Subtext
The US has hit 50 million covid cases. That’s 20% of the entire world’s number of cases. Over 800,000 are now dead from a plague that spread due to a demagogue who refused to do anything about it. The US is now averaging 117,677 new cases a day — 54% higher than a month ago. Blue states New York and California say, “That’s it! Put your masks back on.”
Trump loyalist Republican Senator Ron Johnson, who helped the Trump Plague spread, is still spreading it by promoting anti-science. He said, “I’m going to choose not to get the vaccine, and now we are demonizing those people. Around the world, they’re putting them basically into internment camps. What is going on?”
What’s going on? Nobody is being put into interment camps and Republicans are killing people.
The House voted to refer Mark Meadows for prosecution. Only 2 Republicans voted yes — Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney. Liz Cheney keeps using legal language that signals that they are headed towards indicting Trump — “action or inaction,” “corruptly sought to obstruct or impede Congress’s official proceedings.” This language is taken from 18 US Code 1512c3. Anybody found guilty of it can go to jail for 20 years. The idiots who Trump got to attack the Capitol are starting to plead guilty to obstruction of official proceedings of Congress which builds the case against Trump. Every time one of these idiots tells the court “Trump told me to go,” or “I did it for Trump,” another straw is placed upon Trump’s back.
Subtext: We’re on to you, Trump. You too, Sedition Caucus.
The Select Committee has proof that members of Congress were part of the planning to keep Trump in power starting in November. They are keeping tight lipped about what they know so the traitors can’t work together to get their stories straight.
Matt Gaetz said he didn’t know if the texts that Liz Cheney read aloud are his. “I haven’t seen those reports and I haven’t looked at my texts.”
Subtext: I’m a liar and a criminal and a traitor and I’m going to jail.
Co-Chair Bennie Thompson said no one will be surprised when they release the names of the members of Congress who were texting Mark Meadows during the attack.
Trump’s wall is closing in on him. His long time accountant who cooked the books for him, Donald Bender, has been testifying before the grand jury in New York. His former banker at Deutsch Bank who kept loaning him money is cooperating with the feds. A federal judge said he can’t keep his taxes secret from the House Ways and Means committee and Trump’s name is coming up a lot during the Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking trial.
Subtext: Justice is finally coming for you, Trump.
The Senate hopped around the filibuster by skipping the same rules that Republicans, Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema keep saying can’t be changed to pass voting rights to raise the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is not a big deal (even though the Republicans like to say it is because it reinforces their bullshit “fiscal conservative” brand,) but bypassing Senate rules sure is. Senator Raphael Warnock made a speech on the Senate floor where he called out the Republicans for voter suppression. He said the most important thing for Congress to do at this moment is to get voting rights done because democracy is built upon that. He said it was incumbent on Democrats to protect voting rights and safeguard democracy. They’ll have to go it alone because the Republicans don’t want democracy. He said:
“I come to the floor today after a long week of wrestling with my conscience. Before we left Washington last week, we in this chamber made a change in the Senate’s rules in order to push forward something that all of us think is important. We set the stage to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, and yet as we cast that vote to begin addressing the debt ceiling, this same chamber is allowing the ceiling of our democracy to crash in around us.
We could not imagine changing the rules. That is, until last week. Because last week we did exactly that. Be very clear, last week we changed the rules of the Senate. To address another important issue, the economy. This is a step, a change in the Senate rules we haven’t been willing to take to save our broken democracy, but one that a bipartisan majority of this chamber thought was necessary in order to keep our economy strong. We changed the rules to protect the full faith and credit of the United States government. We’ve decided we must do it for the economy, but not for the democracy.
So, Madam President, I will be honest, this has been a difficult week for me as I’ve pondered how am I going to vote on this debt ceiling question we’re about to take. I feel like I’m being asked to take a road that is a point of moral dissonance for me. Because while I deeply believe that both our democracy and our economy are important, I believe that it is misplaced to change the Senate rules only for the benefit of the economy when the warning lights on our democracy are flashing at the same time. I happen to believe that our democracy is at least as important as the economy.
The judgement of history is upon us. Future generations will ask when democracy was in a 911 state of emergency what did we do to put the fire out? Did you rise to the moment or did you hide behind procedural rules?
I believe that we Democrats can figure out how to get this done, even if that requires a change in the rules which we established just last week that we can do when the issue is important enough. Well, the people of Georgia and across the country are saying that voting rights are important enough. I think that voting rights are important enough. And so we cannot delay. We must continue to urge the party of Lincoln not to give in to the very forces of voter suppression that Dr. King described in that 1957 speech while standing in the shadow of Lincoln.
But even as we do that, we cannot wait. We cannot wait on them. With uncanny and eerie relevance, Dr. King’s words summoned us to this very moment. He said the hour is late. The clock of destiny is ticking out, and we must act now before it is too late.”
The family of Martin Luther King Jr, who once occupied the pulpit at the same church that Reverend Raphael Warnock preaches at today, has called for the annual celebration of his legacy to be skipped next month if Congress doesn’t pass new national voting rights legislation.
Subtext: The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
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