elections – frustratedboomers

A Voting We Will Go

by Roxanne Tellier

ELECTIONS! Whether we want them or not!

But first ….

FACEBOOK! If you’ve been following my Facebook antics – or lack thereof, as I have sat banished and abandoned in Facebook solitary for the better part of the last six months – I am happy to report that I have been allowed to return to the site. Well, for the moment, anyway. I’m already getting warnings for doing really horrible things like posting links to how to determine if you might be addicted to social media.

If you’re using any social media on a daily basis, you probably are addicted, whether you realize it or not. Seeing those ‘likes’ on your posts are like hearing the cha-ching of a slot machine paying off, or the crinkle of a bag of potato chips; betchya can’t eat just one.

All that time in solitary was a very effective cold turkey method; I’m pretty much weaned off Facebook now, and intend to use it primarily for my business needs. That’s assuming the company doesn’t find some pretext for booting me off, just because they can.

(yes, there IS a cold turkey app – getcoldturkey.com. It bills itself as “the toughest website blocker on the internet,” designed for studying or focusing on work. It will block distractions like social media, games, apps, YouTube, or even the entire Internet. There goes your last excuse for finally writing the Great Canadian Novel/Song/App.)

Wrote this on Saturday to let the ‘FB Friends of Roxanne’ know what I’ve been up to.

“I’m poking my nose up to say ‘hi’ and to thank those of you who’ve posted messages of encouragement during my last 30 days in FB solitary. I missed you too. But, quite honestly, don’t expect me to be around here much. I can’t live in a gulag, and that’s what FB has become, sadly, for some of those voices that don’t just talk about the weather and post pics of their dinner and/or pets. I can’t tolerate that anymore. My every word is being scrutinized by either an out of control and unsupervised algorithm or malicious observers who get joy in reporting people with whom they disagree. That ain’t what I call fun. I’m too old and tired to fight anymore. You win, Facebook. I’ll shut up. At least when I’m on here.
Little by little, Facebook has moved the needle to the right, suspending and banning liberal voices, while encouraging and profiting from those who seek to overturn laws like Roe v Wade in the U.S., and to gather supporters for ‘protests’ that seek to overturn democracy.
But most people who still call FB ‘home’ are boomers. The kids left long ago, for Instagram, TikTok, or any one of a dozen newer and more social social media sites.
Boomers, on the other hand, are a little nervous about picking up and moving to another social media site; it’s just too much work. It’s a bit like trying to find a new place to live when you’re in your sixties – what you’re really trying to find is a place where people will leave you alone until you die. You can put up with a lot, if they’ll just leave you alone, and not make you confront your hoard, and heaven forbid, make you pack up all your baggage and move it to some other location.
While Facebook’s move to encourage and abet the spread of right-wing misinformation hasn’t gone unnoticed, nothing’s been done. Congress, old and out of touch with tech, simply pretends they understand Zuckerberg’s explanations, excuses, and promises to change and improve.
And like the sad victims of any kind of abuse, they swallow his words, and really believe that he’ll change. THIS time.
But, here’s the thing – he won’t. With all the money in the world, he’s simply too greedy to stop doing what buys him one more mansion or airplane. He’ll keep doing what he’s doing until the next time a Republican party gets into power, at which point, they’ll shut him (and Twitter) down aggressively and with malice, for denying their beloved leader a platform.
Until then, Facebook will continue along their merry way, warping the minds of kids, and supporting acts of domestic terrorism and violence.
Same as it ever was.”

Now about that election ….

VOTERS! They would like us to believe that they are intelligent, well read, and rational. I so wish that were true.

Most are not. They’re just not. They rail against System A until they get System B, at which point they whine and complain about System B until, inevitably, System A is returned to power, and we start the whole mess all over again. In the unlikely event that System C should win, proponents of both Systems A and B will make the leader’s life a living hell, and prevent System C from actually accomplishing anything worthwhile during their time in power, with the result that System C’s party will likely be shut out from getting another whack at governing for several decades.

And the losers are never any of the Systems; it’s always the voters. The ones that would like us to believe that they are intelligent, well read, and rational. Even when they’re not.

With that said – here we go again. It’s the election no one wanted, at a time when the precautions necessary to protect voters from COVID-19 are guaranteed to make the process as uncomfortable, maddening, and irritating as possible.

I’m working this one as a Poll Supervisor. Which means that for about 16 hours tomorrow I will be supervising and filling in for Information Officers, Registration Officers, and Deputy Returning Officers, all of whom will also be working through a very long 16 hour or more day.

Most of the people working will have had about four hours of training. Many will have never worked at a polling station before. Few will be ‘political junkies,’ and none will be allowed to wax political during the day. In fact, they’d be booted out of the station were they to do so.

People working at polling stations must maintain neutrality; we’re not allowed to wear any clothing in the colours that the political parties claim. That means no red, blue, green, orange or purple is to be seen (although blue jeans are okay.) No political buttons, no banners, or posters for any party are allowed in the room.

Elections Canada sets out certain standards that have to be maintained throughout the course of an election. The voter’s privacy, and the secrecy of the vote are time honoured precepts. Accessibility needs must be met, and all voters have the right to interact with poll officers in either of our official languages.

Health and Safety has always been a major concern, but this year, it’s changed the way a lot of things are done. For one thing, every polling station has to have a separate entrance and exit. Social distancing will be maintained, and there’s a strict, “No Mask, No Vote” rule in place. There will be no exemptions. Contact tracing will also be in play. I am really, really hoping that this does not prompt fanatics to add to what will undoubtedly be a challenge for many voters with protests or arguments with polling officers.

I’ve read complaints levelled against the slowness of the voting process during advanced voting days. I wish I could assure voters that this won’t happen on Monday, but I can’t. COVID-19 safety regulations have to be followed, and that’s slowing things down, but also, there’s been a change to what happens when you’re finally in front of the deputy returning officer, and ready to vote. In the past, there would have been two people at that desk, one doing the paperwork, and the other preparing your ballot. Under COVID laws, there is just one person doing both of those jobs. So please be patient.

There’s a lot of protocols in place for a safe and secure election. I consider Canada a beacon of sanity compared to the chaos that we see of voting in the United States. Our nationwide protocols are secure. We use the same electoral protocols right across the board, coast to coast, and, thru years of trial and error, we have created a system in which every Canadian can be assured that procedures are being properly followed, and that, at the end of the day, a winner is legally declared.

This Monday, September 20^th is the day when Canadians all across the nation are asked to do their civic duty and vote for representatives and political parties that we hope will have the intelligence, strength, compassion, and leadership ability to guide us through what is hopefully the end of the pandemic, and into the economic recovery that will emerge after this healthcare crisis.

It’s not a time to hold on to petty grudges, or to ‘stick it’ to the people who, just like you, are fallible and capable of making mistakes. Voting is not just a civic duty, it’s a gift we give our children and our future – if we do it right.

Let’s be the example of how well a strong democracy works when the people actually want everyone in their entire country to succeed, now, and in the future.

The Run Down and the Wrap Up

by Roxanne Tellier

Ah, dang it. Like death and taxes, unwanted summer electoral politics are inescapable. Rumour has it that our PM Justin Trudeau is determined to call a snap election, reportedly to be held on September 20^th. Why? Because he believes that doing so at this time will ensure his party can win a majority government, allowing him to avoid what he has been calling “opposition obstruction.”

Trudeau had a majority in the House of Commons when he first came to power in 2015, but there’s been an erosion of confidence in the years since, leading to his party being reduced to a minority in 2019. I find it hilarious, how easily those that lean right can be manipulated. “Here’s a 20-year-old photo of a young man in black face!” “I KNEW IT! Hang him high!”

There have been rumblings for months that the Liberals would spring an election on Canada, two years ahead of schedule, in response to an unfavourable slate of choices available from the NDP or the Conservatives.

In a summer fraught with tension over where the COVID virus could pop up next, and in what variant, the Libs are walking a financial tightrope. They’ve racked up record debt levels in an effort to help both the people and the businesses of Canada, but they have plans to inject another huge chunk into the economy – between 3-4% of GDP, or about $100 billion dollars. To do so, they’re going to need more than a minority government. And they would prefer not to have to count on the help of the NDG and the Greens to push thru legislation.

A Conservative attack ad that hit YouTube on Friday night has even their own party members disgusted, calling the ad dumb, tasteless, and embarrassing. It’s a 37 second video that has a cut out of Trudeau’s face pasted over the face of spoiled brat Veruca Salt, in a clip from a scene from the film “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” where the brat throws a tantrum in a song called “I Want it Now.”

With any luck, it’s already been taken down. Posting link for the strong-stomached.

Meanwhile, polls have shown that most Canadians have climate change on their mind, and are focused on a transition away from the fossil fuel industry. And the reports of summer’s horrific high temperatures and fires, here and around the globe, along with the UN’s newest report that global warming is “dangerously close to spinning out of control” would agree on that course.

“ Humans are “unequivocally” to blame, the report from the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said. Rapid action to cut greenhouse gas emissions could limit some impacts, but others are now locked in.
The deadly heat waves, gargantuan hurricanes and other weather extremes that are already happening will only become more severe. “

On the plus side, August 13 came and went without trump being reinstated, as promised by the pillow guy, so that’s a win.

The rising tide of COVID in Florida, on the other hand, is most definitely a loss. There were over 151,000 cases in Florida, and 1,071 deaths in just the last week.

It’s so bad that doctors are warning patients seeking emergency help for their children that there’s simply no more staff, equipment, or rooms available, and parents will literally have to wait for some other sick child to die before their child can even be admitted to the ICU.

