Sunday, March 27, 2022

Dear Dems - playing nice and going "by the book" isn't respected in the 2020s. Using power for good is.

Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times had a prescient observation about this whole disgraceful era.

Time and again, we see Republicans in power (ab)using the power they have (or even not, in the case of the US Senate), and being allowed to throw out charges and claims without being countered, Meanwhile, far too many Dems refuse to use the power they have been given and default to "going high" with "proper procedure" and worrying about future precedents and convictions.

That's not something that is rewarded these days. Not in outcomes (as amoral Republicans drag out court proceedings against them), and not much by voters, from what I can tell. Take a look at how Assembly Speaker Robbin' Vos is trying to stall and hide from showing the public what he and the rest of the Legislative Republicans are wasting hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on their Big Lie investigation.

Dane County Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn told Vos’s attorney that her patience was wearing thin as Vos has yet to produce deleted emails and other messages sought in the lawsuit brought by liberal watchdog group American Oversight.

The judge earlier this month gave Vos until Wednesday to provide the deleted email and text messages, or explain why they can’t be retrieved. Vos attorney Ronald Stadler told the judge on Wednesday that the work to retrieve Vos’s deleted emails from his legislative account was ongoing and he would need up to two weeks to review whatever is recovered.

“I don’t know if I’m getting back 200 emails or 200,000 emails,” he said.

Stadler also said he had an expert witness who would testify that deleted text messages could not be recovered.
ENOUGH! If everyday people like us failed to appear in court with what was required, we would not be given another 2 weeks to figure it out. Lock Napoleon Up and/or Fine the F*ck Out of Him! That's all these scumbags understand, they think the rest is a game they can rig and eventually make people grow tired of watching, which removes the consequences of breaking the law.

It's the same strategy that TrumpWorld is using with the January 6 investigation. Sure, the Committee has gathered evidence and Merrick Garland's Department of "Justice" has gotten some convictions of the yokel foot-soldiers. But we need public hearings that are EVENTS that grabs people's attention. We need perp walks and recognizable heads on the wall.

We have too many people in our legal system that care more about convictions over indictments. And it's the indictments, and the proof to the public that everyone has to face the music when they break the laws, which is what this country is crying out for. Meanwhile, Republicans in Wisconsin can waste time and taxpayer dollars making claims and holding hearing on the Big Lie that ultimately result in....nothing.

And as for the GOP's claims of "absentee ballot harvesting", one the Wisconsin Elections Commissioners points out the weakness and absurdity of that charge.

But it got on RW "news radio" in Wisconsin and tricked a lot of rubes into thinking "something was going on," didn't it? Which is exactly why Robbin' Vos wanted this charade to happen. Too many Dems think this is an academic battle of ideas where following the rules gets rewarded, when we are in a PROPAGANDA WAR where feelings and spectacle are a big part of winning.

Which goes back to the earlier post from Bouie, and why the wife of a sitting Supreme Court Justice felt that she could conspire with the Trump White House to keep the losing candidate in power after the November 2020 election. Because her husband was willing to help the cause.

The proper response to this in a functioning democracy would be to demand Clarence Thomas' resignation, and failing that, have him promptly impeached with ugly details revealed that suck in a lot of other Republicans. Do I think that'll happen? No, because DC Dems will figure that it's not worth taking up time to impeach someone when 2/3 of the Senate won't remove Clarence Thomas from SCOTUS. Instead, they'll try to pass the buck and ask SCOTUS to do the right thing, which won't happen.

In a country where corruption and lawlessness run rampant at the highest levels of Republican power, the typical person sees little being changed about that, and voters will give up and think there is little benefit to having Dems in power. Instead of debating people who ignore the rules, Dems need to hit back and hit hard, use the power that the voters gave them, and file charges and impose penalties that reiterate how crooked and scummy the entire GOP is.

Republicans won't stop this destructive garbage until they face punishments, be they financial, political, or legal. And Dems in power need to , stop waiting for it to happen, and start making it happen whether it goes by "the book", or it doesn't. We shouldn't have to keep waiting for public hearings and criminal trials against the ringleaders of January 6th because we need to gather evidence to "get the full picture and the best case." And we shouldn't be seeing Dems sit silent when Republicans launch smears and lies in the halls of government that get amplified through the social media BubbleWorld.

The everyday person doesn't have the time or privilege to hit back against these thugs, but Dems in power do. And they need to, or else the 2020s will be an even worse version of the decline in democracy and the breakdown of the rule of law that we saw in the 2010s.

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