system.  Over 80% of Republicans have lost confidence because they believe The Big Lie and that the system is full of fraud.  Over 80% of Democrats have lost confidence because over 80% of Republicans believe The Big Lie and are trying to rig the system in their own favor.

All of this adds up to every election now being contested to the death especially if the Republican candidate loses.  Armed goofballs will show up at polls, counting locations, city halls, county seats, state capitols, and, yes, even the US Capitol if the election goes against their candidate.  Though TFG is the heartbeat of this massive delusion, it has now grown beyond his own cult of personality.  Oh, sure, every right winger will run to Mara Lago to kiss the ring, but The Big Lie is so engrained that it has taken on a life of its own.  People who were reasonable folks 10 years ago are now ranting maniacs spouting bullshit and even QAnon conspiracy theories.  All reason and critical thinking has all but vanished.

My greatest fear is that this won’t end well, and not until violence and fascism touches most Americans will people wake up and demand accountability from elected leaders.  Add the metastasized cancer that is TFG to the political mix, and the patient could easily die. That is the risk that we really face.

The Texas legislature, over long opposition by Democrats and the majority of Texans, passed the most radical voter suppression law of 2021, making Texas the worst state in the union to exercise the Constitutional right to vote.  The GOP knuckle draggers rammed through a bill that wiped out very popular voting alternatives such as drive through voting, extended voting hours, and easy vote by mail rules.  They also empowered partisan goons to intimidate voters at the polls, and criminalized mistakes an honest voter might innocently make.  In short, GOP Fuckheads pushed us back to the days of poll taxes, arbitrary voter tests, and Jim Crow laws with Jim Crow 2.0.

Zero days since Texas was a National Embarrassment, racing other Red States to the bottom.

H. Scott Apley was a Dickinson city council representative and a member of the Texas GOP executive committee.  He was also an anti-vaxxer and anti-masker.  He’s railed against public health policy and flaunted guidelines to keep people safe.  Last Friday he posted a claim the COVID vaccine doesn’t work on Facebook.  Over the weekend, he, his wife, and his son all tested positive for COVID.  He was admitted to a hospital in Galveston on Monday, and he died yesterday.

Oh, and here’s his Facebook profile pic:

He gave his life “owning a lib”.  He sure showed us.

Reuters, the NY Times, and Axios are all reporting that 100 prominent Republicans, sick of Trumpism, are threatening to form a new party.  In a letter titled “A Call For American Renewal,” which may come out as soon as today, outlines the positions of these Republicans, who are alarmed at the iron grip Trump continues to exert on the once great party.  The as yet unnamed Republicans are threatening to start a new party if the GOP does not break with Trump and his lies.  Clearly the situation is seen as dire, and the group, said to include prominent figures such as Tom Ridge, is ready to break with the GOP, saying “The Republican Party is broken. It’s time for a resistance of the ‘rationals’ against the ‘radicals.'”

This move, if undertaken, will be a seismic shift from our status quo two party system, and hopefully will restore a loyal opposition and isolate the insurrectionists and screwballs who now control the GOP.

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.

Biden’s speech last night was like a breath of fresh air after we all endured the verbal manure that flowed so freely from Trump’s mouth and Twitterfingers for 4 years.  Biden spoke of a rising America and introduced his trillion dollar American Families Plan that, after decades of decline and neglect, will attempt to make our lives better.

Predictably, the Republicans hate it, all of it, and it’s all predictable.  This morning on CBS News, Rick Scott was given a remarkable 5 minutes of national airtime to spew nonsense and childish attacks against  Biden and the GOP’s other favorite targets.  His lies came fast and furious, blaming Biden for all the ills HIS side caused.

Why are Republicans so opposed to anything that makes Americans’ lives better?  Because if people are happy, they won’t keep them in power.  The GOP has raised hatemongering to an art form because they know that if they can keep millions of Americans miserable and pissed off, they can then blame Dems for that misery and drive angry people to the polls.  And it works like a charm.  The GOP base is driven by adrenaline fueled anger, fomented by hate radio, Newsmax, OAN, Fox Noise, and the NY Post where the blame is regularly placed on “socialists, gays, Satanists, Pelosi, AOC, and Bernie.” Instead of focusing on real issues like education, income inequality, job security, and healthcare, they focus on bathroom bills, gay wedding cakes, and now the new target “boys pretending to be girls leering at your daughters in the locker room” accusing trans kids of trying to take advantage by posing as the opposite sex.

If the GOP had to actually face voters over their piss poor performance they would lose every time.  THAT’s why they are willing to inflict generational misery to the populace so they can keep everyone pissed off and insecure so their base will blame the rest of us.  That’s also why they are trying to push through voter suppression bills to make it harder to vote.  They know the truth and are really worried now because Biden rammed through the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill that helped to relieve some of that misery.  If we follow that with making airports, roads, and other public infrastructure once again usable, the GOP is terrified that their supporters will like their lives made better and the veil finally lifted on their scam.

And that’s why they have zero interest in doing their jobs and making Americans’ lives better.