The Brookings Institute made an interesting observation on the Fourth Wave battering red states. They noted that

“It is rare that a politician acts against his own self-interest—but then again, Donald Trump is a rare breed of politician. No politician has made it a habit of acting against his own electoral interest like Donald Trump…
A total of 17 of the 18 states that voted for Trump in the 2020 election have the lowest vaccination rates. The exception was Georgia which went for Biden by a very small margin…
Historically, rational political calculus has been a bipartisan quality, but not in the Trumpified GOP. If Trump wants to preserve the lives of his best voters, he would turn his rallies into mass vaccination sites. There is still time, but it is running out for thousands of Americans.”
Brookings.edu, July 2021

Meanwhile, in Ontario, we have 111 people in ICUs around the province. 110 of them are either unvaccinated, or have only had one dose.

This week, hospital teams of doctors and nurses have literally been trolling the Danforth and Gerrard Avenue, trying to bring vaccines directly to people who might have used inaccessibility as an excuse to avoid the jab.

What is it going to take to shake these dreamers out of their reveries? Ah.. right … the carrots are not working, so here come the sticks.

“The new travel vaccination policy will apply to passengers and workers in the federally regulated air, rail and cruise ship sectors. It will be enacted “as soon as possible in the fall and no later than the end of October,” the Canadian Treasury Board said on Friday.”

We need our kids back in school, our economy back in gear, and our hearts, minds and butts in restos, bars, nightclubs, theatres, and arenas. Come to the Light Side, you of the Great UnVaxxed.

Times have been hard for everyone, in the last year and a half. So much that has happened, that has upended our reality, our ‘normal,’ has been beyond our control, and due to its very novelty, often really frightening. We have been spoiled in the last 80 years; there’s been no war waged on North American land.

That’s made us quite spoiled, and sometimes very silly. Without an actual opponent, so many decided they’d make one up, turn mild adversity into a fear of escalating hardships. They created paper tigers of the innocent, blowing up the annoyances of inconvenience into firm red lines that must not be crossed. They salivated over fantastical and imaginary creatures, spent incalculable hours planning how they’d survive a zombie apocalypse, built bunkers and hoarded supplies against Armageddon.

But when a real catastrophe – a pandemic! – came along, few broke out those emergency supplies. Wouldn’t this have been the perfect time to extol one’s own prescience in prepping? How could it be that so many quite simply did not recognize a crisis when it actually came along and took a bite out of their lives?

We lived with loneliness. We lived with fear, anxiety, depression, and grief. We monitored our health, and the health of our loved ones, and when someone we loved died, we were told how and when to mourn, and how many of us would be allowed to share in that moment of remembrance. I often think about those we’ve lost, the ones we were told that we would have an opportunity to memorialize, ‘when this is over.’ That’s not how grief works. Grief cannot be put on a shelf until a convenient time arrives.

I often think about how we were encouraged, all this time, to simply ignore the sickness and death the pandemic brought. While I would have expected the media to spend hours of video on covering a world-wide disaster, there far more often seemed to be some sort of weighing of coverage, almost as though the media, usually quite open about ‘if it bleeds, it leads,’ was suddenly taking a stance more akin to trump’s pandering ‘good people on both sides.’

Perhaps it was that sloughing off of brutal truth and reality that allowed a segment of people to cease to care about their places in society, prioritizing their own opinions and wants over the rest of societies truth and needs.

That attitude spills over into all aspects of our lives. I find it heartbreaking that the people of Afghanistan are mere puzzle pieces in America’s ongoing war games. I expected the callousness of trump’s decision to leave Afghanistan; I am dumbstruck that Biden would be in agreement. When Biden first said that he’d follow trump’s lead, I assumed his reasoning was that if he didn’t, the GOP base would tear him to pieces.

But now I hear that this is simply part and parcel of a numb and hard-hearted populace who just don’t care about what is to come for the innocents of Afghan.

“…. There is, quite obviously, a calculation behind all this, which is that, after all this time and with more than enough blame to go around in both parties, Biden will not suffer politically from leaving behind an unwinnable war. Put bluntly, there is a strongly held belief in Washington that Americans simply do not care what happens in Afghanistan. Poll numbers back it up. “
“The Pentagon has warned every one of the last four Presidents that an abrupt U.S. withdrawal would lead to some version of the Afghan military debacle we are seeing this week.”
The New Yorker, August 12, 2021

Yep, we’ve been suffering through some very ‘interesting times.’ Sometimes, all you can do is keep looking for those odd bright spots that bring joy to your day and life.

During the pandemic, we’ve had a few cool things happen here at the old homestead, where ‘there’s always something happening, and it’s usually quite loud.”

This particular cool thing involves a video that the heymacs made five years ago. As one of the Mackettes who donned their fur coats, wigs, and high heels on that blustery morning, I certainly never dreamed that there’d come a day when we’d be ‘nearly famous’ in far away places with strange sounding names!

From Macky’s notes:

“So, several years ago, the heymacs started stumbling into their first music videos, and one of us said “Let’s put them on the internet. All the kids are doing it” .
Someone else said “How’s anybody gonna know about them? There’s no cash to do promotion for our flicks”. Also brought up was the fact that the situation probably wouldn’t change, as we weren’t playing live to spread the word and, maybe, flog some T-shirts to aid with the cash shortage.
What’s more, there’s no friggin’ way any record company was going to sign a bunch of Rock’n Roll relics, and what band management company would waste their time on some guys whose main pass-time was hanging out in the alley behind the warehouse where they got together to plan what tunage to work on next.
But, couldn’t hurt to give it a whirl, so we picked one we liked and stuck it out there. At first, nothing much happened . . yeah, it got a few more views on the yootooby every month, but the going was slow.
Then, suddenly a couple months ago, our cover of Ray Charles’ little beauty “Hit The Road, Jack” took off like a rocket! Ten thousand – – twenty – – then 50,0000 and 125,000 – – and, soon, a quarter-of-a-million – – and, at this moment 498,730
Well, it’s looking like it’s gonna cruise past 500,000 tonight, so the heymacs want to thank anyone who gave us a peek and supported the effort! Cheers, dudes & dudettes . . we like your taste in tunes !!“
Macky, of the heymacs

The heymacs cover of “Hit the Road Jack” hit the ½ million mark, and then just kept on climbing. 550,000 clicks as of this morning. And where it stops, nobody knows …

And that’s it, folks, that’s your wrap up and run down.

Happy Summer Folks!

You Say Sedation, I say Sedition

by Roxanne Tellier

In the face of a soon to be ex-president who has lost spectacularly and consistently, at the polls, and in and out of court since November 3^rd, it’s hard to grant any credibility whatsoever to the Republican Party – no, scratch that – the Trump Party. The cult is being run by a master gaslighter, who tried, but failed to steal an election, despite using every dirty trick in the book, who is now arguing that the election was stolen from him, he believes, by a better thief than he.

Let’s be very clear; if there is one thing at which trump excels, it’s gaslighting. He is a walking Master Class in the art of brain scrambling. His particular brand is almost indistinguishable from the sort of emotional, verbal and physical abuse routinely dealt out to children and spouses by malignant narcissists. Those who manage to escape from that sort of trauma generally need years of counselling and treatment to find their way back to emotional equilibrium, post abuse.

Trump told the nation repeatedly that the election would be fraudulent. He seeded the ground for his base to believe that anything but a trump win would be illegal. He said that he would not lose the election, and that he was going to continue being their president for as long as he wanted. He told them he wouldn’t be going. He told them he wouldn’t concede. He told them that there’d be no peaceful transfer of power. He told them over and over again exactly who and what he was.

So why is anyone surprised that that is exactly what he’s doing now?

What DOES surprise me is how meek the Democrats have acted in the face of this sedition. While I understand Biden’s wish to soothe America’s soul, there will be a point at which even his supporters will consider his soft-heartedness as simply the mirror image of the political depravity of the GOP.

Leaving aside the issue of whether or not Trump will be held accountable for his crimes against humanity throughout his presidency, can someone tell me why Lindsay Graham was not charged when he attempted to interfere with the results of Georgia’s election? On November 17^th, he told reporters straight out that his efforts to overturn Biden’s win included pressure campaigns in Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona.

“Sen. Graham is bordering on a crime against his country by trying to overturn a free and fair election to keep Trump in office.” PoliticusUSA

The decision to not charge Graham, or at the very least sanction him publicly, has been read as license for other Republicans in the party of ‘Law and Order” to throw caution (and legality) to the wind, and go even bigger.

Sure, there was an ethics complaint filed by Walter Shaub, demanding that Graham’s conduct, which constitutes an abuse of office and conduct unbecoming, be investigated, after Georgia’s Secretary of State confirmed that Graham had called him in an attempt to have him throw the election. But that, and a couple of bucks, will get you a coffee at MacDonald’s. By the time the complaint inches it’s way to the front of the line, most of us will barely remember this seditious action.

“Results of a Washington Post survey of all 249 Republicans in the House and Senate that began the morning after Trump posted a 46-minute video Wednesday evening in which he wrongly claimed he had defeated Biden and leveled wild and unsubstantiated allegations of “corrupt forces” who stole the outcome from the sitting president… showed that just two Republicans consider Trump the winner despite all evidence showing otherwise. And another 220 GOP members of the House and Senate — about 88 percent of all Republicans serving in Congress — will simply not say who won the election.” Washington Post, December 5, 2020

Truly, any Republican senator who refuses to recognize that Biden won the election and must be respected as president elect, should resign their seat, since what they’re saying is contrary to their oaths to protect the constitution, the results of a free and fair election, and democracy.

By their words and actions, every one of those Republicans is guilty of sedition.

