My vote is not a statement of purity. I don't vote (or not vote) as a means of putting myself above anybody.
I vote to exercise my right to pull the one small lever of power granted to all of us by the US Constitution.
There are no perfect candidates. No perfect office-holders. No perfect humans aspiring to lofty positions in my government.
There are people running for office who hold beliefs and espouse philosophies similar to mine - and they're the ones I try to identify and then vote for.
I think Trump has been worried that he might not get the old money Republicans to go along with his hare-brained schemes, so he's emphasizing his intentions to serve the plutocracy by telling us straight out that he's all for shit-canning every progressive policy that's been put in place since FDR.
Privatize Social Security
Voucherize Medicare
Kill Obamacare outright
Eliminate EPA and OSHA (and the departments of Energy and Education, et al)
In a democracy, even very poor people have power thru the various agencies and regulatory bodies that their votes got politicians to create, and push those politicians to maintain.
In a plutocracy, people who don't have the money don't have the power.
Trump always tells us what's really going on. So when he says, "This is the most united the Republican Party has ever been", you know the GOP is breaking into smaller and smaller pieces.
Because this divide-n-conquer shit always comes back to kick your ass.
Glenn Kirschner is a little antsy. What's taking so long? Why does it seem like DOJ isn't moving against obvious law-breakers?
My contention is that there's a boatload of sharpsters and hucksters playing their little Intrigue At The Palace games. So it's going to be a while before we get enough of those assholes outa there, so we can start to see something close to "normal" again.
Trump's lawyers took a beating today. And you can hear it pretty plainly when Judge Pan tries to cut thru the total Gish Gallop of this Sauer guy by reminding him - a coupla times - that she asked him a Yes-or-No question.
Yes, we have a two-tiered "justice system", and Donald Trump is benefiting from it to the point where it's like he's already the American Emperor.
(paraphrasing) If Trump was a 20-year-old black kid, charged with the pettiest of petty crimes, and he tweeted out or just spouted off in public any tiny bit of what Trump has said about witnesses and judges and court staff - that kid would be sitting in jail incommunicado waiting for his trial to start.
Shut your mouth when you're out in the lobby, and say what you have to say in the courtroom, under oath.
Stop pretending you've had absolutely no agency over what happens in your life.
Take responsibility for your actions, and stop whining about a "rigged system" every time somebody holds you accountable for something you've done wrong.
Republicans in Congress are not stupid - most of them anyway - but they've been able to count on their constituents being pretty fuckin' stupid
Rank and file people in uniform look up the chain of command with the reasonable expectation of finding certainty
Long-time Republican voters at the command level of the US military are starting to vote for Democrats in bigger and bigger numbers
The fact that some pretty visible Senators are up on their hind legs might indicate the worms are finally turning - possibly because they know they're hemorrhaging votes in the Defense Sector
Key point 1: Don't sell these idiots short when it comes to doing the dumbest thing possible.
Key point 2: We're almost half way thru the Congressional term, and Republicans can't figure out who they want for Speaker.
Key point 3: Don't dismiss the probability that this is just more of the intentional chaos and dysfunction they love to hit us with as they try to tear it all down.
Whenever some YouTuber / commentator / pundit says "Trump is toast" or "Trump torpedoes his whole defense" or "Trump admits blah blah blah", I have to wonder if they've heard or read any of their own stuff in the last 8 years - like the 437 times everybody and his fuckin' uncle predicted "This is the coup de grâce!"
Trump will eventually take the big fall, but it happens when it happens.
In the meantime, most of us are over here wanting to believe justice will prevail, while Trump and his MAGAloons are counting on the rabble raising enough of a fuss to counteract the silliness of Law-n-Order.
We are being tested. And the test - just like democratic self-government - is a thing of our own making. Self-devised and self-administered.
And if we fail, it'll be because we've self-sabotaged.
Marge The Impaler Greene is the new Trey Gowdy. But where Gowdy was only interested in driving up Hillary's negatives, Green doesn't care about anything but engaging in whatever fuckery she can get away with in order to advance whatever fucked up "agenda items" she thinks will get her a few minutes of media coverage and more donations from the rubes.
So of course there's never anything on that agenda but "Fuck With The Democrats".
BTW, when Ken Buck comes off as "the voice of reason" in the GOP, we're in serious trouble.
