US Constitution Under Threat – Page 9

Texas Wingnuttery

The Daily Escape:

Easter morning at Lake Tapps, with Mt. Rainer in background, Pierce County, WA – April 2022 photo by Motojw Photography. This picture was cropped by Wrongo to fit the blog’s page. View the original photo here.

Two examples of Texas wingnuttery, and it’s only Tuesday. First, the WaPo has an article showing how Conservative groups are teaming up with politicians to remove books and to change membership of local library boards:

“In early November, an email dropped into the inbox of Judge Ron Cunningham, the silver-haired head chair of the governing body of Llano County in Texas’s picturesque Hill Country. The subject line read ‘Pornographic Filth at the Llano Public Libraries.’”

The author was Bonnie Wallace, a local church volunteer who had attached an Excel spreadsheet with 60 books she found objectionable, including those about transgender teens, sex education and race, including “Between the World and Me,” by author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Not long after, the county’s chief librarian sent the list to Suzette Baker, head of one of the library’s three branches:

“She told me to look at pulling the books off the shelf and possibly putting them behind the counter. I told them that was censorship,”

In January, commissioners voted to dissolve the existing library board and created a reconstituted board of mostly political appointees, including many of the citizens who had complained about books. They named Ms. Wallace the vice chair of a new library board stacked with conservative appointees some of whom didn’t even have library cards.

Later, Baker was fired, and Llano joined a growing number of communities across America where conservatives have mounted challenges to books and other content they deem to be inappropriate.

A movement that started by influencing school boards has now expanded to public libraries. They accounted for 37% of book challenges last year, according to the American Library Association. Conservative activists in several states, including Texas, Montana and Louisiana have joined forces with like-minded officials to dissolve libraries’ governing bodies, rewrite or delete censorship protections, and remove books outside of official challenge procedures.

No one is forced to go to a public library. If someone goes to a public library, nobody is forcing that person to read a book while there, or to take a book out of the public library. It’s called a “public” library for a reason. The library serves all of the public, not just a small interest group (or individual) who feels they have the right to decide what all citizens should or shouldn’t read.

The issue is denial of public access.

Second, the NYT reports that a Texas state legislator warned Citigroup that he would introduce a bill to prevent the bank from underwriting municipal bonds in the state unless it rescinded its policy covering travel expenses for employees who go outside their state to seek an abortion. This Texas politician is attempting to dictate a national anti-abortion policy:

“Citigroup stated in a filing on Tuesday that it would provide travel benefits to employees seeking abortions outside their state, “in response to changes in reproductive health care laws in certain states.” Last year, Texas enacted a law that bans abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. The law took effect in September.”

It’s important to remember Enron, a now-defunct Texas corporation known for its massive accounting fraud, used to threaten banks with withdrawing all of their business if the bank’s analysts gave accurate opinions about Enron’s stock. It appears that remains a model for Republican governance.

Lots of high tech companies have diversity programs and progressive employee policies. Many have extensive operations in Texas. It’s going to take some time but Texas will suffer disinvestment as companies move elsewhere.

Because Texas is becoming Taliban country.

Here’s a long quote from Oliver Cromwell, speaking to the Rump Parliament on April 20, 1653, the day he dissolved it. He could easily be speaking to today’s Republican Party:

“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there and lock up the doors.

In the name of God, go!”

Judge Says Jan. 6 Was a “Seditious Conspiracy”

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Sandhill Cranes, Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge, CO – February 2022 photo by Rick Dunnahoo

Most of us had few expectations that the organizers of the Jan. 6 insurrection would face any legal consequences. Indeed, we’ve had almost zero confidence that the truth about what led up to that day would ever be known.

That just changed. Politico reported that:

“Joshua James, one of the 11 Oath Keepers militia affiliates indicted earlier this year on a charge of seditious conspiracy alongside the group’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, on Wednesday became the first person to plead guilty to the sedition-related charge in connection with the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.”

James admitted that he tried to disrupt the peaceful transfer of presidential power and that Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes had a “plan” for accomplishing that disruption. The plea deal statement describes planning that occurred in November 2020 in the DC area and VA:

“On November 14 and 15, 2020, James met with Rhodes and others in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and at Caldwell’s Virginia farmhouse and learned about the start of their plans to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power.”

