Shame or Blame
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Photo Credit: Donkey Hotey

Let’s not kid ourselves. We have always known that Bill Barr is a spineless sycophant of Donald Trump, until the January 6th insurrection, that is.

All of a sudden it seemed like good old Bill had seen the light. He started telling everybody who wanted to hear that the election wasn’t rigged and that Trump was at least partially responsible for the insurrection. He also started making comments that Trump was not fit to hold office, let alone be president.

In an extensive interview recently with MSNBC he was extremely critical of Trump. Remember he was the attorney general who totally politicized his office by misrepresenting the Mueller report and by working with Trump on commuting sentences for Trump’s high profile cronies. But now all of a sudden he is saying that he will vote for Trump because he thinks Biden is worse.

This man is the scum of the earth. He is willing to sell his soul, probably because he
feels he may still get himself a role in a Trump administration. He Is the personification of what is wrong in the current Republican Party where all that matters is power.

Please feel free to leave your comments on our message board.

Photo Credit: Ted Eytan
I am fed up with all those statements of blanket support for Israel I keep hearing from
the media and politicians. Yes, Hamas’ attack on Israel was absolutely abhorrent, deplorable, disgusting and
criminal, and they should release all their hostages immediately. Their leaders should
be brought to justice.

But Israel’s response has now grown beyond all proportions. It seems they are intent on
eliminating all Palestinian people from Gaza.
The Israeli government keeps saying they’re trying to minimize, as they call it, civilian
casualties, but the blanket bombing and the attacks on hospitals, aid workers, and the
killing of 10s of thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza says otherwise.
Given the history of the Jewish people I have always had a lot of sympathy for Israel,
but what they are doing now is beginning to look very similar to what was done to the
Jewish people back then.

There is no way that this mass murder by way of bombing, point blank executions, and
even using starvation of the population in Gaza, can be justified anymore. Israel can
now no longer be classified as a civilized nation.
Israel would have been extremely justified to take targeted action against Hamas and
it's supporters in order to ensure their future safety and get the hostages that Hamas is
holding released.

But what they’re doing now is straight forward ethnic cleansing, and that is never ever
justified.

The USA should immediately stop all military support for Israel. Furthermore, the UN
should send in peacekeeping troops to force Israel to stop the bombing and let in
humanitarian support.

Finally, the leaders of the Israeli government should be brought to trial at the
International Court of Justice for their crimes against humanity.

It is a shame that all the goodwill Israel has had over the years from the western world
is disappearing. Instead of a targeted military response to the Hamas attack they
decided to wipe out a whole people.

History will not look kindly upon this.

Please feel free to leave your comments on our message board.

Censorship is a tough subject to talk about. Nobody likes being censored, but many people would like to censor speech that they don’t agree with or find offensive.

Never has this subject been more urgent in our country then after the prominence of social media. When Elon Musk responded to a particularly vile anti-Semitic tweet, saying “you speak the truth”, many people wanted that original tweet taken down. But who determines what is offensive? I certainly did find it disgusting, but a whole lot of right wing extremists had another view of it, and they too have the right to freedom of speech.

So where is the line? Or is there even a line? Who determines what needs to be censored, and who determines what the limits are to free speech?
Imagine if the MAGA movement wins the election (God forbid), do we then assume they are the majority, and therfore they determine the standards? That could mean that some of that movements slogans, like “Jews will not replace us”, are all of a sudden acceptale?

Even now, the house voted to ban TikTok, unless it is sold to an American company. That is some serious censorhip! Shouldn’t it be up to the users to decide if they want to give a Chinese owned company their personal details? After all, there is no law against being stupid.

Censorship is a difficult subject. A case can be made both for and against it. For me, as much as I dislike some of the vile stuff that appears on social media, I believe that censorship is so incredibly subjective that it cannot be properly justified.

Please feel free to leave your comments on our message board.

I am so sick and tired of hearing everybody on TV talk about the threat to our democracy. Politicians, punters, commentators, all of them droning on about the threat that Donald Trump represents to our democracy.

While the threat to our freedom is very real, it is not a threat to our democracy because we do not have a democracy! Our system is that of a representative republic. We are based on an outdated constitution that is supposed to give us protection for the minority, but it is incredibly undemocratic. It gives us garbage like a Supreme Court with lifetime appointments, gerrymandering, 2 senators per state regardless of state population, and the extremely undemocratic Electoral College.

