US House Of Representatives

Liz Cheney Vows To Do What Has To Be Done To Keep Donald Trump Out Of White House!

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Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming was interviewed at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Texas, on Sunday.

Vice Chair of the January 6 House Committee investigating the US Capitol Insurrection, but defeated for renomination in her home state, Cheney has vowed that she will do what has to be done to keep Donald Trump out of the White House in the Presidential Election of 2024.

She has hinted at running for President, to stop Trump, and willing to support Democrats, even though she does not believe in many of their ideas, but sees Trump as a “clear and present danger” to American democracy.

She plans to campaign for Democrats in states where Republicans are election deniers, including for Katie Hobbs in Arizona and against Kari Lake, one of the wackiest Republicans running for Governor in the midterm elections. Also, she will campaign against Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, running against Democrat Josh Shapiro for Governor.

And Cheney has said that if Donald Trump is nominated for President in 2024, she will no longer be a Republican!

Turnover In Congress To Be Massive For The 118th Congress

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There will be massive turnover in the 118th Congress, with many members retiring; some being defeated in primaries; and others running for another office.

The final totals will be determined after the Midterm Elections of 2022, but at this point, we have the following statistics:

38 Democrats and 27 Republicans will not be in their positions in the US House of Representatives in 2023.

6 Republicans and 1 Democrat will be leaving the US Senate in 2023.

5 Republicans and 1 Democrat who were House members passed away.

Others who are running for reeelection are, in some cases, likely to lose their seats.

So the makeup of the new 118th Congress will be dramatically different, at a higher rate of turnover than is normal!

Republican And Conservative Advantage In House, Senate, Electoral College System, Despite Popular Vote Advantage For Democrats

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The American political system is in bad straits, in what seems like a losing battle for popular vote to determine who runs our government.

The system has become stacked to favor Republicans and conservatives.

Republican legislatures in many states promote gerrymandering, which hurts Democrats massively, not only in the state governments, but also in setting up House of Representatives seats. An example is Florida, which used to have four Congressional seats that favored African American representation, but now has been halved to two such districts.

Fewer people regularly vote nationally for Republicans, but they have near to a majority even before the election in 2022 for the House of Representatives, and it is likely they will control the lower house of Congress despite having fewer total popular votes nationally.

Also, the US Senate has a situation in which Republican Senators, presently half the Senate, are elected by a population of about about 142 million Americans, while Democrats, presently the other half of the Senate, are elected by a population of about 184 million Americans!

So 60 percent of the nation’s population is being underrepresented, while 40 percent is overrepresented.

The idea that Wyoming has two US Senators with only about 600,000 people, while California with nearly 40 million peoples has two US Senators, is an abomination, but simply has evolved that way over time, so the US Senate is anti democracy to the extreme!

Additionally, the Electoral College favors the small, mostly Republican states, this despite the Democrats winning the national popular vote seven of the last eight Presidential elections, from 1992 through 2020, with the one exception of 2004!

So the idea of democracy is under attack, and the right wing Federalist Society has managed to “fix” the Supreme Court, with a strong 6-3 margin, with only Chief Justice John Roberts able to be considered, most of the time, as “moderate”.

So a constitutional crisis exists, with white supremacists working to insure that American democracy fails completely as we reach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026!

Defeat Of Sarah Palin For Alaska House Seat A Major Win For Democrats As Midterms Loom!

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The victory of Mary Peltola, an Alaska Native, for the open House seat, over former Governor and 2008 Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, is a major win for Democrats as the Midterm Elections of 2022 loom on the horizon over the next two months.

This is the first Democratic win in Alaska for the House seat in a half century, with Don Young holding the seat for the Republicans since his election in 1973 and until his death earlier this year, after a record setting 49 years, the longest of any House or Senate Republican in American history. His wife had been, ironically, an Alaska native!

While Peltola will have to compete for the seat again in November, it would seem likely that she would triumph over Sarah Palin once again, and retire the outspoken, Trump like supporter, from public life, or at least, from making moronic statements as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert do regularly in the House of Representatives, embarrassing themselves and the Republican Party!

Results Of Tuesday’s Primaries Indicate The Upcoming Midterm Elections Favoring Democrats

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The feeling is developing that Democrats are going to have an unexpected advantage in November’s Midterm Elections.