The November planning meetings are important, because they suggest broader coordination with “others” at the Jan. 6 March. Perhaps the most interesting detail of the statement describes a plan to report to White House grounds and secure the perimeter:

“In the weeks leading up to January 6, 2021, Rhodes instructed James and other co-conspirators to be prepared, if called upon, to report to the White House grounds to secure the perimeter and use lethal force if necessary against anyone who tried to remove President Trump from the White House, including the National Guard or other government actors who might be sent to remove President Trump as a result of the Presidential Election.”

This begs the question of who is suicidal enough to plan to meet as an armed group at the White House grounds, unless they believed they were invited there and cleared for entry by Trump. Absent that, they should have expected to be arrested or shot on sight.

We’re looking at a plea of seditious conspiracy. From the WaPo:

“Federal law defines seditious conspiracy as two or more people who “conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States,” or act “by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States.”

This means we can now legally describe Jan. 6 as a conspiracy to commit sedition. For those among us who were wondering what Merrick Garland’s DOJ has been doing for the last year, it’s this: January 6 was officially a sedition, at least for Joshua James.

That says things are getting very interesting, particularly when we add to it this from the WaPo:

“The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said on Wednesday that there was enough evidence to conclude that former President Donald J. Trump and some of his allies might have conspired to commit fraud and obstruction by misleading Americans about the outcome of the 2020 election and attempting to overturn the result.”

In a court filing in a civil case in California, the Committee’s lawyers said they had accumulated evidence demonstrating that Trump, the conservative lawyer John Eastman, and others could potentially be charged with criminal violations including obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the American people by illegally obstructing the counting of Electoral College ballots.

The Committee made the statement in a court filing to force Trump’s lawyer, John Eastman, to turn over documents to the Committee. Eastman is the attorney who advised Trump that Vice President Mike Pence could reject the electoral ballots.

The Committee also released an email written in the middle of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, to Eastman from Greg Jacob, a Pence advisor:

When you read the email above, don’t gloss over this sentence: “I share your concerns about what the Democrats will do once in power.” That shows he is a hard-right partisan. But he closes with the big point:

“…thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege”.

Short-term, despite the way the media is breathlessly talking about the Select Committee’s court filing, the Joshua James guilty plea is more interesting.

He connects the dots with the Oath Keepers’ leader, Stewart Rhodes. James was also in contact with Roger Stone, which begs the question of what Stone knew about their plans, or more troublingly, what Stone might have directed them to do.

Let’s not get too excited, but it seems that it’s now remotely possible that Trump, Roger Stone, and others will discover that in America, it’s true that no one is above the law.

Cook up some popcorn and watch the show.

Are Freedom and Democracy Still Compatible in America?

The Daily Escape:

Henniker Covered Bridge, Henniker, NH – February 2022 photo by Jurgen Roth Photography. It is a footbridge across the Contoocook River.

Trucker anger is coming to America. From Politico:

“Canada’s truckers have paralyzed Ottawa and unsettled the country’s politics over vaccine and mask mandates. Now Americans want in on the action. A nationwide convoy — starting in California before heading toward Washington, D.C. — is expected to get underway on March 4 amid a growing clamor from those who believe their freedoms are under threat from government Covid-19 restrictions.”

The trucker protests in Canada seem to have become a rallying point for those who are irate about what they view as Covid-inspired overreach by their governments. Momentum seems to be building for a similar convoy in the US. The NYT reports that:

“…several right-wing figures, including Dan Bongino, Michael Flynn and Ben Shapiro, have promoted the protest and shared links to fund-raising sites that have collected millions of dollars. American anti-vaccine groups have also begun forming local wings of the movement and have urged truckers in the United States to adopt the tactics in Canada.”

The US organizers are now calling it “the People’s Convoy“. They have formed Telegram encrypted channels to use for building support in multiple states. The group says it’s working with two other groups: Freedom Fighter Nation and Restore Liberty, whose founders are closely tied to right wing politics. They include Leigh Dundas, founder of the Freedom Fighter Nation. She gave a speech in DC on the eve of the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill insurrection, claiming it would be “within our rights” to murder “alleged American turncoats” who interfered with the 2020 election.

She seems nice.

Trucker protest convoys have become a rallying cry for far-right and anti-vaccine groups around the world. They seem to be gathering strength from growing Covid fatigue, something that is nearly universal in the developed world.

Their message is that “government has been overreaching for too long, and we’re not going to take it anymore”. They’re expressing an old, bad idea: That individual freedom cannot be limited by government.

Let’s spend a minute on whether freedom and democracy are compatible. “Freedom” normally means freedom of the individual while democracy is a communitarian concept. Democracy is a system of government while freedom is about either not being governed or being governed as lightly as possible.

