Tag: Lindsey Graham

Life In Trump's America: The Political Thriller Of Our Lifetimes Is Also Theater Of The Absurd

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Our inner animals knew it instinctively even as the tide was turning election night 2016. We were being told something that every fiber of our being knew was untrue — or knew was truth complicated by layers of deception, deceit and treachery — that Trump had “won” the presidency.

Ever read the details on exactly what happened chronologically on election night in the Trump campaign — especially between Trump and his flotus to be? Trump wasn’t just “surprised” that he won, he was shocked. And not because he had “pulled it out”. Trump knew better than anyone that THAT was not what happened election night. Trump knew better than anyone that “The Boss” — Vlad Putin — had suppressed, propagandized or — via internet-connected-voting machines — literally stolen just enough votes in three key states (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin & Michigan, three states for which Oleg Deripaska had received proprietary polling data from Paul Manafort) to GIVE Trump the EC victory.

Melania wept openly. She raged at Trump — who, per Steve Bannon, morphed from a “disbelieving Trump into a horrified Trump”. That’s disbelieving he could win to being horrified that he HAD “won”. Winning wasn’t part of Trump’s plan. Using a presidential run to platform launch a Trump-branded news network was. Winning — once victory was gettable (via cheating) — was absolutely Vladimir Putin’s plan. Putin saw a way to put Trump in the White House — the greatest intelligence coup in the history of intelligence — and he took it.

Keep in mind — Putin had already compromised enough of the Republican Party that he knew he could keep them in line. Take Lindsey Graham, for example. You can practically see the Kompromat Vlad’s holding over Lindsey play in Lindsey’s mind’s eye every time he speaks.

That’s where it starts crossing over from John Le Carre territory into Becket — from George Smiley realpolitik into waiting for a Godot who will never, ever appear. Our spy movie as real life beats anything any writer could possibly imagine — or get away with if they did imagine.

We’ve got intrigue and treason and cyber war and actual war and murders out the wazoo. We’ve got a handful of heroes and scoundrels by the bucket. And we’ve got a Main Stream News Media that makes an unsatisfying hash of the whole damned thing. We’ve got liars lying, rapists raping and con artists conning.

The feeling, watching this madness rush by on a daily basis, is a lot like watching an English pantomime (a Christmastime tradition in England). Based on old chestnuts like “Puss In Boots” or “Cinderella”, panto’s are very much the groundlings having a good time at their local theater — talking back to the characters on stage as if a fourth wall never existed.

One of the moments every panto must have — the villain (upstage) creeps toward the hero who’s downstage — while the audience tries to warn the hero. Every time the hero looks toward where the audience points — the villain ducks or disappears — then reappears the moment the hero has turned away again. It’s absurd, of course, because the truth is so apparent — and yet so impossible to hold onto.

It is numbing — by design — how far from “normal” we’ve shifted. It’s inconceivable that Donald Trump’s presidential bid didn’t end the moment he started it by telling us all how Mexicans were rapists. More absurdity compounded by pussy grabbing — compounded exponentially when “Mexicans are rapists” and “pussy grabbing” went back seat to “her emails” sitting in the front seat of the news media’s Scooby van.

Looking back today at “But her emails” — even Ionesco at his most obtuse couldn’t touch the absurdity of our news media obsessing over an abstraction over constant evidence of dubious, devious behavior. Despite three years of this madness, of Trump’s lying, deceitfulness and cruelty, our news media still wants to give him the benefit of the doubt — as if “this time”, Trump “could be” telling the truth.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve shouted far too often at the news “professionals” on your TV set — “FFS, don’t be absurd!”

Is it really asking that much to have our political theater be one thing and our theater of the absurd be something else entirely? Apparently so…

It Really Is This Simple: By LAW, You Cannot CHEAT To Become POTUS; Therefore Donald Trump Has NEVER Been POTUS

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Now, that’s just The Rule Of Law talking and what does The Rule Of Law know? That’s how Republicans think these days apparently.

To be absolutely fair about it, they’re right. The Rule Of Law is a fiction that we invented for our mutual benefit. There are lots of places on Earth where the people don’t live by The Rule Of Law — so, The Rule Of Law is not some absolute, inviolable Law Of The Cosmos. The only thing actually keeping The Rule Of Law in place as our guiding principle as our faithfulness in maintaining it.

It’s like stamina, if you think about it. You can build your stamina. You can maintain it. But stop working on it and it goes away just like that. You can’t store it. Can’t bank it.

Part of our problem — here in America: we’ve taken The Rule Of Law for granted. Those following it always assumed that everyone was following it. Sure, sure — there are criminals outside The Rule Of Law but that’s why we HAVE a Rule Of Law — to isolate those people and handle them fairly but judiciously. We never imagined, We The People, that so many of those who swore an oath to defend The Rule Of Law (that’s what our Constitution is) were committed to overthrowing The Rule Of Law in a kind of soft white Christian male coup d’etat.

