Former U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan is angry with his former Republican congressional colleagues.
Ryan believes they have embarked on an “un-American,” and “anti-conservative” strategy while seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Of course he is correct. One big problem exists, however. They don’t give crap what the former speaker thinks of their shenanigans.
According to Business Insider: “All our basic rights and freedoms flow from a fidelity to the Constitution and the rule of law,” Ryan, who represented Wisconsin in the House from 1999 until 2019, said in a statement. “This principle is not only fundamentally American but a central tenet of conservatism. Under our system, voters determine the president, and this self-governance cannot sustain itself if the whims of Congress replace the will of the people. I urge members to consider the precedent that it would set.”
Do you think any of the nimrods who are seeking to challenge President-elect Biden’s victory when Congress meets this week to certify the Electoral College tally from the election will heed these words?
The New York Times has published a story that begins with this paragraph:
President Trump demanded that Georgia’s Republican secretary of state “find” him enough votes to overturn the presidential election, and vaguely threatened him with “a criminal offense,” during an hourlong telephone conversation with him on Saturday, according to audio excerpts from the conversation.
Now, let’s ponder the consequence of that news article brings to us.
To me it tells of a president seeking to coerce a state election official to change the outcome of an election and to threaten him if he doesn’t do what the president is demanding.
Have you ever heard of such a travesty? Can anyone recall any president in any era of any political party doing the kind of thing that Donald Trump has done in the wake of an election he lost … by a lot?
What we have on our hands — for the next 16 days — is a president who is out of control. He’s also out of his mind.
Every move he makes to overturn an election, to subvert democracy, to violate the very oath he took to defend the Constitution and abide by the law only ratifies what many millions of us have known since before the guy became president.
It is that he presents a dire danger to the very nation that elected him as its president.
We have corrected that grievous error and I am awaiting the moment when Joseph Biden takes the oath and rescues this country from the madman he will succeed.
Part of President Clinton’s success in the White House involved his ability to “compartmentalize” his relationships with political foes, including the politicians who sought his removal from office via impeachment after he messed around with a White House intern.
Clinton was able to set whatever personal animus he had for those individuals and work constructively with them to, oh, balance the federal budget and keep the economy steaming merrily along.
President Biden might encounter a similar challenge when he takes office in 16 days. At this moment, 11 Republican senators and 140 House members want to challenge his duly constituted election as president of the United States. They are dancing to the tune being called by the Seditionist in Chief, Donald Trump, who continues to rouse the rabbles by insisting there was voter fraud … where there wasn’t. Not even a little bit!
I am appalled to say that the Senate GOP ringleader appears to be the Cruz Missile, Texas’s junior senator Ted Cruz, who has managed to make me detest him more now than when he first entered the Senate.
Joe Biden has built a lengthy list of professional relationships with members of Congress on both sides of the great divide. He served for 36 years in the Senate, eight years as vice president. The man knows the players, he knows what makes ’em tick, can find their hot buttons without even trying.
He also will have to deal forthrightly with their insurgency, with the aim of subverting a legal, free and fair election. They want an “audit” of the results in several states before certifying the Electoral College vote this week. They won’t get the audit, but those 151 members of Congress will be on the record insisting on getting it.
How will the new president work with them? He must be able to compartmentalize those relationships the way President Clinton was able to do during his two successful terms in office.
If he can do that and give Americans the kind of leadership and governance that’s been missing for the past four years, President Biden will be able to craft a highly successful tenure in the nation’s highest office.
Here is hoping for President Biden’s success right out of the chute.
Is it a crime for a public official to encourage another public official to break the law?
I kinda think it is.
What do you suppose Donald Trump was doing in that hour-long phone conversation with the Georgia secretary of state, asking him to “find” 11,780 votes cast for Trump so that he could reverse the outcome in Georgia of the 2020 presidential election?
From my vantage point, Donald Trump was berating the secretary of state into breaking the law.
This is further proof — as if anyone needed it — of Donald Trump’s supreme unfitness for the job he is going to surrender in just 17 days to President-elect Joe Biden.
One of the stark truths of this blog is that it hasn’t offered much praise for a newspaper where I worked for nearly 18 years. I have watched it decline to a level I no longer recognize.