But a society without democracy would be autocracy or worse. With no government, it would be anarchy. And a society without freedom couldn’t possibly be a democracy. So maybe the question isn’t whether they are compatible, but whether each is a co-requisite for the other to exist.

Elizabeth Anker in the NYT opined on the changing nature of the language of freedom, saying that many political actors are using the concept of freedom to justify anti-democratic politics. She calls them the “ugly freedoms”. In American politics they increasingly justify minority rule, prejudice, and anti-democratic governance. And their popularity is growing.

This is highly relevant to the impending trucker convoys and how we think about “free speech” and the rights of non-experts to try and force their opinions on the majority. Perhaps the alternative to the ugly freedoms should be our beautiful freedoms, like the Bill of Rights, or the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

A third of Americans make up their own facts, so we’re bound to hear a few lies expresed as truth. These same people believe they don’t have to consider what’s happening in their communities. They think opinions are equal to facts. They get angry enough to threaten violence or to commit violence.

Many of them, despite outward tough guy appearances, are simply too soft mentally and emotionally. Life can often be harder than we want it to be. Sometimes, you’ve got to do what’s good for society, not just what’s good for you.

OTOH, these trucker rallies could conceivably draw support from others who are angry at governments at all levels. Think about restaurant workers, first responders and all of the “essential’ employees who have been unevenly impacted by Covid.

Think of it as the laptop workers vs. those who have to leave the house to earn a living. They each have experienced Covid and the jobs crash in far different ways. If the trucker protest casts a wide net, it will rope in small business owners and parents who are angry that their children have lost so much when schools were closed.

There’s plenty of anger fermenting out there.

Going back to Wrongo’s US Army days, you weren’t required to like everyone in your platoon, but duty demanded you bear the responsibility of fighting beside and for them. That was considered patriotic. Once we had the ability to pull together and sacrifice in the midst of national crisis. Now it’s everyone for themselves.

On Jan. 6, the right of free speech produced lies that led people to commit federal crimes. That’s the downside of the Bill of Rights: An individual has a protected right to lie to the public. We see many career politicians and social media entrepreneurs lie every day.

Assuming that there are protests in the US in coming weeks, Biden will face the same dilemma as Canada’s Prime Minster Trudeau faces now. Will Biden demonize the truckers? Will he listen to their grievances?

The shift of emphasis in America from an expanding democracy with protected individual rights/freedoms to an ad hoc (and sometimes illogical) version of freedom is what may create a failed American state.

It’s a movement that’s long on energy, and short on facts and judgment.

Republicans Double Down on The Coup

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Camden Harbor, ME – February 2022 photo by Daniel F. Dishner

(For email subscribers: Below in this email is a link to Monday’s Wake Up Call. It wasn’t sent on Monday morning)

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking,” ̶ Gen. George S. Patton

Last Friday, the Republican National Committee (RNC) passed a resolution that claimed that the House Select Committee was seeking to punish ordinary people for engaging in “legitimate political discourse.” This came days after Trump suggested that, if re-elected in 2024, he would consider pardons for those convicted in the Jan. 6 attack. He also said that his goal on Jan. 6 was to “overturn” the election results.

From MSNBC:

“The Republican National Committee on Friday approved an astounding resolution that…condoned the attack on the US Capitol last year. In doing so, it’s given up any pretense that the party stands in opposition to the violence that then-President Donald Trump inspired.”

As Robert Hubbell says in his newsletter:

“The RNC resolution illustrates the death grip Trump has on the GOP….Trump’s repeated insistence that Mike Pence could have awarded the election to Trump finally provoked Pence to declare that “Trump is wrong”….Pence’s statement provoked a vigorous defense of Trump from Matt Gaetz, Steve Bannon, and Roger Stone—a rogues gallery of felons, targets of grand jury investigations, and recipients of presidential pardons.”

The RNC resolution included this:

“WHEREAS, Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger are participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse, and they are both utilizing their past professed political affiliation to mask Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power for partisan purposes…”

So, Republicans think that what the insurrectionists did by bashing in cops’ brains with flag poles is legitimate political discourse? Smearing feces on the walls of Congress was legitimate political discourse?

CNN quoted a Republican who said the resolution was “watered down” because it didn’t demand that Kinzinger and Cheney be expelled from the GOP. That says what passed is the GOP version of a more moderate resolution supporting the coup.

That phrase “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse” goes beyond just defending Trump or faulting Cheney and Kinzinger for defying the Party. It sanctions the actions of insurrectionists who wanted to overturn a legitimate election.

