Matt Gaetz made to look a fool again!

General Mark Milley, the Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, lambasted Republican Congressmen Matt Gaetz after the Florida Congressmen tried to corner one of Milley's colleagues during a recent House hearing.

Gaetz, who is currently being investigated for possible sex trafficking of a minor among other crimes, was trying to advance the right's culture war grievance when he hinted at the fact that the U.S. military was too "woke" as Gaetz called it, and suggested that the military was advancing "critical race theory."

Initially Gaetz reclaimed his time which prevented Milley from offering his thoughts, but then Milley was given an opening by a Democratic member of the House. Milley proceeded to deride Gaetz without mentioning him by name. You can see the whole interaction in the video below. 

This is what the Republican Party has been reduced to. The GOP, with limited exceptions, does not do the work of the American people and rarely offers suggestions for legislation to improve the lives of everyday citizens, but instead spends the bulk of its time complaining about NONSENSE.

One of the newer grievances of the GOP is this aforementioned critical race theory, which amounts to teaching children in school about slavery and the history of race in America. The big beef seems to be that it makes the everybody-gets-a-trophy crowd feel bad about being white. That's insane! 

The fact is that this country did have slaves, both North and South, and was one of the last countries on earth to abolish slavery, and it took a war that led to the deaths of 600,000 Americans to finally end this grotesque institution. If that makes white people feel bad? Oh well.

If the story ended there in 1865, one could say, maybe, it was a long time ago. However, that is not the case. Even after slaves and their descendants were free from shackles, they were OPPRESSED. FACT.

In the South they were second class citizens well into the 1960s and 1970s with segregation and living in terror of organizations like the KKK, but in the so-called "enlightened" North, people still made sure that blacks could not buy homes in the same neighborhoods as whites, get the same access to higher education, or banking opportunities to start business to name just a few. 

Blacks who excelled despite these institutional roadblocks, were in some cases attacked - see the Tulsa Race Riot. Not to mention the treatment of blacks at the hands of the police over the last fill-in-the blank years. 

Excuse me if Gaetz, a trust-fund baby, gets upset when someone tells the truth. He claims that by teaching the real history of race in America, that it is teaching our children to hate America. Again, Nonsense. Two things can be true at once. I love this imperfect country because of the principles that it was founded on that all men are created equal. And although, America has never quite lived up to that principle, we keep trying to get there. But I can also be disgusted by 100s of blacks being indiscriminately killed in Tulsa, or lynched in the South for no good reason, or for Bull Connor unleashing the firehoses and dogs on peaceful children in Birmingham, or four little girls being blown up at the 16th Street Baptist Church or for Emmett Till's senseless murder, among countless others.

Emmett Till's open casket

I can be proud of America for defeating Fascism and destroying the oppressive and murderous Nazi regime, but at the same time be disgusted that American citizens of Japanese ancestry had their property taken from them by the government indiscriminately and put in internment camps. 

I can be proud of the founders and the truly enlightened documents they wrote, and the lasting impact of said writings, but still be disappointed and angered by their relative disregard for the native peoples of America and their forced march to reservations all over the western United States, and the broken treaties that led to this inglorious history.

This is called being a student of our history. Not just the highlights, but all of our history. This is the point Milley was making when he says we need to be well read, and attempt, as best we can, to understand how our Asian American friends feel, or how our Latino American friends feel, or how our black and brown friends feel. That gives a better insight into the world we live in.

Milley explained that reading Mao Zedong's writing does not make him a communist, nor does reading Mein Kampf, make someone a Nazi. In fact, our failure to be well read and students of our own history as well as world history is what created an environment that made 1/3 of the country susceptible to a con artist like Donald Trump and his brown-shirt collaborators like Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton and Marjorie Taylor Idiot. In fact, the right counts on the fact that you will not learn about it or look it up on your own or do some critical thinking, because you would find out what Stuart Stevens discovered in the last 4 years, that it was "All A Lie."

So don't believe me. Don't take my word as gospel. Do the research yourself, and you too will find the truth. I know one thing for certain, you can not find the truth in a GOP congressional speech or anywhere on FOX News. Happy investigating!   

GOP an extension of Russian mob!!!!

If you needed any more evidence that a large element of the Republican Party has completely lost its collective mind, here is Republican Congressional candidate in Florida's 13th district threatening the life of another GOP candidate, Anna Paulina Luna, running in the same race to replace Democrat Charlie Crist, who plans to run for Governor. 

I must warn you that the language used by this so-called candidate and self-identified "Patriot", William Braddock, is graphic. He calls his opponent, a member of the same fascist party, a "c---, a piece of s---," among other horrible names.

Braddock, clearly a new Trump-emboldened member of the American Fascist Party (formerly GOP), says that the political threat Luna, in his mind poses, warrants having her killed by his Russian and Ukrainian friends. He says that they will make her disappear and that he will be sent visual evidence of this crime.