The strong support of Florida Democrats for Charlie Crist and for Val Demings portend, hopefully, difficult races for Governor Ron DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio. It would seem that both races will be close, and the hope is that the Democratic nominees, the strongest possible nominees, have a good chance of victory, but it will not be easy in any sense.

DeSantis is acting more every day like an authoritarian tyrant, and there is pushback on his actions that centralize too much power in the governorship, and give us a hint of the horrors of this man, were he to run for and win the Presidency in 2024.

Rubio has been a lazy and unprincipled Senator, who did not even want to run for reelection in 2016, but did after his failed Presidential candidacy in that year. But his total obsequious nature toward Donald Trump makes him clearly a weak, indecisive figure, who has no concern about the danger to American democracy of the former President, whom he once condemned harshly.

In New York, moderates won out over “progressives” in a number of Congressional races, including Dan Goldman (who was engaged in the prosecution of Donald Trump in his first impeachment trial); Jerry Nadler, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee; and Sean Patrick Maloney, the Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Also, in upstate New York, in a Congressional election to elect a person to finish a Congressional term of someone who resigned, seen as a battle over abortion rights, Pat Ryan, the Democratic nominee and strongly for abortion rights, defeated a Republican, and this is seen as another sign of the strong support of Democrats, Independents, and some moderate Republicans for abortion rights to be insured, following up on the Kansas state abortion vote in July!

Major Primary Day Today In Florida And New York

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Today will decide who the Democratic nominee for Florida Governor will be against Republican Governor Ron DeSantis. Also, Val Demings, former Orlando Police Commissioner and Democratic Congresswoman from Central Florida, will formally be chosen to oppose Republican Senator Marco Rubio.

It will also decide in New York who will be forced to retire from the House of Representatives in a district that, due to New York losing a Congressional seat, pits two 30 year veterans–Carolyn Maloney, who is the Chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, and Jerry Nadler, who is the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which was directly engaged in the two impeachments of President Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021.

Ahead of the vote, it appears that Charlie Crist, former Florida Republican Governor, who became an Independent and then a Democrat, and has served in the House of Representatives since 2017, is favored over Florida Agriculture Commissioner, Nikki Friend, the only Democrat elected state wide in the past generation in Florida, for the challenge against Ron DeSantis. And the Demings-Rubio race will likely be close in November.

Also, in New York, Nadler is favored in polls to win the House seat, newly created, over Maloney.

It will be interesting to see the results of both the Florida and New York elections.

Republican Attacks On FBI, IRS, Election Workers A Reckless And Dangerous Escalation!

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Republican Party leaders are escalating attacks on the FBI after the Department of Justice ordered intervention at Mar A Lago to retrieve national security documents illegally removed by Donald Trump when he left the White House.

Threats on the law enforcement agency and its agents make the Republican Party look like the party of lawlessness, chaos, and anarchy. This is all in the name of a former President who is promoting Fascist authoritarianism in his mission to regain power with the intention of destroying government institutions, with the help of the MAGA mob that can be seen as domestic terrorists, and Trump promoting their extremism.

But also, future potential House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is encouraging such action, with his promotion of conspiracy theories, along with a whole group of other reckless Republicans.

And Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, who if reelected in November at age 89, would be President Pro Tempore if the Republicans become the majority in the US Senate, is asserting a preposterous claim. According to Grassley, the new Inflation Reduction Act of Joe Biden, which allows 87,000 new Internal Revenue Service employees, is going to lead to such new employees having the authority to use force, including assault rifles against small business owners and middle class tax payers to collect taxes!

This is pure insanity, and to think that the third and fourth ranking government officials that may arise after the midterm elections are attacking the federal government’s ability to do their jobs of public safety and tax collection, is an alarm bell for the future of extremism!

And also, election workers are being threatened all over the nation, as Republicans aim at insuring that their party will take control of election machinery and insure that only Republicans can win elections in the future!

The Republican Party has become a “clear and present danger” to American democracy and the rule of law, and has made the Midterm Elections of 2022 more urgent than any midterm elections in the past!

Time For Anti Trump Conservatives And Republicans To Begin Campaign To Deny Donald Trump Future In The White House!