“By assaulting U.S. democracy in so many ways, Trump has shone a light on its weaknesses. We should seize this moment to strengthen our institutions,” Fareed says, proposing nonpartisan boards to oversee US elections, a requirement that presidents place their business holdings in blind trusts, and other changes. “That way, if another Trump-like politician (or Trump himself in four years) tries to pervert the system again, American democracy will be better equipped to withstand it.” (Fareed Zakaria)

You know what’s the craziest part of it all, through this insane clown rodeo? That so many high-tension moments in the last four years have just passed through and been forgotten in the diarrheic flow of yet more unbelievable moments. Madness piled upon insanity, a never-ending story of cruelty, sadism, vengeance, and hatred. Stunning moments of craven loyalty, followed by equally stunning acts of retributive disloyalty. A nonstop flow of adrenaline raising accusations and hysteria, that never allows America’s cortisone level to return to anything vaguely resembling normality.

In the face of this, is it so hard to believe that those of weaker minds and ethics have simply had their ability to reason broken? That it becomes easier for them to hear the unbelievable and wonder if perhaps, just perhaps, it IS all ‘fake news’, and that it’s trump that’s telling them the truth, despite his history of tens of thousands of lies?

I’m a huge fan of the bellicose and belligerent newscaster Keith Olbermann, who hosted a political web series called “The Resistance” for GQ from September 13, 2016 to November 27, 2017. He’s back, with another round of very loud yelling at the soon to be ex-president with a new grouping of targeted accusations, that he’s calling “Olbermann vs Trump – The Worst Person in the World.”

Here’s his latest screed, post trump’s whinefest in Georgia, in which he describes how trump accidentally conceded the election by baffling his own self with his own bullsh*t, and then names names of those blatantly committing crimes in support of the failed president’s tantrums. It’s six good minutes any NeverTrumper can thoroughly enjoy.

“As of Friday, the leading cause of death in America is Donald Trump.”

73 million people voted for Trump for a second time, in November. They wanted more of a pathological liar, a sadist, and a malignant narcissistic sociopath, who bullies the handicapped, and lacks empathy even for children. Trump is the Mad King, the ruler in near exile, who wants America to prove its loyalty to him by ripping itself in half. The worrying thing is that, while Biden will very likely be inaugurated on January 20^th, 2021, the damage to the nation may never be completely healed, a Trumpian legacy that no one saw coming, despite the neon lights and klaxons that heralded its approach.

Ding Dong Is That Witch Dead Yet?

On Wednesday, I began my column by saying “It’s nighttime in America.”

Today, I’m happy to report that at 11:30 am, on Saturday November 7^th, the media called the 2020 US presidential election, and named as winners former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., and his running mate– the first woman elected to the vice presidency– California Senator Kamala Harris.

And suddenly – it’s a new day in America.

(Paging Bill Barr… Mr. William Barr … has anybody seen the Attorney General? It’s been days!)

Ah, forget about him. Barr and the rest of trump’s cast of sycophantic minions are about to be returned to the reeking garbage scows from which they were so serendipitously plucked before being delicately mixed in with Washington’s miasma of swamp creatures. Today, I can finally say that I believe a day will come – very soon! – when we will be able to say, with true confusion … “Ivanka Who?”

And to think, it all started with one broke man with a crazy dream, riding a golden escalator.

But for now, my friends, it is time to dance in the streets. Rejoice, righteously, for those who fearlessly stood up for democracy. It wasn’t easy. It truly has been America’s long national nightmare, four years that felt more like four decades, and it ain’t the COVID that has left most of us looking ten years older, and feeling twenty years older, than when it first began.

He told us who and what he was, but many didn’t believe him. Five years after that escalator ride, trump had showed the entire planet exactly who and what he was, and still, many don’t believe what they see with their own eyes. A dictator wannabe, lacking in character, incompetent, vengeful, sadistic. Also, a proven coward, apathetic and weak.

And yet, he nearly succeeded in ending democracy in America.

The next person hellbent on that kind of mission may not be so incompetent. He or she may have learned how not to telegraph every treasonous move. He or she may succeed.

Which is why – it’s not over. It’s never over.

Politics is hard, and unending, when done right. So many of us like to slag off politics and politicians, branding them all useless and corrupt. And certainly, many are. We have stunning evidence of that, in history, and in current politics. But politics is not just those men and women who chose to enter the field – democratic politics, our preferred norm, actually DEMANDS that we all take an active part in a successful society. In other words, like it or lump it, you too … are in politics.

Surprise! Being a good citizen doesn’t end with casting a vote. It means actually knowing the issues on the table, being honest, trustworthy, and law abiding. It means being a good neighbour, of being respectful of the rights and property of others, and being a good global citizen, respecting nature. It means taking responsibility for your actions.

All of those attributes may seem quaint, but without the majority of us following those rules, our society falls apart. We’re stronger when we’re all together, working together, not against each other.

It hurts to think that over 71 million Americans watched the evil trump and his administration perpetrated, and voted for more, and worse to come. 71 million voters were okay with kids being torn from their parents; with the DACA kids being cast adrift; with Russia offering bounties to Afghanis for American military scalps; with a lawless administration; with the only thing preventing a depression being bailouts to those nearly bankrupted by bad trade deals …. And by the reality of more than 230,000 Americans already in their graves, dead from COVID-19.

We already knew that, coming up, the least of the evils about to be visited on America, under a re-elected trump, would be the firing of Dr Fauci. On the agenda, under his packed and stacked Supreme Court were the final killing blow to the Affordable Care Act’s protection of those with pre-existing conditions. And he’d tentatively moved forward to dismantling Medicare and Social Security. No plans for stemming the tide of COVID deaths. Things were looking pretty bleak.

How bad was it? Enough to make a grown man cry.

But 71 million voters were okay with all of that, because they had a few more bucks in their pocket under trump’s reign.

As marketer Seth Godin said, “If your guiding principle is to do whatever benefits you right now, you don’t have principles of much value.”

It would appear that there are two diametrically opposed political ideologies in today’s America, and that it comes down to generations of right-wing media creating a fictional world that gives them comfort, clashing with those who are living in a reality-based community. Both sides believe they are right, but only one has the receipts.

So, there’s still much to worry about. There’s a long, hard, road ahead of us. Biden’s win is just the first step on that journey.

I’m pretty sure that trump won’t be leaving behind a handy list of “All the Bad Stuff I Did.’ Instead, the new administration will have to figure out which Jenga pegs he pulled from which vital institutions, and try to plug those holes as quickly as they can, to prevent the tower from toppling.

Remember, there were people who died on battlefields, and in concentration camps, and yes, in cotton fields in the Deep South, after peace and freedom was declared. There are many who are suffering right now, who may not live long enough to see the end of this administration.

And though thousands of Americans are dying daily, needlessly, from COVID-19, which did not miraculously disappear on November 4^th, as promised by trump, trump actually outperformed Biden in states like Texas, Florida, Iowa, Montana and both Dakotas, all of which had the highest numbers of new cases per capita in recent weeks. His followers seem unperturbed, which I can only compare to the mental gymnastics of groupies who are fine with the long-term effects of various venereal diseases, if they can proudly claim to have caught them from their teen cult idol.

Biden’s got a plan to beat the virus into submission, and it’s going into place this coming week. But it won’t be enough to save everyone from the months of neglect on disease containment.

Trump can, and will, do a lot of damage on his way out. That’s a given. He’s a man that can hold a grudge for decades, waiting for the moment when he finally gets to lower a (nuclear) boom. Look to history – dictators are not benevolent in defeat. Germany was bombed to smouldering rubble as Hitler ranted in his bunker.

Some in the Republican party have been pleading that the new administration go easy on poor old Donnie. They suggest we turn down the heat, and that Dems respect that this is all so very hard for a young and naive 74-year-old to deal with all at once.

Which brings us to the next conundrum: what happens next to the boy who never wanted to grow up? Does he get pardoned? Plead insanity? It’s going to be pretty hard to pull off an insanity defense. In the case of COVID-19 alone, there are many hours of taped conversation between trump and Bob Woodward, in which trump bragged about lying about the virus to the American people. He knew, all along, exactly how virulent and deadly the infection would be, and did not act. It was a lack of leadership, and criminal negligence, that sentenced a quarter of a million Americans to death, not a ‘Kung Flu.’ Trump is a murderous sociopath, and it will only be by making an example of his sedition that another, more capable, traitor is prevented.

But Ding Dong, the Witch is Nearly Dead – the Empire has been saved – and it is right and just that those who worked to stop the fascistic arc, that those who voted to stop trump – rejoice!

The long nightmare did not belong to America alone. This glorious moment, this breath of fresh air, belongs to us all.

Congratulations to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., and his running mate– the first woman elected to the vice presidency– California Senator Kamala Harris.

**“Rosa sat, so Ruby could walk, and Kamala could run. “**

Nighttime in America

The American Dream is OVER. It’s nighttime in America.

If Biden was running for the ‘soul of America,’ he was too late. It had already been sold to the Devil. And its apprentice, trump, along with his squad of overweight, wannabe SS, has now emerged, crueler, more sadistic, and more vengeful than ever, whether, in the end, he wins or loses.

I write this, around noon on November 4^th, trump and Biden are basically neck and neck in terms of votes. The Senate is about the same, so no clear winner there either. Biden has been sitting at 223 Electoral College points, and trump at 213, since I first checked in, around 5 a.m. At this point, either man could be declared the winner. But whomever wins, whether with 50.1% or 51% of the votes, it is America that is the loser. Because a country that split, that cleaved so cleanly, cannot hold. And a Senate that split, cannot pass any measures to help a country that is hurting badly.

In 2016, the world was shocked at what America chose, but we could still pretend that this was somehow a mistake. Good people looked at those who struggled economically, and, based on the violence, racism and inequity of American society, said, “well, maybe they had to do it, had to pray there could be a different way. They put their trust in a con man, but, really — how bad could it get?”

