It’s taken almost 3 years for the Main Stream News Media to broadcast things that, when loons like me used to say them, got eye rolls so hard they nearly burst out of the heads rolling them.

Russia — or any other bad actor — COULD ABSOLUTELY hack into voting machines — in real time even — and CHANGE THEIR TALLIES. That’s even after voters (all Democrats, don’tcha know!) have survived being hacked out of the voter rolls to begin with. Let’s not skip past that very important point: a vote suppressed (where the voter could not vote or was not allowed to vote or was “provisional or was dissuaded from voting via lies sent directly to their FB pages) is a vote stolen. It means the other side’s votes count more; we don’t know for certain what the ratio is — of Republican votes to suppressed or obliterated Democratic votes.

Ya gotta figure — if all those votes Republicans work so hard to suppress were guaranteed Republican votes? We would not be having this conversation. Hell — each of those voters would be limo’d to their polling place, fed, entertained (probably including hand release if they want it) then limo’d home and eased into bed. Same goes for every single Central American refugee trying desperately to get into this country.

Let’s be very clear about WHY all of this is happening. We are experiencing a perfect storm of greed, graft, gall & treachery. The greed, graft & gall all flow from Republicans recognizing that America’s demographics spell eventual doom form them. They are (and always have been — in modern times — we ain’t talking about “The Party Of Lincoln” here) the party of White Christian Male Privilege. Guys like Lee Atwater, Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell saw it and saw what they had to do to maintain that privilege for as long as possible if not forever: they had to break the system.

Republicans got that the executive branch was forever gone (take away the bullshittiest SCOTUS decision ever — Bush v Gore) and Al Gore is POTUS. Take away Russia and Hillary Clinton is POTUS. Take away the Electoral College and Republicans can’t even get within the DC City Limits.

They saw, the GOP did, that the House of Representatives was also likely a lost cause. Good thing the Senate is weighted so heavily toward rural states where all the white power lives. It doesn’t put the Senate out of reach for Democrats — it demands a whole other kind of politics however.

That left the judiciary — the one (theoretically co-equal) branch of government that Republicans could (using the Senate) seize, pervert & (using lifetime appointments) employ to circumvent the majority’s will (regarding birth control, climate change, voting rights, immigration). To that end and effect, Mitch McConnell refused to grant Merrick Garland so much as a hearing. He refused to process most of Obama’s other judicial nominees.

Can we all just agree, please — Mitch McConnell (Moscow Mitch as he’s trending now on Twitter) is among the vilest humans to ever walk the planet and – bonus points – one of the worst villains to ever turtle walk across the American political stage. Mitch — beholden to the Kochs & Mercers, beholden to millions of dollars of Russian patronage into his PACS, beholden to oligarchs and any number of other bad actors — deserves to be tried & punished for treason. That’s as factual as facts get.

Though the Republican Party may have resisted Trump at first, they got seduced easily. Having secrets (including emails stolen from the RNC, as yet unrevealed to the public but very much a fact) makes you vulnerable to blackmail. I present the pride of the Carolinas Senator Lindsey Graham who went from calling Trump a racist to proudly pointing to all the places on his uvula where Trump spattered his racist DNA. Once the GOP bought in to Trumpism, they bought in all the way.

The Mueller Report — in print and in Mueller’s unwilling oral presentation — made concrete points: Russia cyber attacked us, our election, our whole Democratic process — and Donald Trump and the Republican party knew it, accepted it and participated in it. When they feared being discovered, they lied about it and obstructed justice in every single way they could.

They’re still at it — just like Robert Mueller said. He was referring strictly to Russia but — he’d already suggested that Trump and those around him were complicit. I’m sure Robert Mueller knew — as he stared back at Republicans like sexual-assault enabler Jim Jordan, DUI-guy Matt Gaetz and scumbag-di-tutti-scumbags Devin Nunes — that each and every one was a flat-out traitor.