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With the defeat of Liz Cheney for her Wyoming Congressional seat, it is clearly time for anti Trump conservatives and Republicans to begin the campaign to deny Donald Trump the White House in 2024.

It is also time to deny ANY Republican leader, who has Presidential ambitions and continues to back Donald Trump, from becoming his replacement on the Republican ticket.

And if such cannot be accomplished, then someone in the anti Trump conservative and Republican camp MUST mount an Independent campaign for President in 2024, which would deny such a MAGA Republican nominee the ability to defeat the Democratic nominee for President.

At this juncture, potential candidates to announce for the Presidency to challenge the Trump conservatives and Republicans would include:

Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska
Senator Mitt Romney of Utah
Outgoing Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson
Outgoing Maryland Governor Larry Hogan
Outgoing Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker
New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie
Outgoing Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger
Outgoing Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney

There may be others not thought of at the moment, but anyone of these would be a better choice than the multitude of those Republicans who accept Donald Trump and the “Big Lie”!

This does not mean that this author and blogger would vote for any of the above list, but IF one of them somehow became President, the nation would be safe from the imminent threat to American democracy and the rule of law!

A Contrast In Two Republican Women: Day Of Reckoning Tuesday For Liz Cheney, Sarah Palin!

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Two Republican women politicians face the voters this coming Tuesday.

Congresswoman Liz Cheney, whose father is former Vice President Dick Cheney, faces what seems like a certain defeat for her statewide Congressional seat in Wyoming, as Harriet Hageman, endorsed by Donald Trump, is up to 30 points ahead in various polls.

This author and blogger does not agree with Liz Cheney on just about anything, except her courageous, principled stand against Donald Trump and his incitment of the January 6, 2021 US Capitol Insurrection, the most dangerous threat to American government institutions since the War of 1812.

She has worked as co-chair, with another Republican, Congressman Adam Kinzinger, on the January 6 House Committee, and has endured vicious attacks and repudiation by her Republican House colleagues.

She is a “Profile in Courage”, as is Kinzinger, and they are on the right side of history, against the great evil of MAGA, the right wing Fascist movement led by the most corrupt and dangerous President America has ever experienced!

It seems likely, assuming she loses her Congressional seat, that Liz Cheney will mount a Presidential campaign, if for nothing else, than to split Republican and conservative votes and insure that Donald Trump, or anyone who runs in his place for President as a Trump supporter, is defeated for the Presidency.

The survival of American democracy is at stake with Liz Cheney’s battle against evil!

On the other hand, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain’s Vice Presidential running mate in the Presidential Election of 2008, is coming out of the “woodwork”, and plaguing us again with her inane, dumb, clueless candidacy for the open House seat in her state, caused by the death of long term Congressman Don Young.

Sarah Palin is part of the extremist right wing, divisive deterioration of the Republican Party in the past quarter century, and as a supporter of Donald Trump, it is hoped she will be repudiated by the voters, as she has nothing positive to offer her state.

If she is elected to the House, she will be an annoying figure such as Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, so hopefully she can be rejected, and returned to private life!

The Republican Party Declares War On Law Enforcement And National Security!

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The Republican Party, Donald Trump loyalists, and Fox News Channel have declared war on law enforcement and national security, threatening action to destroy the FBI, Department of Justice, and Department of Homeland Security, over the legitimate action of removing national security and other government documents wrongfully taken by Donald Trump to his Florida estate, Mar A Lago, when he left office 19 months ago!

It is shocking to see the reaction of a large slew of Republicans, including, among others:

Rick Scott
Marco Rubio
Ted Cruz
Rand Paul
Josh Hawley
Tom Cotton
Kevin McCarthy
Jim Jordan
Elise Stefanik
Newt Gingrich

They and numerous others are promoting violence and potential civil war, and it is clear that they have become the Fascist Party, with the desire to install Donald Trump as the dictator of the US, with the plan to wipe out these government agencies!

Death threats are emanating, with the fear that top government officials to the highest level, may be subjected to assassination threats, a horrifying thought!

Another January 6th is a possibility, an attack on the US Capitol or other government buildings by an armed mob, with domestic terrorism being inflamed further by Donald Trump and his minions!