It Wont Be Easy to Fix the Collapse into Fascism (2/3)

It is a waste of time for me to write up these notes.  Very few people will read them and those who do will not have the power to do anything.  The best I can say for this is that it might have some minor psychological value to put this out there.  

The introduction to this discussion of "things to fix" is here.

1. The Electoral College

None of this would have happened if we did not have a dysfunctional electoral college. Remember, the supreme court threw the election to Bush in 2000 through this device.  Gore won the popular vote and was well on his way to win the electoral vote.  It was because of this coup d'etat that we got Alito and Roberts on the court.

2. Fixing the Supreme Court and the Judiciary

This situation was created in large part because the right wing nuts on the supreme court installed citizens united and gutted the voting rights act.  On top of that we have the ridiculous immunity decision.  We have the failure of them to correct the obviously unconstitutional actions by Trump to go against the power given to Congress to fund or not fund government agencies.  And of course we have various members of the court committing perjury to congress when they discussed what they would do with Dobbs.  Therefore all these decisions have to be reversed and the people involved ejected from the court.  We also have right wing nuts throughout the judiciary (remember Cannon?).  All of these people must be removed from the judiciary and their decisions reversed.

3. Pardoning Insurrectionists

Trump pardoned those who were convicted of attempting to overthrow the government of the United States.  The convictions need to be restored and those people put in jail to serve their time.  The abomination of the insurrectionist being given honors by the Air Force needs to be reversed.  

4. Enforce the constitution on insurrectionists in government.

5. Fix the problem of the executive orders

6. Remove anyone from ICE and DOGE from the US Government and make it impossible for them to return.

7. Set standards for national elections.

8. The DOJ and FBI were weaponized.  Everyone involved in that needs to be arrested and prosecuted and barred from government.

9. The ability of Fox News and others to lie outrageously to pervert the government and political process needs to be solved.  We proved that the civil justice problem is not sufficient.

Is the NY Times is a Right Wing Front Organization?

The NY Times is running a partisan campaign to attack Joe Biden and destroy the Democrats by creating the fiction that Joe Biden is too old to run.  Aside from being ageist, who gave the NY Times the right to decide who the Democrats will nominate to run for election?  They run their front page articles every damn day, an editorial masquerading as a news article.   

They run this same article, with small variations, every day.  

And of course the NY Times could not care less about reporting on Trump's 34 felony convictions, about how he is unqualified and dangerous as president, about how he will murder Ukraine, about how he has always been corrupt all these years in NY, about his racism, his sexism, his abuse of women.  No.  None of these things matter to the NY Times.  Nor does the NY Times care to report on the illegitimacy of the legal system which is failing to try Donald Trump for his crimes during the January 6 attack on our government.  Nor does the NY Times care one bit about the delays of the case in Florida.  Nor does the NY Times care about women bleeding out from miscarriages that the doctors and hospitals will not treat in a Red State.

I remember when SCOTUS threw the 2000 election to their right wing nut, W. Bush, which caused a trillion dollar war in Iraq and put Alito and Roberts on the Supreme Court.   Not one word of protest from this right-wing rag.  From the day the SCOTUS pissed on the constitution in public, not one word was said about the illegitimacy of the W. Bush administration, its wars, or its judiciary.

There are several mysteries here.  Why do people continue to think and to say that the NY Times is in some way a bastion of progressive thought, the primary outlet for the so called "liberal media"?  That is as obviously false as saying that the Jews control the media, a joke if I ever heard one.  The second mystery is why are they doing this?  Who is telling them to do this?  Well one obvious suspect is that it is the elites of Wall Street and possibly just the elites who run our government, or think they do.  I have heard that Wall Street is all in support of Trump, just like Silicon Valley hates Biden for daring to talk about regulating AI.  

I dont think I know why the NY Times wants to destroy Biden.  I am certainly cancelling my subscription and I am sure the NY Times will not care that I do so, not even a little bit.

A Midjourney impression of unused newspaper printing machinery

On the Road to Fascism 05/09/2023

I write about the things in this post not because I think I can solve any of the problems, or say anything the least bit interesting that hasnt been said before on these topics.  I write these posts to help me remember some of the outrages we are exposed to because it is so easy to forget, being bombarded as we are by injustice and stupidity on a near-daily basis.

 

Here is just a sample of what has been happening recently.

 

1. Jordan Neely is murdered for the crime of talking to himself on a subway.  I talk to myself, and if I was in NY where there is a subway, I might talk to myself there too.  Would I be murdered?  Daniel Penny, the white man who murdered Jordan, is free and walking around. 

 

2. The Supreme Court is so deeply fucked up and illegitimate that it almost seems cruel to even mention it.  But yes, the corruption of Clarence Thomas has gone on long enough.  Roberts or someone needs to act.

