Potpourri-v15.0
You’ve Heard Of ALEC
Right: the American Legislative Exchange Council. What do you suppose they exchange?
Here’s a maddening investigative piece from Atlanta’s NBC-11, The Back Room: Where Georgia Bills Are Made to help you understand. It does a nice job exposing what ALEC and its funding lobbyist buddies are about. Here’s another piece from the Center For Media and Democracy. This stuff goes on in every state and at the national level, all out of sight – out of your sight.
ALEC is the high court of pay-to-play. It’s where bills are written by industrial giants for the benefit of legislators and – guess what? – industrial giants; but not for you. It’s where big business tithes millions to get back billions and where politicians are on the take. It’s where you get sold out.
Now that you’ve had a look, let’s revisit that question about ALEC: What do you suppose they exchange? Right. They exchange money for massive influence and control. Is that okay with you?
A Little Kindness
Herschel Walker with his participation trophy
Poor Herschel Walker has said many times that he’s transparent. For example,
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– He said he was a member of law enforcement. He even showed a police badge given to him by the sheriff of Johnson County. It was for community support, not for law enforcement.
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– He said he was in a police shoot out. He wasn’t.
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– He said that he graduated from the University of Georgia. He never graduated.
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– There are multiple credible domestic violence claims against him.
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– And, of course, he is categorically against abortions no matter what, even as the mother of one of his four illegitimate children provided proof that he paid for her to have an abortion.
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Herschel is transparent, all right, but it’s only because of fact checkers who show him to be, let’s say, a few slices short of a loaf. Yet, let’s cut him some slack for his over-abundant truth transgressions and his inability to speak any language but Paleolithic Word Salad. He took some vicious hits to the head playing football and there’s no telling how scrambled he is intra-cranially. We don’t know if he’s lying or if he’s so permanently injured that he doesn’t know the truth.
So, instead of sending Herschel to the U.S. Senate, let’s send him to a facility capable of doing brain scans. Forgive him, voter, for he knows not what he says.
But don’t forgive the Machiavellian Republicans supporting and promoting him in order to gain power for themselves. They know what they’re doing and that he’s terribly damaged goods. They know he hasn’t the ability to meet even minimal standards of performance in the Senate. These Republicans don’t care about Herschel Walker, Georgia or the United States of America. All they care about is power for themselves.
So, let’s extend a little kindness and help Herschel to help himself by sending Rafael Warnock back to the Senate.
Important to Remember
William Barr seems to have conveniently discovered a small whiff of integrity by not lying to protect Trump from the January 6 Committee. That was at least a tiny bit refreshing, coming from this guy who wants to make the Commander-in-Chief an Imperial President, a monarch. Barr’s anti-democracy values made him a perfect pick to serve Trump (not the nation) to aid the Great Deceiver in:
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– ripping migrant children from their parents
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– distorting the findings (okay, lying about the findings) of Robert Mueller’s investigation in order to manipulate public opinion for the benefit of Trump
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– allegedly bringing DOJ cases in order to settle Trump’s political scores
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– hamstringing the prosecutions and the sentencing of Trump’s felonious goons
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See note 5 below
The reason for calling out the Imperial Presidency Whisperer is because he and Stephen “Goebbels” Miller and Louis “stop the mail” DeJoy and many more sycophantic, pathological extremists are who we’ll get if today’s Republicans get their hands on power. Spineless, “Gosh, I sure hope I get to be Speaker of the House” Kevin McCarthy has announced that he will appoint election denier, conspiracy lunatic and stalker of Parkland shooting survivors Marjorie Taylor-Green to be number 2 in the House. “This is the democratic emergency that is Donald Trump.” Many thanks to Rep. Jamie Raskin and his book Unthinkable for that descriptor.
Raskin warns us to be “alive to the perils facing democracy,” questioning, ” . . . will the minority Trump party be able to rule through anti-democratic mechanisms like voter suppression and gerrymandering backed up by political violence?”
The answer to that stunning question depends on you and me.
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Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
Fire the bastards!
The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.
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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
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