The Way Forward

Dems, don't be afraid.  Don't be disconsolate.  Be angry.  Be unified.  Defend our media and our elected officials.

The Trump crime family, with Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy and of course Donald at the helm, have had 3 weeks to plan an attack to offset all the investigations. They are going after Dems in Congress and the media with renewed energy after the partisan and highly censored Barr "report." We need to be more outraged and energized than ever.

Don't just write to like-minded friends, send letters to the editor, contact the news media, and keep calling our elected officials. We got Paul Ryan convinced he needed to spend more time with family, we need to put the pressure on Graham and Scott. We need to keep saying the truth. We need to be unified and angry. Mueller knew Trump was trying to shut him down, so I believe he did what he did in order to keep the investigations going. Don't let Trump and his mafia discourage you.

Trump is going to play all his greatest hits at his rallies. So educating everyone you know about his lies is essential.

Lindsey Graham has gone from telling truth to power (when he was running against Trump) to being no more than his golf caddy. We need to keep at him about his own lies and hypocrisy.

Let no manipulation by the Trump minions go unchallenged.

I received an email from Kevin McCarthy yesterday, stewed about it for awhile, and then composed this letter for The State:

Yesterday I received an email from "Kevin McCarthy -- Republican Leader." In it he claims that the case is closed -- no collusion. He says that Democrats' behavior has been "irresponsible." Then he concludes that "For the good of the country, it is time we moved on."

This completely partisan missive was sent to me via House Communications email.

I believe most Americans are sick of these mean-spirited, divisive attacks. Our tax dollars are paying for what amounts to a 2020 campaign run from Congress and the White House; this is undemocratic and morally repugnant.

Lindsey Graham, who once spoke the truth about President Trump, has sold out for a standing invitation to Mara Lago. His hateful rhetoric mirrors that of Trump.

Attorney General Barr has kept his promise to protect the president by keeping most of the report hidden, and Mitch McConnell refuses to allow the Senate to vote to demand that the full report be made public.

While McCarthy is saying that "for the good of the country, it is time we moved on" Donald Trump is seeking revenge on Democrats in Congress. We just can't tolerate this hypocrisy and the threat to the citizens of our democracy that it represents.

Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott must insist that Attorney General Barr release the full Mueller Report immediately rather than be implicated in the obstruction of justice that has been going on for far too long.

Don't worry about how you say it, just say it. We know who the criminals are and what crimes they have brazenly committed. We don't have to be afraid. And we won't allow ourselves to be silenced.

Being outraged got us the House of Representatives in 2018. The people who stepped up and are now representing us reflected our own feelings: they were fearless and they were outraged. They believed in our country and they were not going to be distracted by fear of not winning. When they spoke what was on their minds, they found out that the majority of Americans felt the same way. We were just waiting for someone who wasn't going to hide in fear to say it.

So spread the word. Share my blog. It may be an example of passion over literary worth, but boy, it's how I am feeling.

I took this picture in DC on January 21, 2017. It couldn't have foretold better what was going to happen to our country after Donald Trump got his tiny, greedy hands on it. He goal is to control everything. My goal is to leave him with one last enterprise:

What Comey Forgot

Not too long ago I wrote about an important book that went under the radar called, The Unmaking of the President 2016.  The book explains quite thoroughly how Comey's clumsy handling of the Hillary email fiasco caused Trump to win the election.  At the time, I got pretty snarky in describing James Comey.  But I do try to be fair, and now that I have heard him analyze the bizarre details of his past couple of years in the spotlight, and have read his book, A Higher Loyalty, I find that I have changed my opinion of the man.

I believe I have referred to James Comey as smug and compared him to Pence and Gorsuch, which would conveniently make them the unholy trinity of vanity, hypocrisy and self-righteousness.  But I don't believe Comey is like that at all.

He seems to be honestly struggling to do the right thing.  He can be self-deprecating, which means he is attempting to be objective and is aware of his own very human fallibility.  He has a sense of humor, which immediately separates him from the humorless Pence and Gorsuch, as well as Donald Trump.  By the way, I have for some time been aware that Trump never smiles or laughs, a feature of the narcissist-in-chief that had also come to Comey's attention.

Comey has a lot to say about bullying.  In his book he describes having been both a victim of bullying and an instance wherein he became a bully in his younger days.  This kind of self-analysis and insight makes his narrative of the election of Donald Trump both personal and relevant to the current political era.

As with all heroes, Comey's greatest strength became his Achilles heel.  The need to be honest and fair brought him to national attention during the Bush years, when he went head to head with Dick Cheney over the reauthorization of the NSA surveillance program "Stellar Wind."  It was a dramatic moment, when Jim Comey dashed to John Ashcroft's hospital room -- in intensive care -- to head off White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Bush chief of staff Andrew Card who were trying to force Ashcroft to sign the reauthorization.

Because of this, Comey had a great deal of respect and credibility when he began the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server as Secretary of State.

In his book, Comey goes into great detail explaining the situation as he saw it, and each step of his decision making.  It is obvious from this narrative that he has not only examined his actions but looked to others of his peers for their analysis.  He is aware that his actions may have influenced the election, and he has admitted that the thought of having a hand in electing the deranged and dangerous Donald Trump makes him "mildly nauseous."

I can appreciate, after the diarrhea of lies that have come from Donald Trump and his swamp creatures, that James Comey is being honest.  I share his nausea over the events that led to the election of Donald Trump.  I value the extent of his self-examination in order to get this account right.

