I have a theory about the missing Secret Service texts on and around 6 January 2021. I believe there were some agents close to DJT who were aware of intent and request to have Mike Pence decertify the legal and fair democratic election. The mob at the Capitol was intended to create, in-part, a pretense to get Pence out of the Capitol and somewhere Trump and his people could continue to press the issue with Pence. When Pence said he wouldn’t play ball with the “Green Bay Sweep” then the disturbance which was started and encouraged by Trump was intended to disrupt and delay the election certification, and after he could not go to the Capitol himself, he was going to have Pence brought to him, and continue to delay and push on Pence, possibly while calling for martial law. The text from Trump Secret Service team to the Pence Secret Service team would likely be highly revealing. Pence refusing to leave the Capitol despite his Secret Service trying to get him into a car, was the brave move which enabled the election certification, preserving our democracy along with the hundreds of others who fought to protect the Capitol and our elected representatives. Quite interesting these texts are lost to history… ask yourself who does this protect?
Category Archives: Blog
Democracy at Risk
“Farcical Fascism is still Fascism”
by Charlie Sykes
The most interesting thing I heard this morning… as they discussed how Trump pursued ridiculous conspiracy theories on election fraud, including bizarre ideas that Italian satellites were changing Trump votes to Biden votes. Laughable of course, but there were people willing to believe, willing to pursue this and willing to be his stooges in our government for the explicit purpose of overturning a free and fair election in order to maintain power, and use violence to do so… this is fascism pure and simple. My profound fear is the next time a fascist finds his or her way to the top of our government, he or she may be more calculating and competent at manipulation of people and our government, and our democracy will die.
Fascists kill democracies. Hitler and his Brown Shirts did exactly this in Germany of the 1930’s. He came to power by taking advantage of runaway inflation, grievances and underlying racist lies. Listen to Republicans trying to deflect, using inflation in equivalency to the death of democracy!
Hitler used levers of a democratic government to rise to power and then kill the democracy to become a dictator.
More recently, in the last three decades, Putin followed the same play book successfully in Russia. Because Trump was unsuccessful and cartoonish in his approach, doesn’t make him any less of a fascist.
There is a direct line between Hitler’s Nazi’s and the MAGA crowd. If you still buy into the big lie and support the insurrection, if you still believe Trump will make America Great Again, then you are a fascist… and have no right to the term patriot.
From August 2018:
Republican Party
…on its way to a dark place.
There is a radicalization happening in the Republican Party. Belief in the big lie of a stolen election in 2020 is no longer a fringe belief, but has become mainstream in the GOP. Conspiracy theories offered by fringe groups such as Critical Race Theory being taught in grade school, has morphed into acception of the Great Replacement Theory within the mainstream. The idea that Jews and a cabal of elites are bringing non-white, non-european heritage peoples into our country via immigration intentionally to change the voting demographic to disadvantage whites… A conspiracy theory offered by white supremacists for years, is now repeated by Republican politicians.
I predict this all goes too far, and candidates supported by this newly-mainstream republican radicalization can win in primaries. They cannot win in a general election and will ultimately fail in elections this coming fall. The concern this raises, is what will happen next? Where will these fringe, now-mainstream right-wing ideas evolve to? Where do they go when they find they cannot get their grievances addressed using the democratic process. Will they give up? I fear they won’t and there will be violence. They will claim the elections are rigged. A rise of militancy, and marches, and protests, and provocative violence is coming.
Trump and others, including Fox News celebrities have helped to mainstream these ideas, and they will be consumed by them, because you cannot play, as long as they have, with fire without eventually getting burned. Their house will eventually burn down and will have to rebuild, just as our country had to rebuild after the Civil War…. Ironically after the assassination of the founder of the GOP who rid our country of the stain of slavery… and was thus vilified by the white supremacists of the time.
Happy Easter…
May your day be blessed with joy and peace
Christ is Risen!
NATO Strengthened, China Accession
Russia, and by that I mean Vladimir Putin is unwittingly accomplishing two things in the matter of weeks which would otherwise have taken a decade or more.
One is the unification and strengthening of NATO. This is clear and playing out in the united front being shown as defenses are strengthened. Germany committing to 2.5% GDP expenditure in defense spending is extraordinary. The threat from Russia is now so very clear and apparent. This has been written about and spoken about quite clearly in the last two weeks, and requires no further discussion other than to say that the Trump administration weakened NATO alliance, and Putin corrected that weakness in just a few weeks.
The second impact Putin unwittingly caused is a bit less obvious, the rise of China. I’ll make the case for it here. His actions, will result quite obviously in economic disaster for Russia, while allowing a great acceleration for China. Europe will be slowed by energy issues, and dealing with millions of refugees for another year or more. China seeing the challenge it is for Russia to take over Ukraine via land invasion, will think twice and maybe thrice about threatening invasion of Taiwan, an island not so easily accessed.
If China gives up its obsession with Taiwan, they then can reduce their defense expenditures and double down on economic growth, presenting an alternative to US and Europe for second and third world development. China will seek to secure critical natural resources through either the raw materials and/or the processing of those materials… they are doing so today for critical battery technology that is needed for electric vehicles. This market will grow as threats to oil have caused price increases and the world seeks greener power. China will emerge very rapidly as a superpower, and will distance themselves from Russia once it serves their needs to do so… which is after Russia bloodies itself against the patriotism of a democratic Ukraine.