The resolution shows that the RNC (and therefore most Republicans) have effectively joined the insurrectionists. The important thing is that it wouldn’t matter what their intent was. The Republican Party is whitewashing the riot:

We know that the Right-wing media continues to spread misinformation about Jan 6.
We know that those arrested for participating in the Jan. 6 violence are getting sympathetic responses from many Republicans.
We know that for the overwhelming majority of elected Republicans, the only thing they truly regret about 1/6 is that it failed.

This means that Republican candidates will have to campaign in the 2022 mid-terms by supporting violent insurrection and a failed coup. That will appeal to most Republicans, but on its face, it will repel the strong majority of Democrats and Independent voters.

Speaking of the mid-terms, let’s spend a few words on Liz Cheney. Had you said a few years ago that the straight daughter of Dick Cheney would become a pariah in the Republican Party in 2022, you would have been laughed off your bar stool.

What kind of a world do we live in when Liz Cheney isn’t evil enough for the Republican Party?

Cheney’s Congressional seat is important: If the next presidential election were to be decided by the House of Representatives, each state would get a single vote. If Cheney was Wyoming’s sole Representative, she would have the same clout as California or New York.

That’s a relatively unlikely future scenario, but Wyoming is an open primary state, meaning that Democrats could cross the aisle and vote for her, possibly making a difference in whether she wins the primary. She couldn’t win the mid-term because Dems would go back to their candidate, and the anti-Cheney Republicans would stay home. In that scenario, the seat might flip to the Democrats.

Cheney is what the GOP used to be, or pretended it was: stalwart, principled, with deeply-held convictions, and unwavering loyalty to the country and the rule of law.

She’s also a reminder of how far the GOP has fallen.

Know your enemy. Dems think they’re in a battle of tweets armed with binders of position papers and outrage. That won’t be enough in November.

The Republicans are doubling down on the coup. Democrats need to double down on registration, turnout, voter protection, and sure, some outrage at Republicans.

Saturday Soother – January 8, 2022

The Daily Escape

Hopi Buttes, AZ – January 2022 photo by Jon Ray Doc

January 6 should have been a national day of mourning. The president spoke in the very place that symbolized the attempted coup, the Rotunda of the Capitol. From Biden: (parenthesis by Wrongo)

“We saw with our own eyes: rioters menaced these halls, threatening the life of the Speaker of the House, directing to hang the Vice President of the United States of America. What did we not see? We did not see a former president, (Trump) who had just rallied the mob to attack, sitting in a private dining room off the Oval Office in the White House, watching it all on television and doing nothing for hours as police were assaulted, lives at risk, the national Capitol under siege.”

You can watch his speech here.

But except for a very few, Republicans boycotted Thursday’s 1/6 events. We have to accept that means they support the insurrection and the candidate who mobilized it:

“Top Republicans were nowhere to be found at the Capitol on Thursday as President Biden and members of Congress commemorated the deadliest attack on the building in centuries, reflecting the party’s reluctance to acknowledge the Jan. 6 riot or confront its own role in stoking it.”

Trump won the argument within the Party over his efforts to nullify the election results. McConnell, McCarthy, and their allies abandoned the thought of considering impeaching Trump over January 6. That instead became a rallying cry for Democrats. When the second impeachment went forward, the Republicans closed ranks behind Trump.

Wrongo argued for the second impeachment. With hindsight, that effort has ended any bipartisan effort to get to the truth about who and what caused Jan. 6. Republicans initially supported a commission to investigate it, but soon abandoned even that.

A bit of history: When Hitler attempted his putsch in 1923, he got off with a slap on the wrist thanks to a sympathetic right-wing judge. A decade later he was chancellor. That’s a stark history lesson for AG Merrick Garland.

The attempted putschists who stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6 are being prosecuted, but it’s the principal organizers who should now be getting the primary attention of law enforcement. Republicans are hoping that Garland will sweep the potential crimes committed by Trump and his organizers, like Bannon, Meadows, and Navarro, under the rug.

We now find ourselves in a place where whatever the Democrats say Republicans did on Jan. 6 is mirrored: Republicans are saying that it’s the Democrats who are doing those exact things. The Republican Party is trying to end anything resembling democracy in America by relying on the claim that the Democratic Party is trying to end anything resembling democracy in America.