A true democracy is based on majority rule. It is the tyranny of the majority where the minority just loses out without recourse. We don’t want to strive for that. Even in the system of a representative democracy with a constitution, like most European countries, the majority still wins in all cases.
Our constitution is designed to overcome that problem, but it has a lot of problems. As long as we have a Electoral College we can in no way be characterized as a form of democracy.

In our current system we are subject to the tyranny of the minority, where gerrymandering allows politicians to select their voters instead of the other way around. Where the supreme court is corrupt, taking bribes and enriching themselves. Where a right wing fascist minority faction enforces religious views that restrict or eliminate the rights of the majority to even be in charge of their own body.

To those who keep whining about the threat to our “democracy” ……. Keep voting for Trump and his sycophants and you won’t have to worry about that. Whatever you consider to be “democratic” in our country today will all be gone. Elections will be Putin style. Racism will be rampant, opposition to government will be punishable by law, Muslim bans and persecution of Jews will be the norm, unions will be outlawed and only the ruling class will get rich. Vote the MAGA crowd into power and you can kiss the so called American Dream goodbye.

So instead of whining about getting court cases done before the election, focus on voting for people who can actually, eventually get us a system that at least somewhat resembles a democracy. A representative system can actually work if we fix the problems in our constitution.

Vote for people that are willing to change our electoral system. People that will change the constitution to have our Supreme Court be elected instead of appointed for life. People that will outlaw gerrymandering.

If the electorate in our country does not smarten up we will become Russia, and our quest to be an actual functioning “democracy” will become a footnote in history. The choice is ours.

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Nevada Democrats and Independents should change their party affiliation temporarily to Republican. Why? Because we cannot under any circumstances afford for Trump to become president again. The only way he will not be the Republican nominee is if another Republican wins the nomination.

Currently the only candidate who has any chance of achieving that is Nikki Haley. She is in no way ideal, but getting a President Trump, and losing our democracy, would be disastrous.

The Nevada Republican primary is closed, meaning only registered Republicans can vote in it. The more
Democrats and Independents temporarily register as Republicans and then vote for Nikki Haley, the better the chance that Trump loses this important swing state, making it harder for him to win the
nomination.

Democrats and Independents should really do this in every state where the Republican primary election is only open to those that are registered Republican. Just change your party affiliation back after the completion of the Republican primary. In most states you can change your registered affiliation online in a matter of minutes.

We realize that if Nikki Haley were to be the nominee she might be a formidable opponent to Joe Biden, but can you really be sure that if Trump were to be the nominee he won’t beat Biden? We can simply
not afford to run that risk!

So change your affiliation temporarily, vote for Nikki Haley, and then in the general election show up in the millions to vote for Joe Biden and vote Democrat all the way down the ballot.

From the Crusades to the Spanish Inquisition, and from the Holocaust to Northern Ireland, to the Israeliconflict and to 9/11, the world has a long history of war and atrocities based on religious extremism. Of course we understand that many of these conflicts were also about territory, but the root of all ofthese atrocities is in extremism in religion. It’s the intolerance for those who are perceived to be a danger to us because of their religion and culture.

Christians fighting Muslims, Muslims fighting Christians, Catholics fighting Protestants, Muslims fighting Jews….. it is all about extremism in religion.

This is very disturbing, especially when one looks at the teachings of all religions. Every one of them teaches tolerance, love, cooperation and acceptance of others. There’s even a lot of intolerance within individual religions. There are different groups of Muslims that cannot tolerate each other, and there are different groups of Christians that try to impose their views on other Christians.

A good example of that is, of course, the current drive here in America by extremist so called Evangelical Christians wanting to prevent others from being able to control their own bodies. Then there is of course the example of Iran where extremist Muslims try to impose things like the hijab on others and if they don’t comply there is the death penalty.

As we are writing this litany it would be easy to assume that religion is the cause of all evil. But that is of course not the case. Extremism in religion is the cause of all the evil, and currently we’re seeing a lot of that extremism all over the world and in this country.

As stated before, all religions in the world, and we do mean ALL, have one thing in common, and that is that they teach to love your fellow man.

But until we realize that it is extremism that is the root of all evil nothing will change, and we are hurtling towards a situation in the world, and indeed the USA, that obliterates democracy, common sense and human decency.

Our choice is simple. We either accept and practice religion in its intended form, or bastardize it with extremism. If we do the latter religion may actually end up to be the root of all evil.

The Earth is flat.
The moon landing was fake news.
Elvis is alive.
The sun comes up in the west.