I must be clear here. As much as Luna is a victim here of a sociopath running against her, she is not a better option for this seat. Luna is supported by disgraced former President Trump and future registered sex offender U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz.    

Braddock also threatens Erin Olszewski, the other person on the call, saying "please do not be associated with this candidate (Luna)" because it will put Olszewski in danger as well and going so far as to say "you have kids." Then he tells her not to say anything to anyone because they will both be in danger.      

Braddock who is the epitome of Trump's GOP, claims that the tape was doctored but as you can see in the video, the phone call is running on speaker phone and the time of the call never gets interrupted as it pertains to the relevant parts related to the threats. 

This is what I mean when I say that we need to do everything in our power as voters to make sure that people like this never see the inside of the halls of Congress. It was not enough to vote out Trump, but we need to eliminate electorally those people who share his views but come in a much more presentable package like this Braddock fellow. 

On the surface, Braddock seems like the type of person who might make a good candidate for Congress. He describes himself as a lawyer, entrepreneur, and former member of the USMC (Marine Corps). They don't all look like Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene, but there mentality is the same. If you live in Florida's 13th District, make sure this douche never sniffs Congress. 

But it is not only in this district or the ever-increasing disturbing state of Florida, but all around the country that candidates like this are popping up. If you want to be a true PATRIOT, do you civic duty and vote these goons out. The only viable option in America right now is the Democratic Party - even if that means voting for a Progressive because at least they are not storming the U.S. Capitol, plotting to kidnap duly elected governors, or threatening to kill their political opponents with mob hits. There is a sentence I never thought I would have to write related to politics.

For more details on this story read the articles posted below:

Washington Post story

NY Magazine article   

Second Amendment insanity

A U.S. District Court judge yesterday in California ruled that the state's 32-year-old assault weapon's ban was unconstitutional, calling the 1989 ban "a failed experiment" that violates people's constitutional right to bear arms.

Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego, a staunch gun advocate and a GOP activist judge, claimed that "like the Swiss Army knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense and homeland defense equipment. Good for both home and battle."

That is NONSENSE.

What happened to the right's bullshit arguments about state's rights? They claim state's rights when it comes to writing new abortion law. They claim state's rights when it comes to writing election law. They claim state's right when it comes to writing transgender law, but here California wrote a law that helped save lives, and this George W. Bush-appointed hack, no longer is a proponent of state's rights. SURPRISE, SURPRISE! 

This is just another prime example of how the GOP and the right in this country is completely full of crap. 

Benitez, who is clearly a card-carrying member of the NRA, went on with his braindead argument. "This case is not about extraordinary weapons lying on the outer limits of Second Amendment protection. The banned 'assault weapons' are not bazookas, howitzers or machine guns. Those arms are dangerous and solely useful for military purposes. Instead, the firearms deemed 'assault weapons' are fairly ordinary, popular, modern."

This is also an insane argument. If you ask any doctor, AR-15's are designed to kill people in mass, and they destroy people's bodies and that's why many victims of mass shootings can not be saved.  

I have had thousands of arguments with gun advocates, and they claim that laws will not save anyone, but they have no answers to help save the lives that are needlessly taken every year in this country before their time so that some moron who wants to play G.I. Joe on the weekends, needs to have these weapons of mass murder.

NO gun that has ever been manufactured in this country has been sold out the back door of the factory illegally, and no federally-licensed dealer sells guns illegally to criminals because they risk losing their licenses and livelihoods. So where are these guns being sold to criminals? They are being sold to criminals at gun shows, and then being sold to criminals. 

Any person who sets up at a gun show and is not a federally licensed dealer, does not have to abide by federal background checks. 

In fact, Texas this year is moving a law that would no longer require gun owners to get a license, would no longer require a background check and no longer require safety classes. That sounds incredibly sensible (SARCASM)!

This is why every election is so important. You can't simply vote when there are dopes on the ballot like Donald Trump. Assume every member of the GOP is a culture-war idiot like Trump. They are extremely dangerous, and with your vote you must insure that they can never appoint these hack Federalist Society justices to the Federal Courts around the country.         

Chicago Tribune article on ruling

"a personal favor"

I am watching the Senate live tonight as they prepare to vote on legislation which would allow a bi-partisan independent commission to investigate the January 6th riot that nearly overthrew our democracy. 

In order for the legislation to pass, it would need 10 patriotic Republican Senators to vote for this commission. Unfortunately, the GOP is lacking even 10 people that resemble patriots at this point. 

This piece of legislation was negotiated in the House of Representatives by both parties and even saw 35 Republican members of the House vote for this commission, but despite all of these facts, the Senate will not find the necessary GOP votes to pass this bill tonight. 

