Month: December 2023

Top Five Political Villains Of The Year 2023

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As we look back at the year 2023, it was a very tumultuous year in so many ways.

The five most negative political factors in 2023 would include the following:

The disgraceful Republican controlled House of Representatives under Kevin McCarthy, and then, Mike Johnson, and including former Congressman George Santos, who represents the true nature of the Republican Party in the lower chamber.

The weak, spineless Republican contenders for the Presidency, including Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, unwilling to condemn Donald Trump and take him on in a full throated campaign to remove this cancer on the party and the nation.

The corrupt, evil Fox News Channel, which lost a major defamation suit, but continues to spew forth poison, venom, and lies incessantly.

Billionaire Elon Musk, the owner of what used to be called Twitter, who showed how hateful, unstable, and dangerous unchecked wealth accumulation can be for society at large.

And finally, the continuing cancer and destruction of the Republican Party at large, provoked by Donald Trump, but with willing suicide victims who are willing to promote racism, nativism, and misogyny as a new norm for American politics.

The 80th Congress (1947-1949) Vs. The 118th Congress (2023- )

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It has often been claimed that the 80th Congress (1947-1949) under President Harry Truman was unproductive, or as Truman claimed it in his 1948 Presidential campaign, a “Do Nothing” Congress.

While it is true that the Republican dominated 80th Congress worked against Democratic President Truman and his “Fair Deal” proposals, most notably passing the anti Labor Taft-Hartley Act over the President’s veto, in reality a lot was accomplished in that Congress.

The following actions were accomplished:

The Truman Doctrine
The Taft-Hartley Act
The Presidential Succession Act
The National Security Act–including the Defense Department at the Pentagon in Virginia, the National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, separate Department of the Air Force, and the Central Intelligence Agency
The Marshall Plan
22nd Amendment to the US Constitution

At the same time, NOTHING significant has been passed into law in the present first session of the 118th Congress, making it the least productive in modern times since the Great Depression 1931-1933 72nd Congress, split between a Democratic House of Representatives and Republican Senate under President Herbert Hoover!

Momentous Time For Supreme Court With Colorado Court Banning Of Trump On 2024 Election Primary Ballot!

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The moment has arrived for the US Supreme Court to face a tough decision that will affect the Presidential Election of 2024.

Should they uphold the Colorado Supreme Court and agree to the banning of Donald Trump from the 2024 Primary Ballot, due to his involvement in setting up and inciting the January 6, 2021 US Capitol Insurrection?

The Colorado Court’s decision is based on the 14th Amendment Section 3, added to the Constitution after the Civil War, and seemingly appropriate to this blogger to be employed in this present situation!

If they do, that would open up other states also employing the same strategy through lawsuits to the state Supreme Courts.

Respected conservative experts agree that this is proper, including J. Michael Luttig, a retired Appeals Court Judge, who is highly regarded, and conservative attorney George Conway!

That would, effectively, undermine, and likely prevent Donald Trump from being able to win the Presidency, and effectively saving American democracy from the threat he represents to the Constitution and rule of law!

There is no way to forecast the result, but it could be a case as significant as US V Nixon in 1974, which led to the resignation of Richard Nixon from the Presidency!

A gut feeling that the Supreme Court will vote 7-2 to uphold the action of the Colorado Supreme Court, with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito in dissent, but with all three Trump appointees showing principle, guts, and courage, as three such Justices appointed by Richard Nixon did so in July 1974!

Ugly Nativism Rears Its Head Once Again With Donald Trump!

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Nativism–anti immigrant rhetoric—has reared its ugly head, with Donald Trump attacking immigration once again, pandering to the most ignorant and despicable elements of American society.

America is a land of immigrants, with only native Americans having a claim to being otherwise, but we all know how native Americans have been treated throughout American history for four plus centuries!

Generation after generation, hatemongers have exploited the disease of nativism to divide Americans and gain or retain political power.

They have used hateful rhetoric to attack Catholics, Jews, Asian Americans, Hispanic-Latino Americans, African Americans, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and every other minority sect that goes against their white Christian supremacy advocacy!

America has been strengthened and prospered by immigration over and over again, and the nation has been renewed by the contributions of people who come to our shores, and those who are born here of immigrant parents.

Demagogues, including Donald Trump, and a multitude of MAGA Republicans, have picked up where others pursued an equivalent agenda in past generations.

But the idea of setting up massive detention camps and reviving the separation of children from their parents is horrifying, and reminds us of the Nazi concentration camps, and similar mistreatment of minorities in China, and innumerable other dictatorships in nations around the world, which do not gain much publicity in news media.

Every effort and motivation must be made to stop the promotion of hate and division, as it only promotes authoritarianism within America and internationally!

Concern Grows Over Low Biden Ratings, As Trump Rants And Raves!

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Public Opinion Polls continue to give President Joe Biden low ratings, and it is starting to alarm Democrats who are stunned by these polls.

One remembers that public opinion polls have been wrong so often in the past, but the thought that a Fascist authoritarian, Donald Trump, who has called for the end of the Constitution, and calls the criminals who attacked the US Capitol “hostages”, and embraces dictators around the world, might defeat Biden is horrifying!

One wonders if there is any possibility of Joe Biden withdrawing from the race, as Lyndon B. Johnson did in March 1968 after announcing for another term in the Presidency.

If that were to happen, Vice President Kamala Harris, sadly not well regarded in public opinion polls, mostly due to her race and gender, would be the likely heir apparent, but the odds of her being able to carry the mantle of the Biden Presidency and win the election, seems highly unlikely.

There are Democrats who would run in the future, but it is almost too late for their entrance into the race at this point.

So American democracy hangs in the balance as the nation comes into an eventful, transformative election year around the corner!