This is the ultimate expression of the rule that every accusation made by the Republicans is in fact a confession. From the AP:

“….since that day, separate versions — one factual, one fanciful — have taken hold. The Capitol riot — the violent culmination of a bid to delegitimize the 2020 election and block its certification — has morphed into a partisan ‘Rashomon,’ the classic Japanese film about a slaying told from varying and conflicting points of view.”

Instead of receding into the past, the story of the Capitol riot is yet to be fully written. America needs the DOJ and the House Select Committee to tell the story by criminal referrals.

Leave the history of the event to historians.

We need to take at least a momentary break from thinking and talking about January 6. It’s Saturday and time for our Saturday Soother, and boy, we need one today. It snowed quite a bit in New England on Friday morning, with totals between 3” and 15” depending on location. Once again, Wrongo’s repaired snowblower served as an insurance policy against a heavy snowfall. We got a mere 5”, so Wrongo got to exercise his snow shovel instead.

We’re having a belated Christmas party today. Between Covid and suspected Covid, this is the first time that some of us can occupy the same space. So, before the family descends on the Mansion of Wrong, let’s brew up a strong cup of Conquistador coffee ($18/12 oz.) from San Francisco’s Henry’s House of Coffee.

Now grab a comfy seat by a window, look out on the winter wonderland and listen to the “To Kill A Mockingbird Suite” written by Elmer Bernstein for the 1962 movie. Bernstein was one of the most prolific composers to emerge in Hollywood in the 1950s. It’s played here by the Beethoven Academy Orchestra, in Krakow Poland, with Sara Andon on solo flute:

Saving The Republic By Destroying It

The Daily Escape:

New Year’s Day, Pike National Forest, near Colorado Springs, CO – January 2022 photo by Daniel Forster

“It’s not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting.” – Tom Stoppard

Tomorrow we will observe the anniversary of the attempted coup at the US Capitol. For the most part, in response, America will do nothing. The Atlantic’s Barton Gellman wrote last month,

“Trump and his party have convinced a dauntingly large number of Americans that the essential workings of democracy are corrupt, that made-up claims of fraud are true, that only cheating can thwart their victory at the polls, that tyranny has usurped their government, and that violence is a legitimate response.”

There are tens of millions of Americans who believe that the 2020 election was magically stolen from Trump, and tens of millions who believe violence is the answer to resolving that problem. A new NPR/Ipsos poll finds that 64% of Americans believe US democracy is “in crisis and at risk of failing.”

The poll found one-third of Trump voters say the attack on the Capitol was actually carried out by opponents of Donald Trump, including Antifa and government agents, a baseless conspiracy theory that has been promoted by conservative media ever since the attack, even though it has been debunked.

Is the US careening toward a second civil war? Republicans seem to be willing to destroy the Republic to save it.

Stephen Marche published an excerpt from his new book in the Guardian. He points out that the Right has recognized that the American political system is in collapse, and it has a plan: violence and solidarity with far-right factions that want to subvert the vote-counting process.

Marche says that two things are happening at the same time. The American Right has abandoned its faith in government. The American Left has been slower on the uptake, but they are starting to figure out that the American political system which we call a democracy is less deserving of the name as each year passes.

So, the Right is already preparing for a breakdown of law and order. They’re preparing because they’re the ones fomenting the breakdown.

A University of Virginia analysis of census projections shows that by 2040, 30% of the population will control 68% of the Senate, and eight states will contain half of the US population.

The conservative project to achieve permanent minority rule long precedes Trump’s efforts to nullify the election in 2020. It’s being further codified into law in states across the country. The Senate’s built-in malapportionment gives advantages overwhelmingly to white, non-college educated voters. The federal system as constituted no longer represents the will of the majority of the American people.

This shouldn’t surprise you, since we continually elect people uncommitted to making government work. And surprise, it doesn’t. VOX’s Zach Beauchamp observes:

“America’s dysfunction stems, in large part, from an outdated political system that creates incentives for intense partisan conflict and legislative gridlock. That system may well be near the point of collapse. Reform is certainly a possibility. But the most meaningful changes to our system have been won only after bloodshed and struggle, on the fields of Gettysburg and in the streets of Birmingham. It is possible, maybe even likely, that America will not be able to veer from its dangerous path absent more eruptions and upheavals — that things will get worse before they get better.”

Can this be avoided? Unclear. The Democrats have done an excellent job in ensuring they have little bench strength. Who do they have who is capable of succeeding Biden?

The Republicans have lobotomized their talent base. Trump created an environment where any number of lunatics can claim followers that vaguely fit under the Republican banner, while the mainstream Right fails to control either the Party or its narrative.