 

3. The Republicans, who dont want to actually support the constitution which created a method for controlling appropriations, are dead set on destroying this country through the debt limit nonsense.  On the one hand, Biden is right to  stand firm, but wait.  Why didnt the Democrats change the debt limit when they controlled both houses of congress and the White House?  Maybe the Democrats are incompetent. At least they are not consciously evil, but that is about all I can say in their favor.

Would any other country be better?  Well, maybe, I dont know.  But I do know that if I were living in another country and bad things like this happened I would not feel betrayed because I would not have had to listen to the self-servicing, self-congratulatory, BS that I was exposed to here, in America, where people think they are the only country with a legitimate government.

I wonder if this is one of the posts that the Internet censors will use to block this blog?

The supreme court back in the day when it had legitimacy.

 

Will California Protect Us?

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A friend asked if California would be able to protect its citizens from a fascist federal government.  Well, probably not, but its not black and white.

1. Any proactive blue state that can control their republican nuts in their state legislature should be able to pass laws that protect people, or their state attorney general can declare that they will not enforce a law, and the state police forces technically work for the governor. Then the DOJ can sue the state and tie things up in court.

2. But who controls the National Guard and can they be called out in spite of the Governor of the state saying no? Yes, they can. The president can declare that there is an insurrection and send in guard units from any state, not just the state with the insurrection, so called. Now when you have a shit-for-brains fascist like Trump, why would he ever be limited by the law or the constitution?

3. The FBI works for the DOJ and COINTELPRO and other history proves that under the right circumstances they will violate any law, any constitutional right, and not be punished for it. We dont know how many people the internal security forces framed and sometimes killed during the 1960s.

4. The judiciary has been stuffed with right wing nuts who will do whatever the right wants, no matter how egregious. See for example Kavanaugh and Barrett but at the appeals court level as well as the Supreme Court. Do you trust Kavanaugh or Barrett to protect your rights?

5. Fascists do not recognize any law that interferes with their power. The standard play is to call their supporters to "protect the country", see Jan 6. Why not send the various right wing militia groups into california to "restore order"?

So, IMHO, if we lose congress or the presidency, I am very skeptical that our institutions will protect us. I looked in vain as the country failed to protect us during the Trump administration.

A friend explained it to me, please excuse the semi-sexist language. "The Constitution is a gentlemen's agreement", my friend said. The whole thing fails when you have low class shits like Trump, Barr, Kavanaugh, etc.

Driving Home from Home Depot

So I am coming home from Home Depot (owned by a right wing nut) with a big heavy thing in the back and my seat is scrunched up so I am driving extra carefully. And on my approach home here in Santa Barbara, about 2 miles out, I get a big van behind me, and he is really unhappy. He is honking at me whenever I stop at a stop sign or intersection and its weird. He is pissed off about something, but I dont know what it is. And it concerns me because I am driving to my house and he will see where I live and he is pissed off. Like I am afraid he is going to try and ram me or something, or get out of the car or whatever. So I pull into my driveway and he honks a few times to indicate how much he hates me, and his partner, in a big van behind him does the same thing and it beats me what this is about.


So I am home unloading and I notice something. I have an Antifa sticker on my bumper. You figure it out.

Letter to a Friend

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I think we know where we both stand, so why am I bothering you?  I am bothering you because I essentially have no one else to talk to (not quite true but almost true) and I like to vent my feelings.

I doubt I am going to blow anything up.  I may be able to leave the country but doing so requires that I solve a number of problems that have proven unsolvable in the past (there are a few wrinkles here that might work out because I havent tried everything and I do think there is promise in finding a marriage partner who wants a US citizenship and who has a European or UK citizenship with which to trade.... until they close that loophole).

I happen to agree with the editorial below, at least I think I do as far as I have read it and I know the author's work. 

https://www.salon.com/2021/06/01/republican-attacks-on-democracy-are-a-national-emergency-will-democrats-ever-fight-back/

There are huge differences between us and the Weimar example, we are not Germany between the wars.  Nor are we the Shah of Iran during the revolution.  But both examples do suggest one commonality: people were way too complacent that they could control the fanatics and that they did not represent a threat.  I say to you, not only do our right wing fascists represent a threat, they are 9/10ths of the way there and nothing less than immediate extreme response will help.  Now I know you dont believe that, and bipartisan, and cant we just get along, and who needs a Jan 6 commission.  But I think this is sheer and obvious lunacy.  Those who are not ready to go to the mattresses will never defend freedom they have been given enough chances and frankly, we failed.  I hope you get your children out in time.

 

You Dont Talk to Nazis

A reminder of why it is useless to talk to Nazis.