Some members of the Senate GOP were wavering and were seriously contemplating voting for this bi-partisan commission, but Moscow Mitch McConnell - the GOP leader in the Senate - pressured these wavering Senators by telling them that a 'No' vote would be a personal favor to McConnell, who is clearly siding with the insurrectionists and their dear leader - Donald Trump (FAILED one-term ex-President). 

Numerous Capitol police officers, who were on the front lines on January 6th, and Brian Sicknick's mother came to Capitol Hill today to try and lobby Republicans to get this legislation passed. The REALITY here is that the majority of these GOP cowards even refused to meet with the grieving mother of the fallen U.S. Capitol police officer who died trying to protect these losers.

Fifteen Republican Senators refused to meet with Mrs. Sicknick, whose son was a Trump supporter, and 14 others did not respond to requests. What kind of useless men, and they are mostly wealthy white men, refuse to listen to a grieving mother of a man who gave his life in defense of his country. This party, comprised of Trump sycophants, must be cleansed electorally. Only by punishing this kind of gross behavior at the ballot box will you modify it for the better going forward.   

The vote has been pushed to Friday because the Republican Party bogged the Senate down in procedural votes related to the science and technology bill. The delay is just prolonging the inevitable. The GOP has no intention of voting for a independent commission because they feel it would hurt this grotesque party in the 2022 midterms. It's a power grab like most of what the Republicans spend all day, everyday doing in DC, figuring out a way to stay there!

The key for voters is to remember which one of these braindead GOP losers refused to meet with Mrs. Sicknick, and refused to put the country ahead party and then vote their useless behinds out of office.

ENOUGH is ENOUGH!   

Next up for a Trumpism takedown!

This is a post that has been long overdue because Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) still wholeheartedly believes in Trumpism and all it's disgusting attributes, and he is undoubtedly the most at-risk Senator in 2022 to be removed from his position by the voters of Wisconsin - hardly a red state.

Since the January 6 attempted overthrow of the government by brainwashed insurrectionists, Johnson has gone on numerous media outlets and claimed that the violence of January 6 was not really dangerous or a threat to the members of Congress or Vice President Mike Pence, and that it wasn't an armed insurrection and that it posed no real threat to democracy as a whole. Just to be clear, that's all a load of happy horseshit.

This post includes numerous videos of Johnson spewing the most outlandish garbage that a sitting U.S. Senator could spew in light of the terrorism experienced at the Capitol on Jan. 6, but it is critical that the voters of Wisconsin see this over and over, as well as the rest of the country. The main reason is that this Trump, boot-licking coward might someday get the inclination to run for President, and when he does remember these videos.

Senator Johnson first claims that he did not feel threatened by the terrorists who stormed the capitol on Jan. 6 because they were "law-abiding" Trump supporters. Hey Ronnie boy, they broke numerous laws including beating the police with flag poles. But he was quick to point out that if these were BLM protesters, he would be afraid or fear for his life. Is there anything more racist? Why not just say, "no, I never cross the street when I see white people coming, but of course I do when I see black people walking on the same side of the street as me." 

"This did not appear to be an armed insurrection to me," Johnson said. Because the terrorists who stormed Capitol were not all carrying firearms does not make the violence the police suffered any less real, or the threats of "hang Mike Pence" any less worrisome. This Senator from Wisconsin has spent the last 4 months trying to whitewash the insurrection and erase it from history so his dear leader "Dumbo Trump" can never get blamed for the violence. Johnson and his cronies in the House and Senate who are trying to downplay the violence, are all co-conspirators in a violent armed insurrection.  

Johnson is bending himself into a pretzel since Jan. 6 in an attempted to whitewash this vicious and violent insurrection. Most people who came to the rally might not have come with the intent to be violent, but also could have stopped some of the violence, or if they couldn't, should have simply walked away.  

And below was Ron Johnson's response on January 6, 2021 after the violence. He went so far as to say people do not trust the results of the election, and the response there would have been, because you and the former President have been feeding them a steady diet of bullshit about the election. Listen to the list of all the fraud that he says took place. I guess that same fraud occurred both times he was elected to office.

     

We can not have delusional people like this serving in the United States Senate or House for that matter. Do your duty Wisconsin, and in November of 2022 add Ron Johnson to the scrap heap of Trumpists who paid for their sins with their political careers.  

A dysfunctional mess of a party

Representative Liz Cheney appears poised to lose her job in the Republican House leadership tomorrow morning. Why you ask? Because Cheney committed the most horrific of crimes in Republican circles these days, she told the truth. But even more heinous than that, she told the truth as it relates to Donald Trump and the 2020 election.

