Former Guy was responsible for his own political failure. In other words, "He alone ruined it".

I disagree with Christopher Caldwell's premise being that the Republicans may have a legitimate reason to be suspicious about the way the 2020, elections were managed, calling the stars that aligned against #FormerGuy "luck".  

This is my opinion: #FormerGuy Trump was and continues to be incompetent. At the end of the day, the right people exercised good judgement by saving the nation from having a crazy, deranged, delusional, pervert from being reelected.  Frankly, I am chilled by the thought that #FormerGuy could have been re-elected. He probably could have been, if he had behaved, for example, like Ronald Reagan. Instead, #FormerGuy showed himself to be unstable and that's the reason, on January 6th, then Vice-President Mike Pence and the Senate Majority Leader (at the time) Mitch McConnell held their political fingers in the dyke, against the insurrectionists and #FormerGuy's name calling and completed their tasks to ratify the defeat of Donald Trump. In other words #FormerGuyTrump did himself in because he did not uphold his oath to support and defend the US Constitution. 

What did Joint Chiefs of Staff General Milley know and when did he know it about Trumpzi's instability?  Well, he certainly received good mentoring from Marine Corps General John Kelly, General H.R. McMaster, who was the National Security Advisor and Defense Secretary General and Secretary of Defense and Marine Corps General James Mattis. 

Following is the Christopher Caldwell opinion published in The New York Times, but based, in my opinion, on a flawed premise.  In other words, Trump was responsible for his own political failure in 2020.

CALDWELL- So, the first crop of books about the end of Donald Trump’s (IMO failed) administration has prompted speculation: 

Was the president plotting to remain in power through some kind of coup?

(HELLO? How can there be any doubt about the preponderance of evidence to support #FormerGuy's intention to violate his oath to uphold the Constitution!)

The question has arisen because the Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker report in their book “I Alone Can Fix It” that Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saw the president’s postelection maneuverings in that light.

General Mark Milley had no direct evidence of a coup plot. 

General Mark A. Milley is the 20th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation's highest-ranking military officer

Nevertheless, General Milley got  nervous in the days after Trump’s electoral defeat, as the president filled top military and intelligence posts with people the general considered loyal mediocrities. 

“They may try,” but they would not succeed with any kind of plot, he told his aides, according to the book. “You can’t do this without the military,” he went on. “You can’t do this without the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. We’re the guys with the guns.”

While some might greet such comments with relief, General Milley’s musings should give us pause. Americans have not usually looked to the military for help in regulating their civilian politics. And there is something grandiose about General Milley’s conception of his place in government. He told aides that a “retired military buddy” had called him on election night to say, “You represent the stability of this republic.” If there was not a coup underway, then General Milley’s comments may be cause more for worry than for relief.

Were we really that close to a coup? The most dramatic and disruptive episode of Mr. Trump’s resistance to the election was January 6, and that day’s events are recorded on brutal video.

General Mark Milley earned his commission as an Armor officer through Princeton's Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps program in 1980 and spent most of his career in Infantry assignments

On the one hand, it is hard to think of a more serious assault on democracy than a violent entry into a nation’s capitol to reverse the election of its chief executive. Five people died. Chanting protesters urged the hanging of then Vice President Mike Pence, who had refused Mr. Trump’s call that he reject certain electoral votes cast for Joe Biden.

On the other hand, the January 6th riot/sedition/insurrection was something familiar: a political protest that got out of control. (So, Mr. Caldwell, who paid for that rag tag group of violent political demonstrators to convene in Washington DC, on January 6th?)

Contesting the fairness of an election, rightly or wrongly, is not absurd grounds for a public assembly. For a newly defeated president to call an election a “steal” is certainly irresponsible. 

Yet, for a group of citizens to use the term was merely hyperbolic, perhaps no more so than calling suboptimal employment and health laws a “war on women.” Nor did the eventual violence necessarily discredit the demonstrators’ cause, any more than the July 2016 killing of five police officers at a rally in Dallas against police violence, for instance, invalidated the concerns of those marchers.

The stability of the republic never truly seemed at risk. As Michael Wolff writes of Mr. Trump in his new book, “Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency,” “Beyond his immediate desires and pronouncements, there was no ability — or structure, or chain of command, or procedures, or expertise, or actual person to call — to make anything happen.” Mr. Trump ended his presidency as unfamiliar with its powers as with its responsibilities. 

In a way, that seems to be reassuring. 

The problem is that Mr. Trump’s unfocused theory of a stolen election had a distilling effect, concentrating radical tendencies — first in his staff members and later in his followers nationwide. 

Danger! Rational voices exited his inner circle. 

After Attorney General William Barr told reporters that he knew of no evidence of widespread voter fraud, he was out. Instead, the inept and often drunk Rudolph Giuliani was in, along with a shifting cast of less stable freelancers, including the lawyer Sidney Powell, with her theories of vote-switching ballot machines and Venezuelan stratagems. Now, the #FormerGuy was not only thinking poorly; he was also doing so with even poorer information. That was the first distillation.

The effect of the president’s theory on disappointed voters was more complicated. Republicans had — and still have — legitimate grievances about how the last election was run. Pandemic conditions produced an electoral system more favorable to Democrats. Without the Covid-era advantage of expanded mail-in voting, Democrats might well have lost more elections at every level, including the presidential. Mr. Wolff writes that, as Republicans saw it, Democrats “were saved by this lucky emphasis; that was all they were saved by.”

Nor was it just luck; it was an advantage that, in certain places, Democrats manipulated the system to obtain. The majority-Democratic Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled in favor of a Democratic Party lawsuit to extend the date for accepting mail-in ballots beyond Election Day.