It’s still possible for America to implement a modern electoral system, restore the legitimacy of the courts, reform its police forces, and alter its tax code to address inequality. All of these changes are possible.

However, we can’t simply hope that everything will work out; it won’t. If democracy is to survive, the US must start over. It must rediscover its revolutionary spirit. But who’s willing to do that? We seem to feel that it’s futile to expect that we can change anything.

The upshot is that people are angry. Many are checking out, no longer caring about what happens. How will we save the American project if we aren’t willing to fight for it?

What happens if it no longer matters who is running for president next time around?

We may find out.

Monday Wake Up Call – January 3, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Nathrop , CO – December 2021 photo by Haji Mahmood

“And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been” – Rainer Maria Rilke

Wrongo hasn’t published predictions since 2018, because while it became increasingly hard to imagine that things would get worse, every year they did. Every year. It’s his fervent hope that despite evidence, things won’t turn out to be even more terrible in 2022.

This year, maybe we should avoid saying “Happy New Year!” in favor of “Hopeful New Year.” Let’s simply resist saying “We’re doomed!”, because there’s always reason for hope, even in the darkest times.

Pandemics do not go on forever. Even before vaccinations, eventually everyone who was susceptible was infected. Covid won’t be any different. Ever so slowly, more people will get vaccinated, and better treatments will be found. We should remain hopeful that 2022 will see the pandemic fade.

Our economy is humming along. We have a normal President who displays empathy and common decency, and (rarely) zero common sense. But we’re going to elect a new House in ten months, and most polls show the forecasted outcome to be Republicans in control.

If that happens, any progress made so far in the post-Trump era will end. If we are to avoid that, the Democratic Party will need more than a fresh coat of paint and a kitchen renovation, because the Party looks a lot like grandma’s house just before it goes on the market.

That doesn’t leave a lot of time for a makeover. The NYT said it best in its “Every Day Is Jan. 6 Now” editorial:

“Jan. 6 is not in the past; it is every day….It is regular citizens who threaten election officials and other public servants, who ask, “When can we use the guns?” and who vow to murder politicians who dare to vote their conscience. It is Republican lawmakers scrambling to make it harder for people to vote and easier to subvert their will if they do. It is Donald Trump who continues to stoke the flames of conflict with his rampant lies and limitless resentments and whose twisted version of reality still dominates one of the nation’s two major political parties.”

The violence every American witnessed at the Capitol one year ago demonstrated the will of Republicans to take over our democracy. And while the select committee in the House promises a detailed accounting and, presumably, some sort of referral for action to the DOJ, time is short.

Time is short for all of us.

In state after Republican-controlled state, efforts continue to put in place, under cover of law, mechanisms for Republicans to overturn elections results not to their liking.

So, the Capitol riot is continuing in a bloodless, legalized form that no police officer can arrest and that no prosecutor can try in court. The fact that half of Americans watched Jan 6 in real time and have concluded that it was a legitimate effort to prevent Biden’s election and to restore Trump to office suggests that the decades-long project of the Right wing is nearly complete, unless we intervene. More from the NYT:

“Democrats aren’t helpless, either. They hold unified power in Washington, for the last time in what may be a long time. Yet they have so far failed to confront the urgency of this moment — unwilling or unable to take action to protect elections from subversion and sabotage.”

That means Democrats must shelve Build Back Better and throw everything they have at voting rights. The mealy mouth discussion by Sens. Manchin and Sinema about what might happen if the filibuster was suspended, is an artful dodge when the threat to democracy is so clear today.

Temporarily suspending the filibuster is not radical; standing on the sidelines and not doing anything to stop Republicans from ending our democracy is radical.

Time to wake up America! Democrats need to force the issue on their leaders. Wrongo’s view is “no money until Voting Rights are passed”. That means zero donations between here and the mid-terms unless Democrats act on voting rights. It means Wrongo replies to every tweet and email solicitation with that message.

To help the Democratic Party wake up, here’s “Wake Up Everybody”, originally by Harold Melvin and The Bluenotes, featuring Teddy Pendergrass. Teddy left the group for his solo career after this album.

Today we listen and watch John Legend’s 2010 cover of the tune, backed by Questlove and the Roots Band along with Melanie Fiona, and Common. The song is as strong today as it was 47 years ago when it was released:

Sample Lyric:

The world won’t get no better
If we just let it be
The world won’t get no better
We gotta change it, yeah, just you and me

Christmas Day, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Great Santa Run, Las Vegas NV – December 2021 photo by Ellen Schmidt

(We will be taking the next few days off. Posting will be light and variable until the New Year)

Merry Christmas! You shouldn’t be cruising the internet today, but here you are, and Wrongo thanks you for stopping by. Many say that this is the most wonderful time of the year, but perhaps it’s better that we don’t think about what a roller coaster ride 2021 was for all of us.