If you believe any of these statements you might as well stop reading this article. You are beyond hope. It would not matter what we say here, nothing would change your mind anyway, so there is no reason for us to continue to talk with people as stupid as you. We know that sounds blunt but we do not want to put in the effort to educate you about things so obvious and backed by so much evidence. But now look at the following statements.

The election was stolen somehow.
JFK Jr. is alive and will come back to be Trump’s VP.
All those boxes of documents are Trump’s property.
He declassified documents by just thinking it.
Trump was illegally indicted.

If you believe any or all of these statements we know your political leaning.

There is of course nothing wrong with being a Republican, but believing these falsities just because they are uttered by Trump is hard to understand. That gives the appearance that you know it’s wrong, but you are never willing to admit it because that might somehow put you in the “liberal” bracket. All of those statements have the same amount of undisputable evidence proving them as wrong as the first set of statements, and deep down you know it, but you don’t care, just because it is Trump saying it. We understand that so many of you are fed up with the politics in DC, however that is no reason to totally ignore the logic in any evidence.

If Trump, or Jim Jordan, or any of the other MAGA morons, were to tell you a hundred times a day on Fox that the Earth is flat would you believe it? Or would you just pretend that they are right just because of who they are?

If you agree with our second set of statements above that is what you must be doing….ignoring all evidence, and declaring things are true, even though you know better.
How about instead of doing that you try taking back your once great party and regain trust in your politicians by electing people with conservative values to implement those values? Stop supporting a guy who thinks it is okay to “grab women by he pussy”. Surely, that cannot be in line with your values.

Photo by Adam Schultz

There is a new word creeping into our political dictionary promoted by the Democratic Party. That word is Bidenomics. It is supposed to represent all the various laws and presidential dictates that Biden and the Democrats have implemented in order to correct the economy. They are used to get inflation down, which has to some degree worked but has cost many people the ability to buy a home or get a loan, because the interest rates are ridiculously high.

President Biden loves to look into the camera and in a whispering voice say “it is working”. Is it really? Certainly, if you look at things like unemployment rate yes, that’s coming down very, very low and the inflation, which was at 9% is now at 3%, a great result.

If those things are your measure then certainly it is working, but should that be the measure? There are other measures that are much more important for the people in our country. When the price of eggs, milk, bread, and all other staples that people need are so ridiculously high…. is this Bidenomics really working?

If the people in California are paying $5.80 for a gallon of gasoline is that Bideomics really working? When even people with jobs that are considered to be good paying have to make choices between gasoline or medication or food or insurance or housing is the Bidenomics really working?

It is high time that president Biden and the Democrats wake up to the reality of life. You cannot say to the people that your system is working if this is the result of it. We don’t care that unemployment is low if we can’t afford housing. We don’t care that insurance costs have been capped for people who are on Medicare if we are not on the Medicare system. We don’t care that you say the inflation is down to 3% if we still pay a freaking fortune in the supermarket and we have to live on ramen noodles for a while.

If the Democrats keep up with their current policies then they are assured to make Donald Trump the next president of the United States. Democrats need to understand what real life is like. We don’t care how you measure whether the economy is good or bad. We care how our personal economy is doing. If Democrats don’t do anything soon to improve the economy of the people, and start talking about THAT economy, then they lose our vote.

Don’t tell us it is working when it is only working on paper and not in the real world.

Image credit: Gage Skidmore

Does anybody really like Jim Jordan? It is hard to imagine. He is nothing more then a glory
hunter of average intelligence and no scruples or principles whatsoever, other than that he wants
to promote his own career. For him life decisions are only made for the greater glory of Jim
Jordan.

The big mistake he seems to be making is that he does not understand that this makes him
incredibly unpopular, if not straight out disgusting to large portion of this country. But he
only seems to care about his popularity with the former president. One man without any socially
redeeming qualities trying to curry favor with another.

John Boehner was right when he called Jim Jordan a political terrorist. Jim is often referred to as
Ted Cruz in the extreme. Given Ted’s weaselly, racist, homophobic, fascist, and spineless
character that comparison is quite a statement.

But Jim Jordan is much more dangerous than Ted Cruz. Jim is absolutely ruthless in spreading
his lies. He is sitting so deep up the backside of the former guy that he can’t get out. He firmly
believes that it is the best way to further his career to be the self appointed henchman for the
former guy. And for Jim Jordan all that matters is his career. He will stop at nothing.

