NOTE: After writing this and scheduling it for publication for this morning, late last night I read this article from Rolling Stone about Sen. Joe Manchin’s constant reversal on voting rights, some of which I witnessed in real time through news reports and interviews. In addition to what I’ve written below, we need to ensure that ONE Senator, even one from our side doesn’t have so much control over somethng as fundamental as voting rights.

I also want to note that Joe Manchin (along with Sen. Sinema) torpedoed the Build Back Better bill that they had continuously supported with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill (that passed and was signed into law by President Biden.) Build Back Better was the main bill that would help more working class Americans. Manchin needs to be made irrelevant by adding to our Senate majority.

How Joe Manchin Knifed the Democrats…

It looks like I chose an appropriate quote to begin my original subject.

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Politics don’t corrupt people; people corrupt politics.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson

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I’m not sure people realize the gravity of the upcoming election situation. It may seem as thought everything is standing still it’s important to recognize that in the first year of the Biden Administration an enormous amount of work has been done, and is continuing to be done. (* See graphics below.*) We need to call out the Republican hypocrisy and fascism (and yes, that’s exactly what it is) whenever and wherever we see and hear it. We need to call out the lies and misinformation whenever and wherever we see and hear it. It doesn’t matter whose feelings it hurts. Lies are lies and their lies are killing us.

The biggest lie is that they are conservative and want what’s best for the country. NOT TRUE. They are attempting to put the government in every facet of our lives. Just last week, a woman was arrested and held on $500,000 bail in Texas for a miscarriage because now having a miscarriage (correction: it was a stillbirth) in these ass-backward red states is now illegal. They insist (not just Texas by the way) that an ectopic pregnancy be carried to full term. This is physically and biologically impossible. All ectopic pregnancies that are not treated (ie: terminated) will end with the death of the mother. They pass an incredible amount of heartbeat laws when they couldn’t care less about the mother’s heartbeat and its stopping. What you’re hearing when you hear a fetus’ “heartbeat” is not a heartbeat. The heart, which has four chambers and beats, circulates blood throughout your body. A fetus has none of these things when the “heartbeat” is heard for the first time. They (Republicans) also want to eliminate abortions in the time between your sexual encounter and discovering that you are in fact, pregnant.

My biggest problem with anti-abortion laws, in addition to the whole bodily autonomy thing (I mean, cadavers have more rights than a living, breathing women) is that the people writing the bills and making the laws have no idea how a woman’s body or pregnancy works. One of the main Republicans falling into this and other hypocrisies is a doctor. What no one remembers is that he’s an opthamologist. (Rand Paul, FYI)

If you had the misfortune to watch Josh Hawley’s performance in the Supreme Court confirmation hearings, he asked irrelevant questions that made good talking points for his low information voters (or voters that don’t do any due diligence to ask questions of their representatives) as did Tom Cotton, who we should not forget claimed to be an Army Ranger when he was not and never went to Ranger School. He made claims of Brown Jackson’s opinions on child pornographers (which were FALSE in their entirety). He, Ted Cruz, and Thom Tillis quoted Brown Jackson incorrectly, accusing her of saying something as her own opinion when it was something she was restating for the record in a trial as most judges do before ruling on a case. They got their soundbites. It is up to us to correct the lies and misinformation. Every. Time.

When Justice Amy Coney Barrett was being questioned by Democratic Senators on the Judiciary Committee, they asked serious questions and didn’t attempt to minimize or belittle her. Republicans just don’t take their jobs seriously.

Lindsey Graham said that he couldn’t vote for Brown Jackson even though he voted for her the last time she was nominated to the federal bench (the Court of Appeals).

Hershel Walker and Dr. Oz are running for Congress and lying their way through the polls. We MUST re-elect Senator Raphael Warnock. The Georgia run-off in 2021 saved our country and we cannot lose Georgia again.

We must not let women continue to be second class citizens whose rights are meted out and controlled by men who usually and often don’t know what they are talking about when it comes to women and our bodies.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginni has been implicated in texts to Trump’s Chief of Staff (Mark Meadows) in attempting to overthrow the election and suborn a coup to reinstate Trump’s totalitarian administration. Thomas (of SCOTUS) has a definite conflict of interest and if not a criminal referral, he should at a minimum be required to recuse himself as January 6th cases appear before the Supreme Court.