Whether the country ought now to return to pre-Covid voting rules is a legitimate matter for debate. But Mr. Trump’s conspiracy thinking produced another “distillation,” this time among supporters of the perfectly rational proposition that election laws had been improperly altered to favor Democrats. (To say that the proposition is rational is not to say that it is incontestably correct.) Those who held this idea in a temperate way appear to have steadily disaffiliated from Mr. Trump. By Jan. 6, the grounds for skepticism about the election were unchanged. But they were being advanced by an infuriated and highly unrepresentative hard core.

The result was not a coup. It was, instead, mayhem on behalf of what had started as a legitimate political position. Such mixtures of the defensible and indefensible occur in democracies more often than we care to admit. The question is whom we trust to untangle such ambiguities when they arise.

For all Mr. Trump’s admiration of military officers, they wound up especially disinclined to accommodate his disorderly governing style. General Milley was not alone. One thinks back to such retired generals as the national security adviser H.R. McMaster and the defense secretary James Mattis, both of whom broke with Mr. Trump earlier in his term.

We might be grateful for that. But our gratitude should not extend to giving military leaders any kind of role in judging civilian ones.

Kevin McCarthy obviously is not reading his hometown criticisms

Why does Kevin McCarthy only come to our district and only have dinners with rich people instead of town hall meetings with his constituents?

Ventriloquist and the puppet Charlie McCarthy

Puppet Charlie McCarthy and the famous ventriloquist Edgar Bergen
I'm thinking the puppet has come alive and its ventriloquist is #FormerGuy

Can McCarthy answer these questions?

Why did he vote against the commission to investigate Jan. 6 after stating Trump was responsible, and not tell us about his phone call that day with Trump?

In my opinion, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is a puppet that is controlled by a ventriloquist.  He speaks gibberish, using nonsensical and truncated phrases like "Pelosi Republican". Hello? What does that mean?  It sounds like he has a battery run voice recorder in his chest that programs cues for him to use like t punch lines in a vaudeville show.

Moreover, I don't believe the McCarthy puppet knows how to read, which is even more evidence that he can only speak when a ventriloquist is projecting words out of his mouth.  Because, if McCarthy could read, he would pay attention to what is written about him in his hometown Bakersfield.com newspaper.

Two echo opinion letters to the editor are proof that McCarthy does not read.  Otherwise, McCarthy would spend more time talking to constituents rather than mouthing the words given to him by a ventriloquist. 

#1) Letter to the editor: Can McCarthy answer these questions?

• Why did McCarthy bring Trump back into the loop when he would have faded away after his loss?
• Why does McCarthy support the #FormerGuy, a man he strongly suspected of illicit behavior with Russia?
• And the most importantly. What has McCarthy done for his district and constituents after all his years in office?

Truth is important. From  Mark Pertula, in Bakersfield, California

Who is McCarthy protecting?

#2)  I grew up in Bakersfield, graduated from a Bakersfield high school, my family was prominent in the business community, and I married a Bakersfield boy. I remember this community as being a great place to live with promise for everyone and filled with community pride and patriotism.

Apparently those values are no longer valued by some in the community as they allow Kevin McCarthy to actively work to destroy our democracy. We sent my relatives and friends to fight and die in World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam. I am the proud daughter of a World War II veteran, wife of a Vietnam veteran, and mother of a Desert Storm Marine.

What has happened to Bakersfieldians, that you have elected a U.S. representative who has shown his traitorous character in the actions he has taken?

We have a right to have the insurrection of Jan. 6th impartially investigated and those responsible for planning and supporting the events held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. 

Apparently, Kevin McCarthy does not want that!

• Who participated in facilitating the attack on the People's House - the US Capitol? 
• What does Kevin McCarthy not want to see the light of day?
• Who is Kevin McCarthy protecting?
• Why is Kevin McCarthy not upholding his oath to the Constitution?

Why are citizens of Bakersfield allowing McCarthy to run roughshod over his responsibilities as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives?

• Who is pulling Kevin's puppet strings?

Will we stop this and demand that McCarthy honor his oath to the U.S. Constitution?

From Dea Monfort, in Long Beach, California

Urgent memo to the COVID unvaccinated: 300 million doses are evidence to support safety!

Dr. Anthony Fauci says it's unexplainable to try and understand why so many skeptical Americans do not want to be vaccinated? These recalcitrant individuals, who unexplainably refuse to accept COVID vaccines, are putting all of us in the position of going back to pre-pandemic protective measures.

Get vaccinated!

"It is almost inexplicable why people, when they see the data in front of them, that they don't get vaccinated," Fauci said in an interview with CBS, "Face the Nation."

Memo to the unvaccinated. This echo opinion letter was published in Quad City Times, an Iowa newspaper.

Please explain: Why are you not vaccinated? 

Americans must vaccinate our way out of the COVID and Delta variant epidemic! Scientists cited new information about the ability of the Delta variant to spread among vaccinated people.

People are dying and COVID-19, especially the rising morbidity of the Delta variant, is spreading rapidly, mostly by the unvaccinated.

The only way to eradicate this deadly disease is for everyone who is eligible to become vaccinated. The vaccine is safe. It is much safer to get the vaccine than to contract the disease. Some claim it has not been adequately tested. 

Social media is not a source for medical advice!

Don’t believe everything you read on social media. It’s false! Listen to the CDC. Over 300 million doses have been administered in the United States alone. I would say that is a pretty good trial.

Over the centuries, vaccine programs have been incredibly successful. Smallpox has been completely eradicated. Polio, measles and mumps are rarely seen these days. Some "anti-vaxers" see attempts to get everyone vaccinated as an infringement on their personal freedom. I’m sorry, but your freedom cannot come at the expense of others. We owe it to our friends, children and neighbors to ensure that as few people as possible spread, get sick or die from this preventable disease.

