Category Archives: Government, for better or worse

Commentary, Critical Thinking and Decorum: Two More National Deficits, Criticism, Enough is Enough, Evil, Facts, Government, for better or worse, Historical, Reflections, Saracasm

Patriotism Spoils History (Goethe) Fasten seatbelts

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There is nothing more terrifying than active ignorance.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749-1832

It is manifestly clear that last Wednesday was seditious insurrection, a violent attack on our central body of democratic governance: the parliament, Congress withj the aim of destroying it. It was directly and unmistakablly encouraged, urged on by at least Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Rudi Giuliani, et al. They must not get away with this and set the norm for all future Presidents to do the same. Until now, there has been an ability to avoid culpability by those who have blocked, undermined, maligned, misused and support and crippled. Now however they have helped instigate or even plan the attack. No longer can we look away, no longer can their opposition be treated as political opposition in a two party democracy. That is a dead system as of Wednesday. Their self indictment is on video, the vandal acts are on video, the murder acts are on video.

Everyone needs to be crystal clear on this: it was the radical right who crossed the constitutional, the peaceable, the civil, the democratic Rubicon Wednesday January 6, 2021. That is not an interpretation, not a Ted Cruz dodge, not a Mitch McConnell stonewalling. It is a description of what everyone saw and can still see online.

If this stands, then this nation will fall.

So all on the democracy team here (not you Giuliani, not you Trump, not you the Senators and Representatives who lauded, even encouraged thle mob, not you mobsters, not you criminally negligent police and security forces in DC) it is time to settle this hash with all the legal, procedural, security and investigative force that the United States of America can bring to bear. It is time for the local democrats to organize to help extinguish this burning stream of insurrection. Reconciliation can come after tehj January 6 mob criminals have been punished and stability under law has been re-established..

Wednesday’s self styled “patriots” have started a process to spoil 244 years of US history. Now it is time for the heirs of 244 years of US history to exact the cost of treason, murder, riot, incitement etc from those self-styled, God-playing, costumed, selfie taking, ignorant, duped, and sadly superficially patriotic traitors.

No more Mr NIce Guy until that score has been settled once and for all Fasten your seatbelts..

Commentary, Dark Bedevilments, Enough is Enough, Evil, Government, for better or worse

Clear and Present: Trump is—Are you, Congress?

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Let’s finally be clear: it is now the COngress against the President to save the Union.

The President is a traitor. The Senators who support him are traitors. The representatives who support him are traitors.

Supporting insurrection and sedition are treason: Donald committed it, the others support it.

When do the two Democrat Senators from Georgia take their seats? That will change everything. Then the patriots left, the LARGE MAJORITY of the Congress, can do what is needed:

In one day, act to impeach, try and convict DOnald J Trump of HIgh Crimes and Misedmeanors. And when he threatens whatever he can conjure up from his devils mind, — he will and everone knows it even Rich Mitch—use all force necessary to take him, his little right wing thug army and all the traitors who after the insurretion continued with their false challenges without blinking an eyelash of remorse or regret.

This is war, Congressmen and Senators who want the republic to live on and Trump in any role of public view not to. Just shut the hell up about whether this creep in the White House will ever concede. HE is too far into denial and that is not a river in Egypt.

You’d better start thinking of it that way and super fast, because, first, things are going to go from worse to horrible in the next two weeks and second, you are losing.

Still not convinced? Look again at the face. Fat body and animal like bellowiing of ALL of those wannabe SA troopers. This is mass hysteria, these folks are OUTSIDE rational talk, redemption, quiet. And you just let them win: they shut you down for 5 hours.

While you are doing business as usual; in your comfy fog of cowardice and denial, they aer emboldened and planing the next, larger, more destructive attack.

It is clear and present danger. Your response has to be even more clear and present. You are the only defense we have left.

Commentary, Enough is Enough, Government, for better or worse, Reflections

Gotcha O. P.

Drive thru voting in Texas

For centuries our common law has rejected ex post facto laws: we do not invent punishments or restrictions to apply to acts already committed. If we decide that lawn mowing is unacceptable on Sundays and make a law against it, the law is enforceable from that point forward but not retro-actively, against my neighbor whose mower interrupted my nap a week a go.

Two clauses in the United States Constitution prohibit ex post facto laws:

  1. Art 1, § 9
    1. This prohibits Congress from passing any laws which apply ex post facto.
  2. Art. 1 § 10.
    1. This prohibits the states from passing any laws which apply ex post facto.

