Denying their denial of a denial
 
On Wednesday morning May 12 I tuned into CNN to watch coverage of a Congressional hearing that was supposed to delve into the facts concerning what happened on Jan. 6, 2021. Republicans were busy practicing their whirling Dervish kinds of verbal acrobatics in order to wrongly diminish what happened that day and whether the President caused the riot? We were also told that the crowd at the Capitol was really quite peaceful and non-violent, and that the officer who was filmed being crushed by an angry mob, died only because of his heart condition. But how much stress do you suppose one feels when being crushed by an angry mob anyway? DUHH! – enough to  cause a heart attack?

Rep, Jim Jordan wowed the cameras with his typical, sort of bulldog-like spew of words, and his rapid fire auctioneer voice (which seems deliberately designed to confuse). The jest of it seemed to be why it isn’t right for Republicans to question the results of elections in various states, while Democrats always have the right to object to the vote results in States – which they have done several times. However, the entire question ignores the issue at hand by deflecting it and focusing on peripheral issues.

Firstly, both Repubs and Democrats have traditionally understood, that if the vote is very close, differing by less than (0.5 %) a recount can be ordered. But in most of the 2020 swing states the results were not that close. So, to answer Jordan’s question, (as I decipher it), both parties have a perfect right to protest close outcomes, and they always have!

When have Democrats ever denied established recount protocol? And why did Republicans push those protocol’s boundaries to such absurd lengths i.e. failing to mention that several recounts in various states were indeed being done by repubs, and that, Trump tried to pressure several swing states not to certify their electoral college votes! He even expected his own VP to reject the election results on the floor of the Senate the day of the attempted insurrection! And after he  lost more than 60 court challenges, and the SCOTUS he helped fill, (with a 6 to 3 conservative majority), refused to even hear his case. One can only conclude that Trump was actually  beating a dead horse (and still is), in order to somehow overturn the results of the 2020 elections!

 The point is that yes, politicians running for office have a definite right to contest elections (with very close margins of victory), but there has got to be some limit on the number of times they can do this. Otherwise, Al Gore might still be contesting the 2000 election results in Florida, even though most people have now decided that the election was not rigged? And isn’t it really quite silly that he continues to look for some kind of devious miracle that will enable him to be declared the winner?

Trump’s own conservative judges, Republican leaders like Mitch McConnel, Lindsey Graham, Elizabeth Cheney, and even his own Attorney General, have already admitted the truth, yet Cheney has been disciplined and removed from her position in The House. While so many different Republicans have now “reconsidered” the issue. This has all been, and is, completely predictable, since Repubs are great at doing 360 degree turns in order to hold onto power, no matter how many lies it takes, or how long it takes them to deliver on their winner-takes-all decisions – which are all qualities that they are currently projecting onto Democrats!

 Peter W. Johnson
Superior, Wisconsin 

Truth about Liz Cheney    

Today the Republican Party voted one of it’s more influential members, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, out of leadership position. She recognizes and refuses to go along with the biggest lie of the “former guy,” as he’s now often referred to. While an employee of our government for 4 years, it’s reported he told something like 30,000 public lies, including about the pandemic. His biggest lie was that he didn’t lose the 2020 election.

What this and other measures show is that the Republican Party doesn’t feel it can get elected unless it lies, cheats and steals. That’s the real reasons for all the fake “voting protection” laws now being pushed by Republicans. It’s unfortunate and very telling that Rep. Cheney is being punished for sticking to the real truth, not the “fake” truth. Unlike those of Hitler’s Third Reich, Cheney will not declare unconditional, one-way loyalty to an undesirable leader.

All of this further demonstrates or proves that the central core of the Republican Party doesn’t care what the people, the citizens of the U.S., actually want. Their primary concern is that they have power.
This is also the attitude of most corporations. As we’ve seen whenever we’ve looked with open eyes, the Republican Party has been taken over, in a hostile takeover, by the wealthy and the corporations. The good of our people comes in a distant second to the benefits for corporate wealth.
Whenever we look at actions taken or supported by Republicans, we see that somewhere in all of it is direct or indirect benefit to corporations and the wealthy. Climate damage denial? That benefits the fossil fuel people.  Denial for decades of harm from tobacco? Benefits tobacco corporations. Denial of gun and police violence? Leads us to Jan. 6, 2021.

A. Martin
Merrifield, Minnesota