Stephan: I think Ted Cruz is despicable, but I also think what he is saying here should be taken very seriously because my assessment is that this exactly what will happen if the MAGAt Republicans take control of the Congress. Your vote for Democrats has never mattered more. I say this not because I am a partisan Democrat, I am not, but because with all their flaws, the Democrats still support democracy while the MAGAts very explicitly do not.
MAGAt Republican Senator Ted Cruz
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is forecasting a Republican house takeover and a President Joe Biden impeachment in 2023.
“I’m very optimistic about 2022,” Cruz said on the latest episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz podcast. “I put the odds of the Republicans winning the house at 90/10 and it may even be higher than that.”
Cruz was not as optimistic about Republicans taking the Senate.
“I put our odds at 50/50,” he added. “I think it’s going to be a really good year but it’s a bad map.”
The Texas senator believes that if the GOP does indeed gain the majority in the House, impeachment would soon be on the table.
“If we take the House, which I said is overwhelmingly likely, then I think we will see serious investigations of the Biden administration,” he added.
“I do think there’s a chance of that,” Cruz said in reference to a Republican House impeaching President Biden. “Whether it’s justified or not, the Democrats weaponized impeachment. They used it for partisan purposes to go after Trump because they disagreed […]
Margaret Sullivan, Media Columnist - The Washington Post
Stephan: It is my view that the mainstream corporate media generally has done a dreadful job dealing with what the MAGAt Republicans have been doing from the last five years to subvert democracy and create a permanent MAGAt Republican White supremacy, christofascist authoritarian government. Finally, others are beginning to come to the same conclusion.
The U.S. Capitol was surrounded by fencing and razor wire for several weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. Credit: Katherine Frey/The Washington Post
In the year since the Jan. 6 insurrection, mainstream journalists have done a lot of things right. They’ve published major investigations, pointed out politicians’ lies and, in many cases, finally learned how to clearly communicate the facts of what happened leading up to that horrendous riot at the U.S. Capitol — and what is happening now as pro-Trump Republicans steadily chip away at the very checks and balances that saved American democracy last year.
Much of this work has been impressive. And yet, something crucial is missing. For the most part, news organizations are not making democracy-under-siege a central focus of the work they present to the public.
“We are losing our democracy day by day, and journalists are individually aware of this, but media outlets are not centering this as the story it should be,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar of autocracy and the author of “
Stephan: One of the things corporate media is not doing is properly reporting on the role of corporations that funded the MAGAt morons in and out of Congress in their attempt to create a coup. I have been looking for weeks for a fact-based compilation of which corporations were trying to sabotage democracy and which were trying to support it. Here is the best compilation I have been able to find.
On January 6, an armed and violent mob stormed the Capitol. It was the first time the building had been breached since the War of 1812. At the end of the day, the death toll stood at five. The attackers assaulted nearly 140 police officers. Four more officers would die by suicide in the following months. Lawmakers came within seconds of tragedy at the hands of the rioters. The crowd constructed a gallows on the Capitol steps to chants of “Hang Mike Pence!”
The insurrection put a capstone on months of work by President Trump and his allies to overturn the results of a free and fair election. These efforts included dozens of frivolous lawsuits, baseless conspiracies about polling machines and uncounted ballots and the attempted weaponization of the Department of Justice. Riled by Trump’s rhetoric, his supporters flocked to “Stop the Steal” rallies around the country. At the White House Ellipse on January 6, Trump and his allies urged the crowd […]
Thomas Homer-Dixon, Executive Director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University. - The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Stephan: This is a brilliant assessment, with which I agree, of the current state of America by a Canadian scholar, and I urge you to read it. Two points I would add. Canada is absolutely not the only country beginning to consider what it will mean for their national interest if America becomes a White supremacy christofascist authoritarian nation. Second, the failure of the Department of Justice to hold accountable Trump or any of his major enablers responsible for prompting an insurrection to overthrow America's democracy. No one has been arrested. No one has been charged. There are no ongoing trials.
If you don't hold such people accountable, you may be sure they will do it again, and more competently
Washington,Jan. 6, 2021: A police flash-bang grenade illuminates Trump protesters outside the U.S. Capitol, which they stormedafter a provocative speech by the outgoing president. The Capitol insurrection was a wake-up call about the vulnerabilities in American democracy. Credit: Leah Millis/Reuters
By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.
We mustn’t dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine. In 2014, the suggestion that Donald Trump would become president would also have struck nearly everyone as absurd. But today we live in a world where the absurd regularly becomes real and the horrible commonplace.
Leading American academics are now actively addressing the prospect of a fatal weakening of U.S. democracy.
This past November, more than 150 professors of politics, government, political economy and international relations appealed to Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, which would protect the integrity of US elections but is now stalled in the Senate. […]
Stephan: As the previous article mentioned one of the leading forces destroying America's democracy is the obscene wealth inequality, and Warren Buffett's response to Bernie Sanders perfectly illustrates this reality.
Three of the richest people on earth
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Warren Buffett, the ninth-richest person on the planet, says it’s not up to him to settle a strike by 450 steelworkers at a company he owns.Sen. Bernie Sanders wrote a letter to the Berkshire Hathaway CEO, requesting that he intervene in a United Steelworkers union strike at the Special Metals plant in Huntington, West Virginia. They’ve been on strike for three months. Special Metals is a unit of Precision Castparts, which is owned by Buffett’s Berkshire.”At a time when this company and Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA) are both doing very well, there is no reason why workers employed by you should be worrying about whether they will be able to feed their children or have health care,” Sanders wrote. “There is no reason why the standard of living of these hard working Americans should decline. I know that you and Berkshire Hathaway can do better than that.”
His letter said employees were offered a contract with no pay raise the […]