But the actions contemplated by the Republicans in Texas would require a retroactive judicial decision in their favor. The principle of ex post facto prohibits legislatures from passing laws which retroactively criminalize behavior. That is however just a minimum standard. Wlhile this prohibition does not attach as stvia legislated language to judicial decisions, appellate courts sometimes announce a new rule of law, but will not apply it to the case in front of it, in order to attempt to comply with ex post facto prohibitions.

The norm in the US is and always has been no ex post facto laws or judgments. Period. It is so well known that in cases involving ex post facto, the ruling judges do not even need to cite the paragraphs of the Consitituion and the existing practice of upholding the norm.

That is an inviolable sine aus non of Anglo American common (judgment practice inherited from the past) law.We do not use legal gotchas.

So then how do Republicans reconcile trying to exclude write in votes retrospectively and the rule of law? They have known that write in ballots were in the offing and had been approved by Srares. They should have challenged before voting began not ex post facto, retroactively.

Has our judiciary finally become intrumpKate’s with the key foundation of all authoritarian governments: that the most powerful is always right, that might makes right? Are we as a nation finally throwing in the towel on the difficult debate and dialogue of democracy in favor of the oppressive but simpler toe-the-line deep freeze of autocracy?

Judicial prohibition of those Texas drive in votes means that we no longer have a judiciary of rights, It woujld mean that ours has collapsed into a Judge Freisler (Nazi showtrial judge) system of mock courts. It will mean that anything the autocrat or a loyal Trumpionette does not like about you and me can be made criminal and punished, with no defense, and without due process.

And it will not be just cutting your grasss that will be shut down: it will be anything that Trump and his Trumpionettes do not like about our involvement in this election I. Or about whatever Donnie loudmouths about, changing often from sentence to sentence. You could not even run a garbage pickup service that way, let alone a nation under emergency Pandemic threat.

Has the GOP finally completed the petrification process from Lincoln to Loudmouth, from Grand Old Party to Gotcha Oppression Party? Is the judiciary now a Trumpionette show too? Have we deteriorated into a nation under Trump instead of one under law?We had better hope not.

Commentary, Critical Thinking and Decorum: Two More National Deficits, Enough is Enough, Evil, Facts, Government, for better or worse, Historical, Photographic content, Reflections, Shorter - More off the cuff

Amerika/America, du hast/you had….

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We are nowhere near the end of the Trump-thumping we are taking.. We are not at the beginnig of the end, nor the end of the beginning.  We may be at the start of the beginning.  And that makes it all even more sad and urgent.  We have already lost so much; it is such a great shame.

Towards the end of his life, the great German poet, scientist, lawyer, statesman etc;, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) became very enchanted with the energy, robust freedom and lack of a haunting past in the young American Republic.  During those later years he wrote the following poem (here in English translation praising and expressing an important hope about us and  our republic:

(If you want to know more about who Goethe was, read my post “Who is this guy Go-ee’-thee (Goethe)?

Amerika du hast es besser

America, you have it better

Than our old continent.

You have no tumbledown castles

And no basalt deposits.

Your present is not disturbed deep down by

Useless remembrance and vain strife.

Use the present with good fortune!

And if your children write poetry,

May a kindly fate guard them from writing

Stories of knights, rascals, and specters.

http://www.bachlund.org/Amerika.htm

 translation by Marilyn Barnett

One of DT’s first targets for negation remains our fragile, wilting ecosystem.  We must get it back under control —and fast—.  Before DT touched nature with his cold, dead hands, an annual reduction of atmospheric hydrocarbons by 2% would have saved us-but we were barely making that. Now after he has negated our environmental protection, the yearly target for a timespan 4 years shorter than in 2016 is 5%.  And we had been barely eking out a scrawny 2%…. If we fail now, there will not be a second chance, the resulting inhospitable, lethal climate will make this planet uninhabitable.

Let us remember the hopes and faith that so many had for us so many years ago.

But we can only get to the end of the beginning by accepting without filtering where we are today. That’s the first step.

To that end, today Goethe’s hopeful poem could only be written something like this:

Amerika, du hattest es besser…

America, you had it better

Than our old continent.

But you failed to save your forests and oceans, 

You permanently poisoned pristine waters.

Shame! your present is blighted by leaders of

Useless remembrance and vain strife.

You misused the present in bad faith!

And your children will never write verse,

Condemned by drudge lackeys and their bumbling boss, to

end with a whimper: 

as nature winds down in reverse..

Where indeed have all the flowers gone, long time passing? How much pain must good men endure, before they throw off this yoke?