Luther Strange

Mitch McConnell Defies Decency: Merrick Garland, And Now Doug Jones

Ronald 3 Comments

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) is once again engaged in outrageous and despicable behavior.

In 2009, he declared that the Republican Party would do everything to block all legislation and other actions by Barack Obama, so he would be a one term President.

That move failed, but McConnell and his Republican Party did everything possible to block circuit and district court nominations by Obama, and now they are rushing through incompetent appointments by Donald Trump, people who have no or horrible credentials to have lifetime jobs on the circuit and district courts.

McConnell also would not allow Obama’s Supreme Court appointment of Merrick Garland to have a hearing, let alone a vote in 2016, because Obama was in his last year in the White House, even though historically, there have been a number of appointments in the last year of a Presidential term or a Presidency.

So we ended up with right winger Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, who was overruled by the rest of the Supreme Court on a case when he still was a Circuit Court judge.

And now, with Doug Jones having won the Alabama Senate race, and ready to be sworn in, McConnell will not allow that to happen before the vote on the tax legislation which will redistribute the wealth to the wealthy and corporations, at the expense of the middle class, struggling working class, and the poor, elderly, and disabled. So instead, defeated Senator Luther Strange will be able to cast his vote, when he should no longer have that right.

There is a special place in hell for people like Mitch McConnell!

Magnificent Victory For Doug Jones In Alabama: Its Meaning

Ronald 12 Comments

Last night’s magnificent victory in Alabama for Doug Jones in the special election to replace Jeff Sessions in the US Senate has so many meanings.

It is a total repudiation of the despicable former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.

It is a total repudiation of Donald Trump, who now has lost twice in Alabama, after doing so well in that state in 2016. He lost with Luther Strange and now with Roy Moore.

It is a total repudiation of Steve Bannon, and his continued assault on the “Establishment” in the Republican Party, and is likely to lead to a Democratic House and Senate in the 2018 Midterm Congressional elections.

It is a total repudiation of disgraceful talk show host Sean Hannity on Fox News Channel, who could end up possibly implicated in the Trump Scandals being investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

On a positive vein, it demonstrates that the forces of good are there, even in Alabama, as African Americans, Latinos, women, and young people came out and voted in an off year special election at much higher rates than projected.

It is also a tribute to conservative mainstream Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, who refused to endorse and support Roy Moore, and told his supporters that he had voted a write in candidate, and that they could do so as well. As it turns out, if all of the write in votes had gone to Moore, it would have been a victory for the combative former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.

It was also a sign of just how good and decent Doug Jones was and is, as a prosecutor who, almost 40 years later, was able to gain convictions of Ku Klux Klansmen who killed those four young African American girls in that despicable church bombing in Birmingham in 1963. It was wonderful seeing African Americans on the stage with Jones at his victory celebration, showing the race issue does not have to divide Alabama or America.

It is also a sign of the significance of campaign adviser Joe Trippi, who earlier had worked for Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, Jerry Brown, Dick Gephardt, Ted Kennedy, and John Edwards in their various campaigns. What a great adviser Joe Trippi is!

This blogger was emotional about this great victory last night, and more so than even the great victories in New Jersey and particularly Virginia in the November off year elections.

Now it is time to move forward and force Donald Trump, who has divided America in so many hateful ways, to face the punishment he deserves, which is potential impeachment, with moral turpitude to be added to Russian Collusion, Obstruction of Justice, Abuse of Power, and Violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.

It is also time for the top people around Trump to show they have courage and to demand he resign or they resign en masse. This includes John Kelly, H. R. McMaster, James Mattis, Rex Tillerson, and Nikki Haley.

The time for the cancer of Donald Trump to be excised has come, and the Democrats must use Trump against the Republicans, if they refuse to take responsibility for the dangers and authoritarianism that he represents.

It is time for the Republicans to put nation over party.

The Republican Party Of The Early 1990s And Now: David Duke, Bob Packwood, And Roy Moore

Ronald 16 Comments

How far the Republican Party has come in the past generation, from a party that had some principle and dignity to a party that is afraid to stand up against hypocrisy and evil.

In 1991, David Duke, the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, was the Republican nominee for Governor of Louisiana, but many Republicans repudiated him, and President George H. W. Bush condemned him in a public statement, and refused to endorse and support him.