But James Comey has missed an even greater factor in this tragic event.  He has neglected to include the effects of a corrupt Congress in the way this story has played out.

The story goes way back, but it was the republicans in Congress after the election of Barack Obama, and subsequently the Tea Party extremists that took over who represent the bully in the room.

It was minutes after Obama's inauguration that the republican leaders in Congress were meeting to strategize how to defeat the president.  Mitch McConnell famously and unashamedly stated,

John Boehner on the floor of the House led the rage with a cry of "Hell no you can't" as he talked about the proposed health care bill, a bill republicans refused to be a part of constructing, and then told the American people that the Democrats were excluding them from the process.

Republicans in Congress thwarted Obama's every effort to move the near-dead economy, ignored or distorted his successes and magnified out of context the defeats. Remember Solyndra?  Thanks to republican spin and the media echo chamber, all the successes that resulted from government investment in such small businesses were buried under headlines about this one failed attempt. 

That was the way Obama's eight years went under this republican Congress, as they doubled down on lies and false accusations with each electoral success.

While ignoring the hunting down of bin Laden and the winding down of one of our most tragic wars, republicans in Congress did not just refuse to work as partners with Obama in defeating our enemies, they actively opposed whatever he proposed.  Isis?  Syria?  The dynamic and entertaining McCain/Graham duo found fault with it all.  McConnell and Boehner refused to offer any constructive alternatives.  In fact, Congress did not offer any legislation that could be seen as a commitment one way or the other; all they offered was cynical criticism of anything Obama thought might work.  And because he believed that he should be working with Congress, he hesitated to take strong actions in Syria without agreement from Congress.  Although Obama's diplomacy turned out well at the time, he has faced contempt throughout for failing to act when Assad "crossed the red line."

And the whole Hillary project may have begun as an innocent misogynist reaction to the smart and powerful wife of a president, but by the time her intentions to run for president had barely been announced, the same game went into play.  Her every action was criticized, lies were told and then retold by the press, and the Hillary that can't be trusted became the narrative. 

The obstructionism worked, because the republican party united in their loud opposition.  They worked the media, and they played the American people.  They lied and then they lied again.

So, when Donald Trump brought his tantrums and lies to his campaign, the only difference between him and Congressional republicans was the degree and the flamboyance.  And because the media likes to follow shiny objects, like the orange hair, we got to witness every moment of the blowhard's traveling salvation show, with fake miracles and full-blown hate and hysteria.

Sadly, Trump gets full credit for Obama's failure to act more aggressively against Russian election interference.  And surely Trump was by then the bully that controlled the entire show.  He spewed anti-democratic hatred with far more flair than his republican allies.  But without eight years of the bombast and bullying of the republican party and Congressional leaders, Trump would have most likely been dismissed as a crackpot.  Without a Congress that refused to fight for anything other than their own survival, Obama would have fought hard against Russian interference.  But the bullies were harassing and attacking one of the candidates, and the opponent was making shrill accusations of cheating.  Bullies win when they cause the rest of us to lose confidence and to hesitate to do what is right.  The bullies won because Obama did not want to be seen as interfering in the election, as the bullies had already intimated.

And this is where Comey lost the thread of the narrative.  He thought he was cooperating with a responsible branch of government, but Congress was a fully partisan player in destroying Hillary Clinton.  He reported to Congress about emails as though the emails were the issue, and not the defamation of a candidate for president.  And then he went back again, because he had promised he would if anything changed, even though he had no reason to believe anything had changed.

Just as Obama went timidly into these last weeks of this election, Comey went obediently to Congress.  He ignored the advice of his boss and he rationalized ignoring precedent, and he interfered in the presidential election by jumping into an investigation because he was afraid of not opening it, and he reported it to Congress and the American people, because he was afraid he would be seen as dishonest if he didn't.

There are times when one has to take the risk of doing the wrong thing in order to do the right thing.  That last decision point, days before the election, was when James Comey decided it was more important that he be seen as trustworthy rather than that he had followed precedent and law.

James Comey has had to face the reality, through his subsequent dealings and ultimate firing by Donald Trump, that his attempt to be honorable led to a disaster for our democracy.  Out of fear of being seen as dishonorable, he allowed himself to be used by a corrupt Congress and a megalomaniac candidate.  Had he not come forward to announce the reopening of the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails, the outcome of the election would surely have been different.  But then he would have had to face accusations of partisanship by the other side.  And that is where being honorable would really have come into play.

Which brings me to the point of the whole thing.  We have a Congress that is dirty.  Congressional republicans have proven to be wholly partisan and untrustworthy.  They have chosen to continue to hide facts in order to support a corrupt and unbalanced leader in order to maintain their hold over our democracy.  In Germany in 1933, it took elected members of the republic to give Hitler the power to create a dictatorship.  And today we have lapdogs like Devin Nunes and power mongers like Mitch McConnell paving the way for the illegal and undemocratic acts of the Trump administration.  Today this Congressional majority is not only thwarting efforts to protect Robert Mueller from being fired by Donald Trump, they have undermined the investigation into Russian interference.  And incredibly, we continue to hear from one or the other that they think Congress should reopen investigations on Hillary.

While Trump keeps us busy following his criminal and crazy rants, Congress is truly the arm in which the fate of our democracy rests.  I don't believe we can take another session of republican rule.  Not only have they gutted laws that protect 98 percent of us, they have stood by as Trump signs away our environment and our liberties.  They happily approve federal judges that represent the far right:  big business, big money and the curbing of individual freedoms.  They continue to hope baiting us with Planned Parenthood and the Second Amendment will keep them in power, and are blind to the threats to our democracy.  In so doing, they have become the greatest threat to our democracy.

