Mitch McConnell – frustratedboomers

Both Sides Now: Ageism

by Roxanne Tellier

Over the last few years, Joe Biden has had his share of ‘foot in mouth’ moments. This week, he peeled off a doozy.

While speaking at the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health on Wednesday, Biden called out for Rep. Jackie Walorski, asking “Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie? I think she wasn’t going to be here – to help make this a reality.”

Unfortunately, Representative Walorski, who had played a big part in advancing the bill, died in a car accident in early August. It’s possible that Biden had her name in mind because he had been briefed earlier on a visit that her family would be making to the White House on the coming Friday, where he would sign a bill in her honour.

So – he made a mistake. Humans do that. I do that twenty times a day. Trump did it maybe fifty times a day, including that time when he called out Frederick Douglas – who had been dead for over a hundred years – for the good job he’d been doing lately. Stuff happens.

And Biden’s been a little busy lately, trying to save democracy, and the world from nuclear devastation and stuff. What else has he been up to? Oh yeah, finally getting that pharmacy bill passed so that the poorest Americans can actually live a little longer than when they had to share their diabetes meds … giving aid to a disaster shocked Florida, instead of just popping by to toss them paper towels … getting the nation’s infrastructure sorted. He’s been occupied, and not by a weekly golf game.

Joe Biden gets things done because he has more experience at getting things done than almost all other Democrats (and Republicans) combined. That’s Biden’s strength. Knowledge and ability comes with age, time in the job, and real-world experience.

Still, the pundits went crazy, and up the cry went, yet again, that Biden was just too old to be president, and that he was clearly senile. I expect that sort of thing from Republicans, but the frightening thing was how many left leaning, self professed Democrats piled on as well.

I’d gotten almost used to this constant refrain during the runup to 2020’s election, when Biden – who is three years older than Trump – was continually smeared for his gaffes, and his occasional physical limitations. (Give me a break – Biden rides a bike, Trump barely manages to steer a golf cart.)

But when the ageism starts sneaking in from the sidelines, from those who begged Americans to vote trump out, and Biden in, in 2020, it’s kind of nauseating. I’m looking at you, MSNBC, who never miss a chance to diss Biden. And why was Stephen Colbert parading footage, from last March, of Biden’s fall up the plane stairs, over and over, to his seemingly left-leaning audience, just a few weeks ago? Colbert likes to behave like he’s above cheap shots, but he’s done it enough times that I can only think he’s blind to his own ageism.

Bill Maher has slurred Biden as well, in the past. So I was surprised when he defended Biden’s gaffe this past Friday,

“During Friday’s monologue, Maher said Republicans “lost their s—” over the gaffe, “the kind he’s made for 50 years.”

“There’s 535 members of Congress, OK?… I’m not saying it was a great moment. Again, 535 members. He forgot she was dead. The last guy forgot we were a democracy! Can we have a little perspective?” Maher excused Biden before railing against former President Donald Trump for one of his memorable gaffes.

Later during the panel discussion, Maher clashed with one of his guests, The Atlantic staff writer Caitlin Flanagan, who suggested Biden shouldn’t seek re-election in 2024 because he’s “super old.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being old, there’s no shame to it… but there are natural processes that happen and it certainly seems like he’s losing his acuity, which a lot of older men do,” Flanagan said.

“I’m so disappointed that you, like me, not so young, would say this. It’s such bulls—,” Maher reacted. “

Later, on the same show, CNN contributor Van Jones chimed in, saying, “When Biden’s strong, he’s very strong. And when he’s weak, he’s very weak,” which is “what people are responding to.”

“If the public in 2024 sees what they perceive to be a weak insider versus a scary outsider, a Trump or a DeSantis — that’s a perception… I do think that people have a reason to be concerned if he continues to be perceived to be weak, but the reality is, what’s the alternative to Biden?” Jones asked. “

The reason why there’s no viable alternative to Biden is – ageism. First of all, there’s reverse ageism, in that no one wants to be the ageist publicly pointing the finger at older people running for office, especially not those people who are themselves nearing the age of retirement.

Yet, continually re-electing senior statesmen, well into their eighties, and mostly due to name recognition and brand loyalty, means denying youngbloods their chance to have a kick at the Congress Can.

Ageism is a little like ableism; you don’t really think it’s a problem until you yourself get old or disabled, at which point, you’re not generally in a position to do much about it.

Historically, North Americans have given respect to a sector of our older citizens, but most often only to those who fall neatly into our category of being worthy of such respect, based on their ability to acquire wealth and power throughout their lifetimes. Some have risen to the top of their field, and so are deemed to be filled with knowledge, history, and wisdom. But often, that longevity was just the good fortune of surviving longer than their peers.

America took that thinking a little too far. Solid gold health care plans have kept a bunch of reps and senators in power far past their best before dates, and Congress doesn’t have a mandatory retirement age.

Mitch McConnell is older than Biden, at 80. His current term ends on January 3, 2027, when he will be 85.

Dianne Feinstein, 89, filed the initial Federal Election Commission paperwork in January 2021 that was needed to seek re-election in 2024, when she will be 91. “Because of her age and reports of mental decline, Feinstein has been a frequent subject of discussion regarding her mental acuity and fitness to serve.” (wiki)

Chuck Grassley, 89, is running AGAIN in November, against a Democrat who will turn 65 on November 8, election day. If he wins re-election in November, Iowa’s longest-serving senator would be 95 years old by the end of another term. And if Grassley is re-elected and Republicans regain control of the Senate, he will once again become president pro tempore, making him the third in the presidential line of succession after the vice president and Speaker of the House.

You can’t really blame Feinstein or Grassly for not wanting to retire. Life is good for Senators. They have a solid base salary, as well as access to many other opportunities to make bank. They have gold plated health, dental, and medical plans, and if they become ill, they can be assured of gold star treatment, as they are, in effect, ‘government property.’ Their days are spent surrounded with aides, assistants, and security, who handle their every need. Their names are known, they get special treatment in restaurants and shopping places, and they’re invited to all the best parties. If there were to be a terrorist or homeland security scare, they’d be first into the safest places to hide.

Why on earth would anyone ever want to give all of that up – and have to live like the peons they actually are supposed to be representing in Congress?

But with every year, these elders, who have always been, by dint of being above the fray in power and wealth, distanced from the hoi polio, also become less able to relate to the needs of the majority of the tax payers, who are thirty or forty years younger.

Worse still, the clog in the Congress pipe for senators and reps is so dense, based on the serial re-election of the incumbent, that it doesn’t allow younger politicos to get into the game, and get the knowledge and experience that would potentially shape these neophytes into future presidents or vice presidents.

Amongst the masses, aging is very different, and it wields a harsh sword. At some point, especially as technology ever sharpens, our education and experience in many fields will become irrelevant and obsolete. Simply living long enough to have put in twenty or thirty years in your field will not be enough; there’s always some young kid that just graduated who has more up to date information, and who will work for a fraction of what you’re being paid.

Women, and those in the entertainment business, feel ageism earlier, and much more cruelly. We have to learn to conceal our age, lest we segue from the ‘up and comers’ to the ‘once was-ers.’

Men over 50 become a liability to companies, because they want to be paid what they believe they are worth. Women become invisible.

If you’re over 50, you know all this stuff. You’ve felt the sting of ageism, and you’re rolling with the punches, because you have no other alternative. For most of us, ageism can be a killer, especially financially.

Age-based attacks are so common that they’ve become internalized, and shape how we all feel about the aging process. In reality, most North Americans will live longer than their parents did, and often at their maximum cognitive ability, far into old age. Your actual age is not a good indicator of what you’re capable of doing, either mentally or physically, since so much is dependent on our genetics, and how well or poorly we treated our bodies during our youths.

On one level, we all know that; we can see it for ourselves, in our older relatives, and in friends a little older than ourselves. And yet, these negative stereotypes, and the accumulation of continual small insults, can trigger anxiety and depression amongst seniors.

The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t help, as older people, more susceptible to the disease, died in large numbers, thereby reinforcing ageist beliefs in the fragility and vulnerability of seniors, and, in many cases, painting these victims as a burden on society. That same prejudice mentally encouraged many older workers to retire early, rather than risk their health by mingling with other people daily.

In truth, we all age at different paces. Some of us will fight valiantly against the overt signs of aging, choosing instead to keep colouring graying hair, and seeking out cosmetic surgery for a youthful appearance. Others will not seek out the dentures, hearing aids, or cataract surgery they need that would ensure a better daily health experience, because to do so would be acknowledging the effects of old age.

Studies have shown that these ageist attitudes actually impact younger people who accept ageist stereotypes as fact, making them more likely to experience development of plaque on the brain (Alzheimer’s Disease) and cardiovascular events. One study showed that ageism led to ‘significantly worse health outcomes in 95.5% of the studies, and 74% of the 1,159 ageism-health associations examined.”

Biden’s detractors underestimated him, based on his age, despite the fact that Biden’s first two years have been more successful politically than nearly any other president in history. Nonetheless, that stereotype is rampant in society and the business world.

This is the double-edged sword of ageism; we need to respect those who are aging, while simultaneously understanding that we must at some point gracefully give way to allow the future politicians and potential world shakers to enter the playing field.

Should Biden consider another run in 2024? That should be up to him, and his doctor, as they would be the best judges of his physical and mental ability to do the job … not the media, or the rank and file.

We have to beware of underestimating others based on their age. The lucky will eventually grow old, and the messaging that is currently being broadcast will shape how they expect their own aging to happen, and how well they will be treated by others, when it inevitably is their own turn on the hotseat of senior citizenry.

Talking Points and Party Lines

by Roxanne Tellier

During the trump years, it was a staple of reporting; when asked for their opinion on something the Administration had done, all the top Republican Senators either brushed off reporters with a breezy, “hadn’t heard anything about that yet,” or stopped just long enough to run whatever party line Mitch McConnell had broadcast to them earlier that day, into the microphone.