Recently he took his judicial committee to New York. Ostensibly this was for the house
committee to investigate, and hear witnesses about, the crime level in New York which he stated
was ridiculous. Of course what he didn’t say is that the crime level in New York is considerably
lower than in his own state of Ohio. It was simply a political ploy to put pressure on Alvin
Bragg, the prosecutor who has indicted the former president.It was no more than a political stunt
paid for with tax money.

In his past there is a great example of his willingness to be the slimiest of all slimes.
When he was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University it was brought to his
attention by a number of students that the head coach was sexually abusing them in the showers
for years. And what did Jim do about it? He buried the story. He did absolutely nothing about it,
because he did not want to get involved with that which would hurt his political ambitions.
Jim Jordan is an example of what is the worst in humanity. This guy does not belong in our
politics, he belongs in Bellevue.

Image credit: DonkeyHotey

Remember when the former guy referred to some countries as shithole countries? Although we don’t like the term, what defines a country as a shithole country? Is it corruption? Probably yes. Is it undemocratic government? Also, probably yes. Is it politicians with a fascist leaning suppressing people’s personal freedom? Absolutely yes.

Now let us see how we in the USA measure up to this. Let’s start with the first one, corruption. We have some of that here. Let’s look at Clarence Thomas. His wife was actively involved in organizing the January 6 insurrection. But Justice Clarence Thomas did not recuse himself from a related case that came before the Supreme Court, in spite of an obvious conflict of interest. That is corruption.

Then, for decades, Justice Thomas accepted lavish vacations on luxury yachts, private airplanes, and in luxury accommodations, from a billionaire with severe Nazi tendencies. He did not declare any of that either. Again, corruption.

Now we learn that the same right-wing billionaire bought a number of real estate properties from Clarence Thomas, which by law the Justice has to report, but didn’t. Surprise? No, systematic corruption.

Then there is the Republican lead House of Representatives where Jim Jordan is corruptly trying to breach the barrier between the judicial and the legislative branches by demanding that Alvin Bragg hands over all the evidence in the investigation into the former president’s corruption trial. Of course, the only reason he wants this information is that he can then give his guy a heads up about what evidence the opposition has. Corruption.

Want more examples of corruption? How about the former guy suing his former lawyer Michael Cohen for $500 million. This is pure witness intimidation. It’s a crime, and it’s corrupt. There are many more examples in the USA about corruption, but we will leave it at this, and move on to the next criteria for being a shithole country. We will note however that by far most of the corruption we see in this country comes from the GOP. That means that the voters have an easy fix.

Now, let’s talk about undemocratic and oppressive government. Main example right now is Ron DeSantis. The Disney corporation did not agree with Ron’s “don’t say gay” bill. As a result Ron tried to take away their lawfully established limited self governing rights. Fortunately, the Disney corporation thwarted that idea.

Next, Ron focused on book banning. Books about Rosa Parks? Shouldn’t be read by children at all according to Ron. Books about the true history of the USA? Students should not be exposed to that either. Ron is on a mission to totally whitewash (pun intended) our history.

LGBTQ+ events? Ban them! Transgender bathroom rights? No way! Transgender athletes? Also, no way. Taking in asylum seekers from Texas and then putting them on a plane and sending them unannounced to Martha’s Vineyard? Nothing is below Ron.

Oh, and to “fight crime” Ron now signed a law that allows concealed carry of a handgun without a permit in Florida. Yeah, that is really gonna reduce the number of murders isn’t it?

They don’t come any more corrupt and undemocratic than Clarence Thomas, Jim Jordan, other Republican house members, the former president, and Ron DeSantis. And how about suppressing people’s personal freedoms? That certainly must be a sign of a shithole country.

A number of states have not only made abortion effectively illegal, they have also created laws that make it illegal to assist women who need an abortion, not just by treating them, but even by driving them to the hospital. Or helping them get out of state. All for something as fundamental as women’s personal healthcare, and having control over their own bodies.

In many cases there is not even an exception for rape, incest, or for women at risk of losing their life. Teenagers are being dragged into court for trying to terminate a pregnancy that is the result of incest, or trying to get out of state treatment. Hundreds of women being forced to have a child by a rapist. All of these oppressive laws are created by Republican politicians in deep red states. Again, for the voters there is an easy fix.

We love this country, but we seem to be on our way to becoming a shithole country if corruption, fascist behavior, and oppressive government are all the trademarks.

The GOP of old is gone. That party is now ruled by exactly the kind of people that will turn this country into a shithole country.

It is time for some of those in the Republican Party, if they still exist, who have a spine, and a common sense of decency, to take back their party or start another one. In the absence of that it is up to us, the voters, to take care of this.