This is why we must do everything we can to turn over both houses of Congress in November.  The only way we can survive the terrorism of Donald Trump is by electing a Congress that will fight for our democratic principles.

We cannot be passive during this midterm election season.  Be informed.  Volunteer.  Donate.  Spread the word.  Vote.

Our lives and our children's futures depend on it. 

The Dearth of a Salesman

It sickens me to hear Donald Trump speak.  Given free reign, he has become increasingly shrill and incoherent.  His invective is even more filled with lies and cruel attacks.  His face, when he speaks, is ugly, twisted, full of rage and hate.

So it took me a few days to get to the point where I had heard enough snippets of his rant at the Boy Scout Jamboree to wonder how Boy Scouts of America, a group rooted in building moral and ethical behavior, not to mention patriotism, in boys, was reacting to this ugly display.

There has been a great deal of blowback since his performance.  Facebook and Twitter have been filled with angry comments by past scouts and parents of scouts.  But of course, there has also been praise by the base that feeds off his tantrum-like attacks, and this is what keeps him going, his presidency a four-year continuation of his campaign, when each performance proved his popularity.  His red-faced envy of President Barack Obama, and his rage at Hillary Clinton's three million vote win, not only will never end in his warped paranoid mind, it continues to grow, his obsession becoming ever more dangerous.

Fed by Steve Bannon's fascistic rhetoric, surrounded only by those who fawn and flatter, Trump's lack of boundaries and poor judgment appear to be unstoppable.  In Warsaw, he was greeted by cheering fans, encouraged by Poland's right-wing government to come together to show enthusiastic support; his anti-democracy speech in turn showered praise on the government that is dismantling its democratic institutions, much as Trump is working to do here.

These days, Trump opens his mouth, and CNN airs the foul and stinking words that come out, often in their entirety.

When Trump performs at rallies that fuel his need for approval, they are not called rallies, they are presidential visits, like at the Boy Scout Jamboree.  When he gives interviews, they are rare and mostly with Fox News and like-minded devotees like Pat Robertson, where he can for a few moments control the public narrative once again.

As we have let Trump devour our lives, we have come to know him well.  And yet, it occurs to me, we are missing completely his defining trait.  Donald Trump has gone to great lengths all his life to build a persona.  The American people, much of his loyal base, got to know him as the successful entrepreneur of The Apprentice, charming but knowledgeable and firm.  This is not Donald Trump at all.

He is a lousy businessman.  He is terrible at making deals.  He has used his name and his inherited wealth to create a brand that falsely describes the person.

The brand was the creation of a first-rate salesman.  He has the instinct that comes from his own insecurities, that allows him to divine his target's needs and desires from his own.  To be a good salesman does not require honesty or integrity; in fact, he might have more appropriately entitled his best-seller, The Art of the Con.  Because that is what he does best.

However, success in sales requires control over one's audience.  Trump has always surrounded himself by people of power, like lawyer Roy Cohn, people who could teach him how to project an image of power.  And he has surrounded himself with devotees.

From the time he staged his entrance down the escalator to announce his war against Mexicans, Donald Trump was selling himself to a base that he knew well, people who had been responding to his politics for decades, people who were angry and insecure and looking for someone to focus their rage.  They were looking for a savior, and that is exactly what the bombastic and narcissistic Donald Trump planned on giving them.

And in the long con that was the 2016 election season, he succeeded in getting people from all walks of life to believe in him.  They thought they knew him from his role in The Apprentice, and from his absolutely adamant extremist claims, about Muslims, about "the wall."  He fed people's fears:  about violence, about loss of work, about unaffordable health care.  And then he made them promises:  he promised jobs, and that they would be safe on the streets.  He promised the best of everything, and that it would be easy, because he would be the one who would do it.

A con.

The problem with a con, though, is when the con artist loses control.  Suddenly, Trump as president had other people with power questioning him, contradicting him, saying no to him.

What happened next was inevitable, the dictator's path to maintaining control.  He berated the media because they were the ones confronting him with questions he couldn't answer.  He began firing people.  He became more isolated, surrounding himself with his entourage, those from whom he expected complete loyalty.  He began to publicly criticize not just enemies, but those who had supported him.

And he became angrier and more unstable.

The president we have is one whose powers a responsible congress would be checking, rather than cowering out of fear of losing their comfortable government jobs.  Mitch McConnell -- the real dealmaker -- with his lack of ethics and sleight of hand gave us a Supreme Court that will be very guarded in cases that involve presidential powers, as they did by allowing parts of the travel ban to go into effect while they waited to hear the case.

Donald Trump is no longer that great salesman.  He is a very poor con artist these days.  But because of the power he wields, those who have already signed on to ride his coattails continue to allow him to threaten them publicly.  They allow him transgression after transgression, cowed by his threats and their own insecurities.  He has been allowed to flaunt national security regulations, to profit from his position as president, to bring unsavory people into the most powerful corridors of government.  He has met secretly with our most dangerous opponent, flattered dictators and trashed our allies.  He has curbed media access, which is public access, to the presidency.

And he speaks to boy scouts as though they are having a bitch session in a bar.

No, he is no longer a great salesman.  Most all of us know the emperor is naked.  And that just makes him angrier, and crazier.  But with the power he has, and which he has usurped, he doesn't need to sell anybody anything anymore.

