Get REAL Democrats!

My anxiety level is rising with each Democratic debate I watch…in fact, I don’t think I am going to watch any more of them—it is too disturbing.  Last night’s slug fest was truly disappointing.  None of the combatants exhibited anything like a Presidential demeanor.  They looked like squabbling schoolyard bully wannabees trying to seem tough.  They are spending all their waking hours refining their arguments about why their opponents will not beat Trump in November.  That is so shortsighted!

What they SHOULD be doing is recounting all the broken promises made by Trump which he lies

about to the American people.  Instead of beating each other up about how many bills they passed or who wrote what legislation or who said what to whom 20 years ago, why aren’t they pointing out what has happened in America over the past three and half years, and what the current trends are:

(the links are the supporting reports)

-- People are working two to three jobs to get by, wages are essentially flat, and layoffs are on the uptick

-- Trump is trying to end you and your family’s coverage for pre-existing medical conditions—along with all the other benefits of the ACA—in a lawsuit now in federal court.

--four in 10 adults can’t afford to pay an unexpected $400 expense, per a recent report by the Federal Reserve

-- the Congressional Research Service found recently, Trump’s tax cut resulted in corporate profits that “grew faster than wages" and worse, "ordinary workers had very little growth in wage rates."

-- wage growth is virtually non-existent. In 2019, after you subtract inflation of nearly 2 percent, the average American worker will see a net wage increase of slightly over 1 percent.  One percent!!

--2019 has been a “bloodbath” for the trucking industry, with approximately 640 trucking companies going bankrupt in the first half of the year alone, that’s more than triple the number that went bankrupt in all of 2018

-- For the 12-month period ending September 2019, Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings by farmers are up 24 percent from 2018—the highest level since 2011. Even worse, there has been a spike in suicides by farmers linked to their economic despair.

--in reality only about 50 percent of Americans own stock. And a whopping 84 percent of those stocks are owned by Americans in the wealthiest 10 percent of households

-- In 2014, under President Obama, we hit over 5 percent economic growth in one quarter and 4.9 percent in another.  Trending downwards, with last quarter our economy growing at barely 2 percent, down from nearly 3 percent the year before

-- the percentage of Americans currently working or looking for a job is almost unchanged since he took office?

These are the real legacies of the Trump years!  Why isn’t anyone talking about these FACTS!  These are facts reported out by agencies of the Trump administration—it is not fantasy—this is what’s happening NOW!

Add to these sobering economic trends, the FACTS that regulations to protect our citizens against fouled water and air have been rescinded by the Trump Administration, shortening our collective life spans.  We have withdrawn from agreements around the world with allies having to do with trade, arms, climate change, etc.

Given four more years of this downward spiral, what do they think will be left of our republic by 2024?

That is what they need to be talking about!---not how many women Bloomberg might have told bad jokes to!

Banana-Time!

Trump has weaponized the Justice Department.  He couldn’t have a more compliant and servile lackey than Bill Barr as Attorney General.  We have seen over recent days what it will mean to have Trump for another 4 years.  The Rule of Law, perhaps mortally wounded, will certainly be dead and buried by the end of another Trump term.  The pardons being wholesale issued are just a softening up process for the ones to come for Manafort, Stone and Flynn.  His transition from Rule of Law to Crime Boss Law is now complete.  Yesterday he declared himself the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the United States.  Hmmm, with a lackey like AG Barr, he will now pursue political adversaries and perceived enemies relentlessly with investigations.  He has apparently successfully de-fanged the SDNY Justice department by appointing the EDNY as the SDNY’s new controlling entity with his own appointee and himself having to approve any judicial action initiated or currently under way by that agency.  The SDNY has always handled the most corrupt criminals because of its jurisdiction in Southern Manhattan.  What will that do to investigations of Guiliani, Trump’s tax cases, and other national scandals etc.?  Three guesses and the first two don’t count!

However, that is not the worst case scenario to consider.  What are the odds that the Trump

administration Justice Department will ‘discover’ sometime in October that there is a ‘foreign conspiracy”(certainly not Russia!) or a joint foreign/domestic(Democratic) conspiracy to rig the November elections.  Can’t you imagine Trump declaring a national emergency and postponing the election until the DOJ can ‘get to the bottom of the conspiracy’ after which Trump will allow the election to occur?  But in the meantime, of course, he will keep the markets running and of course keep on making America great!  One wonders if the DOJ will ever be able to get to the bottom of the ‘plot’, ergo we'll simply have Donald as our President until……..well, until he decides it is safe enough for him to have the election.  Get ready!