Yes, Cheney had the audacity to speak out against the big lie. Every time Cheney is asked about Trump and the 2020 election, she tells the truth, and that clearly does not sit well with the Grand Old Party of Liars. You can not be a member of the cult in good standing unless you repeat endlessly that the election was stolen and that there was voter fraud. However, here on plant earth the election was not stolen. Illegals didn't vote. Thousands of ballots were not flown in from SE Asia, etc., etc., etc.  

"The election is over," Cheney said in her speech tonight to the House, and she will not roll over and sit quietly by while this thuggish liar, Donald Trump, continues to attack Democracy. And make no mistake, that's what Trump and his friends like Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley, just to name a few, are doing. 

Unfortunately for our country, Cheney is on a virtual island by herself. She, Adam Kinsinger and Mitt Romney seem to be the only GOP members of congress who have continued to show the backbone to speak out against the two-time popular vote loser, and one-term president. They have recognized Trump for what he is, a dangerous cult leader like Charles Manson, David Koresh, Jim Jones, and alike. No, that is not to strong of a comparison. 

Trump has led an insurrection that led to the deaths of multiple Capitol Police officers and one of his supporters. He ignored the pandemic, but even worse, he actively undermined the medical professionals to convince people that they shouldn't wear masks or take this disease seriously. That led to the deaths of half a million Americans. His far-right rhetoric about immigrants and other scapegoated groups, has led some of his most twisted supporters to try and assassinate prominent Democrats. It led one deranged Trump supporter to shoot up a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, so he could stop the "invasion" and then of course there was the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh where another Trump supporter, radicalized by Trump and the far right's rhetoric about George Soros and all those made up conspiracies, shot and killed 11 people who were praying. 

This body of evidence is what has got Cheney and a tiny minority of her Republican colleagues upset. Donald Trump and the people who keep backing his bold faced lies in Congress are a CLEAR & PRESENT danger to the future of the country. 

 

Regardless of where you live in the country, you must identify these blind, cowardly and feckless Trump supporters in Congress and vote them out the next time they come up for re-election. Only by paying the price on election day will this weird Republican cult ever have any chance of recalibrating itself to something that possibly could resemble normal. 

If you still do not believe it's a cult, watch the reaction Romney received at a Utah GOP convention.

The negative reaction Romney received came in a state that he won in 2018 by 30 percent, and it bears repeating that only eight years ago, this was the Republican Party standard bearer. It boggles the mind how quickly the Republican Party has swirled down the bowl in such a short period of time. 

Cheney wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post explaining her position, and it is a must read.

Washington Post op/ed

GOP needs to deescalate the situation

Throughout my life, believers in the death penalty, have told me that capitol punishment is a good thing because it deters criminal behavior. I can not pretend to get into the criminal mind and determine whether that is true or not, but the defenders of the death penalty - largely members of the GOP - now are upset that Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all counts of murdering George Floyd in board daylight. 

My answer to those idiots on the right who are defending a guy who kneeled on the neck of a handcuffed person until the life left his body, is we need to hold these bad cops accountable in order to deter them from killing unarmed or handcuffed people at will, especially black folks who seem to be the targets in most cases whether it is warranted or not.

This one verdict, by itself, will not be enough to deter cops from feeling like they have the public's blessing to kill black people when they get "uppity, or resist" and talk back, etc. This needs to happen to 100 or 200 bad cops before they get the message that the courts are no longer going to protect them when you indiscriminately kill unarmed black folks. The "Blue Wall of silence," or police unions are not going to protect you any longer when you kill the citizens you are suppose to be protecting whenever you have a bad day, or they piss you off. 

The police's job is not to be judge, jury and executioner, but is instead to detain people and process them for the courts if the situation so warrants it. In the field, a police officer's job is to deescalate the situation, not inflame it.

Here is a prime example of the opposite. What not to do:

 "I have not done anything wrong" and "I am afraid to get out of the car." Police response "you should be."

"What is going on?" Police response - "You are fixing to riding the lightning." This is an older term describing someone who was fixing to die in the electric chair. Really? Is that what we do now in this country to someone whose tags you didn't see displayed.  

That's right. Before we go any further, this is a traffic stop over his tags not be displayed on the vehicle, but they were in the rear window. If I were this person, I would also not want to get out of the car. George Floyd ended up with four people on him until he could not breath and died. I'm not going out like that. What happened to license and registration please?

The police's job is to deescalate the situation. Full stop. The officer could have talked to him calmly, but instead this veteran had two guns drawn on him, and was eventually sprayed with a chemical to attempt to force compliance.

This is the activity that is happening across the country on a daily basis that the right seems determined to defend. And before you claim that I am some radical leftist who wants to defund the police, let me just say, go banh ankles. I have always respected the police and the difficult job that they do, but I think the police and all suspects will be safer if they address potential risks in a non-threatening manner. Research in other countries in Europe bares that out. People who give respect are more inclined to receive similar respect in return.