The Ironic Cherry Reads... The Cynic

The Cynic: 

The Political Education of

Mitch McConnell

by Alec MacGillis

I was one of those with my mouth hanging open when Mitch McConnell announced that he would not bring to the floor President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.  We should not have been surprised.  If we had been paying attention, and we had, we knew that there was no depth to which the republican Congress would not sink in order to win.  The Obama administration began with McConnell's announcement that his most important goal was to make this Democrat a one-term president.

In retrospect, I believe we don't give Mitch McConnell enough credit, because of his looks and demeanor.  His deer-caught-in-the-headlight, tortoise-y, stiff appearance leads one to imagine that he is, well, doofy.  And late night comedians have made the most of this, doing hilarious imitations.  The media has had no lack of material pointing out his conflicting statements over the years.  As though that would horrify, or even embarrass, McConnell.  It doesn't.

McConnell was the high school nerd that wasn't all that popular, but was drawn to politics.  He had a single-mindedness that no number of losses could derail.  Like the tortoise to which he is so often compared, he continued to plow ahead, setting goals and working at them, all the way back to vice president of his junior high student council.  The other thing he did was observe, and learn.  And he was fearless when it came to attempting to persuade people to his side.

What I did not know is that McConnell began his career as a moderate to liberal republican:  pro-choice, pro-union, pro-civil rights.  Along the way, though, he learned that going negative was the way to win.  And he learned where the money was.

McConnell knows how to get what he wants.  And what he wants is the power he now wields in the Senate.  He may not be likable, but that doesn't matter to him.  His colleagues know that he is the best power broker there is.  Trump thinks he knows how to make a deal?  McConnell is like a card-counter.  He is like a chess champion.  And the goal is winning.  He has no scruples, no guiding ideals.  He will do anything to win.

In his early years he hired Roger Ailes to create ads for his campaign and he hasn't looked back.  There is no dirty trick he will not be delighted to run if it will get him closer to winning, and indeed he takes great pleasure from crushing his opponents.  There have been many races in McConnell's life when he nearly lost.  But he is willing to say and do anything to best his opponent.  He has no scruples.  There is no line he won't cross.  And he is always willing to try something new and egregious.  He plays the odds very, very well.

In the Senate, he knows everything that is going on.  He keeps fellow senators close, and strategizes everything.  He is the master of procedural tricks.  And he doesn't give a damn what anybody thinks of him.  Those republican senators that don't like him nonetheless know he knows what he is doing, and they had better play his game.  AND YET, when the Tea Party came to Washington, people like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz who came to government like gunslingers, aiming to take it down, McConnell figured out how to work with them and around them.  He knew how to act like he wanted to get government moving while not opposing tactics like shutting down the government.  He knows when to stay in the background and when to be heard.

We owe as much to Mitch McConnell for the dysfunction in our government as we do to the Tea Party.  He has been the mastermind.  His only goal is to stay in power, and anybody running against him or anyone else in his party needs to be ready for a dirty fight.

He is truly a strange bird in that he thrives on fund raising, as though getting money out of donors proves his self-worth.  He is good at it.  He gets the best -- in other words, the dirtiest -- people to manage his campaigns.  His ads are going to be plentiful, and as ugly as they come.  And, as we saw in the recent Georgia 6th Special Election, that is politics in 2017.

I have said recently that when they go low, we don't have to roll in the mud with them.  But we do have to educate voters that dirty tricks and ugly accusations will be out there.  We have to let them know about the kind of people who are paying to spread the lies, and what they have to gain, and what the voters have to lose.

We also have to learn to stick together.  One of the worst mistakes that Alison Lundergan Grimes made in her run against McConnell in 2014 was to back away from President Obama.  The moment she waffled on that question, McConnell's gang came in for the kill.  That's what he does.  So don't give him, or any other republican, the opportunity to pit us against each other.  We are far better than they are, and we need to be confident when we tell that to voters.

And we need to hit, and hit back, and then do it again, each time republicans are wrong.  That should give us lots of material, right?  Then I wonder why we haven't seen, all over the country, on every television station, ads about the republican health care plan.  And tax cuts for the wealthy.  And how about job losses?  We let Trump and Pence get away with claiming to save jobs at Carrier, but how about the massive layoffs that are beginning at Carrier next week?

And speaking of jobs, South Carolina's Boeing plant, paid for by Nikki Haley with our own tax dollars, celebrated with great fanfare and a visit by the liar-in-chief a few months ago the rollout of the 787 Dreamliner.  All the doting local news stations played the video of Trump promising great jobs blah, blah, blah.  Earlier, Boeing had put out a small -- actually what to most of us would be a rather large -- fortune in advertising, blanketing the media with anti-union ads.  Now they have announced layoffs.  If voters, workers, citizens don't hear us shouting about this from the rooftops, how will they know the promise of jobs was a lie?

I saw a crawl on CNN a week or so ago that announced that gas prices were now the lowest they had been in twelve years.  Really?  I keep a pretty close watch on gas prices and I know here in Charleston, before the election, I was paying somewhere under $1.60.  I also know that shortly after the election, the price jumped up by some twenty cents.  Since then they have jumped up and then crawled down, with them finally holding steady for a while around $2.00.  Check it out at SC Gas Buddy.  When the media swallows false information, we need to get in their faces.  Campaign managers, party officials and we citizens need to make sure the news is accurate.

