The mechanism for holding members of the modern Republican Party seems almost non-existent.

Although taking an oath in a court trial and then lying leaves the liar open to a charge of perjury which carries a penalty, there are no penalties for breaking oaths in public office carries no such penalties. This was on display when the leader of the Senate majority told the world that he was coordinating their response with the President’s impeachment defense team and then he and they obviously lied when taking the oath as jurors in that trial. No penalties at all were levied.

Similarly, there was no penalty involved when President Trump was blackmailing the President of Ukraine into announcing an official inquiry into the Bidens. He definitely broke the “law” that required him to notify Congress when he held up money already voted for Ukraine’s defense against Russia. Except for the fact that his action happened to have been brought to public attention, he would have gotten away with it.

Trump has brought impunity to the highest office in the land, wielding a wrecking ball to American democracy

Most of the 74,222,957 Americans who voted to re-elect Donald Trump – 46.8%of the votes cast in the 2020 presidential election – don’t hold Trump accountable for what he’s done to America.

Their acceptance of Trump’s behavior will be his vilest legacy.

Nearly forty years ago, political scientist James Q Wilson and criminologist George Kelling observed that a broken window left unattended in a community signals that no one cares if windows are broken there. The broken window is thereby an invitation to throw more stones and break more windows.

The message: do whatever you want here because others have done it and got away with it.

Americans’ acceptance of Trump’s behavior will be his vilest legacy

Can those wayward Americans learn that with freedom comes responsibility? Time the GOP was held accountable for what it has allowed, even encouraged.

Excuse me while I go out to hug a tree and go for a hike in ungroomed nature with my dog.

I feel your pain. However, what you think is ungroomed nature may not be so.

See George Monbiot’s book, Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding

The fact that roughly 70 million people voted for that shitbag despite (h)is continuous criminal behavior and complete lack of even an attempt to deal with the covid issue is appalling.

That lack of concern, and, the mentality behind Brexit in the UK (disaster capitalism sold as freedom from foreigners to white Brits), anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers across the western world, to name but a few reasons, leaves me in despair regarding our ability to solve the current climate crisis in time to prevent even bigger disasters than we are already seeing. It’s a wholesale rejection of science, particularly when science interferes with the comfort of one’s own lifestyle, or even worse threatens to raise the lifestyle of those you’ve been taught to hate.

Acting like, or actually being, a psychopath is advantageous to executive status in the corporate world (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-small-business/wp/2016/09/16/gene-marks-21-percent-of-ceos-are-psychopaths-only-21-percent/.) At a fundamental level capitalist societies encourage a dog-eat-dog view of the world, a pathology that is inimical to nature, while religions blind people to reality and personal responsibility by stating it’s all “God’s” will and promising a better “next life” as long as you do what they say and pay them for it.

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” ~Philip K. Dick should be taught in school.

Industrialization led to mass urbanization where every sq. m. of land is deemed to valuable to leave wild, where parks are carefully groomed or absent, has, in turn, led to a dulling of people’s sense of connection to nature. Without that connection disregard for environmental woes becomes ever more apparent.

Excuse me while I go out to hug a tree and go for a hike in ungroomed nature with my dog.

Happy winter solstice to all. May we find some sanity in the new year.

“Had Donald Trump been more intelligent with an inkling about governance,…”

The fact that roughly 70 million people voted for that shitbag despite is continuous criminal behavior and complete lack of even an attempt to deal with the covid issue is appalling.

The fact that we have rickA and mikeN as examples of the type of morality- and integrity-free racists that support him is also chilling.

Had Donald Trump been more intelligent with an inkling about governance, we might well be on the verge of a second term for a President of that criminal organization and on the verge of the second stage of the metamorphosis of the U. S. A. into a full-fledged oligarchy like the Russia so admired by Trump and minions such as Michael Flynn.

* Quoted from a television conversation with Steven Schmidt, founder of the Lincoln Project.

Just in case knowing that desantis ordered florida’s health dept to lie about virus numbers didn’t let you know what a scumbag he is, he’s provided more evidence.

https://www.businessinsider.com/floridas-governor-desantis-wont-prioritize-essential-workers-for-covid-vaccine-2020-12

“Or not as the case may be if you are too poor, or otherwise disadvantaged”

Or, if you have the bad luck to be a florida resident, it might be too late, since desantis meddled with the state health agency’s reporting on numbers and spread from the start of the problem, and actually ordered it to stop all messaging around covid 19 in the month leading up to the election in order to give the message that things were under control.

It’s hard to get through things in the best of settings: when you have leaders who are morally bankrupt, which is the case for republicans now, it’s exponentially more difficult.

“…as security guards…”

I’ve never understood why mercenaries were referred to as security guards.

Pardons sink Trump further into swamp of his own shamelessness

Analysis: President sanctions first federal execution of a woman in 67 years – but war criminals, fraudsters and Russia-linked cronies go free…

Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heards worked as security guards for Blackwater, owned by Erik Prince, a prominent supporter of Trump and brother of his education secretary, Betsy DeVos. All were serving long prison terms for a 2007 massacre of 14 unarmed civilians in Baghdad.

After their trial in 2014, Ronald Machen Jr, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, said: “These Blackwater contractors unleashed powerful sniper fire, machine guns, and grenade launchers on innocent men, women, and children. Today they were held accountable for that outrageous attack and its devastating consequences for so many Iraqi families.”

The pardoning of the four led political opponents and legal commentators, even those who thought they had grown immune to Trump outrage, to reach for words like “disgusting” and “grotesque”. With just 29 days left in office his burn-it-all-down brazenness knows no bounds.

And this is by the creature that RickA supported, if you lie down with those who have fleas so you will be similarly afflicted. Trump is the true traitor of the USA, the penalty for that is….?