It was so common that comedy shows often ran clips of the beleaguered Senators, or of Conservative media talking heads, mouthing in lock stop whatever nonsense they’d been fed.

Fr’instance, remember the parroting of McConnell lies in 2016, when Senate Republicans said that the seat vacated by Justice Scalia’s death should not be filled in an election year, and refused to hold hearings to consider Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland? McConnell argued that the Senate had not confirmed a Supreme Court nominee by an opposing party’s President to fill a vacancy that arose in an election year since 1888. Of course, it was nonsense.

“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President,” McConnell said in 2016.

And at a Judiciary Committee meeting in March 2016, from Lindsey Graham …

“I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said, let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination, and you could use my words against me and you’d be absolutely right. We’re setting a precedent here today, Republicans are, that in the last year, at least of a lame-duck eight-year term, I would say it’s going to be a four-year term, that you’re not going to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court based on what we’re doing here today. That’s going to be the new rule.”

In 2020, Senate Democrats were outraged at the GOP, charging them with hypocrisy, when Trump and McConnell blithely chose to shove through a Supreme Court justice to fill the seat vacated by the death of Justice Ginsburg on September 18, 2020, mere weeks before the presidential election.

“I therefore think it is important that we proceed expeditiously to process any nomination made by President Trump to fill this vacancy. I am certain if the shoe were on the other foot, you would do the same,” Graham said, with a perfectly straight face.

Trump’s “Big Lie,” accepted and repeated ad nauseum, by his supporters, and conservative social media, is another example of how blithely mindless people can become, as they parrot the words that contain the seeds of their society’s destruction.

Trump’s Big Lie … A Lincoln Project video

Party lines. Talking points. All political parties do it, in an effort to present a position of solidarity within their ranks. There are scripts written for the rank-and-file members to follow, if they are asked for their opinions. And their answers shape public opinion, especially within the ranks of those who believe their leaders are usually right in their decisions.

There’s a modicum of laziness, and of a lack of time or interest, in that approach. Though, I’ll admit, as someone not gainfully employed, I have a lot of time in which to fall down the Internet rabbit hole, ferreting out the details behind the party line.

When I hear about something that has happened that will affect other humans, I have an immediate gut reaction. I then process the new information by digging deeper into the issue; reading opinions, both pro and con, on the subject; and finally coming to a conclusion with which both my mind and heart can feel comfortable assuming. Even then, however, I retain the right to change my mind, should I receive newer, additional information that is pertinent to the issue.

But that’s not how everyone deals with the day’s data. Most people have a lot to do in the day, at work, with their families, getting through their own personal issues, and simply have neither the time nor the inclination to care.

Which is where the ‘party lines’ come into play. It’s not just those in Parliament or on Capitol Hill (or the Kremlin, or Westminster) who lean on those talking points, it’s a lot of people who will eventually be charged with electing or re-electing the people who will be following those lines and points while in office, shaping the country.

The trouble with relying on talking points and party lines, rather than thinking for oneself, is that lazy judgments can have a huge impact on societies.

Take the rhetoric that I’m hearing from many whom I thought were less gullible, on the subject of Georgia’s new voter suppression laws. For two days, Morning Joe Scarborough whitesplained and whatabouted that these laws were actually GOOD for voters, even as his guests, people of colour and women who would be aversely impacted by these changes, tried nervously to explain to him why his information was faulty. (birx reacts to trump.jpg)

Seriously, it was like watching Dr Birx dealing with trump assuming she’d be all in on injecting bleach into oneself to prevent COVID. Deer in the headlights time.

Leaning heavily on the unfairness of major Georgia corporations, like Coca Cola and Delta Air Lines, condemning the new laws, as well as the decision of MLB to move the annual All Star Game, he inadvertently quoted Republican talking points (new laws make Georgia voting safer than that of New York) falsely claiming that these laws would actually make voting easier. He was wrong, but even after being schooled by those who had the correct information, he turned a deaf ear to their words.

A similar thing happened on Bill Maher’s Real Time on Friday, when Heather McGhee and Reihan Salam discussed the restrictive new voting laws in Georgia. Mr Salam is a conservative American political commentator, but in this case, he was reduced to simply mouthing the party lines, and being schooled on the truth, live and in colour.

Something similar is going on right now with the increasing likelihood of international “Vaccine Passports.” Already several countries have started to lift lockdown restrictions for people who can show vaccine papers that prove they have been vaccinated.

There is a desire for opening up entertainment venues and travel after a year of isolation, but liability laws make owners of those venues nervous about allowing the non-vaccinated to enter. This isn’t about dictating to consumers, it’s about Free Enterprise doing what they must to turn a profit, and it’s as legal as demanding that your customers wear shoes and shirts to receive service.

In countries with a universal health care program, a reputable record of vaccination is fairly easy to produce; the vaccines are under the auspices of each province’s health care registry.

The same cannot be said for the United States, and this has created a bit of a conundrum. If there is no central processing point to be had by the government, then it leaves a hole that will be filled by … Big Business.

And if you thought you mistrusted the government, just imagine how sorry you’ll be if all of your personal and private health care information is put under the auspices of some massive corporation that has no need to worry about re-election at some point in the future. Be very afraid.

Enter talking points and party lines. The Republicans down south are already working themselves into another ‘rights’ lather, at the very idea of their country becoming a ‘papers please’ nation.

And that’s pretty rich, coming from the party that wrapped America in incredibly restrictive security measures, post 9/11, 2001, which have still not been rescinded, nearly twenty years later. Ah, but that was their own party, demanding that everyone show a passport, carry their shampoo in a one-ounce bottle, and remove their shoes to prove they didn’t have a shoe bomb hiding in there. So that made it okay.

There are some genuine concerns over these passports, which are essentially the same sort of vaccination documents that travellers to certain countries have had to produce for safe travel for decades.

“People are trying to circumvent that (not being allowed entry into venues) by creating false documents, essentially putting the lives of others at risk,” Beenu Arora, founder of cyber intelligence firm Cyble, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an online interview.

Global news reported that “Fake COVID-19 vaccine passports are being sold online for “peanuts” in a fast-growing scam that has alarmed authorities as countries bet on the documents to revive travel and their economies, cyber security experts said.”

This is why we can’t have nice things.

“Last week, 45 attorney generals from the United States signed a letter calling on the heads of Twitter, eBay and Shopify to take immediate action to prevent their platforms from being used to sell fraudulent COVID-19 vaccine cards.
“The false and deceptive marketing and sales of fake COVID vaccine cards threatens the health of our communities, slows progress in getting our residents protected from the virus, and are a violation of the laws of many states,” it read.“
Global News Ca

There will always be a breed of selfish, greedy, psychopaths that delight in putting a stick in the spokes in the wheels of civilization. The pandemic seems to have brought many more out from under the rocks where they usually reside.

Party lines. Talking points. These are a sop for the lazy minded, since it prevents real thought and opinion from forming, based on further investigation of whatever it is a government wants to ‘sell’ to its people.

The repetition of these concepts is a form of gaslighting, a glitch in the human psyche that equates repetition with truth. The “illusory truth effect” is something that politicians and markets have been doing for decades, knowingly manipulating your mind by manipulating your cognitive bias.

Trump and his administration were masters of this kind of manipulation, pummeling lies and illogic into people’s minds non-stop before, during, and after his term in office. He’s still doing it now, with his “Big Lie” that the election was stolen from him by Biden. He can’t seem to stop doing it, and a lot of people can’t seem to stop believing him.

“Repetition makes things seem more plausible. And the effect is likely more powerful when people are tired or distracted by other information.” Lynn Hasher, a psychologist at the University of Toronto whose research team first noticed the effect in the 1970s.

It’s not a new concept. Adolf Hitler knew of what he spoke when he wrote, “Slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea,” in Mein Kampf.

Repetition is a staple of political propaganda. It sells fake news. It sells toothpaste. It drums in concepts that most often are so outlandish that we can’t believe we’re repeating them. And yet, we wondered where the yellow went, when we brushed our teeth with Pepsodent.

We’re slowly coming out of a terrible, traumatic, time, and we’re all a little fragile. Still, it’s not the time to be spoonfed platitudes. What we need now are not party lines and talking points, but intelligent, common sensical directives on how to get back safely into our lives and world, ensuring that the rights of everyone are considered and protected.

The Wisdom of Our Elders

by Roxanne Tellier

What a difference a week makes! Since the inauguration, I haven’t had a single communication with another person that didn’t involve a distanced high five, and a recounting of how much better we’re all sleeping and eating since we saw the backend and ignominious departure of the previous resident of the White House.

Trump was that creepy uncle that you only saw once or twice a year, and learned at a young age to step lively around, lest he pinch you cruelly, and in a ‘private’ place. His words were lies, his ‘truth’ nothing but narcissism and tales of his own greatness, believed only by the gullible.

Predictably the QCrazies are bereft, inconsolable, losing their minds, because, it seems the Kraken didn’t awake, the Storm didn’t break, and all the money they spent on champagne to toast a forever trump presidency is gonna have to paid for, so it’s back to the proverbial chain gang, trumpless.

There’ll be no pardons for those that opted to follow their leader’s words, and attempted to overthrow the government, just arrests, fines, and imprisonments to remind them that black out drunks and highs have consequences.

A new Biden administration toddles into place, just a few days old, and already under siege from a Republican party that believes their bluster will protect them from the wrath of not just the Democrats, now in a majority, but the millions of Americans who watched trump and his lackeys attempt a coup in broad daylight.

Gone, but not forgotten, America must now sift through the rubble left behind by a corrupt and criminally incompetent administration whose response to crises was to throw blame and shade on everyone around them, before taking off for some R & R on the golf course. There’s a lot of work – a mindboggling amount of work – to be done before America is back on track.