The Cynic is a slim book, but an awfully important political education.  Mitch McConnell, incredible as it is to believe, was determined to become a force in politics, and he has indeed.  He has set the standard for political warfare.  If we are going to win against a cheater, we need to understand the cheater and the system.  This is a good place to start.

When They Go Low...

In that sparkling election campaign that was Hillary Clinton's, Michelle Obama led the call and response:  "When they go low... we go high."  Problem is, and the election of 2016 is proof, when they go low... we lose.

This is what republicans are good at.  In The Cynic, a disturbing book about the political career of Mitch McConnell, we find a gawky, not-very-popular young man who supported women's reproductive rights (!) as well as collective bargaining (!) in his early years.  He soon found out, though, just how sweet was the taste of victory, won in any way possible.  And the easiest way to win was by attacking your opponent.  And claiming to support any cause that would win the election, followed by enacting legislation that benefits the wealthy and powerful.

This is the republican playbook.  The moral vacuity that is the republican party will stoop to any depth to win.  The wealthy and powerful pay their way.  Voters hear what they want to hear, and believe the lies they are told writ large:  in ad buys, billboards, Russian fake news (yeah, that's what fake news was until Donald Trump appropriated it to his narcissistic ends).

We Dems just aren't comfortable with lying to win an election.  We shy away from attacking our opponent, whether it is because of our values or fear of retaliation.  I don't believe we need to, or could possibly, stoop as low as has the republican party.  But we have let republican strategists beat us to a pulp while we fight among ourselves.

I imagine that republican opposition research just can't be any more fun these days.  What happens is:  they find some questionable detail about a candidate, toss it out, and watch Dems fight about it.  And if they can't find some small actual thing, they make something up.

Take Jon Ossoff.  It wasn't that long ago that he ran the most exciting campaign since Bernie, in the truly red (don't get me started on gerrymandering) district in Georgia from which Trump's handlers plucked the evil Tom Price to Orwellize the Department of Health and Human Services.  It is no accident that they have been plucking their deplorables from redder than red districts (South Carolina has been fertile ground).  But Georgia's 6th, while solidly republican, also has its share of intelligent republicans, who chose Trump over Hillary by only one percent.

So imagine their alarm when republicans saw the populist excitement over candidate Jon Ossoff.  Of course, they did not spend much time biting their nails.  They went into action, fund raising and scheming.  They (RNC, PACs, and those even shadier groups) went into overdrive.  Had the situation been reversed, Dems might have made excuses for why they probably wouldn't win, or complained about how unfair it was that someone from the other side was giving them a tough race (only Donald Trump, in his robocalls, did that, telling voters not to let Democrats STEAL THE ELECTION).  Republicans immediately regrouped.  McConnell's playbook from his early years proves to have been the gift that keeps on giving.  When you are running against a formidable candidate there are two things that work:  lying about your opponent, running attack ads, and running attack ads that lie about your opponent (three things...).

Beginning with an ad showing clips that under a more, shall we say, objective framework, would have us think: "What a fun guy, and he sure is clever."  But in the hands of the Congressional Leadership Fund, it became a dark-tinged piece of hysteria that nonetheless made national news.  And why shouldn't it?  Republicans and republican supporters know how to get oppo research and negative messages into every crevice of the American media.  That success was followed by pieces of work that became progressively more desperate and evil, from falsely linking Ossoff to "Bay area liberals" and Nancy Pelosi, to a last truly disgusting ad that pronounces that "Now the unhinged left is endorsing and applauding shooting republicans."  Of course, once it was out, it was an easy matter for opponent Karen Handel to denounce the ad.  But fact is, it may have gotten those last crazies out to the polls, for which she is no doubt quietly grateful.

Yes, there was some grumbling about the ugliness of these ads.  But what did not happen was Democrats coming out in droves to talk to the voters about what they were seeing, that is, a desperate, nasty effort to manipulate the election to vote for the least popular candidate of the two.

If you are planning on running for office as anything other than a right-wing republican these days, you need to start with the assumption that the first thing republicans are going to do is find dirt on you.  If it's not dirt, they will make it so.  If they can't find anything to turn into dirt, they will lie.  So you need to tell the voters that this is going to happen.  You need to say:

"Republicans are going to do everything they can to win.  They will turn over everything in my past to find something they can twist to make it look bad.  They will distort everyday aspects of my life to make them look questionable.  They will lie.  They will put ads on TV that you won't want your kids to watch....  Why will they do this?  Because they can't run honestly on the issues.  They know that if you take a good look at their candidate, you will see that they don't have your interests in mind.  They know that if you are able to hear my message, without their lies and distortions, you will vote for me.  So know that, and let's run this campaign on the issues."

And you need to say it and say it again, every time there is a negative ad or attack.  Keep bringing voters back to the issues.  Keep reminding them why your opponent is going so low.

The other thing we Dems need to all get together on is getting together on our candidates.  These are people who for the most part don't have donors with deep pockets.  If they do, as did Hillary, you can bet republicans (talk about the pot and the kettle) will bring up their ties to Wall Street.  If they have gone to Harvard, they will make the Ivies sound like dirty words.  For gods' sake, they will bring up Nancy Pelosi and make it sound like you cohabit.

And here is where they get us, every time.  I am still hearing the smackdown between Bernie and Hillary supporters.  Trump taunted us by talking about his love for Bernie, gloated in the in-fighting.  Could he have done better after Bernie's admittedly half-hearted pleas to support Hillary than to have us turn against each other?