Then the Amarillo Globe-News did something the other day that I find truly inspiring. Instead of singling out a Man and Woman of the Year for 2020, it chose its Men and Women of the Year: the frontline medical staffs in the Texas Panhandle who have risked their lives saving others’ lives in the wake of the killer pandemic.
A no-brainer, you say? Eh, one could make that argument. Except that not all publications that bestow these honors have followed that lead.
The Globe-News solicits nominations from the public. It would gather its management team at the end of a calendar year to deliberate over who should get the honor. The newspaper would dispatch a reporter to interview the subject and those close to him and her, concocting some pretext for the interview. Then the paper would publish its Man and Woman of the Year on Jan. 1. The paper has honored its Man of the Year since 1950; its Woman of the Year since 1974.
It’s still doing so, but with a dramatically different setup than I remember. Whatever the case, the choice this year was at one time an easy call and an inspired one.
Perhaps every community in America should honor their first responders, their medical staffs, their emergency services personnel in such a manner.
The Panhandle has been staggered by the toll brought by the virus. Its acute-care hospitals have been stretched to the limit. Its nursing homes and assisted living centers have been ravaged. They all are staffed by dedicated men and women who have become in many cases “surrogate loved ones” to patients who have struggled with the COVID-19 virus. They have held the hands of patients, told them of their love for them … and then watched many of them die.
It has been heartbreaking beyond measure.
Yes, they deserve to be honored for their hard work and their selflessness. As the newspaper stated in its New Year’s Day editorial: We also know this year, that while there were others nominated for this distinction, we found none more deserving. After all, a year like no other should yield honorees like no other.
A friend of mine calls them members of the “Sedition Caucus” of the Republican Party.
Indeed, the 11 GOP senators and 140 House of Representatives members have collaborated to form what has to be the among the most dangerous political cabals in American history.
They want to challenge the results of this past year’s election that chose Joe Biden to be president of the United States. They contend, without a shred of evidence, that the result is tainted by voter fraud in key states that Biden won over Donald J. Trump. They want to launch an emergency 10-day “audit” of the results in several states to determine whether their claims of fraud can hold up.
Spoiler alert: They won’t!
To make matters even worse — if that is even possible — they have persuaded Vice President Mike Pence to join them. Pence is slated to preside next Wednesday over a joint congressional session to ratify the results of the Electoral College vote putting Biden into the presidency on Jan. 20.
There was no fraud. There was no corruption. Americans cast their votes. They were counted. Biden got 81.3 million of them; Trump collected 74.2 million. The Electoral College ended up with Biden winning 306-232. The election was conducted under strict scrutiny by state and local officials adhering to all the protocols necessary to prevent hanky-panky at the polls.
Courts have ruled against all the challenges of the result. The former U.S. attorney general, William Barr, has determined there was no fraud.
Now these kooks who serve in Congress want to conduct an audit? They are challenging the result of a duly constituted election? They want to sow even more division, suspicion and doubt into this democratic process? With the blessing of the current (for now) president of the United States?
A longtime dream of mine took a baby step toward coming true today when I fetched the mail from the mailbox.
It contained a jury summons from the Collin County Courthouse.
The dream involves serving on a trial jury. I long have wanted to perform that particular act of citizenship.
I came of age in my native Oregon. I never got a summons, not from Multnomah County or from Clackamas County, where we lived until we moved to Texas in 1984.
I would get a summons from Jefferson County on occasion, but then would be dismissed. We moved eventually to Randall County in the Texas Panhandle in 1995, where I would occasionally receive a jury summons. One time — just once! — I had to report for duty, where I joined other potential jurors waiting to be selected. Then out came District Judge David Gleason to tell us that our services wouldn’t be needed. Every other summons I got from Randall County would result in my being informed that everyone had settled so I didn’t have to report.
We have migrated to Princeton, in Collin County. The summons arrived today. To be honest, this summons doesn’t tell me if I might be called to serve on a district court jury, a court at law jury or a justice of the peace court jury. Does that mean my chances of being called might pan out? I hope it does.