Yes, Creepy Uncle is gone. In his place, we have ‘No Malarkey’ Joe Biden, a man whose backstory would make an amazing made for TV movie. A dog lover, and a lover of trains, he’s a man who has spent the best part of his life in and around D.C., in public service.

It’s an interesting moment in time. The 74-year-old contender was beaten by a 78-year-old retiree. While the new vice-president, Kamala Harris, is just 56, Nancy Pelosi, who is third in the line of succession, will be 81 in March. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is 70. Mitch McConnell will be 79 in February. The incumbent Secretary of State, Daniel Bennett Smith, is 64. Many of the most prominent members of both parties are in their seventies and eighties, including Dianne Feinstein, 87, whose mental capabilities have been questioned in recent months, and Chuck Grassley, who is also 87, and who recently won yet another six years in office. Prior to last week, Wilbur Ross, 83, was the US Secretary of Commerce, when he wasn’t busy on his side hustle, as Jeff Dunham’s puppet, Walter. (Wilbur Ross Walter Puppet.jpg)

South Carolina’s Senator Strom Thurmond left office at the age of 100, after having served almost fifty years in power. West Virginia’s Robert Byrd died in office at the age of 93, as did Georgia’s John Lewis, at 80. Prior to the most recent elections, it was virtually unheard of that a Senator be under the age of 40.

The United States has, thus, for some time been effectively a gerontocracy.

“A gerontocracy is a form of oligarchical rule in which an entity is ruled by leaders who are significantly older than most of the adult population. In many political structures, power within the ruling class accumulates with age, making the oldest the holders of the most power. Those holding the most power may not be in formal leadership positions, but often dominate those who are. In a simplified definition, a gerontocracy is a society where leadership is reserved for elders. “ (wiki)

Under trump, that gerontocracy was in full bloom, as he placed into positions of power septuagenarians and octogenarians willy nilly. By contrast, the majority of Biden’s nominations look more like the average American than in any previous administration, with the exception of a few, like Janet Yellen, 74, who has been nominated to serve as Treasury Secretary.

And this, a younger, more diverse cabinet, is deeply needed, since the aging of the three branches of government has been repeatedly connected to the broader themes of American decline.

How weird is it that, in a country where, clearly, we treasure the ‘wisdom’ of our elders, based on our electoral choices, where we only feel safe and in good hands with those as old as our grandparents and great-grandparents in the highest elected positions – that we also treat the poorer, less powerful, and frailest of our elderly with such dismissive contempt?

If we believe, as has been said, that the weight of years and experience is responsible for the wisdom, gravitas, and good-hearted balance brought about by decades of living, how is that so few of those opining on the ‘common sense’ approach of ‘herd immunity’ in dealing with COVID-19 feel absolutely no shame in expressing no regrets, publicly, that the first and most voluminous group of martyrs in such a program would be our elders?

In Canada, COVID-19 has wreaked most of its wrath upon seniors, disproportionately affecting the elderly. In November, StatsCan reported that more than 52 per cent of those who had died from the virus were individuals aged 85, and older, while 36 per cent were aged 65-84. 88 per cents of our deaths have been in people over the age of 65. Only 12 per cent of the victims were younger than 65. 77 per cent of those deaths can be traced to long-term care, and senior homes.

95 per cent of deaths in the US were of people over the age of 50.

That we have failed so dramatically at protecting and prioritizing the health and care of our elders is a colossal moral failure. It appears that we only value people who are deemed economically productive. Once that time has passed, and regardless of how much we may have contributed to society throughout our younger years, people who are no longer economically productive are essentially perceived as worthless, and without further value.

In Ontario, twenty-five years ago, and under the Mike Harris government, hospitals were closed, and the jobs of thousands of nurses were eliminated, while the public role in long-term care was reduced, allowing corporate players such as Sienna Senior Living, Revera, Extendicare and Chartwell Homes to enter the game. Regulations were relaxed, and public oversight was reduced. Seniors would now have a range of options for assisted living and long-term-care housing, but at a significantly higher price.

In May of 2020, the Toronto Star reported that “three of the largest for-profit nursing home operators in Ontario, which have had disproportionately high numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths, have together paid out more than $1.5 billion in dividends to shareholders over the last decade.”

The article added:

“This massive sum does not include $138 million paid in executive compensation and $20 million in stock buybacks (a technique that can boost share prices), according to the financial reports of the province’s three biggest publicly traded long-term-care home companies, Extendicare, Sienna Senior Living and Chartwell Retirement Residences.”

A decent society resists the temptation to take the easy way out, no matter how profitable it may be. The elderly deserve more than warehousing, secured away from their loved ones, while they wait to see if they’re next to die. It shows a horrifying disrespect that we are not making more effort to protect them.

Ontario may be the guiltiest province in Canada for hypocrisy. In April 2020, when the province wanted to appear ‘caring,’ they brought in the military to help with the abject neglect and chaos in long term care homes, brought about by those lax regulations, and poor staffing choices.

And yet, in June, and despite record-setting profits, the CBC reported that the majority of Ontario’s LTCs were still operating at 1972 structural safety standards.

“Ontario changed its structural safety standards back in 1998 — mandating, among other things, that nursing home bedrooms should house no more than two residents.

Homes that didn’t meet the new standard were allowed to keep running as-is, with an expectation they would upgrade eventually. The vast majority of homes that haven’t yet upgraded are run by for-profit companies.

While non-profit and for-profit homes have been equally likely to experience outbreaks, those outbreaks have proven deadlier in for-profit homes.“ (CBC Canada, June 2020)

In January 2021, Mike Harris, who spent the last 25 years raking in profits from the long-term care system he helped create, and who is the chair of Chartwell Home’s board of directors, was nominated for the Order of Ontario, despite protests from numerous minority groups, most vocal of which have been the Indigenous communities of Ontario.

(“Between 1995 and 2002, Harris was premier during some of the province’s most notorious scandals in recent history, including the shooting death of Indigenous protester Dudley George in 1995 and the Walkerton water crisis five years after.”) from CTV News, January 2021

We believe that we live in lush capitalism, but that’s not true of all of society. In fact, we are in end-stage capitalism, where even the lions turn upon each other. There are homeless living in our parks, but millions in dollars in pandemic aid is going to corporations making healthy profits, who are paying out dividends with one hand, while receiving federal wage subsidies in the other.

In Canada, 53 public companies disclosed receiving more than $10 million under the Canada emergency wage subsidy program (CEWS). CEWS will have cost ALL Canadians more than $100 billion by the time it wraps up in 2021. But only a small segment – the wealthiest – will have received the most benefits from that and similar protection programs.

While far right Republican and Conservative pundits clamour that the Democrats will ruin their economy with socialism, their parties actually preach and platform something more akin to dog eat dog, where people are only valued for what they produce. These groups advocate the removal of any sort of social safety net, in the form of Social Security or Medicare. What these politicians never acknowledge is that the removal of those nets will doom the elderly, the frail, the ill and the disadvantaged to spending their days in situations akin to that of the worst horrors of the 19^th centuries poorhouses and workhouses, where society placed stigma and shame on those unable to support themselves.

The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the truth in the social safety net, that it was never adequate protection in times of major risks like pandemic illnesses, because of the massive inequality of resources in capitalistic societies. If not addressed and amended, the worse is still to come.

I’ve long contended that the gerontocracy of the United States government is a negative factor, in terms of governance, primarily because those making the rules and regulations for the future have no stake in that future; they won’t be around to reap the rewards or punishments of their decisions. That’s on top of the fact that the majority of those in power are long term seat holders, who have amassed significant wealth and fulsome pensions and benefits, and so are unaffected by the ebb and flow of the average citizen’s lifetime.

They don’t look, act, behave, or earn like the hundreds of millions of Americans they represent. Yet they define the parameters for everything those hundreds of millions must do, from birth to death, and everywhere in between.

Some have called me ‘ageist’ for this position, which is almost laughable, in that there is no ‘ist’ or ‘ism’ that takes away one iota of wealth or power from that most blessed group of elected fortunates.

But what do we call those who look at the opposite end of the age spectrum, at the people who are poor, sick, frail, and without any of those benefits, and deem them of no value to society? Nothing that can be repeated in polite society, that’s for sure.

These last few years have been hard on all of us, in Canada, and in the United States, as we’ve struggled under circumstances made all the harder in the last year with a global pandemic. I want desperately to believe that there are better days ahead. I sincerely hope that Biden has begun as he means to go on, and that his successes inspire Canada and other countries to look in the same direction of progress, healing, and more equal opportunities for all, not just the privileged.

BONUS .. everybody sing along! 😉

Mood Swings & Roundabouts

by Roxanne Tellier

What doesn’t kill us doesn’t necessarily make us stronger. Sometimes it still kills us; it just takes a little longer to do so.

I’m hearing from way too many people, from all walks of life, that they’re feeling utterly exhausted and unable to stay awake, and yet, when they finally fall into bed, they’re not making it to a good and lasting sleep place. And they’re waking up still feeling a little beat up.

Biden won, 2020 took its best shot, but it’s nearly over. Why this enervation now?

It’s because we’ve got a kind of psychic hangover. This malaise is about a long-term, exhausting, mental struggle that left our brains feeling ‘broken.’

We’ve been gaslit. It’s been an adrenaline high for nearly five years, from 2015, when the madness began, to last week, when we thought that our brutal emotional marathon had finally come to an end. We’ve been jacked into the media, battered by every new atrocity that’s rained down on us, reeling like boxers as we try to first understand what’s happening, and then to protect ourselves from those who tried to tell us that it was all good, and it was we who were crazy and over-reacting.

And Biden’s win, so ferociously denied by trump and his supporters, a continuation of the complete denial of reality, means that we’re still not able to take a deep breath and relax. Turns out that our tormentors, like every ruthless predator in a horror film ever, are not going away without a sequel.