The Republican Party approached Election 2016 like a thief approaching the score of his life. He had lots of help but still wondered if they could all pull it off. Keep in mind what we’re talking about here. This isn’t some drunken fraternity prank — this is criminal. It’s aiding and abetting a foreign enemy hellbent on 1) undermining our whole system & 2) profiting from it via the lifting of sanctions. Russia’s efforts — active measures all — aren’t “war-like”, they’re WAR. Cyber War. Information War.

Anyone who thinks wars require bombs and bullets will lose every war they ever fight going forwards. The Russians (or Iran or North Korea or any number of others) could shut down our power grid — you better believe that’s do-able — and we’d sue for peace. Cyber War IS War. We’re under attack. Think of us like Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 — 20 minutes BEFORE the Japanese Imperial Navy arrives and starts bombing, The war has already started, the Americans at Pearl Harbor simply didn’t know it yet.

That’s us, not recognizing an empirical fact — that the man occupying the White House was PUT there by a hostile foreign power as part of an act of outright WAR. That means the crimes being committed in concert with Russia are crimes being committed in war time. THAT makes them picture-definition treason.

Let’s be clear again. What the Republican Party did & keeps doing is treasonous. That’s not hyperbole. What Mitch McConnell is doing — refusing to beef up our election security IN ANY WAY is treason on the hoof and in plain sight. THAT is absolutely what the Republicans are up to now and what they were up to back when we all went to vote in 2016.

What happened on November 7, 2016 was neither free nor fair. The Republican Party collaborated with Russia to steal the election and pull off a soft coup d’etat meant to undermine The Rule Of Law and install permanent minority rule. THAT was the actual result of election 2016 — the Republican Party deliberately circumvented the Will of the American People.

Well how the hell can THAT possibly stand?

It can’t. Of course it can’t. If one dollar of Russian money flowed into Republican campaign coffers, that’s a crime. It doesn’t matter if it stopped there (it didn’t); the Rule Of Law isn’t proportional, it’s absolute. If one voter was denied their right to vote then the election was NOT entirely free & fair. Again — the Rule Of Law is not proportional; it is absolute.

You cannot — in the abstract — break the law to become president of the US. You cannot break the law in reality either. And you cannot claim to have “won” an election when the only reason you “won” is because a hostile foreign power MADE YOU WIN.

That means Donald Trump never won anything. Having not actually WON, he didn’t earn the right to take the oath of office or do anything he did after that. He never had the right or the privilege to name judges — including two SCOTUS judges. The authority was NEVER vested in HIM. He did it WITHOUT actual authority.

That means those two judges — hell, EVERY judge nominated by Trump (never mind that the AEI and the Federalist Society who did the actual choosing) are as illegitimate as Trump is. Every bit of legislation. Every executive action. Every statement. Every tweet. Every racist, misogynistic, bigoted, ignorant statement — it was Trumpian but it wasn’t “official”.

So — what do we “do with” all these illegitimate judges and laws (like the tax giveaway)? I heard former Republican David Jolley on MSNBC this morning saying that maybe we just have to let 2016 go — as a “life lesson” for our Democracy.

Ummmm, no, David. Absolutely not. That’s telling the rape victim to get over it. We were raped. Our Democracy was raped. How else would you describe the Republican party shoving themselves on us regardless of how long and how loudly we protest. They’ve “inserted themselves” into us, like it or not. The bombing at Pearl Harbor has begun.

See that pile of bodies over there? See the flames? It’s all real.

It is incumbent on We The People to void every last bit of Election 2016. How do we do that exactly? I’m not sure. We’ve never had to do it before. But then, we’ve never had a president — and his whole political party — sell us out to an enemy before. None of this is explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.

We may have look & think outside the box (and the Constitution) for answers and solutions. Let’s start by throwing every single Republican in prison where they belong and by repealing every last bit of 2016.

If we don’t do that, we’ll be setting ourselves up for failure. It’ll be “Slavery: The Sequel”.