And then, for four years, we found out. Boy, could it be bad. So bad, that parts of the nation now look like a third world nation, as tens of millions have been plunged into poverty and homelessness; immigrants, refugees … children! … have been treated with a sadistic cruelty not seen since Hitler’s camps; 230,000 Americans are dead from what should have been a preventable public health crisis; the environmental clock has been turned back to before anyone cared about clear air or water; peaceful protestors are routinely met with pepper spray and rubber bullets, and there’s no hope in petitioning the court, because McConnell and co. loaded up every court, right up to the Supreme one, and it’s all tilted in their favour, and their favour means you are going to lose the last of your health care AND your social security.

And yet half of America, knowing this, decided they want four more .. no, it being trump… forever more years of this. And worse.

We now know the truth about that half of America; they not only chose that all of that evil continue; they ran towards it with open arms and embraced it, with all of the strength in their bodies.

It’s a travesty. Even before mail-in votes are counted, trump has racked up two million MORE votes than he got in 2016. There were more votes cast for Joe Biden as president than in any other election in American history. And yet – there still isn’t a clear winner.

The Dems wanted and needed a landslide, a total repudiation of the evil that the trump administration has perpetrated, but that didn’t happen.

But the polls! The polls! I mean, most of us were suffering from PTSD from believing the 2016 polls, but come on! How could the polls have been THIS wrong again, in 2020 …? All the experts swore that they’d gotten all the bugs out, and that this time – FOR SURE Were the polls that wrong? Were people lying to pollsters? How did the Democrat message get so garbled.

And here we are.

Trump will not concede; he will never concede. Predictably, at 2:21 a.m., in the wee hours of November 4. trump attempted to falsely claim victory, saying that it was a “fraud on the American public,” and “an embarrassment to our country” that he hasn’t been able to fully celebrate his win properly.

“Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump said, while also suggesting he would take legal action to keep further ballots from being counted, insinuating that Democrats were committing fraud as key states continued to count hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots.

“Millions and millions of people voted for us today,” he said, “and a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people, and we won’t stand for it.”

As expected, trump will be petitioning the Supreme Court for a stop to the counting of the remaining ballots, again insisting that the remaining ballots, which number about 25 million from mail ins and the military, are somehow illegal.

“We’ll be going to the US Supreme Court; we want all voting to stop, we don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list.”

So how to explain this mess? Racism? But Obama won twice, and with a majority, so racism might not quite be the issue. Could it be misogyny? A vote for Biden, at 78, almost guarantees that at some point, you might have a black FEMALE president. Trump spent a lot of time hinting that Biden was too fragile to survive, even claiming that Joe Biden would be “shot” within three weeks of taking office. (While he meant ‘shot’ in the sense of exhaustion, he had no problem with the more violent connotation so many of his supporters hoped he was insinuating.)

Trump also told his supporters that they would never have to see Kamala Harris as president in Biden’s place.

“People don’t like her,” the president said at a rally in North Carolina, recounting her falling poll numbers on the Democratic primary trail. “Nobody likes her. She could never be the first woman president. She could never be. That would be an insult to our country.” (ABC News)

And recently, he went even further, when he told his supporters at the retirement community, The Villages, in Florida, “We’re not going to have a socialist president, especially a female socialist president.”

And here we are.

In the Senate, despite the $100 million spent in South Carolina on Jaime Harrison’s campaign against Lindsey Graham, Graham won 55% to 43.7%. Mitch McConnell beat Amy McGrath, 58.2% to 37.8%. Even Joni Ernst won her race, which no one could have envisioned. And Maine’s Susan Collins, believe it or not, will hang around to continue playing her Lucy to the Democrats Charlie Brown for another six long and dithering years.

I’m numb. My head is splitting, and my ears are ringing. The TV is blaring CNN updates, while MSNBC keeps me informed on the computer. But the numbers are unchanging, no matter how much attention I pay to them.

Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele reminds us that, “Democratic Americans still don’t understand what Donald Trump represents, and that it’s what 50% of Americans want.”

Joy Reid (MSNBC’s AM Joy): “I just wonder what all of this says about us. I think it raises real questions about what America is, at the end of the day, and whether what trump is, is more like what the American character is, than people ever wanted to admit.”

Randy Rainbow tweeted, “Woke up with a hangover in a stranger’s bed. But the stranger was America. “

And the comments pour in. On Facebook, “I feel like I was lied to my whole childhood. I was so proud to be an American, that we are the greatest country in the world. Now I see America for what it is – a bunch of horrible, selfish, stupid people who are unAmerican run the country. And the rest of us are screwed pawns.”

From Richard Kay, “To all the people I talked to previously about the extent of Trump-supporting rednecks, Christian fundamentalists, gun-crazy yahoos in the USA, and those people I was talking to, who replied, “oh, they’re only a small % of the country; the majority of citizens are good people.” Well, here’s proof you were wrong.”

From Jim Wright/Stonekettle Station, “It’s not over, of course, and Biden may indeed yet win. But even if that happens, it’s pretty obvious that at least half of our country would have been those Germans who embraced the Nazis. It’s about what I figured.”

Gary LeDrew: “It is looking like about 4 years before we can open the border. Not much hope for the world and mega deaths for USA “

From Daniel C. Castellano: “After all that has happened. After all that they have seen. Still, they say, “Yup, that’s my guy.” 67 MILLION people. They are despicable. Every last one of them. If one of them is a friend or relative of yours, I’m sorry. But they are awful, awful people. Every. One. Of. Them.”

Wayne Baggs: “Many believe one gets what they deserve. The beginning of the end. Goodbye health care, social security, public schools, right to choose, balanced courts. I love watching train wrecks. They wanted the GOP; they got the GOP. Let the shit show begin. The cowards were only getting started.”

David Corn, (Mother Jones): “Close to half of the American electorate voted for a man who just declared he would try to block election results and undermine American democracy to remain in power.”

Annie G. Robinson:“It’s like a family in our neighbourhood was accused of committing murder. We then determined that only a few family members were guilty, and the rest were innocent. Now we’ve discovered that the guilty family members are actually serial killers, and are acting proud of it, sticking their middle fingers in our faces. And a few that we thought were innocent are guilty also. The truly innocent ones are shocked and heartbroken, and now they, too, are under threat. That’s the way I feel about the US this morning.”

Glenn Morgan: What I DON’T look forward to … is the DOUBLING DOWN of HERR TRUMP’s denigration of the Free Press… he will now try to CRUSH DISSENT of journalists such as CNN & MSNBC, and truly try to DOMINATE the airwaves and Social Media with his insane blather.”

Peter Winholt: “Whoever wins, the loser is America. They have chosen, by close to the same margin as last election, to embrace the values that Trump has shamelessly flaunted in the campaign. The only difference now will be in which direction the U.S. is facing going forward. Where they are standing is in the middle of an Idiocracy, having chosen Q-Anon over science, lies over truth, and sociopathy over empathy.”

Michael Moore: “Sadly, as to why our fellow Americans did not repudiate Trump yesterday in a massive way, as to why nearly 70 million Americans still embrace a bigot and a psychopath — well, we must have that discussion soon as to who we REALLY are. Shameful. Apologies to our Black brothers and sisters, and apologies to the rest of the world.”

Shameful indeed.

But here we are ….

To be continued ….

Return to Innocence Lost

by Roxanne Tellier

“There are decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen.”

Ain’t it the truth! Hey, Hi! It’s me, back from what seems like the hiatus that lasted an eternity.

Not that I’m complaining… no siree! I have been BUSY, my darlings … busier than a <fill in your corny but slightly amusing blank here.> Hellzapoppin’, dontcha know, and we’re careening sans seatbelts to what I expect to be a fiery finish to the apogee of the annus horribilis known as 2020.

One might even go so far as to say 2020 is the annus horribilis of all anni horribiles.

About the only good thing I can say about this year so far is that it was a good year for coleus.

Oh, and another good thing – the world took a much needed, deep breath. COVID-19 forced so many of us to slow down, for possibly the first time in our busy, busy lives. Not just slow down; in some cases, things came to a screeching halt. With very little notice, the fabric of our lives, the government offices, the libraries, the restaurants I loved to frequent – began to shut down around us, without the slightest hint of if or when they’d ever re-open.

COVID put a spoke in the wheel that belonged to the organizers of my high school reunion event. Fifty years! Man, that’s a long time! And I never would have even heard about the celebrations (now postponed to next July) if the occasion had not been postponed. With extra time, and unexpected time on their hands, some of the planners set about contacting as many of the old grads as they could. And I was one of their finds.

As each new contact is added to the Facebook page, I find myself drifting back to the skinny, big eyed school girl I was then, staring dreamy eyed at the Roman profile of my first crush, Hugh, or walking home from school with Michael, who managed to con me out of my bus money every single day, so that he could satisfy his thirst for a family sized bottle of Coke. Gathering with Ann, Marianne and Donna to squeal over the new Monkees album. Getting ripped off, trying to buy pot for the first time, and being sold parsley in its place. Ah, those were the days.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2972834292777783

So, I guess that’s two things good about this annus … the coleus, and the reunion. Sadly, the rest of this year has really sucked.

Hmm, let’s see .. did anything else interesting happen since we last chatted, on August 9^th?

Oh. Right. We discovered a few rather nasty things about that trump guy. Like, that he’s not actually as dozy, folksy and down home as he’s been pretending, and that, in fact, he’s got some rather interesting ideas about the 1.3 million active duty military of whom he’s currently Commander in Chief, as well as those countless millions of volunteers and draftees thru the decades, who went forth and around the globe to protect America and others from the horrors of fascism and dictatorship.