Trump is determined to hang on to his position, despite a decisive loss that is the exact mirroring of what he called a ‘landslide’ win, when he himself was on the receiving end of the same numbers, four years ago.

Then, President Obama was gracious to trump, despite wide-spread surprise over his election win, saying, “I want to emphasize to you, Mr. President-elect, that we now are going to want to do everything we can to help you succeed, because if you succeed, then the country succeeds.”

His main opponent in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, was gracious in defeat, calling him hours after the polls closed to congratulate him on his win, and then formally speaking to the nation the next day, from the Javits Center in New York, saying to her supporters,

“Our campaign was never about one person or even one election, it was about the country we love and about building an America that’s hopeful, inclusive and big-hearted.

“We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought. But I still believe in America and I always will. And if you do, then we must accept this result and then look to the future. Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.

“Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power and we don’t just respect that, we cherish it. It also enshrines other things; the rule of law, the principle that we are all equal in rights and dignity, freedom of worship and expression. We respect and cherish these values too and we must defend them.”

But trump doesn’t care about any of that. He doesn’t care about democracy, the rule of law, or that the nation has spoken; he is utterly classless. He won’t concede.

He’s refused to give the green light to the head of the Government Services Administration to acknowledge Biden’s win, and to release the necessary resources to help the new admin hit the ground running on January 20,2021. And that’s impeding President-elect Joe Biden, the man who actually CAN help the nation, from receiving daily security briefs on all the major security issues, along with all of the most up-to-date information on where the country stands on COVID-19.

In truth, the President, like any other citizen, has the right to petition the court. But he doesn’t have the right to hold up the formal transition process for Biden’s succession while he does so. He can’t ‘bookmark’ certain states, claiming them for himself, no matter how many ‘herebys’ he appends to his tweets. The world has already moved on with or without his approval.

He can kick and scream and call himself, ‘your favorite president,’ but in fact, he has now lost the popular vote twice. TWICE. Does he really want to go for a triple? Settle for being out on two strikes, bud.

It’s also become very apparent that a lot of his high-handed decisions, that seemed to be purpose-made to upset groups of people, to bring out those ‘liberal tears,’ or to punish those from whom he failed to receive enough grovelling loyalty, have backfired ‘bigly’ on him.

Trump’s belief that a calling to public service, or the military, was for ‘losers and suckers’ appeared to work against him when General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week, “We take an oath to the constitution, not an individual. We do not take an oath to a king, queen or dictator.”

And the conventional belief that veterans and the military were largely conservative, and had a tendency to lean Republican, was proven very wrong, with an estimated 60% of those ballots choosing Biden instead. Amongst the reasons given for their choices, it seems that the main bone of contention was his selling out of the Kurds, a major ally for American fighting troops for more than 17 years.

The vaunted Million Maga March, meant to protest what he wants to be known as a ‘stolen election,’ fizzled out at a couple of thousand diehards, who showed up in classic clown gear. President ‘Law and Order’ did a drive by on his way to playing golf, giving blanket approval to his followers’ anger and their potential for armed violence. Geez, if only the motorcade had run someone over; it would have been the perfect metaphor for the trump presidency.

Trump’s crack legal team (!!) has had two weeks to find even the tiniest bit of evidence for any election fraud, and have failed. 19 out of the 20 court cases they have brought forward have been dismissed, failing spectacularly, with one judge going so far as to chide the lawyers for providing ‘inadmissible hearsay within hearsay,’ and further rebuking the campaign for failing to include required documentation.

Larry Wilmore on Voter Fraud in the 2020 Election

Off on the horizon, the spectre of ‘faithless electors’ staggering towards the Electoral College like so many Walking Dead extras has been pretty much debunked as being unlikely, and in some cases, blatantly illegal. So, at this point, the only way ‘faithless’ electors’ could be in play would be in the case of an outright, unlawful, coup. Is that possible? Anything is possible. But, again – highly unlikely.

If, during this period, trump was frantically trying to help American citizens by encouraging Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to take up any of the bills brought to the Senate by the House for the nation’s good, including a coronavirus relief package, he might be thought of as genuinely believing that ‘only he could save the country.’

But instead, all he’s done is golf, whine, doomscroll, throw tantrums, and vomit up bitchy complaints and smears on Twitter.

It’s not that he wants the presidential gig; it’s that he doesn’t want anyone else to have it either. And he sure doesn’t want to finally have to answer for all the crimes and corruption he avoided being accountable for, by dint of being a ‘sitting president.’

Even though most people like a good mystery, satisfaction only happens when all of the loose ends are finally tied up, and the bad guy is caught and made to pay for his sins. It’s maddening when that doesn’t happen. It’s exhausting.

Everything about the trump campaign, from 2015 to now, is like a cheap horror film where the monsters are never vanquished. They just keep coming, despite having been shot, stabbed, speared, and set on fire. It’s like we’re in season 125 of the Walking Dead – when will they finally lay down and decompose?

Round and round and round we go. Time for everyone to get off the trump roller coaster. All trump’s really proven to the world is that even the best carnival ride can make you nauseous if it doesn’t eventually come to an end.

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 ….

Notorious RBG and a Last Wish

by Roxanne Tellier

I was preparing dinner in the kitchen on Friday night, when Shawn came into the room and said, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died.”

One hand flew to my mouth, the other to my heart, and I gasped in shock, a reaction that I know was echoed by many in the 24 hours following news of her passing.

How can it be that one small, 87-year-old woman, riddled with cancer, became the only check in the vaunted checks and balances meant to keep an entire nation democratic? How did she become the last bastion of sanity and decency in a country that claims to be ‘exceptional’? Why did it take the loss of her presence on the Supreme Court to wake hundreds of millions of Americans to the stripping away of civil and human rights that awaits them, as early as next month?

While those who claim to be pro-life insist that their religious beliefs should trump the rights of all women to control their own bodies, the Trump administration is already lined up to strip away the health care rights of EVERY American – male, female, black, white, young and old – when their request to invalidate the Affordable Care Act is heard. Some 20 million Americans, many of them low income, will lose health care coverage, and be denied any form of coverage due to pre-existing conditions (something that every single American may have following the COVID pandemic), and will discover that these changes will also disallow children from staying on their parents health plans until the age of 26.

Trump has repeatedly promised that he has a ‘beautiful! New!’ health care plan in the works, but after more than three years of these idle promises, no one should be holding their breath for that to emerge.

Roe v Wade, the case that legalized abortion nationwide nearly fifty years ago, is also on the line. Tom Cotton, one of trump’s proposed new jurists, is on record stating that this would be his first priority.

Short of overturning Wade, there are still several cases in the pipeline that could effectively restrict access to the procedure, including one case already before the court in which the trump admin has asked the justices to overturn a federal judge’s decision that lifted restrictions on telemedicine abortions during the pandemic. And in terms of the most common second trimester abortion procedure, the D&C, (dilation and evacuation) at least 10 states are on record seeking to outlaw clinics providing this option.

Women’s rights to control over their own body is not the only controversial issue. There’s even talk of rolling back the landmark case, Brown v Board of Education (1954) which famously dismantled segregation. The more recent cases that decided on the rights of the LGBTQ, the handicapped, and other minority communities will also be on the table with a fifth Conservative Supreme Justice.

One small, fragile, senior, woman held back that tide of discrimination, prejudice, and misogyny for as long as she physically could. But within two hours of her death, and in defiance of her stated last wish that her seat remain unfilled until a new president was in power, trump was already declaring his intent to fill her seat with a person of his own choosing.

And that follows in a horrific pattern in which four out of five of the conservative justices currently sitting on the Supreme Court (Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh) were nominated by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote

Two of trump’s most loathsome minions, who campaigned ruthlessly to prevent President Obama from appointing a Justice in his last year of office, have reversed their ‘hand on the bible’ statements from 2016.

And today ….

But they are not the only Republican Senators displaying blatant hypocrisy, and a lack of ethical morality, in their decision to blindly follow in their leader’s doddering steps.

The very idea that matters considered so integral to how justice is allowed or denied should be in the hands of judges who profess fealty to a specific political party boggles the mind. Having trampled upon any pretense of a separation of church and state, the modern Court openly skews either liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. That can’t be right. The law must be the law, not something that can be warped to suit the needs of the politicians currently in power. If the decisions are made based on party, then the decisions are only opinions, frothy and transitory, as worthless as the blatherings of a drunk at the end of the bar. The justices lose all credibility, cease to be the ultimate legal decision makers, and are instead mere pundits. .

“President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”

Mitch McConnell seems determined to rush the seating of a lifetime justice, in hopes that, regardless of the outcome of this election, the conservative, Republican ideals will remain the law of the land for decades to come. McConnell is cementing his position as the man who broke American democracy, and brought the pillars of American justice down around it’s citizens, the modern-day Benedict Arnold, made mad thru his insatiable lust for relevance and power.

“According to American political scientist Larry Diamond, democracy consists of four key elements: a political system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections; the active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life; protection of the human rights of all citizens; a rule of law, in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens.” (Wikipedia)

During this administration, each of those pillars has been systematically mocked, repeatedly attacked, and is in peril of becoming a dead issue.

ONE: “ a political system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections;

Despite having won (by Electoral College) the presidency in 2016, trump attacked all forms of voting, insisting, despite his own repeated investigations that found no tampering, that all American elections were fundamentally flawed and rigged. With the pandemic impairing the ability of citizens to safely vote in person, he then first verbally attacked mail-in voting, intentionally underfunded the Postal Service, and then appointed Louis Dejoy as Post Master General, who viciously decimated staff and equipment in the nation’s postal offices, bringing the mails to a slowdown unlike any in it’s history, and making the handling of the volumes of mail ensured by election mail-in voting nearly impossible to consider.