Don’t you think that we need a little Christmas after the year we had? The tune “We Need a Little Christmas” is from the musical Mame, which opened on Broadway in 1966. It is sung in the scene when the stock-market crash of 1929 has just happened, and Mame’s deceased brother’s 10-year-old son has been entrusted to her care. She introduces him to her free-wheeling lifestyle, using her favorite saying: “Life is a banquet, and most poor sons-of-bitches are starving to death.”

Our economy is fine, but Mame’s saying (above) still sounds right in 2021.

With due respect to the Grateful Dead, what a long, strange trip 2021 has been. The January 6 attempted coup happened less than a year ago. Biden’s Presidency is only 11 months old. The DOJ and 1/6 Committee are working away on an unprecedented case that is way more complicated and difficult than most of us seem to comprehend. So, amid the sudden re-emergence of yet another Covid variant, in this case, Omicron, let’s take a minute to review Biden’s performance.

The Atlantic’s David Frum offers some perspective:

“Relative to its strength in Congress, the Biden administration has proved outstandingly successful. In 11 months, Biden has done more with 50 Democratic senators than Barack Obama did with 57. He signed a $1.9 trillion COVID-relief bill in March 2021….He signed a $1 trillion infrastructure bill in November. He signed some 75 executive orders, many of them advancing liberal immigration goals. He’s also won confirmation for some 40 federal judges, more than any first-year president since Ronald Reagan, and twice as many as Donald Trump confirmed in his first year with a 54-vote Senate majority.”

Facing The Music

The Daily Escape:

First snow, New Hampshire creek – December 2021 photo by Betsy Zimmerli

“It’s always been about the music. And when it’s not, it’s about facing the music” – Wrongo

Today is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. It is also Wrongo’s favorite day because he prefers daylight to darkness. This is an optimistic day since every succeeding day for the next six months will bring more daylight to the land.

But Wrongo struggles to see any political daylight at the end of this extremely dark year. Here is a summation of the three events most important to Wrongo in this dark, dark year:

The January 6 aborted coup. Nothing that happened this year can overshadow the effort to subvert our democracy. While it may be doubtful right now that the outcome of the Jan. 6 committee will bring justice for the coup plotters, let’s compare it to the Watergate scandal. Those plotters were held accountable. And Watergate occurred at a time when we didn’t have mobile phone, email, and text message electronic tracing to reveal what had happened. In this Jan. 6 case, proving accountability should be easier. We don’t need to know everything, we just need to know enough to prosecute people. With all the digital information that’s available, that should be an easier job than it was during Watergate.

The recent revelations by the House Select Committee are an encouraging sign because they moved quickly on passing a contempt resolution for a former Congressman, Mark Meadows. The Committee got to tell their story three times in 24 hours. They embellished it with juicy new details (texts from Trump’s family members, Fox News personalities, reporters, members of Congress) every time they told it. If they can keep that up through the early part of next year, maybe we’ll start getting somewhere with this.

Ending the Forever War. Biden was crushed by the media and the public for walking away from Afghanistan and the subsequent chaos around the pull-out, but it was the right thing to do. Nearly 2500 US service members were killed, 20,698 were wounded, and more than $2.2 trillion in American taxpayer funds were spent on warfighting, reconstructing programs, building the Afghan National Security Forces, and promoting good governance.

In the end, we have nothing to show for our time there except for more national debt and soldiers who will need care for the rest of their lives. We deserve a full and complete accounting of our 20 years in Afghanistan. After all, it’s another military defeat that requires a fundamental examination to ensure that we never again jump into a country when we fail to understand their social and cultural dynamics.

Losing the Covid war. We’ve failed as a country to work together to beat the virus variants, despite having a vaccine that offered protection. The politicization of Covid treatment is the second worse outcome in 2021, to the politicization of the January 6 attempted coup.

Anti-vaxxers believe that their strong natural immune system will beat the virus, and that “healthy lifestyles” will give you a healthy immune system. They think using a vaccine to enhance the natural protection offered by their beautiful immune system is a bad idea because [insert the excuse of the day]. Perhaps they don’t realize that you can’t have natural immunity to a virus that your body has never encountered. An unvaccinated but fit person can get Covid because their body has no idea how to fight it.