I urge everyone that is eligible to get vaccinated as soon as possible to prevent further illness and death. It’s a known fact. You cannot vaccinate only one half of a herd or one half the population and expect to get rid of a disease.

Diane Gelaude in Orion, Illinois

Thank you January 6th Commission for seeking truth about the seditionist attack on the US Capitol

‘A hit man sent them.’ Police at the Capitol recount the horrors of Jan. 6 as the inquiry begins. #Hitman45 !- The New York Times

Witnesses for the first January 6th Commission hearing — officer Harry Dunn and Sgt. Aquilino Gonell of the U.S. Capitol Police, and Metropolitan Police Department officers Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges.

An Associated Press report by Aaron Morrison

Racism of rioters takes center stage in Jan. 6 hearing.

It had only been hinted at in previous public examinations of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection: Scores of rioters attacked police officers not just with makeshift weapons, stun guns and fists, but with racist slurs and accusations of treason.

Four officers, two from the U.S. Capitol Police and two from the D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department, on Tuesday detailed the racism and bigotry they encountered during the violent assault on the Capitol. Their direct, harrowing accounts laid out the hours when the pro-police sentiment of supporters of former President Donald Trump was pushed aside, consumed by the fury of wanting to keep him in the White House.

Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn told lawmakers about an exchange he had with rioters, who disputed that President Joe Biden defeated Trump in the last presidential election. When Dunn, who is Black, argued with the rioters that he voted for Biden and that his vote should be counted, a crowd began hurling the N-word at him.

"One woman in a pink ‘MAGA’ (Make America Great Again) shirt yelled, ‘You hear that, guys, this n——— voted for Joe Biden!’” said Dunn, who has served more than a dozen years on the Capitol Police force.

“Then the crowd, perhaps around 20 people, joined in, screaming “Boo! F——— n—— !” he testified. He said no one had ever called him the N-word while he was in uniform. That night, he sat in the Capitol Rotunda and wept.

Ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, a member of the panel, said the Capitol and D.C. officers would provide insight into “what it was like to be on the front lines.”

However, Dunn was also speaking to the experience of being an African American police officer, who make up 29% of roughly 2,300 officers and civilians serving on the Capitol Police force.

January 6th Congressional Commission on July 27, 2021

Dunn said another Black male officer told him that, while confronting the rioters on Jan. 6, he was told to “Put your gun down and we’ll show you what kind of n—— you really are!”

The panel’s chairman, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, pressed Dunn further about how he felt being an African American officer facing down racists and enduring racial slurs in the halls of democracy.

“It’s just so disheartening that people like that will attack you just for the color of your skin,” Dunn replied. “Once I was able to process it, it hurt. My blood is red. I’m an American citizen. I’m a police officer. I’m a peace officer.”

While Black Americans make up roughly 13% of the U.S. population, they were roughly 11% of all police officers in 2016 across a sampling of 18,000 local law enforcement agencies in the U.S., according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Over 71% of officers were white in 2016.

It’s this kind of treatment endured by Black men and women in law enforcement that policing experts say makes recruitment and diversity among U.S. police forces challenging. The law enforcement profession has also struggled with its origins in America, dating back to the slave patrols in the early 1700s formed to capture people who escaped slavery and terrorize the enslaved into submission. Although many African Americans have served valiantly on local and federal police forces since the civil rights movement, data shows Black Americans are still arrested in disproportionate numbers and more likely to be fatally shot by police.

Another Capitol Police officer, Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, wiped away tears as he recalled the story of his immigration to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic, only to face fellow Americans who considered him a traitor for defending the Capitol on Jan. 6.

“It was very disappointing,” Gonell said. “I saw many officers fighting for their lives against people, rioters (and) citizens, turning against us.”

Gonell, an Iraq War veteran, also called out the disparate law enforcement response to the overwhelmingly white crowd of rioters and the response to racial justice protests in 2020 that followed the murder of George Floyd and the police involved deaths of other Black Americans.

“As America and the world watched in horror what was happening to us at the Capitol, we did not receive timely reinforcements and support we needed,” he said. “In contrast, during the Black Lives Matter protest last year, U.S. Capitol Police had all the support we needed and more. Why the different response?”

Indeed, law enforcement agencies in dozens of cities last year showed overwhelming force toward BLM demonstrators. Many used chemical dispersants, rubber bullets and hand-to-hand combat with largely peaceful crowds and some unruly vandals and looters. By the end of 2020, police had made more than 14,000 arrests.

In January, as images and video emerged from the attacks on the Capitol, a racist and anti-Semitic element among the rioters became apparent. One man was pictured inside of the Capitol building carrying a Confederate battle flag.

And in the nearly seven months since the attacks, more video investigations revealed several rioters had flashed white supremacist gang signs and “white power” hand signals during the insurrection.

Gonell also called out the hypocrisy he perceived from many of the rioters who profess to support law enforcement — “the thin blue line” — but did not agree with those protesting over Floyd last summer.

“There are some who expressed outrage when someone simply kneeled for social justice during the national anthem,” Dunn said. “Where are those same people expressing outrage to condemn the violent attack on law enforcement officers, the U.S. Capitol, and our American democracy?”

“I’m still waiting for that,” he said.

Morrison reported from New York. He is a member of AP’s Race and Ethnicity team.

January 6th Commission heard horrific testimony from four law enforcement officers who were assaulted by the riot

"'I felt like they were trying to kill me": Police officers to testify during the July 27, 2021 January 6th Commission hearing.

The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrectionistist attack heard testimony from four police officers who were on the front lines that day as rioters supporting then- #FormerGuy Donald Trump violently stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop lawmakers from certifying President Joe Biden's electoral win.

The hearing will mark the first time the panel will have public testimony, and will kick-start its efforts to investigate the events on January 6.