We already knew that he ‘preferred people who didn’t get captured’ in wartime, but we didn’t yet know that he thought that those who chose to serve were suckers, and those that became injured, prisoners of war, or who died for the cause, were losers, until the recent release of his ex-lawyer, Michael Cohen’s, new tell-all book.

But I think what came as the deepest gut punch was the realization that the elected and nominal ‘leader of men’ is completely unable to understand the selflessness and patriotism of those that gave their lives in service to their country. For trump, everything is transactional. Even love of country.

“I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Trump asked as he stood by the grave of General John Kelly’s son, killed in combat.

But even as we reeled in horror from the blatant entitlement of a creature who had himself medically deferred from serving, not once, but five times, there was another sucker punch waiting in the wings.

Veteran journalist Bob Woodward, half of the dynamic duo that brought down Nixon by exposing the Watergate scandal, released a new book detailing his late night, and uncensored chatty chats with the POTUS. And oh lordy, there were tapes.

Considering that trump is said not to drink alcohol, it’s hard to understand the ‘in vino veritas’ nature of his confidences. Was he bragging when he leaked top secret military information on future armaments to someone with no security clearance? Did he think that confessing his complicity in covering up Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman’s role in the torture and murder of Jamal Khashoggi, an American resident and journalist, would make him look like a strongman?

And most of all, did he care at all about the consequences of concealing exactly how deadly COVID-19 was, from the American people, whom he’d sworn an oath to defend?

The tapes confirm that trump knew that the virus was especially deadly in early February, even as he publicly told American citizens that there was nothing to worry about, and that the 15 official cases the U.S. currently had would soon be down to just a handful.

“It goes through the air. That’s always tougher than the touch. You don’t have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breath the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.” Trump told Woodward.

In front of a South Carolina rally, just two days later, he told the crowd that the virus was just the Democrats’ ‘new hoax.”

On March 19, trump told Woodward that he “wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Strange words indeed from the man who has whipped up the fears of Americans daily – even hourly – since coming down the escalator to announce his intent to run for president, to save Americans from the ‘carnage’ about to befall them due to immigrants, people of colour, transsexuals, bathrooms, suburbs, and Muslims.

In March, trump also confided to Woodward that some “startling facts” had just come out about the virus’ targets. “It’s not just old, older. Young people, too, plenty of young people.”

It’s been a long year, so remind me .. when exactly did trump begin exhorting the nation to re-open it’s doors, in order to save ‘his’ economy? Oh right.. that would have been before Easter – April 12^th this year.

And when did he begin demanding that kids, whom he claimed where virtually immune to the virus, prepare to return to schools?

July 6, 2020: “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!” he tweeted, and repeated again and again as the weeks went by, adding threats to withhold federal funds should the schools not obey his mandate.

Trump lied. People died. Trump lied to protect his ratings. He lied to get re-elected. He lied because he put his own needs above the needs of every single one of the 331 million Americans under his mantle. He lied, and he golfed, and he lied some more and golfed some more.

When confronted with his lies, trump began to spin like an intoxicated top. First, he insisted that his reticence to tell the people the extent of the virus was due to his reluctance to start a panic.

Imagine how very different the world would look today if, when the first bombs began to fall on London, Winston Churchill had told the people of England not to worry, because the Nazis would be gone by the spring. But that didn’t happen, because Churchill had faith in the British people. Trump did NOT have faith that the American people could cope with a pandemic.

Next, he tried to paint himself as some sort of cheerleader of the people. Let’s look back at Exhibit A, shall we? If you don’t trust your people enough to believe they could handle news of a pandemic .. just how ‘cheery’ are you? Time to turn in the pom poms, Missy.

And yet, even as over 6 million Americans have tested positive for the virus, with 4000 new infections and 1000 new deaths being tabulated every single day, with nearly 200,000 Americans tucked into body bags, and new estimates for year end rising to as high as 450,000, trump is still not telling his deluded base the truth, still mocking others for wearing masks and attempting to protect themselves from infection.

Despite the truth now being evident that children are not only carriers, but can themselves become ill and die, trump is not calling for the schools to be shut down, or ensuring public health standards are met, but instead, continues to pretend that all is well.

“Clap your hands if you believe in fairies!”

It’s as if he’s a starry-eyed seven-year-old at a Peter Pan pantomime matinee, still believing that if we all clap our hands, Tinkerbelle will come back to life, along with all those innocents he’s murdered through criminal negligence.

It’s mid September – just 50 plus days away from what will most assuredly be a memorable election on November 3^rd.

For those who still wonder if he should be given the chance he’s requesting, to be re-elected so that he might, in effect, have a ‘do over’ … so that this time, he might actually accomplish one good thing for the American people NOT in the 1%, it must be remembered that his years in office have sent the economy into a tailspin, and millions to food banks and hostels; that he’s willfully and maliciously mismanaged the COVID-19 pandemic, while also attempting to bribe the Ukrainian Government into investigating a political rival, and begging China to help him in his quest for re-election. He’s supported white nationalist, white supremacist, racist causes while endorsing conspiracy theories about political opponents and minorities, withheld funds to states he believes have not shown enough gratitude to him, and kissed Kim Jung Un’s ass – possibly with tongue. And that he’s told over 20,000 verified lies.

He’s separated untold thousands of children from their parents, and confined them in cages, where they have shivered, alone, untended, and unmedicated, to the point where some have died. He’s already been impeached, although his Republican colleagues refused to actually throw him out of office, due to their fear of his tweets and threats.

He’s continued to work to overturn policies that might attempt to mitigate climate change, and fired or silenced climate scientists, even as the west burns, and the south floods. He sold out the Kurds to suck up to Erdogan, and ignored North Korea’s building of a nuclear arsenal. He assigned unqualified and incompetent minions to prime positions, and assigned them to tear down the foundations of American government. He has yet to confront Putin over allegations that Russia is paying Afghan militants bounties to murder U.S. troops.

He and his family have illegally used the White House grounds, personnel, and the military for partisan political events, for his own benefit, but paid for by taxpayer dollars. He’s used his presidential powers to enrich himself, his family, and his friends. He’s foisted unqualified judges upon the nation, which alone will ensure a continuation of his racist, bigoted, and misogynistic policies for decades to come.

And he’s left the country holding their breath in fear for what will happen in the days leading up to Election Night, and what will happen after that, regardless of who wins the presidential race. It is pretty much a given that he will claim fraud of some sort, and rally his motley crue of toothless, but heavily armed ‘militias’ to come to his defence.

The election, like the one in 2000, may very well end up decided in the Supreme Court, at which point we can only hope that Chief Justice John Roberts, with his swing vote, will have the power to either save American democracy, or not allow the nation to lapse into chaos and possibly Civil War.

So, yeah – good to be back in the saddle, fellow babies. Strap in. It’s gonna be a helluva ride ….

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/RoxanneTellier

The Tribe Has Spoken

by Roxanne Tellier

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and if you didn’t look at the calendar, you’d think that Spring had sprung.

Except for in Nevada, where the Bernie Sanders romp to victory last night has half of America’s pundits tearing their hair out in despair, and the other half still picking their jaws up off the ground.

Bob Lefsetz nailed it in his Lefsetz Letter when he wrote, “Bernie Sanders wins handily in Nevada and the lead story in the “Times” is how his road forward is fraught with difficulties. That’s like focusing on LeBron’s theoretical injuries in the future as opposed to how well he is playing for the Lakers today.”

Political pundit Chris Matthews put his foot in it last night, when he claimed on his show Hardball that the GOP had oppo research on Sanders that would blow him out of the water, should he become the Democratic presidential nominee. As the Bernie votes rose, Matthews then compared Sanders’ Nevada victory to Hitler’s invasion of France.

Sanders Is a 78 year old man who lost family in the Holocaust, and is on track to be America’s first Jewish president.

Shouldn’t be too surprising that both terrestrial and social media exploded this morning with demands that Matthews resign, if not immediately commit ceremonial seppuku, to expiate his sin of having an unpopular opinion.

Hey, I’ve had my issues with all of the delegates, including Bernie. There’s not one ‘great’ candidate on display. But in such a limited field, I can get behind Bernie, and not just in an ‘anyone but trump’ position.

I get a little peeved that Bernie can’t seem to consistently and properly describe and explain that it’s not democratic socialism, it’s social democracy. Yeah, yeah… he’s been working this side of the street forever, and I can believe he’s tired of saying the same thing over and over, but that’s how this stuff is done now, in a world where people DO have to be beaten over the head before they embrace a new thought.

(Is it the water down there? It’s gotta be the water, right?)

In fact, Bernie would be smarter to use a term that Republicans could really get behind, and would have no real reason to undermine … “Rooseveltism.” In one swell foop the word evokes that cherished time when the ‘greatest generation’ worshipped FDR for ‘saving’ America.

On January the 1^st of this year, the Atlantic ran an article that said that, no matter what happens in this election, Americans will almost certainly elect the oldest president, the youngest president, or the only president to ever win re-election following impeachment. In no part of the article did it even hint that Americans would be electing a great president.

We’re in full blown BizarroWorld now.

It’s odd, this place that both the Democratic and Republican party have come to. We’re not in Kansas anymore. The Republican party is a shell of it’s former self, having abandoned everything they ever stood for in blind loyalty to a mad man determined to suck the American treasury dry for his own gratification, before setting the place on fire and walking away. The Democratic party is beating itself up on debate stages while the Democratic National Committee is in danger of repeating it’s horrific 2016 choice to shove their preferred candidate into position, regardless of what the people profess to want.

Didn’t work then. Won’t work now. But it could spell the end of the DNC, should they try that tactic again.

