Thom Hartmann describes, in considerable detail, Republicans’ rightward march to fascism over the last 40-plus years, and I can only add two things: one, that Democrats could very easily link Mr. Trump calling our soldiers “losers” and “suckers” with Tommy Tuberville’s 80 million military holds in campaign ads, and two, it’s not enough to say Donald Trump will be a lame duck if he wins in 2024 (which will be how many Republican voters rationalize voting for him again), because if he can get his votaries to shoot enough people, he’ll be much closer to an America where folks like him can do what they like and no one else can. Which is, of course, the essence of the fascist impulse.
Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett has, on at least three occasions, sold millions of dollars in stock shares in which his corporation was trading, which would not only strike virtually anyone as a conflict of interest, but which Mr. Buffett has said out loud would be a conflict of interest. OK, I guess he’ll say that he said he shouldn’t be buying stocks Berkshire buys and he merely sold stocks Berkshire bought, but once you confront that time he boosted Wells Fargo stock on TV right after selling millions of dollars of Wells Fargo stock (or the fact that he’s called for higher income taxes on the rich but not higher investment taxes), that’d seem like hair-splitting. Anyway, so much for “the one billionaire we like”!
The good folks of the Pennridge School District in Bucks County, PA, managed to boot all five Moms for Liberty members from their school board on Election Day, and when I read that “Moms for Liberty, in the end, was a very expensive trap that the Republicans built for themselves,” I can’t help but respond that this trap is merely emblematic of the much larger trap Republicans have built for themselves – all they can do now is create hysterical dramas to win elections in the short term (which doesn’t always work; see “crime, hysteria about”), because once they have power, they either use it to directly hurt people (as the Moms for Liberty-dominated school board did) or create even more hysterical dramas. People hate book banning, after all, and people only “hate” Black/Brown/gay/trans folks because right-wingers want to distract them from the fact that their economic policies have taken their livelihoods and happiness away.
When I hear that “You Have a Right to Know Why a Health Insurer Denied Your Claim,” but “Some Insurers Still Won’t Tell You,” I’m reminded that a big reason we don’t let corporations get so big in the first place is so they can’t break the law with impunity like this. I mean, if the law tells a corporation to stop hurting people, and that corporation simply refuses to stop hurting people, that corporation is injuring our civilization, and deserves to die for it. (I mean, a corporation is a thing, not a person, so calling for its death isn’t “uncivil.” And don’t listen to folks who cry out “if you kill a corporation you’ll kill all the jobs!” Why, corporations spend virtually all their time killing jobs already! Think how many small businesses can start in their absence, doing work that actually helps people, and employing people they can’t regard as mere marks on a ledger the way corporations do.)
You know how Rep. James Comer (E-KY) has been banging his saucepan about a $200,000 loan Jim Biden paid to Joe Biden in between Joe Biden’s terms in the Executive branch? Well, guess what Mr. Comer has in his own past! “According to Kentucky property records, Comer and his own brother have engaged in land swaps related to their family farming business. In one deal — also involving $200,000, as well as a shell company — the more powerful and influential Comer channeled extra money to his brother, seemingly from nothing. Other recent land swaps were quickly followed with new applications for special tax breaks, state records show. All of this, perplexingly, related to the dealings of a family company that appears to have never existed on paper.” Republicans have represented Kentucky’s 1st district since the 1994 wave, but the district actually has more registered Democrats; I presume a lot of these Democrats have been voting Republican for decades without bothering to change their affiliation, but I still see an opportunity for Democrats here. If he were to lose his 2024 re-election bid, Mr. Comer would no doubt whine about “the weaponization of the vote.”
Finally, West Virginia Democratic (?) Senator Joe Manchin won’t run for re-election in 2024, and rather than recount his various follies, let’s just say don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya. And no, I don’t care about the excuse that Mr. Manchin “represented a red state,” because Byron Dorgan represented a red state for 18 years, and he kept winning because he fought “free” trade, corporate crime, and bad media policy; everyone, liberal or conservative, approved of him for these good works. Yeah, I first said that over a dozen years ago, and I guess I’ll just have to keep saying it until our leaders finally learn.