And then they threw out the Ossoff bones and sat back and watched us fight.  Does he support Pelosi, and why didn't he stand up for Pelosi?  Republican hate of all things liberal even became, "Is Jon Ossoff really a liberal, or is he just pretending?"  After the attack ads claiming that Ossoff wasn't really a small business owner, I heard Democrats repeating their concern that he wasn't really a small business owner.  Boy-o, talk about getting bang for your buck.

In some ways it is truly nice that Democrats don't toe the line the way republicans do.  But it is time to get political, folks.  I may have my problems with the Democratic Party, but I value any candidate that steps up to what is likely going to be a bloodbath.  Republicans don't just control all three branches of government, plus most of the states.  They have made sure that their tentacles reach the media and college campuses, where they successfully divert attention from their own manipulations by attacks on "liberal media" and "liberal college campuses."

And what they will do every time in every way, is support their candidate.  Right-wing republicans represent corporate America.  Period.  And they will do anything they need to do to get that victory.  McConnell is the master at controlling the message and the race.  Ryan knows where his financial bread is buttered.  And voters routinely mistake the unity of those who run the republican machine for truth.

Democrats can "go high," but we need to recognize the reality of politics.  You are not going to get your perfect candidate.  That means you confront a candidate that threatens not to support those democratic causes that make us Democrats.  But when it comes down to the vote, you ALWAYS vote for the best person.  That means Hillary over Trump, no matter how your heart aches for Bernie.  That means Archie Parnell even though you could see Alexis Frank, another woman on the floor of the House over the years becoming a national treasure.  And that means, stop chasing those nasty old bones the republicans throw out so they can step back and watch us fight.

About Pelosi.  She is the person who brought a bunch of hissing cats together to get the Affordable Care Act passed.  And Hillary.  She is the one who has fought internationally for the rights of women, standing up to Putin knowing that he would be a nasty and powerful enemy.  When republicans are done with them as useful targets, they will turn their sights on Elizabeth Warren (as both Trump and McConnell have already done).

These women are being targeted, not only because they are women, but because they are smart, powerful women.  And they tell truth to power, and to everyone else who will listen.  We need them, and we need to support them, wholeheartedly.  Shame on those who say Pelosi is too old to be effective, when republicans stand behind the old white men who are united with Trump in his plan to destroy our democracy (After the Georgia election there was a time when I was hearing Dems say Pelosi is too old AND Ossoff was too young, both bones tossed out by republicans.).  And shame to those who have let the unproved allegations of thirty years keep them from taking a look at all Hillary has done for us.

Fact is, when they feel threatened they attack.  What threatens them is candidates that will fight for the people and for democratic values.  And the louder we shout, the more voters respond, the bigger and uglier the attacks.  We know this.  We can fight back.

2018 is happening.  Let's stand with our courageous candidates.  Let's stop fighting among ourselves; let's stop listening to the lies and rumors put out by republican opponents.  Let us vote for our values, but let us be loud in our outrage at the perversion of our democracy that has been created by money and power.

We can go high when they go low, but we need to get down to their level to look them in the eye when we call them out.

The Method and Madness of Trumpcare

We should not be surprised that after all the protests, phone calls and town halls, and the first attempt at jamming the AHCA through the House, the bill was resuscitated, bribes were bribed, and it was forced through successfully last week.

We should have known that each and every time a snarky remark was made by a liberal about his failing first 100 days, Trump's determination to win grew.  Much as the truly clever and funny jabs that Obama made in 2011 at the White House Correspondent's Dinner set in concrete Donald's determination to run and win the presidency.

It is said that Donald Trump has no understanding of the complexities of health care... by Donald himself in fact.  And he really does not care, any more than he cares about refugees or American workers.  He wants to be liked, and he wants to win.  He would rather be liked by rich and powerful people than by disgruntled Americans, but if the latter can help him do the bidding of the former, he will say whatever he needs to say to get there.

One of the groups of peons that Trump has courted successfully is the republican Congress.  Don't laugh.  They may be a lot richer than the rest of us, but they aren't in the same league as the Kochs or Vladimir Putin.  They are just rich enough to be insecure about keeping that wealth.  They are just rich enough to know that losing could be just around the corner.  In other words, except for the money, they are a lot like the middle class Trump supporter.

Ryan and McConnell and their cronies want nothing more than to be in the club, and Donald Trump can smell that vulnerability.  When he bused all those senators to the White House for that meeting on North Korea, it had all the makings of a Trump sales pitch.  Inviting a group of powerful people to "his" house is to Trump like inviting the Chinese president to share his delicious chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago.  It puts the power in his hands.

Imagine his surprise when even republican senators were unimpressed.

Donald Trump is a man of limited intellect but a craving for attention and approval that has created a finely-honed instinct for manipulating others.  Of course, he couldn't have done it without his father's wealth and influence, but what he developed has worked quite well for him in his businesses -- even when he lost he made sure he won, regardless of who he had to throw under the bus to do it.

What looks like erratic behavior is really a pattern of responses that is coming to be fairly predictable:  assumption of success; disbelief followed by rage -- insults and attacks; withdrawing briefly to regroup; followed by approach and flattery; and then the deal.

He has done this with each of his primary opponents, with the media, with foreign leaders, and now with Congress.

But he is finding that he is playing in a different league these days.  Even psycho leaders like Duterte of the Philippines are offering fairly lame excuses to avoid looking like they want to be seen associating with our own psycho leader.  And he was brushed off by the inaptly named Freedom Caucus, the group formerly known as the Tea Party, when he tried to prod them into the original AHCA bill.