And of course, all of this very expensive campaigning and jockeying for position assumes that the November elections will actually be ‘free and fair.’ That’s debatable right there. Although Congress made available over $425 million to be used to ensure election security, pretty much nothing has been done, or spent, on working towards that goal.

And every single time the House puts forward bills meant to ensure the fairness and security of the election, the Republicans in the Senate veto the bills, without offering any suggestions of their own about security.

Just from that truth, you have to see that it’s extremely unlikely that the November 3rd elections will have much to do with democracy. It’s pretty much a forgone conclusion that they will be the antithesis of fair and free.

And that’s a real pity, because I think that Americans who are watching this unfettered POTUS post acquittal are too skittish to do what they probably should be doing right this minute – rising up en masse to protest and force him out of office and into a straightjacket.

I think that the average voter is instead saying, let’s be sensible. Let’s push this down the road. We’ll deal with it in November, when we can legally and properly vote him out of office.

And hey! I really hope that works for them. I just don’t think there’s gonna be much left of America worth voting for, nine months from now. Not the way the madness is accelerating out of control. Trump has picked up the pace on the crazy, and turned up the fascism burner to stun.

Am I lucky or cursed, to be able to spend so much time following the news? You really couldn’t be any more jacked in to the trump administration’s insanity than I am, and I still can’t process all of the horrors that this barbaric juggernaut lays down every day. I am one person – they are an administration dedicated to only one thing – the complete annihilation of America’s institutions and foundations.

This morning I read that Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor wrote a scathing dissent to a recent decision made by the Court, which is now little more than a rubber stamp for Trumpian requests.

“Claiming one emergency after another, the Government has recently sought stays in an unprecedented number of cases, demanding immediate attention and consuming limited Court resources in each. And with each successive application, of course, its cries of urgency ring increasingly hollow.”

While I understand her overall anger and frustration with the Court, the particular case she chose to present as proof was more than a little troubling. This request was to pursue something so vile and so un-American that I had originally assumed the issue would never even come to court.

The application pending litigation, the case that trump’s administration considered an emergency, was an update of the “public charge” rule. This rule is meant to help officials decide if an immigrant should be allowed to apply for citizenship and/or a green card, in consideration of whether that immigrant can prove self-sufficiency, and whether or not they might at some point in their lives become a burden on the state, by requiring any government benefits, from welfare, to health care, or social security at retirement.

In a five to four decision, trump’s horribly xenophobic request, a condition that his own parents couldn’t have passed, passed in his favour.

I guess it’s time to melt that Statue of Liberty down, and make it into a big T for TrumpLandia to be put in its place. Underneath that, instead of the beautiful poem that offers respite and welcome to immigrants, they should place a sign that says, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. “

Every now and again I wonder if America (and the world, for that matter) is being punked. Surely these last three years of horrific assaults on common decency, made by an unprincipled, unbridled, racist, misogynist, xenophobic, senile, doddering old fool will at some point be broken by a maniacally grinning Mitch McConnell, dressed as The Joker, popping up and yelling “GOTCHA”

As it stands, all we can hope for is that this ongoing reality series has a huge blindside in the works, that will knock out our least favorite player, and send him off the island. The tribe has spoken.

Lying Liars, Bullies & Cowards

by Roxanne Tellier

I’ve written before about the dangers of elected officials lying to the public. Twice, in fact. In modern politics, it seems that lying in public has replaced any pretence of integrity or any desire to have one’s tenure be remembered with respect.

Lying breaks our faith in others – once we know that someone will lie to us, we can never again truly trust that person. And it doesn’t matter why the lie was told, because the lie reveals something very important about the liar; the liar is a coward.

There’s a reason that the book ‘Profiles in Courage’ is so slim .. it’s because most people are cowards. Oh, they talk a good game. Keyboard warriors slam those who disagree with their contentions. But put them in the same room with their opponent, face to face, and …. crickets. What are they going to do, pull out a gun? Not in Canada, thank heavens. A raised voice is generally our strongest weapon.

The media, bound by economics to depend on ratings and ‘hits,’ lies regularly, either to advance a cause, by omission, or to ensure that the fool sitting in front of the camera will be willing to return the next time they do something newsworthy enough to be asked back. They forget that truth is what is needed, and that you are allowed to talk over or contradict a liar. Profit has trumped truth.

Getting along with other people is integral to a workable society. Being friendly and helpful to others, while respecting their differences and opinions, is the glue that advances and enhances our society.

Humans have evolved to tell polite little ‘white lies’ in their daily lives, and most of us tell at least two a day. But there is a very clear distinction between ‘white lies’ that are meant to soothe the person being lied to, and ‘black lies’, which are antisocial, and meant to benefit the person doing the lying.

Black liars are cowards, and cowards are afraid of being found unworthy. So they lie to cover their lack of abilities. They know that there will be consequences if people discover the truth about what they are, what they do, and why.

Those who stand behind liars and bullies for fear of the bully taking reprisals are cowards, who only have loyalty to themselves.

Right now, we’re watching a dismantling of nations. We have discovered, as people do when little can be hidden, that too many of the people in whom they are supposed to have unlimited trust, are liars and cowards.

In this time, when people have long been vaguely aware that governments are fallible, and that those same governments are often not working for the working classes, but rather for the enrichment of big businesses, a lack of leadership contenders has never been so blatantly obvious.

Whether in Canada or the United States of America, a huge swath of taxpayers feel that their concerns are being ignored, and that the world they will be leaving to their children has been hijacked by the wealthy, in favour of the wealthy.

People have little faith in the ‘checks and balances’ built into government, because they see those in power blow right past those defences. And then it’s check .. and mate. Goodbye clean air and water. Hello oligarchy.

With elections on the horizon in both halves of North America, there is a rise in the use of dirty tricks, innuendo, and accusations that are near slander. There are trolls and bots in social media, sent to shake our faith in all of the political contenders.

It seems that we are now being coerced to choose our country’s leaders and representatives NOT by assessing who is the most qualified, but rather, by whom we’ve defined as the least corrupt, the least politically incorrect, or the least likely to indulge themselves at the tax payers expense.

Instead of a spectacle of intellectual and/or heroic giants battling it out for the prize of leading us, we watch maggots trying to convince us that they are less maggot-y than the other contenders.

Our words and deeds teach others how we expect to be treated. The lesson these politicians have learned is that we expect a circus of high wire acts and fireworks, rather than a clear and cogent statement of policy. Like children, we wait to be delighted by Seussian spectacles.

” They’ll bang on tong-tinglers, blow their foo-flounders, they’ll crash on jang-jinglers, and bounce on boing-bounders!”

Rather than creating platforms or visions of a strong and united nation, these professional politicians seek only to win an election, form a government, and put into place formats to ensure their own enrichment. The voters are just the cannon fodder; the voters are the rubes the con men seek to fool.

And that’s sad.

I’ve always known that there are many people that haven’t the time, or just don’t care about politics, because they’re doing the things that build a nation.. having a family, buying homes, starting businesses, and buying stuff. They only care when it affects them, their children, or their pocketbook.

And that’s sort of understandable. We need those nose to the grindstone types, to keep the country ticking along. But it is still really frightening to see the lack of understanding from the voters, to watch them be played and swayed by the machinations of the parties’ publicity wonks.

In the United States, the president, terrified of the prospect of impeachment, is now seemingly unable to say anything but lies. His Secretary of State was caught in several blatant lies to the public, and pretty much all of his administration and Cabinet are complicit in impeachable, illegal offences.

In Canada, the leader of the Conservative Party has been caught lying on his resume about his work record, and his education. His loyalty to the nation was questioned this week, when he told the media that he’d never spoken publicly about being a dual Canadian-United States citizen, because “no one ever asked me.”

Scheer stayed silent on his citizenship, even as the Conservative party regularly attacked politicians for their citizenships, like Michael Ignatieff in 2011, insinuating that he was ‘just visiting Canada’ They made a huge issue of former NDP leader Tom Mulcair and former Liberal leader Stephane Dion having dual Canadian-French citizenship. And in 2005, Scheer himself questioned the integrity of former governor general Michaelle Jean’s dual citizenship, asking in a blog written to his constituents if they could trust her, saying ” “Does it bother you that she is a dual citizen (France and Canada)? Would it bother you if instead of French citizenship, she held U.S. citizenship?”

It’s a breathtaking example of two-faced hypocrisy.

Do political parties, particularly on the right, no longer even vet their members, and potential leaders? Is it just a question of being the right colour, having money, and being willing to toe the party line?

We are going to find out a lot of things about ourselves in the next few months, on both sides of the border. We’re going to find out who we really are, and how much effort we put forward to understand the policies and platforms of those parties viewing for our votes. We’re going to discover if we are sheep that manipulative entities can herd into their enclosures, or if we are willing to make the time and effort to choose the leaders that will decide our countries futures.

It’s up to us all to stop accepting lies and dirty tricks as the foundation of political campaigns, and to demand truth and accountability from those we’ve chosen to lead our nations.

“In 2016, candidate Donald Trump boasted, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” In the coming weeks, we will find out whether he’s right about who he thinks we are as Americans” Rep Eric Swalwell

Hiding the Mueller Report Under a Rabbit

by Roxanne Tellier

Happy Easter! Did you find any chocolate in inappropriate places today?

eostre We’re not religious, nor do we have any little ones in the house, so we just sort of forgot about the whole thing until we tried to buy some milk, and found the grocery store closed Friday.