As some Americans opt for early voting in states like Virginia, trump’s goons are swarming polling locations and would be voters, in blatant acts of voter intimidation. Trump has already admitted that these acts of intimidation will be severely ramped up on Election Day, November 3. He has also admitted that he might challenge the 2020 election results, or even stay in the White House, despite a loss. It is quite likely that the final results may be delayed by days, or even weeks, based on these restrictions, and while a late decision on who has won is actually not illegal, trump’s mouthpieces are spreading disinformation on the legality of such a delay.

Two: “the active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life; “

Trump’s first town hall meeting in, I believe, the entirety of his four-year term, was held just this past week. The people allowed to question him were thoroughly vetted, and most questions were fairly straightforward and logical. However, his answers merely echoed the beerhall rants familiar from his rallies – mainly incoherent, highly self-congratulatory, and rarely with any semblance to the real world everyone but trump is inhabiting.

Three: “protection of the human rights of all citizens; “ Since the first month of trump’s ascendency to the presidency, the rights of all citizens, American or otherwise, were secondary to his platform. Within hours of his first day in office, he began the process to repeal Obamacare, and within days, had put into place executive orders to set in motion travel bans and restrictions on refugees and immigrants from Muslim-majority countries. By April, 800,000 ‘DREAMers’ had their lives upended and their futures made uncertain.

By the spring, new armies of ICE agents began arresting and deporting many immigrants who were in the process of becoming citizens. And of course, the infamous border wall, persecution of would be refugees, and camps for kids weren’t far behind.

Four: “a rule of law, in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens.” Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present Attorney General William Barr … personal lawyer to the POTUS, and expediter of pardons and the overturning of legal decisions.

America is in crisis. American democracy is on its last legs. And as the citizens limp towards the election, burdened with a lethal pandemic, massive unemployment, and the threat of homelessness looming over the heads of about 40 million people, they must also contend with almost daily revelations informing them of trump’s knowledge of exactly how deadly this pandemic is, and that he hid that knowledge from the people, for his own re-election plans.

Rather than shore up America’s defenses, rather than trust the people whom he took an oath to protect and defend from this deadly virus, trump has instead relied on the snake oil sellers he’s seen hawking junk on FOX to its addled viewers. And now, finally, he’s admitted … his plan is to not have a plan, but instead to gamble on ‘herd immunity’.

This new non-plan will kill as many as 3 million people. “Trump has a plan for coronavirus: herd immunity. Say goodbye to your parents, your neighbors, and your friends. Because the Trump plan will kill millions in the next four years.”

And in the midst of all of this madness, and with a plan that’s not a plan but rather an abdication to the power of the virus, trump has told the American people that he believes that he alone has the right to name yet another conservative judge to the Supreme Court, to join the previous two that were foisted upon the nation.

Despite the last wish of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who said, ‘ My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed’.

A NEW president. Not this used up condom of a failed, incompetent, wannabe dictator.

If Americans want to fulfill her last wish, with the added bonus of saving the nation from plunging into fascism, they’re going to have to vote like their lives depend upon it.

Because it does.

Revenge of the Creature Redux

by Roxanne Tellier

America was never ‘perfect,’ despite the first settler’s early claims that ‘manifest destiny’ made anything Americans wanted to do, in the name of ‘a more perfect union,’ perfectly fine and utterly legit.

But while they might have contended that the special virtues of the American people and their institutions made colonialism, slavery, and the unchecked and wholesale, uncontested, swallowing up of the country ‘god’s will’ for the benefit of the powerful, these presumably lofty ideals, and ‘an irresistible destiny to accomplish this essential duty’ never held much water to the people whose lands were seized in the name of ‘the divine.’

**Manifest Destiny** was the idea that white Americans were divinely ordained to settle the entire continent of North America. The ideology of **Manifest Destiny** inspired a variety of measures designed to remove or destroy the native population.

Fast forward to February 2020, when the Republican party, lead by an immoral, craven Senate leader, and under the sway of a blatantly avaricious, sadistic, narcissist POTUS, took the whole idea of manifest destiny one step further, and crowned their leader Lord and King of America.

Although trump was charged with both abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, the Republican party, in a show of cowardice and cultism unparalleled in modern American history, chose to acquit, thereby finally allowing trump to claim what he always believed to be his due – to be completely above the law, and to ascend to the monarchy.

Analyzing exactly HOW this moment came about would drive a saint mad, but there’s no question that the combination of a virulent social media, combined with a mainstream media desperate for ratings, provided a lack of context and nuance that greased the wheels of weaponizing the words of not just the powerful, but the common man. Trump’s own abuse of Twitter, which he uses in lieu of press conferences or a state media, allows him to avoid actual interaction with those who might have, in better days, used their intelligence and knowledge of history to point out obvious fallacies and wrong thinking.

It boggles the mind, to think that anyone … ANYONE … thought that granting this limitless amount of power – to be above the law, incapable of committing a crime, entitled to scoff at Congressional oversight – should be given to the most corrupt, incapable, malevolent, sadistic, and possibly senile creature ever to soil the carpets of the White House. I am truly left speechless at that calumny.

I honestly can’t even think of any other president in America’s history who would either want or even ACCEPT that power; it is the power of kings, or of a god.

And sure enough, the morning after the acquittal, while attending the annual National Prayer Breakfast, trump did, indeed, take the time to let speaker Arthur Brooks and the other attendees know that, no, trump did not subscribe to the words of the New Testament or Jesus Christ. In fact, he did not believe that Christians should forgive their enemies. Instead, he would demand unholy retribution.

And as to the very concept of prayer –

“he targeted Speaker Pelosi, who has said she prays for Mr. Trump, saying, “Nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you,’ when they know that’s not so.”

“Explicitly rejecting the message of tolerance offered at the National Prayer Breakfast just moments before he took the lectern, Mr. Trump — without naming them — singled out Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was sitting just a few feet away at the head table, and Senator Mitt Romney, the Republican from Utah who voted to convict him, accusing them of hypocrisy for citing their faith while supporting his impeachment.

“As everybody knows, my family, our great country and your president have been put through a terrible ordeal by some very dishonest and corrupt people,” Mr. Trump said.“ (The New York Times, Feb 7, 2020)

Meanwhile, back at the ‘ranch’ – there’s no one left to speak up against whatever the all powerful POTUS chooses to say or do. Furthermore, since the acquittal, and his subsequent retribution upon those who spoke up against him, it’s unlikely that anyone ever will again.

Based on our knowledge of who remains to give trump ideas and direction on how best to abuse this godlike power – McConnell, and Stephen Miller amongst the main proponents – AND the historic lack of original thought evidenced by the GOP in the past, I think we can count on what is to come in the next few months to resemble a medley of the greatest hits of Joseph McCarthy, Torquemada, Adolf Hitler, and the tenets of Putin’s beloved KGB, with nods to George Orwell’s 1984.

Trump Jr’s tweet on Friday sent a real chill down my spine. This stank of Big Brother, cruelty and an abuse of power by proxy.

The guardrails of U.S. democracy are definitely falling off.

Trump has begun his reign of terror; Friday was the ‘night of the long knives 2020,’ as Lt Col Alex Vindman AND his twin brother (who had nothing to do with the Lt Col’s testimony) were both frogmarched out of the White House like common criminals.

Within hours, Gordon Sondland, the loyalist whose ambassadorial position cost him a cool million-dollar donation, was also summarily dismissed.

Most of those who testified, called by subpoenas they did not ignore, have had to leave their posts, whether voluntarily or not. What was first bullying and intimidation has now become outright vengeance and retribution.

Yes, these actions violate a federal law. It is indeed illegal to retaliate against a witness, victim or an informant. But since trump is now above all laws, he can feel free to act with impunity. I’m gonna guess he’s just getting started.

We’ve seen how executive pique has punished the trump enemies – ask Puerto Rico what it’s like to try and survive natural disasters after incurring his wrath. Add the states of New York and California to the list – both are learning that there are a million ways to be hobbled when the Attorney General of the United States lives in the POTUS’ pocket.

While trump cannot fire elected officials, he can continue to make life hell for top Democrats, like Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and more, and in the process force them to spend hundreds of thousands on lawyers to clear their names.

On the Sunday political news shows, loyalist Lindsay Graham seemed to be calling for a ‘thorough’ investigation of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, which will, of course, be costly, exhausting, and ultimately cause just enough suspicion – even amongst the leftiest left leaners – to reconsider a vote for Biden.

Is it possible there have already been investigations started on the other candidates? Do Warren, Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Buttigieg, Yang, and Steyer need to worry? Because, this summer, once a candidate has been selected to run as the Democratic lead, you can bet your bottom dollar that Barr’s Department of (in)Justice will be on them like … you get the picture.

All blatantly political. All filled with malice, and an ego that can never be sated. All very third world, banana republic, where those who dissent are imprisoned. And all with the zeal of a convert who simply can’t stop flagellating those who might have different beliefs.

And, according to Alan Dershowitz, none of his actions will be illegal, now or forever, if he’s leading from his ‘heart,’ in believing that the use of government services and tax payer money to smear his opponents, is in the nation’s best interest.

Neither the DOJ nor the corrupt Republicans of the Senate will expect or coerce trump to obey any of America’s laws. His illegal retaliation against those who testified of his illegal actions will be ignored. It remains to be seen if Defense Secretary Mark Esper, or the Department of Defense, who swore to Vindman that they would see that he did not suffer retaliation or reprisals, will keep those promises. Even the DOD may find itself powerless against a fascist dictator, unhinged, and unchained from any form of accountability.

What you see every day becomes normalized, no matter how awful, no matter how evil. With trump, the evil is baked into the cake, as it has been since his childhood. A certain type of American citizen has not only accepted trump’s version of reality, they have revelled in it, delighted in the racism, bullying, and xenophobia.