Like a rat learning to press the lever to get another rice krispie, however, Trump is a good learner.  He knew how to get Paul Ryan to be his House lapdog, and it didn't take that much more wheeling and dealing to sell the really bad health insurance bill to the people that were actually looking for really bad health insurance to pawn off on the American people.

But that group of people in Congress who are just insecure enough that they will work with Trump to get what they need don't mind throwing him under the bus either.  So what we all tried to call "RyanCare" is now "TrumpCare."  And the republicans who have been at the art of the political dirty deal far longer than Trump, have laid the ground work for laying the blame on him AND gotten their nasty piece of legislation passed.

There are a couple of important factors here, things we need to keep front and center as we watch -- and even try to influence -- the outcome of this struggle.

First of all, we need to stop pretending that the Senate is that much more grown up and responsible than the House.  They are mostly smarter, and definitely shrewder, than their wacky counterparts, but they are still rabid about success, and equally insecure about their futures.  They are in the pockets of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, but because they can't count on guaranteed gerrymandered districts, they have to pretend to be listening to and working for all their constituents.

We in South Carolina have learned the hard way to never make the mistake of assuming that Lindsey Graham is on our side.  He is on Lindsey Graham's side, the side of the right wing, whether it be religious or corporate.  He was tickled that he could vote Neil Gorsuch onto the Supreme Court, and did whatever mental maneuvers were necessary to defend his desires.  This is true of Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, and all the other folks that have been bought by corporate money.

And that leads us back to Trumpcare.  It is a truly egregious scheme, a tax cut for the really wealthy that takes health care away from pregnant women, cancer patients and sick children.  But in that, it is not much different than what has been happening to workers and education since the 80's, and what will be happening to our environment.  Every piece of which will make us sicker, less able to care for ourselves and our families, and less able to fight the plutocratic oligarchy that has managed to lie, cheat and steal their way into Washington.

The irony is, you can call it Trumpcare, but Trump doesn't care.  Ryan and the rest of the right-wingnuts are looking for continued wealth and security.  But the joke is on them.  The only ones Trump cares about are Trumps.  And every single damn thing he has done since he came into office has profited the Trumps.  That is the other thing we need to keep remembering to keep our eyes on.

Talk about the art of your deal made in hell.

Scapegoating KellyAnne

Far be it from me to come to the defense of KellyAnne Conway as she finds herself in a major shitstorm over her sales pitch for Ivanka’s clothing line.  Conway is a mean bitch who hungers for power in a man’s world, and will tell any lie to prove her loyalty.  Her enthusiastic promotion for her boss’s daughter was just that, a stupid misstep in a world where she has been able to say anything without penalty.

But come on, is this really worth a headline in the New York Times?  Is this anything more than a quick laugh on a late night show?

After all, this has been the most corrupt presidency in the history of the country.  What we got when we elected a failing businessman and reality show star was a con man who proceeded to show us in no uncertain terms how he came to his wealth and fame.

This is the president who became, on January 20, his own landlord, violating federal law.  Where, at the Trump Hotel, he trades rooms for favors to world leaders at a profit.

This is the president who pretends to have separated his business affairs from affairs of state, while no one really believes he does not talk freely with daughter and sons about both.  And while the US government – read, your tax dollars – pay for Eric’s security detail when he travels abroad to develop more Trump enterprises, enterprises that now come with the US president's seal of approval.

This is the president who has just named his Mar-a-Lago Resort the “winter White House,” where he can hide from the press and public as he had when he was a private criminal and entitled to hide.  Where he has just doubled the resort’s initiation fees.  Where it is estimated that his weekend jaunts will cost taxpayers $3million.  And where he feels at home making his shady deals.

And Melania, who has wisely chosen to keep her distance from her husband’s swamp, will be staying at Trump Tower, a place she likes to call “home,” with son Barron.  The estimated cost to taxpayers:  $2 million/day.  Not to mention the disruption and cost to the City of New York and its other residents.

But let us not dwell on money.  Let’s talk security violations. Beginning with use of unsecured phones and right on to meeting at a public place with a foreign leader while they talked about security issues regarding North Korea’s latest blast.  Tweets about Ivanka and Nordstrom during a security briefing for gods’ sake.  Flagrant violations of security protocols by Trump and his cast of characters occur daily, so many that the press struggles to keep up with leaks, videos and selfies.

Wondering where all those Congress creeps who targeted Hillary Clinton for the same use of a private email server that had been done by her predecessors?  You know, the partisan witch hunt by Representative Jason Chaffetz, who vowed to impeach Clinton the day she became president.  And South Carolina’s own Trey Gowdy, who never knew when he was embarrassing himself over his obsession over Benghazi.  And by the way, I wonder if he has noticed the disastrous raid in Yemen, the one that was impulsively planned during dinner in an attempt to out-bin Laden our outgoing president.  The one that cost an American life and several others wounded, not to mention deaths and injury to innocent Yemenis.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and head weasel of the Senate Mitch McConnell have been pretty quiet as this third world dictator destroys our standing in the world.  Could it be because they are busy dismantling Americans’ social safety net and programs that would protect us from corporate greed?  Or maybe they are even relieved that the shitstorm is taking attention away from their dirty deeds, like setting up rules to make their ugly laws permanent, dismantling healthcare and environmental and financial protections while shoving through bills that would deny Americans their Constitutional freedoms.