Christians in the West celebrate Easter somewhere between March 22 and April 25, on the first Sunday after the full moon of the vernal equinox on March 21. This timing, and the halting of capitalism for the day, is brought to you by the pagan Teutonic goddess of the dawn, fertility and spring – Eostre. If that sounds familiar, it’s because her name is the ‘root’ for words like estrogen … the female hormone necessary for fertilization and child bearing.

easter origin As cavemen, we couldn’t be 100% sure that Winter would actually end, or when. The pagan ritual of the Spring Equinox is a celebration of the change and renewed life we yearn for in this season. Early priestesses encouraged worship of Eostre as the symbol for this return.

” Today, pagans continue to celebrate spring and attribute the change of the seasons to the powers of their god and goddess – also portrayed as The Green Man and Mother Earth.”

That’s an irony indeed, since today’s pagans are greatly outnumbered by those who are intent on stripping the earth of all her wealth and beauty, in order to enrich a small number of people.

Ah well, mustn’t grumble. Let’s eat some chocolate and sing along with Deanna Durbin!

Think the timing for the official pre-wash with extra spin cycle of the Mueller Report might have had a little something to do with Easter? As in … hopefully most people will have forgotten about it by the time they get back from their holidays?

….. and how about that Barr, eh?

It seems like only yesterday that I was opining on the wisdom of the official Attorney General of the United States position being a partisan one; surely the top law enforcement office for ALL of the citizens of the United States should be one that rules from a bipartisan stance.

barr is bizarro john goodman And why, oh why, by all that’s holy, does William Barr have to look like a Bizarro World John Goodman?

Following in the footsteps of a president that favours his base over the greater populace, AG Barr came down firmly on the side of Trump, donning kid gloves to handle how the Mueller Report was unveiled, and, like a mum defending her bad widdle boy, provided excuses for the despicable behavior that has irrevocably despoiled the presidential seat, ahead of the actual report outlining those behaviors.

He was shilling for the POTUS like a two bit carny trying to get the punters to buy tickets to see the Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla Grrrrrll.

watergate Worse still, his toadying ensured that the Report only deepened the public distrust of the justice department, while revealing conclusively that the Republican Party is morally and legally bankrupt.

“We have in Mueller’s report a narrative, a timeline narrative, of the cover up by the President and his actions. There’s absolutely no question that this has been a vast Presidential cover up.” says legendary Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein.

trump pres worse than Watergate “Bernstein, a CNN analyst, cited his former Watergate colleague Bob Woodward’s book Fear: Trump in the White House, in which Woodward reported that former Cabinet officials believed Trump was not acting in the best interests of the United States and was a danger to national security.” (CNN)

And even the legal beagles of FOX (News) were more honest in their comments, if cautious not to bring down the full wrath of the president upon them, than the Republicans in the Senate who are still attempting to defend the indefensible.

Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano on Thursday noted that there were items in the report that Barr failed to mention during the pre-spin press conference on Thursday morning.

“The president—the behavior of the president is immoral, deceptive, and repellent,” Napolitano exclaimed. “But it doesn’t rise to the level of criminality.”

We should be reminded that the worst of the president’s impulses, that would have lead indelibly to criminality, were generally forestalled by unelected, career administration personnel, who had to try and read his rants and determine if he was just blowing off steam, ‘joking,’ or really intended for others to commit criminal acts on his behalf. A master of deception, Trump will never put anything implicating himself in wrong doing in writing – he leaves it for his minions to divine his intent, to carry out his crimes, and then pay the legal price for their loyalty.

Well, his previous conduct, and the belief that a sitting president cannot be indicted might have kept him out of jail so far, but the aftermath of the Report’s release may change how he goes forward.

trump Bear in mind … the report only covered the lead up to his inauguration, and his first few months in office. What he’s gotten up to in the two years since then are blowing up the pages of American history on a daily basis.

You’d think by now we’d be inured to his constant threats and bullying. Trump is lashing out, demanding an investigation of the investigators, and causing those who testified against him to fear for their futures. He has called the investigation an illegal witch hunt, and said that “the whole episode was an illegal takedown that failed … and somebody’s going to be looking at the other side.”

mcConnel stopped obama warning about russia Despite overwhelming evidence that the Russians did, indeed, meddle in the 2016 election to help Trump win the presidency, Trump continues to fight the ghost of his defeated opponent, Hillary Clinton, and now,-incredibly – has begun to blame his predecessor, President Obama, for not stopping the Russian interference, for some nefarious purpose that doesn’t make much sense at all … why would Obama encourage the electoral win of a Republican candidate by allowing a foreign power to influence the outcome? Do you have to be in full blown senile dementia to understand that convoluted contention?

But what now has to be determined is if the Democrats are prepared to pick up the gauntlet that the Report has thrown down.

” In its extensive discussion of the constitutional issues implicated by special counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month investigation, the report asserts that Congress has the authority to apply law “to all persons – including the President.” Specifically, Congress may “protect its own legislative functions against corrupt efforts designed to impede legitimate fact-gathering and lawmaking efforts.” The authority to prohibit a president’s corrupt use of power, the report finds, is essential to “our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.”

The report declines to reach a judgment on whether the president has committed a crime because Mueller views himself as bound by Department of Justice policy against indicting a sitting president. This does not mean that the president has not committed a crime. Indeed, Mueller’s refusal to reach a judgment is based partly on principles of fairness to the president: while people accused of a crime usually have the opportunity to give their story at trial, in this case, when no charges can be brought, the accused has no opportunity to clear his name. Mueller pointedly notes that the sitting president’s immunity, however, would not preclude prosecution “once the President’s term is over or he is otherwise removed from office” — that is, impeached.” (USAToday, 2019/4/21)

And this is where the going is gonna get rough for traditional Democrats. In the past, egregious interferences into Obama’s presidency were largely tolerated, rather than called out as the profound malfeasance McConnell practiced for eight years. This must stop .. right here, and right now … if America is to regain her fading democracy.

The time for the battle is when it presents itself, not somewhere down the road, when the contentious actions have become ‘old news’ and the battle itself appears to be nothing but hurt feelings and the re-treading of old ground.

mcconnell with garlands head The time to stop McConnell from preventing Merrick Garland’s appointment was in 2016, when it happened. The Democrats assumed they’d win 2016, and ‘fix it in the mix,’ but that political hubris now has America dealing with a Supreme Court and minor courts stacked with Trump loyalists that will impact upon major legal decisions for decades to come.

No, now is the time for the Democrats to show some of the backbone and ‘strong man’ attitude that so many in the United States believe to be the measure of their vigour. This is not the time to ‘go high.’ It’s the time to stand up and fight.

lindsey graham No more delicate tippy toeing towards justice, fearful of causing upset. It’s time to roar ahead, just like the Republicans did against Clinton, when they showed that they were prepared to go to the mat over a presidential blow job, to win, no matter the cost. And it worked for them electorally, got them more seats, and moved Lindsey Graham into a position of power he could only have dreamed of before he snatched the media spotlight with his pearl clutching antics.

There has been some talk from moderate Dems that they would like to conduct a few more lengthy investigations before deciding on whether or not to consider impeachment procedures, but in my view, that has the potential of further angering the populace, who are fed up with what looks to them to be a major waste of time and tax payer dollars.

There’s also been talk that it would be smarter, this close to the next election, to focus on positive progression on the health and environmental front, but let’s face it .. ain’t nothing good coming from that as long as Trump has the bullhorn, and his gang of sycophants are blocking any forward movement from the Dems.

Although it IS possible to talk impeachment AND other concerns simultaneously.

Some contrarians are advising that calls for impeachment might lead to a further division of the country, but, apart from the Civil War, it would be hard indeed to find another time in history when the country was so critically divided.

Despite the voluminous material, articles, and books – AND this Report – that have been written outlining the illegalities and corruption of the current administration, those who have drunk the Trump Kool-Aid are not going to change their minds on what they believe. Six more months, another year, of investigations, are not going to change the hearts and minds of his base.

It is up to the Congress, who are charged with oversight, to hold the president accountable for the obstruction that he has committed.

The only way the Dems are going to change the current trajectory of American history is to stop trying to be the party that always has to be perfect and correct, always taking the punishment that ensues with a gracious smile. They have to put an immediate stop to McConnell’s sneakiness, and burn it down the minute he raises his unholy turtle head. They have to stop pretending that politics is a gentleman’s game, where everyone plays fair – they have solid proof that fairness is a foreign concept to career Republicans, and that playing nice only benefits the GOP. Ignoring how dirty the Republicans play is only making the Democrats appear like weaklings.

As the Democrats wonder if they dare go after a career criminal, the GOP are already in attack mode, with a double pronged frontal attack that is determined to punish those they consider treasonous for the audaciousness of investigating the election, while also implying that a move to impeach the president would mean that the Democrats do not love their country. The banners are being printed, the catch phrases practiced, and the talking points sharpened.

In Trump, the Republicans have found their savior, and they are not afraid to use every last fibre of their beings to stand by their man, even as they abet his corruption, and help destroy the country they claim to so love. It may be a twisted, ultimately destructive, passion, but it definitely trumps the indecisiveness that the Dems are bringing to the skirmish.

impeach trump Yes, a call for impeachment has little hope of succeeding, in the face of a Republican senate and presidency. But it is what the Democrats must be seen to do, charged as they are by their elected positions to bring oversight to the most powerful position in the nation. They must be seen to be the face of all of those who decry this president, who rules from a throne of lies and corruption.

The road to impeachment has been laid out for them to follow. All they have to do is pick up the gauntlet, and fight for those who put them into power.

The Democrats have to look to 2020, and their crop of young, exciting, fresh faces with progressive ideas looking to be the next leaders of the nation.

impeach trump2 All that the Republicans bring to the party is a senile old man, whose lies and corruptions will drag them down, and a bunch of long in the tooth senators content to live out their last years fighting against someone who hasn’t even held office in over eight years.

