Lalo Alcaraz for August 04, 2022

The problem is that one of our two major political parties has ceased good-faith participation in the democratic process. The vast instances of violence, disinformation, racism, incompetence, grifting and corruption in the GOP is overwhelming.

Only one party fomented a bloody insurrection and even after that voted in large numbers (139 House Republicans, a two-thirds majority) to overturn the will of the voters in the 2020 election. Only one party promotes a web of conspiracy theories in place of facts. Only one party is trying to restrict voting and discredit elections. Only one party fetishizes guns to compensate for their weak, cowardly males. Only one party appeals to racism and bigotry, stoking fear — of immigrants, of POC, of women, gays and other sexual minorities, of muslims, jews, liberals, etc, etc.

Against that quarter-century of ruin, what we are living through today is just a continuation of the GOP’s direction for the past 30 years: the appeals to white nationalism, the sabotage of the functions of government, the routine embrace of disinformation, stoking the fiction of election fraud and the “big lie,” and the steady degradation of democracy.

Now, it seems, that degradation is accelerating.

Traitor Trump’s termites.

Look how fast Trump rotted the Federal government. No integrity, covering up for him. Imagine if he’d had another four years.

It’s a dirty job, alright. But somebody has to do it.

The Manchurian Candidate with a twist…..

So it appears that there is a “deep state”, after all, but that it was appointed/hired by Trump… and maybe some of the Republicans before him.

Accidental erasure of critical messages by one agency is possible (though suspiciously unlikely), but by the three top agencies for which the preservation of such data is a primary function, and all for the identical limited period? The odds of my winning the Powerball lottery are better than that.

We need criminal indictments — and convictions — of those responsible… both those who did the deleting and those who ordered them to do it. (Destruction of evidence is a crime, yes?) And with penalties of significant prison time, not merely pay to play “fines”.

Oh, and no one in the Department of Justice who was hired during Trump’s term in office should be allowed a role in “investigating” these potential crimes.

While the Republican Party of the 1950s and 1960’s had more than its fair share of crazies, it was really Newt Gingrinch in 1990s who brought the lack of civility and meanness to the party.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/dana-milbank-republican-destructionists-book-excerpt/

“But the biggest cause is race. The parties re-sorted themselves after the epochal changes of the 1960s, which expanded civil rights, voting rights and immigration. Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” began an appeal to White voters alienated by racial progress, and, in the years that followed, a new generation of Republicans took that racist undertone and made it the melody.

It is crucial to understand that Donald Trump didn’t create this noxious environment. He isn’t some hideous, orange Venus emerging from the half-shell. Rather, he is a brilliant opportunist; he saw the direction the Republican Party was taking and the appetites it was stoking."

Missing Merrick Garland, but spot on otherwise.

so we are learning Benito tRUMPolini corrupted every agency he possible could.

Sanitizing wipes of phones done for one reason. Eliminate compromising info. Someone needs to go to jail.

Paraphrasing someone from Georgia: trump – sen Graham – gop… would be better served by consideration of Thomas Jefferson’s maxim that legislators ought not to stand above the law they create but ought generally to be bound by it as are ordinary persons.

I gotta agree, dems and reps are incompetent at govt but reps have become truly evil and now subversive. Another Trump vote may be our last chance to vote for prez. I’m now a conservative with no place to call home.

Excuse me while I burp!!