The "Big, Beautiful Bill" (NOT) Is MUCH Worse Than We Thought

Read this and weep.  Then call and email your senators, yesterday!  And the senators of other states as well.  It's still not too late to stop this from becoming the new law of the land, but that window is closing very, very fast!

Here is an example of a letter and talking points:

Dear Senator, 

The "Big, Beautiful Bill" touted by President Trump and MAGA is MUCH worse than we thought. The fact that it cuts Medicaid, SNAP, and other vital programs to essentially rob from the poor and give to the ultra-rich is already bad enough. But buried deep in the bill is some even scarier stuff that allows Trump to cancel elections at will, ignore Supreme Court rulings for a year or more, criminalize protests, fire government workers for "disloyalty", invade everyone's privacy, and essentially assume arbitrary dictatorial powers. This bill cannot be allowed to pass. I have faith that you will vote a HARD NO on this abomination of a bill, and hope that you will convince other Senators on both sides of the aisle to reject it as well.

Thank you very much,

Your Name

JUNE UPDATE:  Apparently Musk hates this bill so much, it caused him to have a falling out with Trump.  The Bromance is effectively over now, and MAGA is becoming a circular firing squad.  Get your popcorn, this will get interesting....

The Electoral College's Dirty Little Secret

Psst....wanna know a dirty little secret about the Electoral College?

As I noted in a previous post back in 2016, one of the reasons the Founders, especially Alexander Hamilton, designed the Electoral College was as a supposed fail-safe to prevent a dangerous and unqualified demagogue (especially one with foreign entanglements) from becoming President of the United States. (The 2016 election most ironically proved otherwise) Hamilton basically laid out the Federalist case for the Electoral College thusly, albeit combined with the sort of sneering elitism that even the most rabid Trump supporters would ironically claim to dislike today.

But there was also a much darker reason behind the creation of the Electoral College.  To put it bluntly, it was explicitly designed to protect--wait for it--SLAVERY.  In fact, that was the only way to get the Anti-Federalists in the southern slave states to sign on to the Constitution at all.  That is why less-populous states get a disproportionately large amount of electoral votes (since slave states often had as many slaves as free citizens and each slave only counted as 3/5 of a person in the census and was not allowed to vote).  And to this day, the Electoral College remains a bastion of white (sorry, "rural") privilege for the same reason.  Not all that surprising, really.

Thus, the Electoral College is obsolete and currently serves no useful purpose anymore.  In fact, the winner-take-all aspect, over and above the small state bias, was the primary reason Trump won the 2016 election despite getting nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary, so it actually does more harm than good to this country.  Allocating electoral votes proportionally in each state instead of winner-take-all would go a long way to fixing it, and indeed Hillary would have won the electoral vote by changing just this aspect of the system.  It would also make it harder to effectively cheat as well.  But it would not solve all problems, and would in fact create a new problem--third-party candidates throwing the election into the House of Representatives when no one gets 270 majority--unless candidates with a de minimis amount of the popular vote (say, 5%) are then denied any electoral votes and/or only the top two or three candidates actually counting. 

Therefore, all things considered, the very best and simplest solution is to abolish the Electoral College altogether, and elect the president by straight national popular vote going forward.  And yesterday is not soon enough, since it clearly gives Trump an unfair advantage this time as well.

Of course, abolishing it entirely would require a constitutional amendment, and would thus be quite a long shot indeed, but there is a way to make it irrelevant by 2020.  The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is the way to do it, making it so that that only the winner of the national popular vote would win 270 electoral votes and become President, while still technically keeping the Electoral College in place.  Sign and share!

The Beginning of the End for the Trump Regime

The 2018 midterm election results were a mixed bag overall, and while the Republicans kept control of the Senate and even gained a few seats, the Democrats got the biggest prize of all:  control of the House of Representatives, something they haven't had since 2010.  The House, as you may know, has the power to initiate impeachment against Trump, and launch all sorts of investigations of him.  And Mueller, who has been awfully quiet lately, will be dropping a major bombshell in his investigation of Trump within a matter of days.  You know, the Trump-Russia investigation?

No wonder Trump essentially forced Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign today, and replaced him with a Trump loyalist, Matthew Whittaker.  He didn't waste any time, and also removed Rod Rosenstein from the investigation as well.  But this will likely backfire, as Nixon's infamous "Saturday Night Massacre" comes to mind.  Spoiler alert:  it didn't end well for him.