There’s also the argument that Covid only kills older people. While the facts don’t support that idea either, maybe the anti-Vaxx community views it as an experiment to see if “having living parents or grandparents” is an evolutionary advantage for the kids who didn’t lose their relatives.

These issues show America must face the music. Wrongo’s sure we’ll face more 2021 music, but this is his top-of-mind thinking.

We’re going to have Christmas or seasonal music in each post this week. Today let’s listen to U2 – “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)” filmed in November 1987 at the Assembly Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. These guys were children back then. Maybe this tune has a special relevance in a world where Covid has taken so many lives:

Be kind. Not just during this season, but all the time.

Whose Side Are You On?

The Daily Escape:

Capitol Reef NP -December 2021 photo by Jonathan Vandervoorde

Shouldn’t we be on the side of democracy? Georgia’s Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock says yes. He spoke in the Senate on Tuesday, and what he said is consistent with Wrongo’s thinking.

Warnock asked why the Senate could suspend its rules in order to pass an increase in the debt ceiling by a simple majority but couldn’t do the same thing for something as critical to our democracy as voting rights. From Warnock:

“Before we left Washington last week, we in this chamber made a change in the Senate’s rules in order to push forward something that all of us think is important. We set the stage to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, and yet as we cast that vote to begin addressing the debt ceiling, this same chamber is allowing the ceiling of our democracy to crash in around us….Be very clear, last week we changed the rules of the Senate. To address another important issue, the economy. This is a step, a change in the Senate rules we haven’t been willing to take to save our broken democracy, but one that a bipartisan majority of this chamber thought was necessary in order to keep our economy strong.”

The Jan. 6 attempted coup and the many state anti-voting laws passed by Republicans subsequent to that, come from the same poisonous well: A growing anti-democratic movement of fellow travelers including American conservatives, Right-wing extremists, and political entrepreneurs on the Right who have made the Republican Party their political vehicle.

They’re close to winning in the 2022 mid-terms. If the Senate adjourns without acting on voter suppression, it will help them get there. Buzzfeed reports that in some states, Republicans are going door-to-door in order to “check” to make sure there aren’t any illegal voters in your home:

“Individual election deniers and grassroots groups are canvassing for election fraud in states…including New Hampshire, Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Utah, and Nebraska.”

They’re targeting registered Democrat voters. It’s part of a broader effort by Trump supporters and Republican Party leaders to cast doubt on our elections going forward. In Colorado, a member of the Three Percenter militant group is helping lead the canvassing effort. According to the Colorado Times Recorder, that member suggested volunteers carry firearms to provide security for the group as they went door-to-door.

Let’s call this what it is: Voter intimidation on a multi-state scale. It’s a message that if you are a registered Democrat, the Trump cultists know who you are, and where you live. This intimidation should be illegal, but it’s not.

And it’s another part of the problem that the Senate needs to address right now.

The Democrats have what amounts to less-than-a-majority in the Senate in favor of suspending the filibuster rules for voting rights. In June, Majority Leader Schumer outsourced an effort to garner a filibuster-proof majority on voting rights to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WVA), but Manchin’s effort failed.

Despite that, Schumer was able to finesse the filibuster to act without Republican votes to increase the debt ceiling. He was also able to corral all Democratic Senators, including Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, who are on the record as being against any change in the filibuster rules.

But voting rights, the most fundamental of all Democratic principles, are being sacrificed to the crusty parliamentary rule that these same two Democrats have so far refused to consider. This week, Schumer appointed a group of Democratic senators, who lead the talks on voting rights legislation, to spearhead discussions with Joe Manchin about how to change the Senate rules. They met with Manchin on Tuesday.

It’s time for Sen. Schumer to wrestle Manchin and Sinema to the ground, and make them vote to suspend the filibuster rules a second time.

Barton Gellman, who wrote a recent Atlantic magazine article that Wrongo quoted last week, recently told Terry Gross of NPR:

“This is, I believe, a democratic emergency, and that without very strong and systematic pushback from protectors of democracy, we’re going to lose something that we can’t afford to lose about the way we run elections.”

We’re facing a crisis. Biden and all Democrats have to make this a “whose side are you on?” issue for Washington politicians and for voters everywhere.

Warnock has a powerful message. He’s the one Democrat willing to speak about the elephant in the room. Watch his speech:

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: US Constitution Under Threat

Saturday Soother – January 8, 2022

Christmas Day, 2021

Whose Side Are You On?