Launching an impeachment at this time will throw into sharp contrast the difference between the party of tomorrow, and the party of the old, corrupt, past.

It’s time, Democrats.

Elections and Their Consequences

Elections here, elections there… we’ve got elections everywhere!

trump painting satan With the American midterms just two weeks away, It goes without saying that most liberal progressives, democrats and independents are hoping to see a ‘blue wave’ overturn the stranglehold the Trump administration has on all three branches of government, and the Supreme Court.

Widespread reports of gerrymandering and voter suppression, however, are indications that the Republicans, unable to run on their non-existent record, are ready to lie, cheat and swindle to keep their power. In previous decades and administrations, the Attorney General would have stepped in aggressively to stop this abuse, but under AG Jeff Sessions, the corruption ensues without check.

GOP old white men in undies Many are looking to millennials to start that wave of resistance, but from articles and interviews I’ve read, a lot of millennials can’t be bothered; they think their voices will not be heard, and there seems to be a belief that the kids can take back the country once the last of the old white guys in power die off.

They’re not counting on the “farm teams’ .. the Kavanaughs and the Paul Ryans, ready to pick up the slack from the McConnells and Grassleys as they die off. And they’re counting on there being a country left when they’re finally ready to get involved.

We’ll have to keep all appendages crossed that there is still some justice and democracy left in America, that will see the election allowed to play out without chicanery. But I will not take any bets on that happening.

ford notwithstanding Meanwhile, I sure hope that most Torontonians and other Ontarian citizens are planning to cast an informed vote this week in our municipal elections. With all of the meddling that Ford did in cutting our city council in half, and with his nuclear use of the notwithstanding clause to force his will on the citizens of Toronto, not much time was left for some of the candidates to explain their positions on important issues affecting our city.

Ford gave incumbent mayor Tory the greatest gift of all when he tinkered with the electoral machine. With all of the confusion and chaos, it’s most likely that the great unwashed will do what they always do when their cheese is moved – simply vote for the person with the most recognizable name on the ballot.

And that’s a damn shame, because that’s essentially how our world has gotten into the mess it’s in today – voters who once made an effort to be informed and knowledgeable have been replaced with angry, populist, knee jerking votes AGAINST the status quo, rather than votes FOR progress.

I get it; we’re living in a world where we have to instantly react to once shocking events on an hourly basis. There’s just been too many non-stop fireworks going off daily since January 2017, and that makes it hard to be able to pin down the truth and the facts about atrocities most people of the west struggle to contemplate, let alone deal with mentally.

Remember when the ‘Resistance’ were warning the world that they must not ‘normalize’ Trump and his horrific, racist, bigoted ways? Well, it’s happened. That many haven’t yet realized that it’s happened is in itself proof that it’s happened.

jamal-khashoggi Take the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, the American resident and Washington Post journalist. At the beginning of October, he entered the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey. He was there to obtain a document verifying his divorce so that he could marry his Turkish fiancée. But like the old commercial once said, “He checked in, but he never checked out.”

Khashoggi had been persona non grata and self exiled from Saudi Arabia since November 2016, when he wrote a mild rebuke against the perils of a new president, Donald J. Trump. ” The expectation that ‘Trump as president’ will be starkly different from ‘Trump as candidate’ is a false hope at best,” were the words that Khashoggi wrote about Trump’s stance and rhetoric on the Middle East.

For this ‘crime’ he was banned from all social media, including journalistic writing, making television appearances, and attending conferences. He self-exiled to the United States six months later.

On October 2 he was lured to the consulate, where a team of 15 Saudi Arabians, including one autopsy expert with a bone saw, ‘interrogated’ (tortured) him to death, and then dismembered his body so that it might be disposed of more easily.

The grisly truth of his kidnapping, torture and murder are known to us thanks to what is most likely the ‘bugging’ of the Saudi consulate; Turkey originally claimed to have found the audio recording of the encounter on Khashoggi’s Apple Watch, but tech experts have said it is not very likely. However the information was retrieved, one thing is certain; the American government knew the truth about the murder almost immediately, but covered up the story.

investigating Khashoggi In the three weeks since the murder, people have struggled to come to terms with this act of violence. Some can sort of understand bits and pieces of what happened, but balk at simple truths, like a photo from the Associated Press showing a cart filled with cleaning supplies that arrived at the consulate just hours before an investigation of the premises was due to occur. Spies, torture, dismemberment.. all of this they can swallow .. but a cleaning cart? That just butts up too closely to normalizing traumatic death, and their mental processes shut down rather than absorb the photo.

MBS But the most shocking actions have all have been done by Trump and his administration, who have, from the beginning, and with full knowledge of not only the murder, but of U.S. intelligence intercepts showing that MbS had ordered that Khashoggi be lured to Saudi Arabia, known full well that the Crown Prince had ordered the detention, likely with an intent to torture and murder the writer. They later speculated that it was likely that his disappearance in Istanbul was a substitute plan that went sideways.

And yet Trump, with that knowledge, with audio tapes documenting the blood curdling sounds, pretended that he did not believe that MbS was involved, and actually offered a tentative excuse in advance of the Saudi’s excuses, that it might have been ‘rogue killers’ who did the deed.

This, despite solid information that the 15 Saudi Arabian assailants had arrived on private government planes, rode to the consul in diplomatic vehicles, were greeted and welcomed at the consulate by the officials in charge, and did the actual torture and murder in the consul’s own office, later returning to Saudi in the same manner they’d arrived.

The US president has deemed that the investigation that Saudi Arabia did into their own culpability in the murder is credible, and an ‘important first step.’

” The Saudi Arabian government announced Friday that Khashoggi died after a fistfight at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and that 18 Saudis had been arrested for further investigation while Deputy Director of Saudi Intelligence Ahmed al-Assiri had been dismissed.” (CNN)

trump and saudi orb Trump’s not sure that the US should take action, but if they do, he doesn’t want it to impact the imaginary arm sales and jobs that he believes may be arriving, some time .. really soon .. maybe within ten years. But with nothing on paper or signed, and those imaginary job numbers rising by the day, it’s clear that his words are just more lies intended to protect his, and his son in law’s, personal financial relationship with the Saudis.

We’re now learning of a phone call, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, between Jared Kushner and Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman where the young prince asked “why the outrage?” (Wall Street Journal)

Other people are not at all sure that the Saudis should be allowed to skate on the assassination of an America resident.

“After 2+ [weeks] of dissembling, the Saudi ‘explanation’ is not remotely credible,” Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution tweeted. “Nor is the MBS myth, at least not anymore.” She continued: “The end result of this horrific saga is a weaker, more isolated Saudi Arabia [and] a less effective US-Saudi partnership. And no justice for the innocent victim.” (Washington Post)

Even Trump’s own party is finding it increasingly difficult to defend this cowardice on the president’s part.

” New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement that the Saudi statement is “far from the end.”

“This is far from the end and we need to keep up the international pressure. Congress did its part when we invoked Global Magnitsky Act for a presidential determination. Now President Trump must follow the law,” Menendez said.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Sen. Bob Corker warned against assuming that the Saudis’ “latest story holds water” and stressed that the U.S. must assess Khashoggi’s death under the Global Magnitsky Act, which sanctions human rights offenders.

“The story the Saudis have told about Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance continues to change with each passing day, so we should not assume their latest story holds water,” Corker tweeted Friday.. “They can undergo their own investigation, but the U.S. administration must make its own independent, credible determination of responsibility for Khashoggi’s murder under the Global Magnitsky investigation as required by law.” (CNN)

However, for those for whom there is no bottom to a moral ground, they are carrying on blithely, raking in the dough. While Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin reluctantly cancelled his trip to the “Davos in the Desert’ conference due in November, he’s still set on going to an anti-terror finance meeting soon to occur in Riyadh. Now THAT is irony.

“There was no actual condemnation by the administration of this human rights atrocity, no defence of a free press, or of the right of Americans (residents or citizens) to travel safely. The administration looks feckless, and if it continues down this road, will earn the ridicule and disdain of Americans, our allies, and all free peoples.

In allowing the Saudis to delay this long, and failing to demand audio recordings allegedly capturing the murder, the administration has become an accessory after the fact, an enabler of nearly unimaginable evil.

What’s more, Trump looks pathetically weak. His childlike willingness to adopt a transparent lie so as to avoid taking action will certainly entice other despots to engage in similar acts of brutality.” (Washington Post)

But what’s going on back at Saudi Arabia HQ? Strangely – the crown prince may not be on as solid a ground as he once thought. The young prince – blood-thirsty and naive – may be the King’s favorite son – but he’s not the only son, or even grandson, available to carry on the legacy of the Sauds.

It would seem that MbS drastically misjudged how the world would react to the Khashoggi murder. And don’t forget that when the shit hit the fan, it was down to his daddy, 82-year-old King Salman, who had to call Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, to explain why his ‘special’ boy should not be too harshly judged.

what they do to others they will do to you MbS has done some horrific things in his 16 month run-up to Monster In Charge. He has been given free reign to reshape the kingdom to his own vision, and along the way, has arrested and imprisoned scores of human rights and women’s rights activists, along with pursuing a war in neighboring Yemen where routine flouting of human rights and international battlefield rules have led to the death of at least 10,000 civilians and displaced an estimated 2

million overall.

King Salman has literally spent a ‘king’s ransom‘ to cement a strong relationship between Saudi Arabia and America, but MbS may have severed that connection with just one bone saw.

It is hard to predict what will happen next, to either the United States or Saudi Arabia. However, it is becoming increasingly visible that MbS may simply not be ready to assume the reins of power he so eagerly grasped just 16 months ago. And his daddy may be about to show him just what real power looks like when wielded by a real monarch.

Meanwhile.. back in Washington, DC ….

republicans spineless