The four officers testifying -- DC Metropolitan Police Officers Daniel Hodges and Michael Fanone, plus Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Sgt. Aquilino Gonell -- have shared their stories publicly before, which include accounts of being beaten with a flagpole, being the target of racist slurs, being crushed in a door and being tased by the rioters.

During Tuesday's hearing the officers will again describe what they experienced on January 6, according to a source familiar with their plans, who told CNN that the testimony will be "quite vivid" at times.

The witnesses will also raise questions for the committee to consider, stemming from how officers are still grappling with the physical and psychological wounds they endured more than six months ago and the care that they are, or are not, receiving, the source added.
This is what we know about the four officers who are set to testify:

MPD Officer Michael Fanone

During the January 6th Capitol siege, Fanone was swarmed by a pro-Trump mob and dragged down the Capitol steps.

The officer suffered a mild heart attack and a concussion as he was shocked with a stun gun and beaten.

Of the hundreds of police officers who defended the Capitol on January 6, none has become more outspoken than Fanone. In fact, he has met with lawmakers, publicly supported the creation of a bipartisan commission and slammed Republicans who whitewashed the violence of that day.

Fanone's body-worn camera footage, which shows how he was pulled into the crowd, beaten with a flagpole and repeatedly tased with his own Taser. Rioters stole his badge and grabbed at his service gun. When rioters said they should "kill him with his own gun," Fanone pleaded with the mob and told them, "I have kids," according to the video. Four people were charged in connection with the assault, including one man who is accused of using the Taser. Fanone lost consciousness, suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized after the clashes, according to court filings. These defendants have pleaded not guilty and are in jail while awaiting trial. Prosecutors have said they're preparing plea deals for some of them.

"I want people to understand the significance of January 6. I want people to understand that, you know, thousands of rioters came to the Capitol hell-bent on violence and destruction and murder," Fanone previously told CNN.

US Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn

      Face to Face With Racism

“Black officers fought a different battle” on Jan. 6, said Harry Dunn, a Capitol Police officer.

U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn testified on Tuesday July 27, that he and other Black officers faced racial slurs during the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

Dunn said he experienced a “torrent” of racial abuse after he exchanged words with rioters who were denigrating Joe Biden, then the president-elect, and the people who voted for him during the 2020, elections. 

In fact, Dunn said he was called the N-word after he felt prompted to tell the mob he had voted for Biden.

Dunn has repeatedly spoken out about how he and his fellow Black officers are still grappling with their harrowing experience on January 6, when they endured racist attacks from insurrectionists during an assault on the US Capitol.

"The Black officer struggle was different as in, like I said, we fought against not just people that were, that hated what we represented, but they hate our skin color also," Dunn told CNN's Don Lemon during a March interview. "That's just a fact, and they used those words to prove that. They showed that they hated us and they hated our skin color."

Flags, signs and symbols of racist, White supremacist and extremist groups were displayed along with Trump 2020 banners and American flags at the riot. Black officers played a key role in defending lawmakers during the attack.

Dunn is the only Black officer scheduled to appear before the committee on Tuesday.

Last week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson sought to undermine Dunn's credibility, claiming without evidence that he "is an angry, left-wing political activist."

"Dunn will pretend to speak for the country's law enforcement community, but it turns out Dunn has very little in common with your average cop," Carlson said on his show.

The comments prompted an immediate response from Dunn's lawyers.

"Tonight Fox News allowed its host Tucker Carlson, who has not served a day in uniform, whether military or law enforcement, to criticize the heroism and service of African-American US Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn," attorneys David H. Laufman and Mark S. Zaid said in a statement following the segment.

"Our client has served 13 years in law enforcement and on January 6, 2021, fought against an insurrectionist violent crowd -- no doubt many of them Carlson's supporters -- to protect the lives of our elected officials, including Vice President Pence," they wrote.

US Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell

"I bled, I sweat and I fought to prevent those people coming in through that entrance," Gonell said during the interview.

Gonell was beaten with a flagpole while defending the Capitol on January 6. His hand was sliced open. And he was hit with so much chemical spray that the liquid soaked through to his skin.
During intense hand-to-hand combat with rioters on the west front of the Capitol, there were moments where Gonell thought he might die.
"They called us traitors. They beat us. They dragged us," Gonell told CNN last month in his first interview about the violence he had experienced and witnessed. "And I could hear them, 'We're going to shoot you. We're going to kill you. You're choosing your paycheck over the country. You're a disgrace. You're a traitor.' "

Gonell said the FBI has asked him to view video of the attack to help identify the rioters. It's still difficult for him to watch footage of the events, he said during the same interview, having to relive the battles he fought while he was under assault.

He still has a vivid memory of what he faced: of the pepper spray that forced him and other officers from the front line, of the American flag poles, rocks and even guardrails pried from the inaugural stage that were used to attack officers, and of the struggle to keep the flood of insurrectionists from forcing their way through the door he was guarding.

"I bled, I sweat and I fought to prevent those people coming in through that entrance," Gonell said during the interview. "We got pushed back all the way to the magnetometer by the second door. And just to regain that space took us about another hour. We literally were fighting inch by inch. And to move one step, that was a 10-minute, 15-minute ordeal."

Metropolitan Police Department Officer Daniel Hodges

'Like a medieval battle scene': Officers recount being attacked by Capitol mob

Daniel Hodges' struggle with the pro-Trump rioters became one of the most well-known scenes from the insurrection. A few days after the attack, harrowing footage emerged showing him crushed in a doorway between a massive press of rioters and the police line, writhing and screaming in pain. The video shows one of the rioters grabbing at Hodges' helmet and trying to rip it off.