I chuckled when I heard that Ryan gave his seal of approval to the firing of Michael Flynn.  I’ll bet he was nervously waiting for the news that the president had made his decision so he could publicly announce that it was a good one, whatever it was.  Of course he does not endorse any further investigation of ties to Russia because, well, gee, what you find under that rock might interfere with the victory party they are having in Congress.

But KellyAnne, she appears to be fair game.  It sounds like her head may be on the chopping block for her impulsive sales pitch for Ivanka.  Even Ivanka may be pissed off at her.  The “White House,” which I assume means Trump, is angry about it.  Some republican members of Congress may even be stirring out of their mid-orgy lethargy to speak out about “ethics violations.”

And this is where I wonder, like Elizabeth Warren who was last week told to sit down and shut up for insulting the eminent Jeff Sessions, if KellyAnne is fair game because she is the woman on the team.

Like Elizabeth Warren, KellyAnne is really, really smart.  Unlike Warren, she has absolutely no moral compass.  She will say anything about anyone if it suits her purpose.  And she is driven, not to do the right thing as is Warren, but to get ahead.

I am looking forward to all hell breaking loose if Trump decides to let her go.  It may be that fear of the wrath of KellyAnne may be her job security, but if he is advised that seeing her head roll is the way to distract from other far more severe breaches, I will be on the sidelines cheering her on.

The Unstoppable Elizabeth Warren

As despised as the Affordable Care Act has been is the Consumer Financial Protection Agency .  And as despised as Obama for getting away with the ACA, Senator Elizabeth Warren is despised by Congressional republicans for taking on the powerful banks.  And when it comes to dastardly villains, hell bent on power and revenge, there is none like Mitch McConnell.  Oh, sure, he may duck into his shell whenever a controversy arises,

but when the coast is clear and he is surrounded by his own kind, he is a true leader.

Let us remember that it was Mitch who first stated his primary purpose after President Obama's 2008 election was to make him a one-term president.  He may have a weak chin, but he has balls that even Donald Trump must admire.  Under McConnell, republican senators have stood firmly on the right to oppose Obama's every act as president -- even when he was making a proposal that had been strongly endorsed, even suggested, by republicans.

Perhaps the most absurd act of obstruction by McConnell was last year's refusal to hear testimony on the nomination of Merrick Garland for Supreme Court Justice.  It was not only unprecedented and undemocratic, the rationale given for this militant act against the president's authority was ridiculous.  As everyone from pundits to legal experts to late night talk show hosts pointed out.

His outrageous gambit appears to have won.  We may soon have a supreme court justice that moves to the right of right-wingnut Antonin Scalia.

And now he has his sights on Elizabeth Warren.

It is easy to understand why he wants Warren neutralized.  She was the voice that led to the creation -- her creation -- of the Consumers Financial Protection Agency.  Following the Wall Street fiasco that led to the Great Recession, right wingers couldn't figure out fast enough how to stop the call for regulation and monitoring of Wall Street.  And Warren is smart and persistent.  She can't be outargued, and she won't be manipulated.  She thrives on challenges and attacks; she knows she has facts and the moral high ground on her side.

She also has the American people on her side.

And, as they used to say at Ronco,

When it was learned last year that Wells Fargo executives had pressured employees to set up millions of fake accounts in customers' names, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau pursued the complaints and fined Wells Fargo $185 million dollars.  During the Senate hearing, Elizabeth Warren told Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, 

"This is about accountability.  You should resign.  You should give back the money that you took while this scam was going on, and you should be criminally investigated."

The plot thickens, because Donald Trump in his effort to keep his swamp full to capacity, nominated Elaine Chao to be transportation secretary.  Elaine Chao, since 2011, has sat at the board of Wells Fargo.  And... wait for it... Elaine Chao is Mitch McConnell's wife.

So I guess we could say there is history here between Warren and McConnell.  Or we could say, follow the money and the special interests.

McConnell had a rare opportunity to really stick his foot in it two days ago, when Warren was on the floor speaking against the nomination of Jeff Sessions to be attorney general.  She was reading a 1986 letter from Coretta Scott King to the Senate opposing Sessions' appointment to a federal judgeship.  Thinking this was the moment he had been waiting for, he had Warren stopped and told to sit down.  There was then a vote as to whether to rebuke Warren for "impugning" Sessions' character, which of course fell on party lines.

If you haven't already been immersed in this story, your head may be spinning, you may be saying "Wh-What???"  But it is true.  There is a rule -- Rule XIX -- that was created in 1902, back when Mitch McConnell was just a boy.  It came about because a couple of South Carolina senators engaged in fisticuffs on the floor of the Senate.  And -- this could only happen in Congress -- the rule does not just ban fights on the Senate floor, but any disparagement of a sitting Senator.  This odd and arcane rule has not been used in some forty years, and apparently did not apply when Ted Cruz accused Mitch McConnell of lying. So Warren's crime was that she read a letter stating that Jeff Sessions -- a racist -- is a racist.  And maybe that she is a woman.  A powerful woman.

(In a wonderful act of unity and defiance, a number of Democratic Senators, all male, took their turn to read the same letter for which Warren had been censured.)

More important, Mitch McConnell has once again put Warren front and center of the fight for honest government.  And she relishes that fight.  We can all scoff at the rule that allows unsavory senators like Jeff Sessions to hide the truth.  And we will.  We are fighting on the internet.  "Nevertheless, she persisted" has become yet another battle cry against the tyranny of Trump's right-wing.

And you can catch Elizabeth Warren on talk shows and on the internet spreading the good word.  Fighting for us all.

Thanks for the inspiration, Elizabeth.