Donald Trump Escalates Hate And Racism, And Republicans Remain Silent!

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Former President Donald Trump, the leading Republican nominee for President, continues to escalate hate and racism in his campaign rallies, and Republicans remain silent!

Trump spews forth Hitler propaganda, and expresses great admiration of Vladimir Putin, making clear his threat to upend American foreign policy of support of NATO, and Ukraine’s war with Russia!

Trump talks of massive deportations and hostility toward immigration; building a Mexico wall to prevent migration from Latin America; and resisting any struggle against Climate Change.

Trump is a one man wrecking crew in so many ways, and Republicans, including those trying to overcome him for the Presidential nomination, refuse to condemn him openly.

Trump has become a constitutional crisis leading a Fascist oriented party, who is declaring war on American democracy and the rule of law!

Republican Speakers Of The House: From Bad To Disastrous!

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The Republican Party has gone from bad to disastrous in their choosing of Speakers of the House in the past thirty years.

Dennis Hastert, the longest serving Republican Speaker in American history, eight years, from 1999-2007, seemed reasonable, but later was tried and convicted as a sex offender of teenage boys, and served time in prison, becoming the highest ranked elected official in American history to serve a prison sentence.

From 2011-2015, John Boehner served as Speaker, and got mixed reviews, as a major decline in reputation as compared to Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who served from 2007-2011, and later from 2019-2023. Boehner made it his mission to do everything possible to block President Barack Obama in any way imaginable.

Paul Ryan succeeded Boehner from late 2015-2019, and is considered to have been worse than Boehner.

Then, Kevin McCarthy became Speaker in 2023 after 15 ballots, and ended up serving only nine plus months, as he was voted out by his Republican caucus, and is considered to have been worse than any of his Republican predecessors.

And now, we have Mike Johnson, who is a religious extremist, rejects science and facts, and has proved to be a Donald Trump lackey, after having refused to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the Presidential Election of 2020.

The idea that these men were and are two heartbeats away from the Presidency is terrifying, and they make Nancy Pelosi stand out as one of the top few Speakers of the House in all of American history!

Disillusionment Over “Centrist Republicans” Who Voted To Promote Impeachment Inquiry Of Joe Biden Without A Scintilla Of Evidence!

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We have been told that there are “moderate” or “centrist” Republicans in the House of Representatives.

This includes Don Bacon of Nebraska, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, and the 17 members from Biden won districts in 2020 in New York, California, New Jersey, and elsewhere, who are members of the “Problem Solvers Caucus”, and supposedly have an “open mind”!

This group supposedly represented bipartisanship, and yet they went ahead and, unanimously, voted to start an impeachment inquiry on President Joe Biden without a scintilla of evidence of any impeachment offenses, doing this to please the corrupt, twice impeached, four times indicted for 91 counts, former President Donald Trump!

If only eight or more of this group had done the right thing, refuse to support a phony resolution, Joe Biden would not be facing an impeachment inquiry! He is a good and decent man who has done nothing to deserve this action!

So the idea that one can “trust” the fairness of these Republicans has been blown up, and it means total “war” on the Republicans in Congress is essential, as they have all become cult followers of an authoritarian Fascist who is declaring his intention openly to establish a dictatorship if he is reelected to the Oval Office next November!

Joe Biden and the Democrats must now drop the idea of cooperation and follow the strategy of Harry Truman in 1948–GIVE THEM HELL–against the Republican Party in Congress and its Presidential nominee!

118th Congress Least Productive Since Great Depression 72nd Congress!

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The 118th Congress (2023-2025) is fast becoming the least productive since the 72nd Congress (1931-1933) under President Herbert Hoover at the worst times of the Great Depression.

Both the House of Representatives and US Senate are responsible for such poor performance, but clearly, if the House of Representatives is poorly organized and operated, the Senate cannot make up for it.

Both Congresses had one house Democratic, and one Republican, which also caused stalemate and gridlock.

The fact that the House of Representatives Republican majority has just voted an Impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden, with zero evidence of such abuse of power, is a sign of how incompetent and hopeless the 118th Congress is, even with a small Democratic majority in the US Senate.

Clearly, the most productive Congresses have been when one party, in all modern times Democrats, has had a vast advantage in the number of seats in both houses of Congress.

So those most productive Congresses were, chronologically:

63rd Congress (1913-1915) under Woodrow Wilson
73rd Congress (1933-1935) under Franklin D. Roosevelt
74th Congress (1935-1937) under Franklin D. Roosevelt
89th Congress (1965-1967) under Lyndon B. Johnson
111th Congress (2009-2011) under Barack Obama

The most productive of all were the 73rd Congress under FDR, and the 89th Congress under LBJ.

Republican Party Is Clearly Becoming Pro Russian Without Apology!

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Ever since Donald Trump became a Presidential candidate in 2015, the Republican Party has steadily moved toward a pro Russian viewpoint without apology.

Now they are openly showing that their formerly hardline view toward Russia that existed from World War II and peaked under Barry Goldwater in the 1960s and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and included Senator Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon in the 1950s, has gone into the dustbin of history.

We now have one of the two major political parties openly pro Vladimir Putin, and willing to see Russia take over Ukraine, the largest nation in Europe in land area!

This is a threat to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and many Republicans, including Donald Trump, seem ready to abandon NATO, as Trump threatened to do in his time in the Oval Office!

This should be alarming, as if Putin can take over Ukraine, then why would he stop from wishing to seize former Soviet held areas in Eastern Europe, including Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and then Poland and other former Eastern European “satellites” in the Cold War Years of 1945-1991!

This is a major national security crisis, bringing America back to the isolationist era of the 1930s, when many Republicans were only too willing to ignore the threat of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, leading to World War II!