Those of us who are paying attention to the January 6th Committee woke up yesterday to the strategy of these public hearings; well, at least I did.  The committee is clearly taking direct aim at TFG, heaping loads of evidence on the facts that he KNEW that he didn’t win; he KNEW there was no fraud that would change the outcome of any state result; HE whipped up The Big Lie and repeats it continuously, even today.  We all pretty much knew or suspected that all this lay at TFG’s feet.

However, all this evidence is hard to use to get TFG convicted, much less even charged, so the committee is giving prosecutors a roadmap to get this sumbitch.  This roadmap is not going down the insurrection road; it shows the way down the wire fraud road.  Testimony revealed yesterday that using The Big Lie TFG raised a QUARTER OF A BILLION DOLLARS for the “Election Defense Fund”, which, wait for it…doesn’t and has never existed.  The Election Defense Fund was supposedly to be used to fight election fraud lawsuits, but the money didn’t go to that activity.  It went, instead, to TFG’s Super PAC, doled out to his hotels, family, and even Jr.’s girlfriend.  That’s wire fraud.  So now we have not only The Big Lie, we have The Big Grift.

There is clear and ample evidence that TFG and his cronies defrauded millions of supporters, and the good thing about this crime is that the attorneys general in the states where the donors live can also prosecute TFG.  On top of all the possible federal cases you can name, this wire fraud charge is serious with heavy penalties and up to 30 years in the slammer.  The states have similar penalties.

The committee is drawing the roadmap with turn-by-turn directions, making it easy for the feds to go after TFG and Corruption Inc..  If Garland lacks the will to prosecute, I know a bunch of states with aggressive AGs who would likely be happy to perp walk TFG live on television.

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.

Several books, published and soon to be published, have reported how Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, fought a full time battle after Trump lost the election to keep him from using the military to attack Americans and even start a war with Iran to stay in power.  Even thought Milley hasn’t publicly confirmed this story, enough journalists have, including Susan Glasser of The New Yorker who independently confirmed what others have reported.  This story gave me chills down my spine.

Despite his supporters’ delusions and continued support of Trump’s Big Lie, the rest of us have to make sure that he never comes near the White House again.

The post election audit Clown Show of Maricopa County ballots has been a complete disaster from the first moment it was conceived.  Ordered by Senate Republicans in March, said 60 day audit is now going on 6 months and has probably set the state GOP back, oh, say to the Reagan era.  Everyone associated with the “audit” have made fools of themselves in front of the entire nation, and Trump has happily led them down this primrose path dropping hints of “they can’t believe what they’re finding” when in fact they’ve found nothing.  In the process, God knows how much damage they’ve done, and the elections commission for the county has already said they’ll have to replace all the voting machines after they were compromised by the “auditors”.

To pour gasoline on the fire of incompetence, the report of the results of this months long fiasco has been once again delayed because…wait for it…the CEO of Cyber Ninjas and some of his key staff are “quite ill” with COVID.  Dollar to a donut that none of these idiots were vaccinated because, well, they’re idiots, and Karen Fann, the Arizona Senate President didn’t answer the question if they had been vaccinated.

You just can’t make this up.

It’s all out war right now in Arizona, specifically Maricopa County, where Republicans have been presiding over an audit shitshow of the 2.1 million ballots from the 2020 election.  We’ve talked about the sham that was cooked up by the Arizona State Senate, where they decided that it would be a really good idea to pander to Trump by pretending to count ballots and look for Chinese bamboo in the paper.  The Arizona secretary of state has opposed the audit from the beginning, and now the Maricopa Board of Elections has weighed in with an open letter to the senate demanding that the audit be halted immediately.  The letter was sent after Karen Fann, president of the senate, accused the board on Twitter of deleting the entire data base from the 2020 election, which, of course, is completely false.

Jack Sellers, the chairman of the elections board, both in public statements and in the letter ripped Fann, senate Republicans, and especially the “auditor”, Cyber Ninjas, for their incompetence.  He also has refused to answer any more questions and demands.  Here’s a quote from Sellers in that regard:

Jack Sellers, chair of Maricopa county board of supervisors, ends meeting by saying he is not responding to any more requests from state senate on Arizona audit. "Finish your report and be ready to defend it in a court of law," he says.

— Sam Levine (@srl) May 17, 2021

I had the opportunity to read the letter today and it’s a long, but fantastic read.  Once choice paragraph I reproduce here:

About an hour ago, House Republicans, on a chickenshit voice vote chose to oust Liz Cheney from leadership for her failure to embrace The Big Lie.  In doing so, they have chosen fealty to a criminal former president over the people they represent. In a fiery speech yesterday, and apparently again this morning, Cheney is unrepentant and continues to blast Republicans for their embrace of Trump and his lies.  As you would expect, the caucus actually booed her.  That’s right, on the House side of the US Capitol, Republicans actually loudly booed one of their own as she chose to speak truth to lies.

When she came out of the meeting, Cheny told reporters that she was going to do “everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets near the Oval Office.” She went on to say, “We must go forward based on truth.  We cannot both embrace the big lie and embrace the Constitution.”

I’ve never liked Liz Cheney or her war criminal father; but in this particular case, I admire her strength and steadfast principles.  I don’t agree with most of her principles, but in this case she’s done the right thing, and I personally applaud her for it.