Putin, inadvertently strengthened NATO and paved the way for China to accelerate their position as a superpower… interesting.
Ukraine
Ukraine is in a fight for existence, not just existence of a people and a culture, but for the right to self-determination. A fight for freedom! This is the same fight that the United States Capitol Police were in on January 6, 2021. The fight to preserve democracy. In that moment, it was every bit as existencial as facing Russian tanks driven to attack by an autocrat with a megalomania messiah complex… Putin, believing that he can change history and reverse the will of the Ukrainian people. This is not about a threat that Ukraine posed to Russia, this is about raw naked aggression and power and his threat to use his nuclear weapons to keep others from interfering. He justifies his actions with his own big lies, he justifies on the basis of power. This is a cousin of the autocratic, lying, megalomania that was Trump’s attempt to stay in power and banish the will of the people in democratic America. You wonder why Trump idolizes Putin…. well you see it on display right now. Anti-democratic autocrats hate government of and by the people. We should be learning a great lesson right now.
God Help Ukraine! God Save democracy!
NFL Playoff Weekend… Wow!
What a weekend of NFL post season excitement!
The Bengals are finally going to an AFC championship game, they got past a very good Tennessee Titans team. Joe Burrows looks great, but this was a great defensive struggle, with remarkable plays. In the end, the Bengals win with a last second field goal of 52 yards!
San Francisco comes from behind thanks to superior special teams play, and took the lead on a cold snowy field in Green Bay with a last second field goal to put a dagger in the hearts of GB fans! The winning quarterback is Jimmy Garoppolo and not MVP, Aaron Rodgers.
Our Bucs made an incredible comeback, and lost at the very end. It was hard to watch, Cooper Kupp running past our defense, and catching critical passes from Matthew Stafford, striking deep into our hearts and delivering a win for LA, in what we can only hope is not the last game for the GOAT, Tom Brady!
And the game of the weekend… maybe of all time, was Bills and Chiefs. Three lead changes in the last two minutes, and a tying field goal to get to overtime. Josh Allen played an amazing game as did Patrick Mahomes. Allen was nearly perfect, he just made one mistake. He called tails on the OT coinflip, and never got to touch the ball again as Mahomes lead his team to an OT touchdown!
Wow!
M GO BLUE! TM 42 ❤️❤️❤️❤️
Michigan Wins Big Ten Championship!!
Hail to the Victors!
A 42 to 3 win over Iowa that tells the world that Michigan football is back. But there is more to this story than great football for us to understand.
The Michigan team wore a maize colored patch in the shape of a “Block O” to represent Oxford High School, the scene of this week’s most horrific of school shootings. The patch featured the initials “TM” and the number 42 with four blue hearts below it. The “TM 42” pays tribute to Tate Myre, a football player at Oxford who was one of the four students killed, and has been reported to have rushed the gunman in attempt to end the carnage. The other three victims being honored through the four hearts on the patch are Hana St. Juliana, a basketball and volleyball player; Madisyn Baldwin, an aspiring artist; and Justin Shilling, a member of the bowling and golf teams.
They had the family of Tate Myre at the game for the coin toss… It was a good reminder that there are more important things and greater heros than those that play a game for a championship.
As Michigan scored for the final time, and the scoreboard turned to 42, I have no doubt that many saw the poetry of the moment.
Answering Questions
This morning, as I was reading some poems to my 7-year-old grandson, he asked… “are poems supposed to answer a question?”. I said yes, they should reveal a truth about us, about nature and thus answer a question that we may not even have thought to ask. Well my answer to him was not quite that complete… but in the moment, he was answering a question that I have about the purpose of poetry that is born when I sit in front of a keyboard and a blank page.
Poetry is as simple as answering questions.
Questions are inspiring
Answers are discovery
Understanding is growing
Growing is change
Change is constant
Adventure is energy
Energy is passion
Passion is life
Life is love
answering questions
It is for Real and So Very Near
As a climate conference ends in Scotland, and 200 countries agree to a plan to return with a “strengthened” plan to curb greenhouse emissions. We have the success of the commitment to plan for a plan to cheer. We have developed nations committing to help poor nations with their plans. We have the historic achievement of admitting that burning coal is a principal cause of our planet’s warming. Duh. We have words in the agreement to “phase-down” coal… political commitments, and words with plenty of wiggle-room. Valuable or not? Only actions will tell us over the next decade. The results will be self-evident to the next generation.
The good news is the countries of the world are acting together (or play acting) to address a global threat. The COVID-19 Pandemic was a warm-up act to the world cataclysm which climate change could be, and being slow to work together and act to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees C will make a pandemic that killed over 5 million people over the last 22 months look like a minor annoyance.
IT IS FOR REAL AND SO VERY NEAR
Just as the virus cared little about its name
World warming, relentless is much the same.
It is coming to your and my neighborhood
To extract a cost as we were told it would.
Politicians and leaders plan to make a plan
about how we should all be making a stand.
But we don’t give it much more of a thought
beyond, maybe we won’t need the coat we bought.
Everything is local and personal, until it’s not.
Everyone for their own liberties, until it’s too hot.
Everyone for themselves until we see the children
suffering the flood and droughts of a climate cauldron.
We will care more when it’s too late for our kind
and we’ll beat our breasts and seek miracles we find
in science that will shrug and say, but didn’t you hear
when we said that this is for real, and oh so very near.