Rick Scott, Senator of Florida, claimed on Fox News that the Biden Administration was misrepresenting the Republicans middle class tax cut. John Roberts (surprisingly) called him out on his FALSE statements and corrected Scott that the REPUBLICAN PLAN was to RAISE taxes on ALL middle class workers while lowering taxes for the wealthiest in this country.

Hawley was one of several, if not nearly all Republican Senators criticizing the Biden Administration for its “slow-walking” of Ukrainian aid when they themselves VOTED NO on aiding the Ukrainian government.

Why do they do this obvious obfuscation, misrepresentation, and outright LYING?

Simple: Because they can.

Almost to a one, they’ve claimed to disagree with Trump’s actions on January 6th (2021: the insurrection, attempted coup), and still state unequivocally that they would vote for Trump again despite his lawlessness, corruption, and treason. I can’t list them all but the include the upper echelons of leadership in the Republican party: Mitch McConnell (who has no moral center whatsoever; see his interview with Jonathan Swan (or anyone really)), Kevin McCarthy, who is ore concerned with Madison Cawthorn’s sex and drugs fantasies than he is with Marjorie Taylor Greene’s threats to person and democracy, Steve Scalise, Lindsey Graham, and let’s not forget, Paul Ryan and others.

Mainstream media is afraid of being called liberal, when at best they are moderate if slightly conservative. Hell, CBS and CNN have both hired liars from the Trump Administration to be neutral observers on their airwaves as if the last five years hadn’t happened. And in the case of CBS with Mick Mulvaney, he is single person responsible for withholding Ukrainian aid from President Zelenskyy in 2019 that Trump was impeached for (the first time), and then not only admitting it, told the press room and the American people to “get over it.” He was not only the director of OMB, he was Trump’s Acting Chief of Staff at the time as well as one of the administration’s emissaries of calling covid a hoax and ignoring the illness and death that ran rampant across our continent and the world while doing nothing for the people. Republicans in Congress still refuse to act and vote no on everything this Administration brings to a vote. When they cry out against gridlock, they don’t mention that they are the ones creating the gridlock by blocking nominations and voting no on everything from clean water and lower co-payments on insulin, they vote no and then complain how nothing is getting done.

I have gotten less entitlement and more responsibility from my toddler.

I cannot possibly enumerate all of the ways this current crop of Republicans are thoroughly without morals, rectitude, and common decency. We’d be here for a week or more and even if I found all of the words, you would not read its lengthy narrative for want of time.

We need to keep the House and the Senate. We need more Senators to do that and put Manchin and Sinema back to irrelevancy. We need to abolish the filibuster and make sweeping changes to the ways we elect our representatives in this country, reforming or getting rid of the Electoral College and all other vestiges from the slave era that is holding our popular majority back to the detriment of the rest of this country. To do this we need a supermajority – more than 60 Senators willing to vote on our side (which is the side of the American people).

We can do this, but we need to work very, very hard. Whether it’s by donating money and/or time, we need to start now, and keep the momentum going through November 8.

And don’t let the Democrats talk about decorum or both sides or fairness. If the Republicans get back in control, we will (literally) lose everything: the Supreme Court for a generation, social security (oh yes, they’re gutting it), Medicare, lower prescription drug prices, EVERYTHING.

Follow and listen to people like:

Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii
Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois
Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio
Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts
Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota
Rep. Adam Schiff
Rep. Jamie Raskin
Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez
And many more.

Follow and support Vote Save America and the ACLU and Planned Parenthood.

We must get out the vote for this upcoming mid-term election and every one after that one.

And we need to start NOW by getting informed and getting involved. I will continue providing resources in thi Election Connection series on Tuesdays throughout the year.

And dn’t forget two governors races: in Texas (Beto O’Rourke) and Georgia (Stacey Abrams).

In Florida, we need to get rid of Marco Rubio and elect Rep. Val Demmings.

All of these names can be googled. I will include links on a separate (NEW, Coming Soon) page where you can easily find the contact information for resources and information.

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