Why Democrats Must Retake Control of the House of Representatives

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). (

As pathetic and hypocrisy-filled as Paul Ryan has been as Speaker of the House of Representatives, his likely successor should Ryan be forced out of the speakership before the end of his term or if Republicans manage to hold control of the House after the midterm elections, would likely be far worse in countless ways.  As one former Republican White House official puts it, Rep. Kevin McCarthy would be a "mindless" Trump sycophant and an out right threat to constitutional government.   As a former Republican myself, McCarthy embodies much of what is wrong with today's Christofascist/white supremacist controlled GOP.  The take away?  It is crucial that Democrats retake control of the House and protect the nation from the likes of McCarthy.  A column in the Washington Post looks at why McCarthy is so dangerous.  Here are excerpts:

On the evidence of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s CNN interviewover the weekend, the likely next speaker of the House is a mindless sycophant and a threat to the constitutional order.
 Confronted with a simple ethical question — would he condemn demonstrable White House lies in covering up President Trump’s role in drafting his son’s account of the now-infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians — McCarthy, a California Republican, was initially dumbstruck, then shifted into a prerecorded attack on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. It would have been easy enough to say: “The president and his team are hurting themselves with unnecessary falsehoods. Their overall case, however, is strong.” But such is the atmosphere of intimidation in the Republican Party that affirming the Ninth Commandment is seen as an act of disloyalty. When the king is a liar, truth becomes treason.

McCarthy seems to be more of a memory-foam Republican — taking the exact shape of presidential pressure. Ryan was clearly uncomfortable when ignoring his principles. McCarthy seems to view surrender to the president as a matter of principle — as part of the tribal code of the partisan. His is the loyalty of the lap dog, the devotion of the dupe.

This is problematic for at least two reasons. First, Trump and his team are testing the limits of executive power in increasingly bold and reckless ways. . . . Trump and his lawyers are not just asserting presidential freedom of action, but presidential freedom from accountability. . . . This means obstruction of justice by the president is a practical impossibility, because his actions are the definition of justice.

Since, in this view, any violation of federal law by the president (including, according to his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, the shooting of former FBI director James B. Comey) could be immediately self-pardoned — and any resulting investigation ended on his order — the only relevant legal check during his time in office is impeachment. 

This brings us to the second, less obvious reason McCarthy’s sycophancy is alarming: the strength of the economy. A 3.8 percent unemployment rate — the lowest in 18 years — is good for the country. It also creates an atmosphere in which a leader might grab powers with less dissent. This is precisely what happened in Turkey, where Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s oppressive populism was enabled by strong economic growth. The same might be argued about Venezuela, where Hugo Chávez initially used his nation’s oil wealth to ease the way toward authoritarianism.

American institutions are stronger than those of Turkey or Venezuela. But one reason they are stronger is a balance of institutional power in which the legislature is willing to check the excessive ambitions of the executive branch.

Would McCarthy be willing to play that role as speaker? Consider the scenario in which Republicans narrowly maintain control of the House in November’s midterm elections — which Trump would claim as complete vindication for his approach to governing.

In this environment, will the FBI survive as an independent institution? Will all the corruption of Trump’s campaign team, his White House appointments, his family and his own past business and political dealings be washed away in a flood of self-interested pardons? Will Trump be able to harass and intimidate his enemies in politics, business and the media with impunity?

[Trump]The president has now claimed the entire executive branch as his private fiefdom, and every federal law enforcement official as his personal servant. Would a Speaker McCarthy stand athwart Trumpism yelling “Stop!”? There is no reason to think it.

McCarthy has been a leader in Trump’s troop of enablers. America urgently requires leaders made of sterner stuff.

Is Trump Preparing His Base for the Worse or Insurrection?

Today, Donald Trump yet again attacked the news media and ranted to his Kool-Aid drinking supporters that the entire Russiagate investigation was based on fabrications an suggested that it may have as its goal to steal the rightful election from him - and, of course, them.  This is taking Trump's demagoguery to new levels and suggests he may seek to cause a severe upheaval if Robert Mueller's investigation produces damaging information on Trump, his family members, or campaign.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at this growing prospect.  Here are highlights:

President Trump is again attacking the media this morning, and his broadsides carry a newly ominous edge: He is both faulting the media for allegedly downplaying the size and intensity of support from his base and accusing them of trying to deliberately weaken that support for him. This comes some 24 hours after deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein told “Fox News Sunday” that if the special counsel finds evidence of crimes in the course of his probe into Russian sabotage of our election, it may be within the scope of his investigation to pursue them. In these seemingly disparate developments, it is hard not to discern the potential for a volatile, combustible combination.