In 1995, Oregon Senator Bob Packwood, a mainstay of the chamber, who had been in the Senate for nearly 27 years, and actually had a decent record as a progressive oriented Republican, was shown to have engaged in sexual harassment for the previous two decades, and the Senate censured him, and he resigned from office in disgrace.

Now, in 2017, a despicable human being named Roy Moore, who has hatred and prejudice as part of his mantra, and is seen as a pariah by many Republican Senators, is accused of sexual harassment and more against teenage girls decades ago, and he refuses to leave the Senate race in Alabama, and while many Republicans have called for him to exit the race, only Senator John McCain has been forceful on the issue, and the only conservative intellectual who has clearly condemned him is Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol, who worked for Vice President Dan Quayle, but has been a Trump critic from Day One when Trump announced for President nearly two and a half years ago.

One would hope that many of the Senators who said Moore should withdraw show the courage of John McCain and Bill Kristol, and refuse to support, endorse, or finance his race for the Senate on December 12 in Alabama.

Alabama deserves a decent, hard working, principled US Senator, and forgetting party lines, they can get that in Doug Jones, who prosecuted two Ku Klux Klansmen in the infamous Birmingham Church bombing in 1963, which killed for young African American girls, a case pursued nearly forty years after the horrible events.

This is the kind of Senator all members of that body should welcome into their club.

If Alabama, a state with already corrupt leadership that puts the state in the top ten worst governed states, and with a horrible reputation of being ignorant, prejudiced, and backward, not all that different than in the era of civil rights and George Wallace in the 1960s, goes ahead and elects Roy Moore to the Senate, the Republicans should join with the Democrats, and refuse to seat him, which is within their rights as a legislative body. They forced Bob Packwood out on sexual misconduct in 1995, and further back Democratic Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut in 1982, and more recently Republican Senator John Ensign of Nevada in 2011, both on financial improprieties, so they can do the same to the infamous, despicable Roy Moore.

Since there was horror when Moore won the nomination to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions over Senator Luther Strange, the Sessions replacement, on the part of Republicans in the Senate, it should not be hard to refuse to seat him, and to hell with Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and their ilk demonstrating no morality, no ethics, and supporting a so called “good Christian”, who is anything but that in his views on women, gays and lesbians, Muslims, and on separation of church and state, which he does not believe in.

Right now, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is the most disliked member of the Senate by his own colleagues, but Roy Moore, if he wins and is seated, will far surpass Cruz, and will become an albatross around the neck of the GOP.

How far the Republican Party has fallen since the early to mid 1990s!

Roy Moore, The Most Extremist Right Wing Senator In The Republican Party, And Possible Sign Of Future Turmoil In Party, If He Wins In December

Ronald 6 Comments

Alabama Republicans last night selected former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore as their nominee to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions, overcoming temporary appointed Senator Luther Strange, by a margin of 10 percent.

Although Donald Trump supported Strange, he quickly switched to backing of Moore, who faces a contest with Doug Jones, the Democratic nominee, who as US Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, by appointment of Bill Clinton, was able to gain convictions of the perpetrators of the Birmingham Church bombing in 1963 of four young African American girls in 2001 and 2002, making him a hero four decades later than the crimes, but with two Ku Klux Klan members finally being dealt justice for their crimes.

But Alabama, being Alabama, is likely to elect Roy Moore to finish the remainder of the Sessions term on December 12.

Moore would be, by his own record, the most extremist right wing Senator in decades, more so than even Ted Cruz is or Jeff Sessions was, and as dangerous as Jesse Helms was for decades.

This man wants a Christian run nation, not believing in separation of church and state, a very alarming situation.

He is homophobic, Islamophobic, and racist, in his references to minority groups as “red and yellow”, and wanting to check out all Hispanics on their being documented or undocumented immigrants.

He is a Birther, as Trump was, believing that Barack Obama was born in Kenya.

He was forced out twice from the Supreme Court of Alabama for installing a Ten Commandments statue, and for promoting refusal to accept the US Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, and wants homosexuality to be a crime worthy of prosecution.

He is a firebrand, who has the support of such right wing extremists as Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and Laura Ingraham.

He is anti Republican Establishment, and will create trouble for Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan on Capitol Hill, and will make many controversial statements.

To imagine that Sessions would have been preferable to remain as a US Senator instead of having Moore as his replacement shows just how extremist and whacko the Republican Party has become, and it encourages other Tea Party types like Moore to challenge Republican Senators for renomination in states such as Arizona, Nevada, and now Tennessee where Senator Bob Corker has decided not to run for reelection in 2018.