The Rule Of Law says foreign interests can have no say in American elections. The Republican Party violated the hell out of that throughout election 2016. Current GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy FAMOUSLY said to a roomful of Republican muckety-mucks “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump”. Pays for what, someone in the room should have asked. “Pays for what purpose?” even. Instead, then Speaker Of The House Paul Ryan (per the Washington Post) “…instructed his Republican lieutenants to keep the conversation private, saying: “No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.”

According to The Rule Of Law, Speaker Ryan’s response should have been more along the lines of “Holy shit! Guys — get the FBI on the phone pronto! We’ve got a huge PROBLEM on our hands!” But Speaker Ryan didn’t say that. No one in the room even thought anything like it. Hmmmmmmm…

The literal instant we stop following The Rule Of Law to the letter, we compromise it. When we follow it for some people but not so much for other people — that violates The Rule Of Law’s core principle. Speaker Ryan knew he was violating The Rule Of Law — that’s why they all had to agree to “keep it in the family”. Another group of criminals would call that agreement an OMERTA.

It’s the kind of agreement people do when they’ve abandoned The Rule Of Law for their own set of laws. They just haven’t had the decency to tell the rest of us. You know — THE MAJORITY.

We don’t know yet the full extent to which the entire Republican Party was compromised by Russia (and, perhaps, other countries or bad actors). We can only imagine the kompromat Russia is dangling over Lindsey Graham’s pervy head. Even before this though, the Republican Party displayed a disdainful cynicism toward The Rule Of Law. They applied its full pressure whenever they could — while ignoring all the ways they were violating the hell out of it at the very same time.

We know that the Republican Money Machine turned its back on The Rule Of Law a generation ago when it saw the demographic writing on the wall: America was not going to be a predominantly white country for much longer. By 2050, it’s estimated, white people will cease being the majority of the population. Think that doesn’t scare the snot out of conservative white people?

The hard right in this country turned its back on The Rule Of Law the instant they saw it was going to STOP being their instrument of destruction. I don’t know if they feared retribution, but they certainly feared losing absolute power (and the money that goes with it). The Republican Party morphed into The Trump Party — and The Trump Party works for Russia. Russia made Trump POTUS (he did NOT win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Michigan legitimately — he couldn’t have after Paul Manafort gave Oleg Deripaska proprietary polling data on those three states). Even Trump’s reported behavior on election night speaks to a kind of guilty behavior. Ever since, no one has obsessed more than Trump has on his presidency’s legitimacy. Why’s that?

IF we really do believe in The Rule Of Law then Donald Trump’s presidency violates it. The fact of his presidency violates it and stands OUTSIDE The Rule Of Law. Trump’s presidency and The Rule Of Law cannot exist at the same time and in the same place.

There is no precedent for what’s happening to us. We have to stop looking to the past for guidance. If Trump violated The Rule Of Law in order to BECOME president of the United States then, by law, he never was president. Not being president, he never had the authority to do anything he did. He never had the authority to negotiate on our behalf or nominate judges.

Let’s use a metaphor that even Donald Trump would understand: A Beauty Pageant. An American presidential election is a lot like a beauty pageant. If, it’s learned after a winner is announced, that the winner wasn’t honest with the judges (as, say, Vanessa Williams was about some mildly erotic photos she’d been part of), the judges can take away the winner’s crown and give it to someone MORE deserving. Someone, say, who followed the pageant’s rules about not doing things that might undermine the pageant’s “brand”.

Vanessa Williams lost her crown — and everything that went with it. If the judges had known before GIVING her the crown, they would never have crowned her, right? They would never have given her the rights & privileges that went with it. In their minds, they were lied to. Vanessa Williams mis-represented herself.

If part of Vanessa Williams’ rights had been to negotiate branding deals on behalf of Miss America, the judges — the whole Miss America organization — would have voided every single one of them for the same reasons.

I know what I’m saying seems impossible to pull off. HOW would we undo the results of an American election? Well, as one of the wronged in this equation — as one of the MAJORITY whose rights are being threatened by a willful right wing minority — HOW CAN WE NOT? Why, I’d like to know, are we always fair beyond fair to conservatives while demanding Progressives explain themselves relentlessly. When did the press lose its mind demanding from conservatives how they were going to pay for Trump’s tax breaks for the rich?

There’s a stone cold reality staring us in the face: Donald Trump was never the legitimate president of the United States.

That fact ripples a thousand ways in a million different directions. We cannot simply ignore it. We can’t “agree to agree” to get past it. We won’t. It’s exactly like slavery — a gross insult to The Rule Of Law.

But then… The Rule Of Law is only what we say it is.

Ball’s in our court.

There Is Only One Answer – Election 2016 Must Be Completely Voided

~ A L Katz ~ 1 Comment

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”.