In recent weeks, the Justice Department released several new videos from this skirmish, which unfolded in a tunnel near the still-unfinished staging area for Biden's inauguration. The Justice Department made the clips public only after CNN and other outlets sued for access.

The footage was part of the criminal cases against several people accused of participating in the attack on police in the tunnel area. One man, Patrick McCaughey, was specifically charged with assaulting Hodges with a stolen police shield and grabbing his helmet. He pleaded not guilty.

Plenty of guilty Trump evidence about creating The Big Lie- Lock Him Up

 No evidence of #TheBigLie

Opinion echo letter published in The Hawk Eye, newspaper in Burlington, Iowa.

It is beyond incredible that #FormerGuy Donald Trump is still trying to convince people he won the election.

His FBI director, his attorney general, the Homeland Security cyber security team, and election officials in states all over the country agreed that the 2020 election was one of the most closely scrutinized and error-free in history.

Trump's personal lawyer (disgraced Rudy Giuliani) has lost his law license for making false statements, and the US Supreme Court found so little merit in Trump's claims that it refused to hear them.

Remember when Trump tried with no evidence to convince the country that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya?

Jerry Parks, Burlington, Iowa

America will finally hear first person truths about January 6 insurrection events

Speaker Nancy Pelosi strong! 

Pelosi appoints Republican Representative Kinzinger (Illinois) to the Jan. 6 committee:  McCarthy threatened to pull all of his Republican picks after Pelosi rejected two of them. (Poor Q-baby!)

January 6th insurrection!

Wisconsin State Journal opinion echo letter!

When I heard a bipartisan commission had been proposed to investigate the Jan. 6th  Capitol seditious riot, I felt a sense of hope that the truth about what happened on that day would be fully disclosed. 

I recalled how serious elected officials, both Republicans and Democrats, came together for the Watergate hearings and 9/11 Commission, with the sole purpose of finding the truth.

Regrettably, that simple goal may not be attainable in today’s political climate.

My hopes for a true accounting of what happened faded away when House Minority Leader (#TheDummyLives!) Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., verbally attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for her refusal to accept two of McCarthy’s nominees for the commission. McCarthy attacked Pelosi with more anger and indignation than he has ever showed over the events of Jan. 6.

McCarthy is not a serious elected official seeking the truth, nor are his two rejected nominees, Reps. Jim Banks, R-Ind., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. They are both presidential election deniers and among a handful of Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

The only thing McCarthy, Banks and (Gym-Jim) Jordan have going for them is that they have passed the Trump cult fealty test which is the #Jonestown litmus test of the Republican #GQP Party. 

Obviously, the Jan. 6, sedition attacks are tragic, but it would be even more horrid if the American people never get a truthful accounting that day.

Bob Vetter, Madison

Roman Catholic bishops are wasting energy in their battle with regressive exclusivity

 Bishop's regressive battle over Communion denial opinion letter published in the State Journal Register, an Illinois newspaper.

Alan Richard Griffiths b. 17, December 1906,
Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England. Died13, May 1993 (aged 86),
Shantivanam, Tamil Nadu, India

We believe that the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church which has systematically disempowered women, men, nuns, priests, singles, marrieds, LGBTQs and children of truth without understanding its behavior as increasingly self-weakening, will begin to disempower itself (e.g. bishops’ battle over Communion denial) again unable to see with isolated, dimmed vision. Venerable Bede Griffiths, a modern mystic and Benedictine monk, prophesied the collapse of the church for refusing to acknowledge its shadow and evidence of this omission continues. We thank God for the Christ in, and for, all who helps us, in the power of truth to navigate through what has happened and will occur.

Charles Jude and Agnes Budinger, Springfield, Illinois

Who is Kevin McCarthy's ventriloquist?

Opinion echo letter published in the Bakersfield Californian Bakersfield.com

Rep. Kevin McCarthy might as well be controlled by a #Cult45 ventriloquist

Kevin McCarthy rents a penthouse in Washington, D.C., from one of his billionaire political donors. He’s very much out of touch with his average constituent here in California. His two-faced approach to politics is revolting. One day he says something and, if Trump doesn’t like it, he’s back-peddling and double talking, stumbling and fumbling like some circus hack.

Most real Republicans don’t want to listen to the insane conspiracy rantings of Marjorie QAnon Greene or other Big Lie repeaters like McCarthy, spineless Lindsey Graham and many other of their ilk. I find the great majority of Republicans to be hard-working, humble and honest people. Until the leadership of the GOP returns to these values, our Democracy is in jeopardy.

Whatever happened to Lindsey Graham?

— Steve Bass, Bakersfield, California

Gym Jim Jordan ranked 202 out of 205 useless House Republicans

#GymJimJordan is stupid and a political disgrace!

Opinion echo letter published in the Sandusky Register, in Ohio.

Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan tried to bully (!) 80-year-old Dr. Anthony Fauci at a Congressional House subcommittee hearing about the government’s response to the COVID pandemic. 

Gym-Jim Jordan’s style is ferocious, non-stop harassment of those he is questioning. He is seemingly using the old doctor as his personal punching bag for his distaste of the pandemic restrictions this past year (masks, social distancing, gatherings, etc.).

Jordan relentlessly demanded that the respected Dr. Fauci provide a date and time when restrictions could be lifted. It reminded me of a spoiled brat who can’t play outside because it is raining, and the boy screams at his mother, “when will it stop, when will it stop” until he is told to shut up. That is exactly what happened to Jordan today when Rep. Maxine Waters told him the same, “shut up Mr. Jordan.”

A recent study done by academics at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University rated the effectiveness of our lawmakers in Washington. Their study looked at the past two years with regard to bills sponsored, bills advanced through legislation, and bills passed into law for elected officials. Jim Jordan was ranked 202 out of 205 House Republicans.