Can those who are disgusted and angry with politics in America find a savior to vote for, to lead them out of this wilderness, in November? I don’t know. I hope so. But meanwhile, as these white nationalists with the group “Patriot Front” marched through Washington DC yesterday, it’s hard not to be mindful of the quote from Orwell’s 1984

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

One of These Things is Not Like the Other

by Roxanne Tellier

At a party last summer, I met someone who looked very like Patrick Stewart, aka, Captain Picard of Star Trek fame.

He seemed like a nice enough guy. He had a lovely smile, and a soft, even childlike, air.

Picard, the character, is universally beloved, and, in that role, exhibits extraordinary intelligence, patience, kindness, and empathy, while he simultaneously pilots a starship and its crew to adventures and destinations unknown.

The fellow that I met, the Picard lookalike, was a very nice man. What he WASN’T … was Patrick Stewart. And there’s an odd thing about how humans process information; when we see someone who looks like someone we admire, we expect them to be very like that person. It’s like we believe that our appearance is the augur of our destiny.

One of these things is not like the other.

Our society lionizes the successful, the beautiful, rich, famous, and powerful. Accordingly, we have a surplus of people ready and willing to jump at the chance to ‘pretend’ to be one of our idols, to imitate them, in the hopes of drawing from the fans a little of the same love and respect – and maybe some wealth of their own. “Tribute’ or clone acts fill the entertainment world, and those lucky enough to resemble actors or world leaders can make a ton of money, just showing up at conferences, conventions, and forums, and shaking hands with the faithful.

But of course, looks have very little to do with ability, intelligence, artistry or character. Sow’s ear, silk purse … you can dress a clown in an expensive suit, but that doesn’t mean the clown can do much more than twist a balloon into a poodle shape. And, no matter how persuasive the clown, or how nice the suit, you really shouldn’t give that clown access to a button that can potentially blow up the world.

We are so enamoured by fame that we’ve gone from idolizing those who were indisputably the best in the world at what they did, to pedestalling those who are famous for simply being famous. To this, we can now add those who are famous simply because they look like someone famous.

The people of the United States of America love fame so much that they appointed a failed businessman cum reality show actor to lead and control the enormous wealth and power of their nation. Hasn’t gone quite as well as they’d expected. But that’s because, as I mentioned above, the fact that someone APPEARS a certain way, does not mean that they have any of the attributes of that façade.

Trump was a creation, a confection fashioned by hanging an expensive suit on a broken coat rack, and surrounding him with what the hoi polloi imagine is luxury…. beautiful women, gilded spittoons, champagnes and yachts. In reality, the trump that strutted on the stage sprang nearly fully formed from the forehead of Mark Burnett, show creator extraordinaire.

After the success of Survivor, Burnett wanted to try another ‘social experiment’ – ‘Survivor in the City’ This one would feature contestants competing for a corporate job in the URBAN jungle.

From The New Yorker magazine, January 2019. “He needed someone to play the role of a heavyweight tycoon. Burnett, who tends to narrate stories from his own life in the bravura language of a Hollywood pitch, once said of the show, “It’s got to have a hook to it, right? They’ve got to be working for someone big and special and important. Cut to: I’ve rented this skating rink.”

In 2002, Burnett rented Wollman Rink, in Central Park, for a live broadcast of the Season 4 finale of “Survivor.” The property was controlled by Donald Trump, who had obtained the lease to operate the rink in 1986, and had plastered his name on it. Before the segment started, Burnett addressed fifteen hundred spectators who had been corralled for the occasion, and noticed Trump sitting with Melania Knauss, then his girlfriend, in the front row. Burnett prides himself on his ability to “read the room”: to size up the personalities in his audience, suss out what they want, and then give it to them.

“I need to show respect to Mr. Trump,” Burnett recounted, in a 2013 speech in Vancouver. “I said, ‘Welcome, everybody, to Trump Wollman skating rink. The Trump Wollman skating rink is a fine facility, built by Mr. Donald Trump. Thank you, Mr. Trump. Because the Trump Wollman skating rink is the place we are tonight and we love being at the Trump Wollman skating rink, Mr. Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.” As Burnett told the story, he had scarcely got offstage before Trump was shaking his hand, proclaiming, “You’re a genius!”………………

Trump had been a celebrity since the eighties, his persona shaped by the best-selling book “The Art of the Deal.” But his business had foundered, and by 2003 he had become a garish figure of local interest—a punch line on Page Six. “The Apprentice” mythologized him anew, and on a much bigger scale, turning him into an icon of American success. …

“The Apprentice” portrayed Trump not as a skeezy hustler who huddles with local mobsters but as a plutocrat with impeccable business instincts and unparalleled wealth—a titan who always seemed to be climbing out of helicopters or into limousines. “Most of us knew he was a fake,” Braun told me. “He had just gone through I don’t know how many bankruptcies. But we made him out to be the most important person in the world. It was like making the court jester the king.” Bill Pruitt, another producer, recalled, “We walked through the offices and saw chipped furniture. We saw a crumbling empire at every turn. Our job was to make it seem otherwise.”

This is an oddly common refrain among people who were involved in “The Apprentice”: that the show was camp, and that the image of Trump as an avatar of prosperity was delivered with a wink. Somehow, this interpretation eluded the audience. Jonathon Braun marvelled, “People started taking it seriously!”

To paraphrase Burnett – cut to: Trump on an escalator.

“Trump has succeeded in politics, in part, by borrowing the tropes of the show. Jonathon Braun pointed out to me that when Trump announced his candidacy, in 2015, he did so in the atrium of Trump Tower, and made his entrance by descending the gold-colored escalator—choreography that Burnett and his team had repeatedly used on the show. After Trump’s announcement, reports suggested that people who had filled the space and cheered during his speech had been hired to do so, like TV extras, for a day rate of fifty dollars. Earlier this year, the White House started issuing brief video monologues from the President that strongly evoke his appearances on Burnett’s show. Justin McConney, a former director of new media for the Trump Organization, told New York that, whenever Trump works with camera people, he instructs them, “Shoot me like I’m shot on ‘The Apprentice.’ ”

On the days that I am feeling generous about what would make any human, never mind a professional politician who has sworn an oath on a Bible they claim to hold dear, to believe that trump is a leader ordained by god, elected by 60 million Americans to hold their futures in his tiny hands, I assume it must be, overall, about their own buy-in to his apparent ‘fame.’

Because it can’t be based on any type of actual success he has achieved; his business history is strewn with bankruptcies, court orders, and law suits from people who have been royally ripped off by trump and his family. It can’t be from his success with interpersonal relationships; his three marriages, all of which were plagued by his cheating with any female within grabbing range, would belie his ability to maintain a close, intimate relationship, even with a mate. And although trump has leaned heavily upon, and capitalized on the fawning adoration of the Evangelicals, he himself shows less than a passing interest in religion. Even ‘two Corinthians’ had to be coerced out of him.

I have to come to the conclusion that this mist, this miasma of perceived fame, is what blurred the vision of those who opted to follow trump down the escalator and into a perversion of a Republican party concocted by the Machiavellian Mitch McConnell.

Even those who ran against his presidential bid, whom he skewered like so many cocktail weenies and left to wither on the sidelines, have had a ‘come to Jesus!’ moment, in which they substituted the Jesus for the two faced Janus.

Maybe we’ll learn, years from now, exactly how trump’s former opponents became some of his fiercest defenders. For now, we can just watch, goggle-eyed, as the like of Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio abase themselves at his feet.

Few in the GOP are courageous enough to face the POTUS’ wrath, and really, you can’t blame them for being such cowards. The power of his office is vast, and there is no atrocity he will not countenance. After his yawning dismissal of the murder of Kashoggi by bone saw, it’s pretty clear that he believes all is fair when it comes to disposing – literally – of your enemies.

So I think most of us were rather surprised when Matt Gaetz, another fawning sycophant who seemed to be on the fast track to some prestigious position or posting, suddenly found a conscience, and lent his support to the House’s war powers resolution, which would limit the ability of the president to engage in further military action against Iran without congressional approval.

Gaetz was immediately excoriated by his party, and summarily removed from the defense team being put together for the Impeachment trial. While Gaetz seemed genuinely hurt by the cold shoulder, he also had a few choice words for the media after watching how the Dems and GOP conducted themselves in said trial. While he praised the House Dems for their presentation, saying that ‘they made their case as if it were cable news,” and commending their use of multimedia to make points, he had little respect for the (unpaid) trump defense team, whom he said ‘looked like an eighth-grade book report. Actually, no, I take that back. An eighth-grader would know how to use PowerPoint and iPads.”

Gaetz is, of course, one of the many angry Republicans who just can’t seem to speak without screaming their ‘truth’ over whomever is attempting to make a point. I won’t give him a pass for seeing the defense team as sloppy and lazy; his disdain seems primarily motivated by his narcissistic belief that it is their loss for keeping him off that team.

After the first few hours of the lacklustre defense provided by trump’s defense, he may well be right. After all, we’ve just seen three days, a solid 24 hours, of superior, informed, well-expressed, cogent, political rhetoric, which outlined in every detail exactly WHY trump has to be removed from office, culminating with Adam Schiff’s powerful summation, that – assuming there’s a nation and a democracy after trump’s evil reign – will likely become as renowned as the signature speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., John F Kennedy, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. It was that good.

“If right doesn’t matter, if right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the constitution is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the framers were. It doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is. It doesn’t matter how well-written the oath of impartiality is. If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost. If truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost. The framers couldn’t protect us from ourselves, if right and truth don’t matter. And you know that what he did was not right. You know, that’s what they do in the old country, that Colonel Vindman’s father came from or the old country that my great-grandfather came from, or the old countries that your ancestors came from or that maybe you came from. But here, right is supposed to matter.

