unconstitutional

Election Connection – Renee Good

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I’m struggling today.

Yesterday and this morning have been very difficult for me; my spoons have clattered to the floor, and the idea of picking them up and beginning again isn’t there yet.

I’ve called this Election Connection because it is connected to our recent past elections and the two future ones in 2026 and 2028. It’s the people.

And it’s also more than the elections and the consequences of an illiterate and ignorant electorate.

It’s that the lack of fundamental thought processing is gone. Media literacy is gone. Impartiality on behalf of our journalists is gone.I’m not sure if we will ever get any of this back.

There are not always two (or more) sides to every issue. Sometimes there is the fact side and the anti-truth side. Good versus evil.

A woman and her spouse were driving home with their dog after dropping their six-year-old off at school. They never arrived home. That trauma will never go away.

I watched in real time as side-by-side, the video of the murder next to the government lying about it, and I was stunned. I truly was. I still am.

Anyone who’s watched the video saw what happened. A woman, trying to follow the direction of one ICE agent and leave was murdered by another ICE agent who then calmly walked to her car, turned around and walked away. Not limped. Not taken to the hospital. Not injured in any way. He walked away.

The federal agents on the scene refused to let a doctor attend to her. The federal agents on the scene refused to allow an ambulance to reach her.

The EMTs had to walk into the scene and them carry her limp, dead body back to the ambulance.

At the same time that her spouse was sitting on a snowy curb sobbing, the President of the United States, the Director of Homeland Security, and other federal officials claimed that the driver was a terrorist, that she attempted to harm the ICE agent. We know this is not true. It has been described in the media as the government gaslighting the rest of us.

I will say it more clearly:

The federal officials, the director of Homeland Security, the President and Vice President of the United States are lying to us. They are, in George Orwell’s words, asking us not to believe what we see, but to believe what they tell us. They are lying. Over an over again.

And this morning, we are being told that the FBI, led by a corrupt, unqualified director will be solely in charge of the investigation; that they are refusing to share any evidence found with the Minnesota State Police or the Minneapolis City Police. We cannot be expected to trust them. Not one iota when they’ve been lying to us as we watched the video of Renee Good’s murder.

We know her name because she was a white, middle class suburban woman, a mother of three.

I ask you to search the internet for the following two names:

Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez (Chicago).

Keith Porter (Los Angeles).

We know of others who’ve died in ICE custody, several not wanted on any charges, not undocumented immigrants. We don’t hear their stories because they are not white suburban women, but men of color, and we should be following their deaths and their stories equally as close.

The first man (Villegas-Gonzalez) was allegedly killed by the same ICE agent that killed Renee Good, at least that’s what Director Noem seemed to say in her press conferences.

CORRECTION: While the ICE agent who killed Renee Good was dragged by a car, it was not Mr. Villegas-Gonzalez who was driving. These were two separate incidents with two different ice agents.

The government went too far on January 21. It continues to push us to the brink of the end of democracy, the end of civil rights, the end of life in the United States as we know it.

CBS has capitulated. CNN has capitulated. AP News, the NY Times, the Washington Post have all capitulated. Who will be left to tell the true story? When will actual journalists stand up and remember their commitment to unbiased, truthful reporting, of speaking truth to power, of not showing two sides of a single truth?

I hope it’s soon, but I won’t be holding my breath.

Election Connection – Nobody Voted For This!

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(c)2025

On a road near my house, there are two of the same sign directly across from each other. For months now, I’ve been trying to take a photo because I loved and agreed with the sentiment. I finally got that photo, which you can see in this post. Once I got the photo however, the more I looked at it, trying to decide where to use it, and the more I thought about it, I realized that it’s a nice thought, a way to absolve voters, and get them to speak out and stand up. I agreed that even people who voted for the current president didn’t want this to be the outcome. But I’ve only just recently realized that it’s a lie.

“Nobody voted for this.”

That is a lie.

People did vote for this, greedily, happily, with determination and glee at what the other side would get, and indeed “get what’s coming to them.” I don’t have to give them the redemption arc they so desperately crave because the bad things are happening to them, and they’ve suddenly decided that the  monster in the room is actually the monster in the room.

I can’t possibly list all the depraved, petty, destructive things this president and his Congress cohorts have wrought upon us.

Just because they’ve changed their minds because their landscaper was deported or their cousin the farmer is going to lose his farm because of tariffs or your health insurance is going up, like we told you it would, doesn’t mean that you get a pass because you’ve joined the suffering.

What did they vote for exactly if not for this?

They voted for lawlessness, for terrorism in our streets, for pulling people out of court hearings when they’ve immigrated “the right way,” for canceling citizenship swearing in ceremonies when these almost citizens met every hurdle, for “papers please,” for higher taxes, for lies upon lies upon lies, for pettiness that would put a toddler to shame, for misogyny, transphobia, antisemitism, and white supremacy. Yes, even if you’re not white, you voted for white supremacy. You’ve allowed him to denigrate our press, and the press has allowed him to do the same also by ignoring his outlandish and despicable behavior and their complicit silence. You’ve allowed him to call our women journalists names, and ignore the questions he dislikes. You voted for war, and disrespect for our country, our military, and put our citizens here and around the world in danger. You voted for murder and the destruction of the East Wing of the White House, the paving over the Rose Garden because the dementia-addled resident of the White House can’t remember where he is or what he’s doing. His made up grievances are on repeat, his whines are pathetic, his falling asleep at the cabinet table would be cute if it was Grandpa at Thanksgiving dinner sated by the turkey, but not for the President of the United States.

He’s so narcissistic that he needs to deface a national monument, a memorial to a fallen President; yes, it’s sad, even for this joyless man, but it’s also pitiable.

His need to pull himself up by tearing everything and everyone around him down would be sad if he wasn’t also pulling down the future for my kids, for your kids. Will the next generation have a country to be proud of? Will they even have a country? Will we be able to recover from the nastiness he unleashed? Will the White House recover from the sad, gold accents that reduce this once great house, the people’s house to a tacky golf club?

Nobody voted for this.

Lies.

*I* didn’t vote for this. Many of the people reading this didn’t vote for this. But others, there are others who DID vote for this. They’re only upset that it affects them too and not just the brown skinned people they were “punishing” simply for not being white.

But make no mistake – this is exactly what you voted for, and for those of you who didn’t vote because “they’re both the same…” shame on you.

I, and many of us, won’t forget, and forgiveness is a long way off…if it ever comes.