This is pure craziness.  You would think there would be some way for us to free ourselves and our republic from this inexorable slide to autocracy by this most corrupt man.  The tragedy of this is that there are probably 100 men and women in our Congress who could put a stop to this, but these Republicans are so frightened by this guy, as well as addicted to their own lust for power and money that they are supine before this King of the Corrupters.  I wonder if Susan Collins sleeps well at night knowing that Donald Trump has learned a lesson from his impeachment.  I hope our electorate is smart enough to get rid of all these people in time….I somehow doubt they are of course….  which brings me back to the solution to America’s existential threat. 

I just don’t know how we get rid of this cancerous Man if he continues to successfully use our Republic’s structure and ideals to corrupt a system that did not expect a leader like this.  If the Judiciary continues to be weakened by Republican appointees and actions by the Trump DOJ, then there will be no way to stop the slow spiraling death of our American Democracy.

I hope there is some secret Constitutional Patriot group hiding somewhere that is coming up with a plan to exterminate this gangrenous growth that is killing our America.  Otherwise we will all wake up on November 4^th with bananas for breakfast for the foreseeable future.

Now is the Clarion Call.....

The climate has changed in America...you can feel the ill winds blowing.   Trump’s acquittal has unshackled the forces of despair and evil, and now we all wait for the next development that will expand the level of ‘unprecedented’.

The problem America has is not Donald Trump.  He is merely the most visible symptom.  But this past week we got a glimpse of the what lies under the crust of the effort to hide the real discovery that our country’s leadership has rejected the rule of law and has abandoned truth as the ‘true north’ of the American ideal.  We saw our Senate abandon their oaths of office to protect our Constitution.  And maybe for the first time, we truly see what the Republicans have become.  They have rejected the principles of a fair trial; the presentation of evidence and reliance on testimony and documentation.

As a group (and a predominantly white male group) of overweight, blathering supplicants to the acquisition of power above all else, we can think back over the past 3 years, longer actually,  and see clearly how they have defiled the republic our founders created and gave to us.   All you have to do is think about the display they made at the State of the Union event in our House of Representatives.  They all know that Trump is guilty.  But they are so fearful of him that to a man, save for Mitt Romney, they rejected the truth and surrendered to their own greed and power. 

The sad truth is that they do not represent the people who elected them anymore.  75% of our citizenry wanted further testimony and release of documents during the impeachment trial, but their wishes were ignored by the Republicans.  That is not representative government, my fellow Americans.  That is autocracy and dictatorship….think Russia, China, and other countries that have ‘representative legislative bodies’ that rubber stamp policy and edicts from dictatorial leaders.  We have fallen that far.

And so now the carnage continues, without remorse or regret.  The damage that these people are doing to our republic approaches the point of no return.  Things will not change as far as everyday aspects of our lives are concerned…for a while.  Your TV shows will still be on the air; food will still be in the grocery stores; life for the majority of Americans will appear to be the same….but other things will begin to change.  Elections will be contested as rigged by those who don’t get the result they want.  Republicans will continue to purge voter rolls of people of color, and gerrymander voting districts, destroying the integrity of the vote.  Executive orders will supplant legislative action.  People like Mitch McConnell will do all in their power to corrupt and halt positive middle class and working-class initiatives.  Immigration policy will become increasingly cruel and unlawful.  Look at the example of what the Trump administration announced it is doing in New York re: restricting the ability to expedite  boarding of airplanes as punishment for New York being a state that claims  sanctuary support to stop cruel immigration crackdowns by ICE.

McConnell and his Republican majority in the Senate has basically stopped and blocked all House legislative actions.  McConnell’s mission is to flood our courts with confirmed arch conservative judges who will serve the mandates of corporate interests over the interests of the common citizen.  Money and power are now all important.  Retribution for those who rose to support the Constitution and supported impeachment is now going to be the order of the day.  We have already seen it with the Vindman brothers being summarily fired from their White House jobs.  All the others who spoke out in support of our Constitution and obeyed subpoenas to testify are now fearful for their futures as the administration proceeds unabated to purge them from government.

We are fast approaching the last exit before the toll, my friends.  The national election in November will be the last chance we have to stop this madness.  It is not even really about Trump as President that is the real threat.  We can count on him to behave in the most sinister and egregious way.  It is the rot in our legislature that is the real threat.  And you can expect the most vile election in our history as claims of election rigging will abound, not to mention the probability of more episodes like Ukraine and worse, as forces from outside our boundaries strive to curry favor with Trump and find ways to help him cheat his way to re-election.

The Democrats are stumbling.  They must recover and focus on defeating those senators from every state having a senatorial election.  McConnell must be defeated or made a minority or else we will never regain the power to redeem ourselves.  The Republicans have proven themselves liars and craven power-hungry supplicants to a man they fear.  Our ability to survive beyond 2020 as a democratic republic hinges on our ability to motivate our people to vote these miscreants and Trump out of office and replace them with people who believe in integrity, honesty, and the rule of law.