I know you might think I am a bit loony in the noggin, but I want to serve on a jury. I am aware of those who seek exemptions, citing their work or their age or their physical infirmity. The only thing I can claim is my age, given that I am well north of 65 years of age now. I am not going to evade jury duty.
I know the pay ain’t great. It used to be $6 daily. They’ve kicked it up a bit. That doesn’t matter to me in the least.
Don’t mistake me as some sort of do-gooder, although I have been distressed to read over the years about Texas courts struggling to find eligible residents willing to serve on juries. I have long been curious about how jurors interact with each other and with officers of the court.
The Republican congressional cabal of kooks today grew by 11 members.
I cannot believe these once-serious-minded individuals have done this, but they have declared their intention to object to President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory when the Senate and the House of Representatives meet Wednesday to, um, certify the results.
They have joined their moronic Missouri colleague, Josh Hawley, in filing some sort of empty-headed protest over Biden’s victory, citing “widespread voter fraud” for which no one on Earth has presented a shred of evidence even existed.
Here’s the best part: One of the Gang of 11 dipshi** is none other than Sen. Ted Cruz, the Houston Republican whom I long ago dubbed the Cruz Missile.
To his credit, John Cornyn, Texas’s senior U.S. Republican senator, didn’t sign on to this idiotic ploy.
What these clowns/morons/know-nothings/idiots are seeking to do is commit what I consider an act of sedition. They are staging an open rebellion against our democratic process. They have joined 140 of their House GOP colleagues in contesting an election that Joe Biden won — and Donald J. Trump — lost in what election officials have declared to be the most secure election in U.S. history.
The 11 GOP Senate nimrods want to delay the outcome for 10 days while they conduct an audit of the process. Good ever-lovin’ grief, dudes! The courts have tossed out every one of Trump’s own challenges to the veracity of the election. The Electoral College has met as prescribed by the Constitution and declared that Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will take office on Jan. 20.
We have a bizarre drama playing out on the world stage. Republican members of Congress want to make some kind of show about their resistance to a Democrat winning election over one of their guys. What they are revealing to the world is an absolute disregard for the democratic process, which until this election cycle was thought to be an impenetrable barrier against the kind of dangerous insurrection that appears to be taking shape.
Finally, think also of this reality: The individual for whom they are embarking on this moronic mission, Donald J. Trump, is encouraging them to commit what I consider to be a subversion of the electoral process we all should honor.
Americans will not get to witness President-elect Joe Biden and Jill Biden arrive at the White House prior to the inauguration. There will be no scenes of Donald and Melania Trump greeting them with smiles, handshakes and hugs.
There will be no informal briefing between the outgoing and incoming presidents. The current and future first ladies won’t tour the residence, with Melania Trump showing Jill Biden where to find the linens.
No. All of that is tossed into the crapper.
When Barack Obama was leaving the White House in 2017, he and Michelle Obama greeted the Trumps at the White House. They mugged for the cameras and went inside. Obama talked to Trump about what to expect. Their wives visited informally. It was all done according to long-established custom.
It’s not that the Bidens don’t know their way around the people’s house. They’ve been there many times already, visiting many presidents … not to mention the one with whom Joe Biden worked for eight years, the aforementioned Barack Obama.
I will miss seeing the photos. Still, it’s probably just as well, given the river of bad blood that has flown from Trump in the wake of his loss to Biden in the election.
The Trumps will be gone. The Bidens will walk in and make themselves at home. That’s OK with me.
We can thank the nation’s founders tonight for a federal judicial ruling that puts an end to a loony lawsuit filed by a loony member of Congress, Rep. Louie Gohmert, an East Texas Republican.
Gohmert wanted Vice President Mike Pence to preside over a joint session of Congress next week … and then take it upon himself to throw out the Electoral College certification that Joe Biden was elected president of the United States.
What did the founders get right? They created an independent federal judiciary! Tonight, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle tossed Gohmert’s lawsuit into the trash barrel.
I should say right here that Judge Kernodle, of Texas, is a Trump appointee. Yep, the man who would benefit directly from Gohmert’s idiocy selected this jurist, who then followed his oath of office directly and cleanly. As The Hill reported: The judge found that Gohmert suffered no legally recognizable injury.