Because Trump is undermining our democratic norms and processes in so many ways, it is often easy to focus on each of them in isolation, rather than as part of the same larger story. But, taken together, they point to a possible climax in which Trump, cornered by revelations unearthed by Robert Mueller III’s probe and by ongoing media scrutiny, seeks to rally his supporters behind the idea that this outcome represents not the imposition of accountability by functioning civic institutions, but rather an effort to steal the election from him — and from them.

It bears repeating that Mueller’s investigation is looking at how a hostile foreign power may have sabotaged our democracy, and at whether the Trump campaign colluded with it, and at conduct by Trump himself that came after the election: Whether the firing of former FBI director James B. Comey after a demand for his loyalty was part of a pattern of obstruction of justice. The first of these has been attested to by our intelligence services, and evidence of the second (at least in the form of a willingness to collude) and the third of these has been unearthed by dogged scrutiny by the news media. It is hardly an accident that Trump continues to cast doubt on the credibility of both those institutions, even as he and his spokespeople continue to cast the entire affair as an effort to reverse the election by illegitimate means.

This threatens damage on multiple levels. By casting the entire Russia story as fiction, Trump seeks to undermine the credibility of efforts to determine how our electoral system might be vulnerable to further attacks, separate and irrespective of what is learned about the Trump campaign’s conduct, possibly making it less likely that we secure our system against any such future sabotage.

 [I]t’s also easy to envision the flip side: Trump demagoguing his supporters into a frenzy of rage, at rallies that are exactly like the ones we’ve seen in recent days, in the face of legitimate revelations.

[I]t’s likely that more future revelations about Trump’s unfitness for the presidency will further undercut his efforts to cast institutions holding him accountable as illegitimate. But Trump is already giving every indication that he will go all out in trying. And how much damage that will cause is anyone’s guess.

Be very, very afraid.

Time Magazine Cover Captures Tea Party Goal

While the United States Constitution contemplates that the civil and religious rights of minorities are to be protected from the tyranny of the majority, in the general course of governance the idea was that majority consensus would be controlling, both in terms of election decisions and in terms on Congressional action.  This latter concept is what the Republican Party/Tea Party is seeking to destroy.  The cover of Time Magazine, above, sums it up well.   Daily Kos elaborates further:

Yes, this image perfectly encapsulates the current government shutdown, in which a fringe band of GOP representatives in the House have effectively held the federal government hostage (with the help of the GOP's spineless leadership).

However, this image also perfectly encapsulates, unintentionally, the extent to which our elected officials truly represent America's citizenry today. For as mainstream pundits yap about which monuments might close, the wealth gap between those who have, and those who have not, is larger than it's ever been.

New Yorkers with two jobs are increasingly becoming homeless. Metropolises are becoming income distribution wastelands. Things are getting worse for so many.

And today, a small collection of lawmakers is focused on shutting down the government, rather than ensure it functions for those who need it most.  The majority is not ruling. In so many ways.

Very well said.  And very disturbing.

Christian TV Host Asks God for Military Coup to Overthrow U.S. Government

I have repeatedly argued that the Christofascists pose a clear and present danger to America's constitutional form of government.  It is no coincidence that the Tea Party element in the Republican Party members of the House of Representatives have shut down the government and are seeking to nullify the 2012 election results and override a ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the Affordable Health Care Act.  There is an approximately 85% overlap between Tea Party members and the Christofascists.  One might even make the argument that the rise of the Tea Party label has been the result of an attempt to hide the Christian Right moniker which carries such a negative connotation with non-far right religious fanatics.  The true extremism of the Christofascists was recently exposed by the  rantings of Christian TV host Rick Joyner (pictured above) who is praying for a military overthrow of the U. S. Government.  Here are highlights via Raw Story:

A Christian TV host this week called on God to consider a “military takeover” of President Barack Obama’s government because it could be the only way to save the country from tyranny.

On his Monday Internet broadcast, Morning Star TV’s Rick Joyner predicted that democracy was “doomed” unless the Lord imposed martial law.

“We’re headed for serious tyranny, a terrible tyranny right now,” he continued. “But guess what? The kingdom is coming, the Kingdom of God is coming. And America is not the Kingdom of God. I think we have been used in some wonderful and powerful ways by God, we’ve been one of the most generous nations in history. We’ve done so much good.”

“That’s why I appeal to the Lord: Don’t let us be totally destroyed, please raise up those who will save us. And as I’ve been telling friends for a long time, no election is going to get the right person in there because the system is so broken.”

Joyner added that the “only hope is a military takeover, martial law.”

Last time I looked, advocating for the overthrow of the the government was a crime - even treason.  Why isn't Joyner under investigation or, better yet, in custody.  He clearly is trying to  encourage violence and insurrection.  I am so over Christian extremist being afforded deference when they deserve none whatsoever.  Making the situation even worse is the fact that Joyner is likely living the good life while fleecing the ignorant and gullible.  Con artist have more integrity than "godly" folks like Joyner and far too many occupants of pulpits across America.