It’s what’s made us the greatest nation on Earth. No constitution can protect us if right doesn’t matter anymore. And you know you can’t trust this president to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump. He’ll do it now. He’s done it before. He’ll do it for the next several months. He’ll do it in the election if he’s allowed to. This is why, if you find him guilty, you must find that he should be removed. Because right matters. Because right matters. And the truth matters. Otherwise, we are lost.”

No, one of these things is not like the other.

It is beyond me how those in the trump cult can continue to follow their false Messiah, even as he tears down the foundations of their once great nation. Indeed, even as the Impeachment trial attempts to decide if his crimes are sufficient to remove him from office, he’s flaunting his obstruction, (“We have all the material. They don’t have the material.”) overturning legislation that for 50 years has protected the waters and environment of the country, and telling the politicians and billionaires attending Davos the ‘entitlements’ of social security, Medicare, and Medicaid are his targets to be cut, should he win a second term.

“It’ll be toward the end of the year,” Trump said from Davos, Switzerland. “And at the right time, we will take a look at that. You know, that’s actually the easiest of all things, if you look, cause it’s such a big percentage. “

And really, how big a deal is the prospective deaths of a couple of hundred million Americans through his actions, in the face of climate change, and the accelerated political unrest around the globe, that has enough people so on edge and fearful that it’s moved us to a mere one hundred seconds from Doomsday?

One of these things is not like the others. One spells the end of democracy, and possibly the planet. The other hopes that the children of the world are strong and determined enough to snatch back all of our futures from the brink that crazed, populist, right wing politicians have dragged us toward.

And, unless humanity makes some smart decisions very soon, that direction may ultimately have very little to do with what we would choose, even assuming that we’re given a choice.

America – Coming Apart At The Dreams

There are only two things that kept me from spontaneously combusting this week.

This ….

and this …

and for bonus points .. this…

I was in a white hot rage for most of the week otherwise. Watching democracy die in real time is exhausting. Understanding the implications of just what America is losing is heart wrenching.

This is, after all, what many consider a doomsday scenario, one in which an intrinsically flawed president controls all three branches of government and has declared war on American institutions. With the nomination and confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, every branch of government – meant to protect ALL citizens – now soaks in a stew of fragile, toxic, angry, white, masculinity.

I’m KavaNauseous.

There was never any reason to force a flawed candidate down the throat of America; there were dozens of other candidates without multiple allegations of sexual assault against them, just as worthy, perhaps even more worthy. I’m gonna bet that it’s likely none of the other guys had a former female law clerk available, ready to flash white power signs at the camera during his confirmation hearings. And I’m pretty sure that any of those other choices would have still secured the long term goal of tipping the Court to the right.

Kavanaugh was also concurrently facing multiple ethics complaints about his time on the Court of Appeals. A Supreme Court nominee has never before been poised to join the court while a fellow judge recommends that there be a review of a series of misconduct claims against that nominee. With his elevation, those complaints cease to exist.

But the obvious calculation on the GOP’s part, that this candidate holds some very interesting opinions on just how far above the law lies the office and power of the presidency, was escalated once the fight got into the sexual realm.

And it was then that the depth of male anger, resentment and entitlement leapt to the fore. Although the Republican senators made a stab at showing some sort of sensitivity, as in hiring a seasoned, female sex-crimes prosecutor, their true feelings were evident when they repeatedly referred to the prosecutor as an ‘assistant,’ and took over the questioning when it was time to protect their boy, Kav.

For most sane people, Kavanaugh shot himself in the foot when he came out swinging, getting that toxic entitlement all over the front rows of the viewers. Spewing conspiracy theories, breaking into tears for little reason, and aggressively belittling the Democratic senators attempting to question him, he came off as nothing more than an aging high school bully who still likes to swing by the old school to ensure his legend as a ‘hard man’ maintains.

I’m pretty sure that most women who’ve dealt, even peripherally, with a man this angry, feared for what would happen to his wife and daughters when the day was over and they were in the shelter of his home.

And the subsequent oped that Kavanaugh placed in the Wall Street Journal continued to foster a tone that echoed exactly how abusive partners talk to their spouse, after an episode blows over.

But whatever anyone might deduce from his words and tone were totally immaterial; the fix had been in from the get go. In the post filibuster era, all the GOP needed was a vote of 51, and they knew they had that handily, even if they had to bring in Vice President Lapdog.

When Senators Flake and Coons demanded an FBI investigation, some of us actually had a momentary hope that there might be some justice involved in the rush to elevate the justice, but within hours, our hopes were dashed again.

The FBI were essentially ‘hired’ by the White House, and Trump made the rules for how they’d investigate. The entire report was a sham, from start to finish, and served only to give the few senators looking to cover their ass, a flimsy excuse to give to their female constituents.

The sort of secrecy around even the tiny bit of ‘investigating’ that got done when they talked to “nine people – no walk ins,” and not at all to the two main characters, became even more farcical when the results were treated like a Shroud of Turin, too fragile to be accessible to more than a few people at a time.

The report was a cover-up, a charade meant only as a fig leaf to cover the tumescence of the senators about to give one to the women of America.

Now – we do know that every honourable group in America, and even some not so honourable groups – were opposed to Kavanaugh. Even the ABA (American Bar Association) asked the committee to hold off on the confirmation while they re-evaluated Kavanaugh’s standing, based on his temperament. Gonna hazard a guess that his rating, already having been dropped from ‘very qualified’ to ‘qualified’ was about to drop to ‘unqualified.’

In fact, the only group NOT opposing him, on moral and ethical grounds .. were Evangelical Christians. What a pretty sight to see .. that the group considering itself America’s high ground for morality … displays no tinge of morals whatsoever.

It’s a display…a veritable parade … of the power of white supremacy and male entitlement.

And the Republicans just cannot understand why women and minorities aren’t standing up and cheering the decision.

Well, history will have it’s say – Kavanaugh, I firmly believe, will be outed in all of his reprehensible glory, and this episode, regardless of any thing good he might have done in the future, will colour his legacy with a crimson stain of perjury and rageaholicism.

The confirmation also taints the Supreme Court itself. Every decision made while he sits on the court will be treated with disdain and contempt, with his input rightly treated as the squealing of the suck up to the president/Republican party.

This appointment undermines the integrity of the Supreme Court, whose main job is to provide bipartisan checks and balances. All pretense of that is gone with this new court – five right-leaning judges and four liberals. It’s value is now eroded and this obvious partisan lean challenges the courts ability to uphold the constitutional rights of ALL American people. The SCOTUS branch of justice has been trimmed back hard.

” McConnell and our dysfunctional and disrespected Congress have now ensured an increasingly dysfunctional and disrespected judiciary, and the constitutional balance of powers among the three branches of government is in peril.”
(Christopher R. Browning.. The Suffocation of Democracy)

But I also hold the FBI as complicit in it’s own slow walk to becoming ineffectual, and ultimately, too worthless to continue being supported. And it’s a mark of how far we’ve come in normalizing this abnormal administration, that there was no chance that the FBI would overrule the president, and conduct a proper investigation.

The sad truth is that America is in the middle of a legitimacy crisis. Kavanaugh’s elevation to the Supreme Court was recommended by a president that actually lost the popular vote, and investigated by a Bureau that is rapidly losing the faith of the people. A third of the country – what remains of his base – is being whipped into a frenzy at his Nuremberg-style rallies, with politics now such a delicate area of conversation that families are being ripped asunder by partisanship. People are buying t-shirts that say they’d rather be Russian than vote for a Democrat. The country is ripe for another civil war.

All because of one man, who thrives on chaos, and on pitting us against each other. He is the antithesis of a good leader – he is the Jim Jones turning America into Jonestown.

His minions cheer on his cruelty, unaware that they could well be his next victim .. he’s capricious like that. Citizens are chasing politicians out of restaurants and going after them in elevators. A miasma of violence percolates through the land; we’re one upping each other in our passion, and that can only lead to more violence.

These upcoming midterm elections are being called the most important elections in modern history. Much depends on getting out the vote, and Mitch McConnell is pretty sure that the Supreme Court win will energize the Republican base to come out in droves. Democrats are hoping for a Blue Wave, but if there is one thing certain, it’s that after the debacle of 2016, no election can ever be considered in the bag.

What we do know, however, is that the outcome of the midterms is critical to the future of the United States. A Democratic win would ensure a small return to democracy and an opposition with some teeth. A Republican win, on the other hand, would allow Trump and his very worst flights of fancy to finish the job he’s begun … of tearing America into tiny shreds before handing it over to his Russian handlers.

I’ll bet Putin never expected he’d get such a rate of return on his investment into the useful idiot.

The Fall of Man

My apologies to faithful readers who may not agree with me – or who are easily offended. I’m very offended by anyone who can continue to to support Trump at this stage. This blog is NSFW. (Not Safe For Work.) You have been warned.

…….

A few years back, I used to write recaps of reality shows for a showbiz site. One of the hardest to sit through without gagging was Donald Trump’s ‘Celebrity Apprentice.’

Watching the D, E and F list celebs fawn all over the Cheetoh, and pledge fealty and allegiance to Trump’s superior business sense made me sick, and the end of each episode’s visit to the Boardroom, where Trump, with Thing 1 and Thing 2 seated stony faced to his right and left, levied his ‘justice’ upon the celebs, and chose who would be ‘fired,’ was always illogical, and unexpected only by those who don’t know the rules of Reality TV – keep those ratings coming.

“And when you’re a star they let you do it,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”

“Whatever you want,” says another voice, apparently Bush’s.

“Grab them by the pussy,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”

There really is a delicious irony in the GOP’s recoil and revulsion at Trump’s latest faux pas – oh, sorry what I meant to say was, admission of serial sexual assault.

Certainly … it could be argued that Trump AND the Republicans have said worse in the last few years, putting forward ideas and regulations that dehumanized and disempowered large groups of their own citizens, including minorities and veterans of war. And of course – women.