Watching Jim Jordan rail on one person after another shows me that he is not making many alliances outside his inner circle. This would impede any successful policy negotiating with others. Quite frankly, it is embarrassing to have such an antagonist representing our great state.

From Dennis A. Stout, in Bellevue Ohio

Roman Catholic Bishops have no authority to be judgmental

The leader of the free world under attack- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops alert!

Catholic Bishops advance controversial Communion ban based on a political judgement. NYTimes

Opinion letter echo published in the Cape Cod Times, Massachusetts.

A wrong-minded decision aimed at the nation’s second Roman Catholic president and exposing bitter divisions in American Catholicism.

I can't believe the Catholic Church is still standing after centuries of scandal upon scandal, pay-offs and centuries of Machiavellian intrigue, could possibly even consider chastising the one sterling example of their teaching of love and compassion in Joe Biden.

Like all of us, (including the judgmental Catholic Bishops) Mr. Biden is not faultless, but he is a believer in the fundamentals of love and compassion.

Catholic Bishops, especially those who hid priests who were serial sexual abusers, have no authority to judge. Not to allow Joe Biden to take communion those 433 old-men bishops should be smarter than voting to shoot down their one example in the entire world. Why in the world would they even consider this? Let each one who has not sinned, throw the first stone.

This is not the Catholic Church I know after 20 years of Catholic education. It is a small group of "old-men chosen leaders" running the firm, not what Jesus taught. What about those few decent priests trying so hard to protect their flock and encourage them to follow the founding principles of love and kindness and who finally have the leader of the universe as their example? In the end, it is our own conscience, not a board of overseers, that should decide what is the correct thing to do. It is our life after all. (Maine Writer- In other words, the Catholic Bishops are not God.) 

Fleur Feighan Jones, Chatham, Mass.

Maine Writer P.S.:  Some Roman Catholic Bishops are using misplaced moral authority to create a political statement about abortion.  None of those hypocritical bishops has ever born a child. 

In creating draconian moral rules to fit distorted political opinions, the misguided Bishops are defying one of the instructions quoted by Jesus, in Scripture in Mark 12:17 "Jesus first called them hypocrites, and then asked one of them to produce a Roman coin that would be suitable for paying Caesar's tax. ... They answered, 'Caesar's', and he responded: 'Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's'." 

By mixing religion and politics, it's time to seriously consider how the Roman Catholic Church establishment should be taxed.

Father Joerg Meyrer dedicated to helping German flood victims

In flood-hit German town, a priest struggles to give comfort

https://apnews.com/article/europe-health-coronavirus-pandemic-floods-a5fa0b47d068168b06df42771f505350?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=AP&fbclid=IwAR0zYYXEJlOOfEXvqLpgJiIT_hR9TMWHvMYwTo54ifh_gLxcAjCxiCkghlE

German and European weather officials had forecast the downpours that led to even small rivers swelling rapidly, but warnings of potentially catastrophic damage didn't appear to have made it to many people in affected areas - often in the middle of the night.

Echo report published in the Associated Press:

“It came over us like a tsunami,” Father Meyrer recalls. “Bridges, houses, apartments, utility pipes — everything that actually constitutes this town, what it lives on, has been gone since that night.”

AHRWEILER, Germany (AP) — The Rev. Joerg Meyrer steels himself before making his way through the stinking piles of mud-caked debris that permeate this once-beautiful town in Germany’s wine-growing Ahr valley.

For the past five days, the 58-year-old Catholic priest has pulled on his galoshes and walked the streets to try to give comfort to his parishioners as they get on with the grim task of cleaning up what was destroyed by Wednesday’s flash flood — and recovering the bodies of those who perished in it.

“It came over us like a tsunami,” Meyrer recalls. “Bridges, houses, apartments, utility pipes — everything that actually constitutes this town, what it lives on, has been gone since that night.”

Residents of Ahrweiler had been told to expect the Ahr River, a tributary of the Rhine, to crest at 7 meters (nearly 23 feet), but Meyrer said few comprehended what that would mean.

Trucks and cars are pictured partially submerged along a highway in Erftstadt, Germany, July 16. Catholic bishops expressed deep concern about the catastrophic flooding in Germany as priests helped with the emergency response. (Catholic News Service - CNS, photo/Thilo Schmuelgen, Reuters)

In fact, the last serious flood in the area south of Bonn was more than a century ago.

Nearly 200 people were killed when heavy rainfall turned streams into raging torrents across parts of western Germany and Belgium, and officials put the death toll in Ahrweiler county alone at 110, making it the hardest hit region.

Meyrer, who expects that figure to rise significantly, said the victims came from all walks of life.

“Old people who died in bed because they couldn’t get up or because they didn’t hear it; young people who died minutes after helping others; people who died in their car because they wanted to drive it out when the flood wave surprised them.”

Townspeople recounted grim cases of delayed grief, as the realization began to sink in that those reported missing would not return.

Meyrer said he was called in when firefighters found the body of a woman he had known well.

“The husband knew his wife had been in the basement and he had to wait two days for her to be recovered,” he said.

For now, many residents are focusing on the cleanup before dealing with the longer task of rebuilding.

“We need to start over,” said Paddy Amanatidis, the owner of La Perla pizzeria, as she took a break from cleaning the rubble out of the restaurant.

“We fought our way through (the coronavirus pandemic) and the flood won’t get us down either,” she said, adding that the solidarity shown by neighbors and friends had helped to boost spirits.

Meyrer believes that even for those lucky enough not to have lost loved ones, the enormous impact of the disaster has not fully hit them.

“When the first lot (of debris) has been cleared and people have nothing to do, then I think many will understand for the first time what they’ve lost and what that means,” he said.