No matter how Trump tries to paint it as a victory for himself, the midtern election results overall favored the Democrats, who now have a majority in the House, while the Republicans are barely hanging onto the Senate with a slim majority that can still be filibustered and is no more than a handful of defectors away from failure.  And with a few exceptions, most state and local elections also tended to favor the Democrats this time as well, further making it harder for Trump to advance his vile and regressive agenda on the ground.

Trump's days are numbered.  Will the Democrats have the intestinal fortitude to do what needs to be done to thwart his agenda and eventually remove him or force him to resign in disgrace?  Or will they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory as they have time and again in the past?  We don't know, but given all of the newer Democrats in office, they are more likely to prevail now than any other time in recent history--at least the past eight years.

The TSAP is Feeling the BERN!

It's 2016, and Election Day will be right around the corner.  And the True Spirit of America Party will be unequivocally endorsing Bernie Sanders for President.  On essentially all of the issues, his platform is the one that closest to ours among all the candidates that have a chance this year. 

As much as we want a woman to be President yesterday, which is LONG overdue, the TSAP will not be endorsing Hillary since we believe that she is simply not progressive enough for us or for the nation.  Granted, she is FAR better than literally any Rethuglican candidate out there (puke!), and we would much rather have her instead of any of them, we still feel that Bernie is the better choice overall this time around.  And unfortunately Elizabeth Warren is not going to be running this year, nor is the woman who we feel would really be the ideal President, Marianne Williamson.  Bernie is the next best thing, and in fact Marianne herself is endorsing him as well.  So yes, we are FEELING THE BERN!!!

How Can Americans be SO DUMB?

The election results for 2014 are (mostly) in, and we can all respond with a resounding (facepalm).

Long story short, the Rethuglicans won most races.  They now control both the House and Senate, and they have won several governor's races as well.  Neither Wisconsin nor Florida will be "Scott-Free" anytime soon, and genuine progressives (especially progressive women) have lost almost every race this year.  But although Wendy Davis was defeated in Texas, at least Rick "The Executioner" Perry will be gone, and Andrew Cuomo did manage to defeat the notorious teabagger Rob ASStorino in New York.  Otherwise, things look VERY bleak for progressives indeed, at least until 2016 when we must redouble our efforts.   So how can Americans be so dumb and bamboozled to vote against their own interests?  Must be our educational system, which the Rethuglicans have systematically scuttled over the past few decades.  And it's apparently working just as they planned.

On the plus side, it looks like Alaska, Oregon, and Washington DC will join Colorado and Washington in legalizing cannabis for recreational use.  Some of these initiatives will take effect as early as next year.  But alas, "California Dreaming" won't become a reality until at least 2016, unless the California legislature and Governor Jerry Brown wise up in the meantime and pass a legalization bill themselves. (crickets chirping)  And San Francisco joined Seattle in raising their minimum wage to a whopping $15/hour--it's about time!

So it looks like the next two years will be rather rough for us progressives, but we must never give up.  Because if we do, we will literally have no one to blame but ourselves.  Fight the good fight!

Don't Feed the Vultures!

The 2012 presidential election is fast approaching, and much to our chagrin there will be no chance for any third party candidates.  Though not an ideal candidate, only Obama has any sort of chance of beating Romney the Vulture Capitalist and Paul "Throw Granny Off a Cliff" Ryan.  Only Obama has any chance at all of stopping 1,000,000 Americans from receiving pink slips (due to Romney) and then facing a shredded or nonexistent social safety net (due to Ryan).  And if they do manage to find another job later on, they will then be kicked in the teeth with higher taxes (you read that right) while watching the richest 1% pay even less than they do now.  We simply cannot support that, period.  As a result, the TSAP has no choice but to endorse Obama this time, and thus we will NOT be running a candidate of our own.  It is such a dead heat in the polls that a vote for any progressive third-party candidate will effectively be a vote for Romney-Ryan, as much as we hate to admit it.  And not voting at all is like rolling over and playing dead just so the vultures can eat you alive.

So let's all shout it from the rooftops:  DON'T FEED THE VULTURES!!!  VOTE FOR OBAMA LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!!!  Because in many ways, it does.