But apparently, all of these lawfully appointed representatives have to draw the line somewhere, and withdraw their support from Trump NOW – just weeks before the election – because he’s revealed a truth they’ve danced around for years; that GOP stands for Grab Our Pussies.

And it’s not because they’re embarrassed at his vulgarity. No, I think it goes way deeper than that. Trump just put into words what they have been putting into practice and law for at least a decade.

They’ve built a cult around appealing to the very people who regularly unleash legal fury on anyone who doesn’t follow Christianity as strictly as they purport publicly to do. All manner of evil and hypocrisy has been done in the guise of preserving the women, the children, and the god fearing, from any hint of wrongdoing. America, they contend, has descended into a hellfire pit as horrific as the tales of Sodom and Gomorrah, where ‘fornication, going after strange flesh, sexual immorality, perverted sensuality, homosexuality, lust of every kind, immoral acts and unnatural lust’ has become the rule of the land.

And, just as in the Bible, those most viciously condemned and punished are women. The Republican Party has effectively taken one giant step backward for mankind, a giant step forward for a Christian form of Sharia law.

Make no mistake; Republican lawmakers have been ‘grabbing our pussy’ for a very long time. They just disguised it in legal terms, and in vague protective cautions that alluded to, but didn’t quite come right out and say, that women were stupid, emotionally fueled creatures unable to either understand the dangers of sex, or to properly deal with the consequences.

It is paternalism writ large. “The policy or practice on the part of people in positions of authority of restricting the freedom and responsibilities of those subordinate to them in the subordinates’ supposed best interest.”

It has been laughable, watching Republicans attempt to distance themselves from Trump’s chauvinist misogyny.

Remember Mr. Binders Full of Women, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney? Even he had to draw a line. “Hitting on married women? Condoning assault? Such vile degradations demean our wives and daughters and corrupt America’s face to the world.”

Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House, and Mitt’s running mate in 2012, said he was “sickened” by what he’d heard and banned Trump from a political event in Wisconsin. This would be the same man who’s doubled down on women’s health issues, voting for a bill referred to as the “Let Women Die Bill” because it proposed to allow hospitals to refuse a woman emergency abortion care, even if her life was in immediate danger; co-sponsored a federal personhood bill that declared a fertilized egg that hasn’t even resulted in a pregnancy to be the equivalent of a living person, with all of the rights of federal law, which would mean that aspects of in vitro fertilization procedures and some forms of contraception would be criminalized, as would operations to save a woman’s life in the case of dangerous ectopic pregnancies that cannot be carried to term. Oh … AND voted against women receiving equal pay for equal work. That guy.

From Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, who has stood by Trump uncritically through numerous controversies: “No woman should ever be described in these terms or talked about in this manner. Ever.”

(A 2014 report by the Crossroads GPS and American Action Network report found that women think the GOP is “intolerant,” “lacking in compassion,” and “stuck in the past.”)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the comments are “repugnant, and unacceptable in any circumstance” and made clear Trump’s brief statement would not suffice.

That would be the same McConnell that legislates against 2.2 million Kentucky women every day, and the women of his country year round, by voting against equal pay legislation, the Violence Against Women Act, and countless other pieces of legislation geared towards protecting the health and security of women. Yeah. That guy.

And Mike Pence, Trump’s running mate for VP, has, as Governor of Indiana, been a huge proponent of controlling the pussies of Indiana’s women, insisting upon invasive medical procedures, (forced transvaginal ultrasound before having an abortion; state rape by any ones definition) while ensuring a lack of access to the morning-after pill or abortion options. And as recently as March 2016, he signed a bill that required that aborted fetuses receive what amounts to a funeral.

Pence is not only a heartbeat away from taking over as President should a President Trump decline or be unable to govern, he accepted the request to be Vice-President when told that the offer would make him “the most powerful vice president in history, in charge of domestic and foreign policy.” (This was the offer made to John Kasich this past July, duly reported when Kasich made the terms public.)

Everything about Pence’s policies should frighten most people, as his gubernatorial practices have showcased the spectacular power available when a conspiracy theorist, who can be bought at a bargain price, gets into office.

Despite ample proof, for instance, that cigarettes are a health hazard, Pence has repeatedly sold himself (and very cheaply, I might add) to Big Tobacco, allowing Indiana, under his governance, to attain “the highest adult smoking rates of any state in the industrial midwest region and the seventh highest smoking rate in the nation. With among the lowest tobacco taxes of any state, public health experts warn the state is “really in bad shape.” Indeed a 2014 article noted that “17 percent of pregnant women smoke — nearly double the national average — and this has been linked to lower birth weights and higher rates of infant mortality. As a result, it noted, “the state spends $28 million a year on health costs for infants born to mothers who smoke.””

Moreover, he doesn’t believe in climate change, is vehemently against any LGBTQ equality, marital or otherwise, and we already knows how he really feels about women. And this is the guy who’d be in charge of your domestic policies. How do you like him so far?

So spare me the pearl clutching, Republicans. Spare me the supposed indignation over Bill Clinton‘s CONSENSUAL if stupid fumblings with a starry eyed intern, and your belief that Hillary Clinton was his enabler, who should somehow have been able to control her husband, who was at the time the most powerful man of the land, and thereby disqualifying her from being President herself, two decades later.

That kind of thinking buys into two distinct feminine stereotypes, and you’re asking us to hold both of those ideas as reality; there’s the poor, innocent young woman, who can’t be expected to control herself around a powerful man’s needs, and the harridan wife who, upon assuming marital status, wears the pants in the family and controls her bumbling husband’s indiscretions.

See, that’s the thing, Republicans … women are people, not stereotypes. Sure, you can point to a woman or two that seems to embody the qualities you’re decrying, but that’s got as much relevance as saying that you saw a dog with three legs once or twice, so all dogs with four legs are anomalies. Stereotypes are personal observances rushed to judgment, nothing but ” a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.”

The bigger picture, revealed by Trump’s words, and his non-apology disguised as ‘sorry not sorry‘ if anyone was offended, implies that people like Trump and his supporters do not find his comments offensive, but that his words are rather the truth and reality of how men talk behind closed doors when they’re saying what they really mean about women.

It’s saying that those that are offended are somehow lesser beings, incapable of understanding the real trappings of wealth and power. It’s saying that they don’t care about your feelings at all, and that, in fact, they are annoyed that you had the nerve to call them on it. In fact – they blame you for having the nerve to be upset. After all .. it was just a bit of boyish banter, like all men do when they’re out of a woman’s earshot. Mostly.

It’s not an apology when you’ve no intention of either acknowledging your words or actions or changing how you’ll behave in the future. It’s saying that you’ll keep on doing these things in private, hoping you don’t get caught again.

It makes his repeated insistence that, “there’s nobody that has more respect for women than I do,” a cause for serious alarm.

It’s not like the leaked tape should have come as any surprise, really. Trump’s obsession with women, including his own daughter, is well known. He’s treated women as disposable items throughout his entire life, taking what he wants from them, and then discarding them for younger models. He’s had hissy fit temper and twitter tantrums that called women ‘pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ and worse, describing reporter and debate moderator Megyn Kelly as having ‘blood coming out of her .. whatever’ in what was simultaneously the most prudish and repulsive manner possible. He’s held all women, no matter what their place in life or relationship to him, accountable to a high standard of … well, let’s face it .. fuckability. And when those women fall below his standards, they are summarily dismissed, like so much trash.

His entire campaign has been built around a fairytale of his own making, insisting that America is “in such a desperate place that a wild card like Trump is worth the risk. Trump fans talk like they live in a western town, where the banditos are so out of control, only a maverick gunslinger can save them. A man with no tax code, the fastest tweet in the West, covered in man tan. ”

“But I give Donald Trump’s supporters a little credit. They know he’s an asshole. It is hard to hide. They just don’t care. Yes, he’s dangerous. And thin-skinned. And unhinged. And clinically insane. And an egomaniac, a compulsive liar, a charlatan, with the impulse control of a grease fire. But we have to take the risk because America is hanging by a thread! How do we know it is? Donald Trump told me!” (Bill Maher, Real Time)

Trump has proclaimed that America is a hell hole, in dire straits, where the ‘generals have been reduced to rubble,’ the American Dream is dead, the infrastructure is going to hell, aw hell, everything and everybody is living in hell! Yes, YOU, each of you!

Trump’s vision of America resembles a zombie apocalypse, where the good townsfolk do battle against the bad zombies, killing with impunity, taking what they want or need when they find it, and yes, treating women as disposable chattel that the most powerful can have without any niceties.

When in fact, America’s in pretty good shape. Violent crime is at it’s lowest since 1970; fewer Americans are without health insurance; cancer, alcohol abuse, and teen pregnancies are down; employment is up, as is the stock market. The ‘hated’ President Obama has an approval rating of 55%.

But a world where things are actually pretty good – that doesn’t work for a guy like Trump. Trump needs to live in a self-created chaos, where he can rule as the absolute final word on all within his sight.

Or his grasp. Of a pussy.

The second presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will take place at 9 pm Eastern tonight, and be conducted in a “town hall” format featuring questions from undecided voters.

As the denunciations from his former supporters, and calls for him to quit the race continue to stream in, I’m fairly certain we can expect more of that doubling down that Trump does so well.

His rage toward those condemning his words – turncoats, in his view; the ‘gotcha’ media;’ women in general for making such a big deal about his words and actions, and Hillary in particular for being too smart for her own good, will be barely contained.

He’ll be defensive, only just containing his insecurity, and will take every opportunity to turn any detrimental comment into an attack on Clinton and the Democrats.

He’ll lie, bold facedly, and deny things he’s on record as saying.

And still there will be those supporters who will stand by him, essentially handing him the possibility of running America as his own little fiefdom.

And sadly … many of those will be women.