German officials have rejected allegations that they failed to properly warn people of the severity of the floods, but conceded that more lessons can be learned from the disaster. Experts say global warming may make such floods even more frequent.

Upriver, in the village of Schuld, which was largely destroyed, Mayor Helmut Lussi said the scars would last a long time. “Our lives changed from one day to the next,” he told German Chancellor Merkel, who visited on Sunday.

As for mourning the victims, Meyrer says that daunting task will require the help of clergy from across the town and beyond.

Aside from the sheer number of dead, authorities also must figure out where to bury them, because the local cemetery, too, was flooded, with hardly any tombstone left standing.

While the freshly renovated Gothic walls of the 13th century St. Lawrence Church remained miraculously untouched by the flooding, Meyrer plans to keep walking the streets for now, offering a helping hand, a sympathetic ear and a shoulder to cry on.

But even he is struggling, saying that prayer hasn’t come easily in the days since the disaster struck.

“I don’t have the words, the time, the peace,” he said. “I can’t do that right now.”

“In the evening I try to say, ‘Lord, somehow you have to take over now.’ That’s got to be good enough,” he added.

Dangerous Former Guy cult

Trump cult is Nazi Germany redux.....

Think about it! Echo opinion letter published in the Daily Camera, a Boulder County, Colorado newspaper:

Donald Trump is obviously fixated on a return to Naziism

Not far from the tree

This is Nazi Germany of the 1930s/40s. #TFG'- Trump’s father, Fred Sr., was a seemingly vicious racist, anti-Semite, slum lord and a possible member of the Ku Klux Klan, as he was arrested at a KKK brawl in 1927 (“In 1927, Donald Trump’s father was arrested after a Klan riot in Queens,” Feb. 29, 2016, Washington Post) and possibly involved in the New York-New Jersey region of the German American Bund, or “Amerikadeutscher Bund,” an organization that supported the goals of Hitler’s Nazi Party, and it’s reasonable to assume he personally idealized Adolph Hitler.

The “Bund” was the overseas extension of the German Nazi Party, and it took its orders directly from Berlin. There is some evidence that Fred Trump was, in fact, a spy for the Nazi Party. Curiously, his FBI file from 1927 to 1960 has “disappeared.” In the 1930s, Fred Trump reportedly donated millions to the German Nazi Party.

It seems Donald Trump grew up embracing the Nazi Party and Hitler’s beliefs and methodologies; they form the basis upon which he has conducted his entire life and business. 

These horrible beliefs are laid out clearly in Hitler’s 1927 book, “Mein Kampf,” and later in a compilation of Hitler’s speeches published as “My New Order.” According to a 1990 Vanity Fair interview, Ivana Trump told her lawyer, Michael Kennedy, that (Trump) “constantly reads a book of Hitler’s speeches ­and keeps a copy of ‘Mein Kampf’ at his bedside for reference. (“7 Takeaways From Vanity Fair’s 1990 Profile of Donald Trump, Aug. 5, 2015)

Today’s senior Republican leadership has clearly embraced these same beliefs in order to advance the party’s goals of seizing and maintaining control of the federal government permanently, using disenfranchisement of non-Republican voters and gerrymandering to seize and keep control through the Electoral College. Trump’s actions while president continue to indicate that he had and has no respect for the Constitution, the rule of law, or most of all the truth. Lying is integral to the Republican party’s current strategy.

Causing death through murder of more than 6 million Jews, and more than 75 million more dead because of the Nazis, today the Republican party has embraced their early beliefs, and is using their processes, policies, politics and procedures to seemingly replicate what Adolph Hitler created in Germany, promoting this evil right here in the United States.

Welcome to the new, better, more modern American Republican Nazi Party. Trump himself is an emotional, intellectual, ethical, moral and religious eunuch, and a pathological liar, but his influence and that of his cult of followers is an existential threat to the future of the United States.

Kenneth A. Marcoux in Boulder, Colorado

Republican vaccine myths obviously choose to accept death rather than science

Pandemic hysteria! Ani-vax paranoia!

Echo opinion by Jonah Goldberg, published in The Baltimore Sun.

#SIASD

On a recent flight from Texas to North Carolina, a woman came so unglued that she tried to open the airplane’s door. 

Unbelievable! The flight crew had to bind and gag her with duct tape. This was an extreme example of a disturbing trend in air travel: People are becoming unruly or even hysterical.

I think this phenomenon is attributable to the mental health toll of the pandemic. And it’s not just affecting air travel. 

In fact, it’s contributing to spikes in road rage, crime and crazy politics. Which brings me to the reaction to President Biden’s comments last week. He explained that we’ve moved out of the wholesale approach to vaccination — mass vaccination centers — and must try retail.

“Now we need to go to community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood, and oftentimes, door to door — literally knocking on doors — to get help to the remaining people,” Mr. Biden said.

This triggered a geyser of paranoia and asininity (aka, meaning "assholeitis"!) from much of the right. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said this amounted to “illegal” intrusions into American privacy. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) called it a “gross abuse of power,” adding: “Nowhere in the Constitution does it say, ‘The federal government shall go door to door pushing Americans into vaccine trials.”

Even after the White House explained that federal workers would not be enlisted for this effort, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) warned that this could lay the groundwork to “go door to door and take your guns. They could go door-to-door and take your Bibles.” 

Now that would be unconstitutional. Another horrid example of Stupid Is As Stupid Does, or #SIASD!)

"Two things are infinite in the universe and human stupidity- and I'm not sure about the universe," Einstein.

But, going to extraordinary lengths to fight a pandemic isn’t. 

In 1796, Congress passed “An Act Relative to Quarantine,” authorizing the president “to direct the revenue-officers and the officers commanding forts ... to aid in the execution of quarantine and in the execution of the health laws of the states.”

The president was George Washington, a man with some passing knowledge of the Constitution.

But you don’t have to go back centuries to understand that federal action is neither illegal nor unconstitutional. Helping localities promote vaccination was part of the March COVID relief package, and such efforts have been underway since April.

Besides, what’s wrong with going door to door to inform people where, how and why they should get vaccinated?

People go door to door all the time. The Census Bureau does it (and that is in the Constitution). Political campaigns do it, as do churches, charities and activist groups. Supporting local efforts to promote vaccination is a perfectly reasonable response to an ongoing pandemic (with new strains popping up) that has cost America more than 600,000 lives and trillions of dollars.

You can just say, “Not interested.”

I’m not arguing for the feds to knock on doors to promote getting vaccinated — especially now that the right has primed people to be outraged by it. But the hysteria is embarrassing.

It’s also bewildering. When Former Guy (aka #tfg) Trump was president, Operation Warp Speed was an own-the-libs triumph. 

On Nov. 20, Laura Ingraham of Fox News said: “The stunning success of President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed caught team apocalypse totally off guard. Don’t you love it?”

Now, Ingraham and many other right-wing media figures are engaged in fearmongering over the alleged dangers of a vaccine we wouldn’t have were it not for #tfg Trump.

At last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (C-PAC junk pack!) in Dallas, professional gadfly Alex Berenson said the Biden administration was “hoping they could sort of sucker 90% of the population into getting vaccinated, and it isn’t happening” — and the crowd cheered. (OMG! Kill off their own kind?)

At a time when COVID-19 is spiking among the unvaccinated and 99.5 percent of COVID deaths are among this group, this is depraved. It’s certainly not pro-life.

But as bad as all this is, it would be a mistake to think this is purely a right-wing problem. When #tfg Trump was in office, anti-vax sentiment was high among Democrats, including then-Sen. Kamala Harris and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. 

Mr. Biden himself raised doubts about a Trump vaccine in a debate. Mr. Trump shot back: “You don’t trust Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer?”

After President Biden won, vaccine paranoia became largely a right-wing phenomenon (which Mr. Trump, who is vaccinated, refuses to push back on). Of course, there’s plenty of other paranoia and hysteria on the left these days, including about the alleged resurgence of Jim Crow. But at least that paranoia isn’t getting people killed.

For the anti-vaccine right, it’s as if President Biden were the pilot of a plane and they would rather open the door and bail midflight if the alternative is being a “sucker” by landing safely.

Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast.

Tennessee: Land of the Scopes Trial, snake worshippers and now vaccine ignorance

Leonard Pitts echo opinion: Ignorance is death- STOP vaccine misinformation!

                         "Inherit the Wind" is critical of creationism.

Maine Writer- We are living in ignorant times.  In Tennessee, the land of the Scopes Monkey Trial, the ignorance has surfaced like snake worshippers charming the serpents out baskets.

By now, surely this is obvious beyond argument to anyone who’s been paying attention. From the Capitol insurrectionist who thought he was storming the White House to Sen. Tim Scott’s claim that “woke supremacy (?) is as bad as white supremacy” to whatever thing Tucker Carlson last said, ignorance is ascendant.

Yet, even by that dubious standard, what happened recently in Tennessee bears note. According to a story by Brett Kelman of the Tennessean newspaper in Nashville, the state, under pressure from Republican lawmakers, fired its top immunization official, Dr. Michelle Fiscus, and shut down all vaccine outreach to young people. Fiscus’ sin? Doing her job, working to increase access to the COVID-19 shot among kids. (Maine Writer- is this the brink of infanticide?)

Specifically, she sent a letter to health care providers reminding them that under the state’s “Mature Minor Doctrine,” they are legally allowed to vaccinate children 14 years or older without parental consent. According to Fiscus, the letter, written in response to requests for guidance made by those administering the shots, utilized language drafted by an attorney for the department of health and was vetted by the governor’s office.

All that notwithstanding, it infuriated some state lawmakers. They used words like “extreme disappointment” and “reprehensible” and talked of closing the health department. Some anonymous person even sent Fiscus a dog muzzle. Then she was fired, and the state shut down all vaccine publicity efforts targeting young people.

This means no postcards sent out to remind kids to get their shots, no nudges on social media, no flyers or advertisements, no events at schools, no outreach whatsoever. And not just for COVID, mind you, but for everything — measles, mumps, tetanus, diphtheria, hepatitis, polio.

In a pandemic.

In a state with a less-than-stellar COVID vaccination rate.

At a time when experts are tracking the rise of a deadlier new COVID variant.

It is hard to imagine behavior dumber, more dangerous, more short-sighted and more downright bass-ackward than that exhibited by Tennessee and its lawmakers.

Which is, unfortunately, right on brand for this country in this era. It was in the 2000s that Stephen Colbert coined the term “truthiness” to describe the right wing’s secession from objective fact, and some of us began to speak of them as living in an “alternate reality.” 

How, we wondered in newspaper columns and speeches, can we have meaningful discourse if we cannot agree on basic facts?

Years later, that concern feels too abstract. The threat turns out to be more visceral and urgent than any of us could have imagined. Yes, some people live in alternate realities. What’s worse, though, is when they have power to impose those realities on the rest of us. That’s what we’re seeing in Tennessee and elsewhere, and the results will be as tragic as they are predictable and preventable.

Ignorance is bliss, they say. But it isn’t.

Ignorance is fever.

Ignorance is chills.

Ignorance is trouble breathing.

Ignorance is an empty seat at the table, a bedroom come suddenly available.

Because ignorance is death.

And while the aphorism isn’t true, can you imagine if it were, if ignorance really were bliss? Disney theme parks would have to find a new slogan.

Right now, Tennessee would be the happiest place on Earth.

Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald.