Who’s the Real Party of Hate?

Although I consider myself a liberal Democrat I receive Emails from GOPUSA because I am always interested in how those whose views are different from mine see the world and share their opinions on politics and world events. GOPUSA describes themselves as a private company whose mission is to spread the conservative message throughout America.

They list their mission as one to “educate, enlighten, and engage conservatives through a host of features and services including news, online discussions, commentary, and information.” And although they are not directly affiliated with the Republican Party they say that they “hope to be the first source that Republicans and conservatives will turn to for news and information, both at the state and national levels.”

On Monday December 14th they sent this to my email inbox. It was an opinion piece about President-elect Joseph Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Their opinion was that it was a terrible choice (laughable and left wing) and that the main(lame) stream media (in this case, Time Magazine) was trying to be politically correct when there were so many other good choices that they could have made…Of course, their pick would have been President Trump because of his stellar leadership with regards to the Coronavirus pandemic throughout 2020.

But that is their opinion, which is fine. However, what struck me the most about their opinion was the cartoon depiction that they made of the Time Magazine cover featuring both Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris. Here is the cover of Time Magazine as it appeared on newsstands.

And here is their cover of “Crime” Magazine, featuring the “Plunderer of the year”, with the names of Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris off to the side of their depiction of the two new elected leaders and the caption underneath that reads: “Changing America’s Election Results”.

So I guess that it is their opinion that the President and Vice President elects have stolen the election and are thieves, plunderers and criminals and not duly elected and honest American leaders?

But notice their caricatures as depicted by the artist. Where did those gigantic noses come from? One, more of a sinister beak that cannot be contained by his mask, while the other is rather long and upturned under her mask. What could they possibly represent… since neither Mr. Biden nor Ms. Harris are known for their big noses? (as you can see by looking at their photographs in the real magazine cover) So this is not a caricature as much as it is a message to the Republican and conservative (?) faithful.

It’s one thing to lose an election and be upset by that and another thing to disagree with a choice made by a magazine for its choice of cover… but it’s a completely other thing to depict your nation’s new democratically elected leaders as vile criminals!

So 306 electoral votes means it’s too close to call in a presidential election? Get angry! Get your guns! Take to the streets!… But 3,000 citizens dead each day from a virus and 300,000 citizens dead already after 10 months of a pandemic? Let’s party! Let’s go to a bar! Where’s my freedom?

Meanwhile hatred sells. Hatred is profitable. Hatred makes money and motivates buyers and sellers alike. It’s a commodity. But Empathy? Sympathy? Cooperation and kindness? Good luck raising money and building a grass roots movement with those skills.

We live in a very sad country right now… And it seems to me that it’s getting sadder every day…

Our President Has a New Hobby

As President Trump’s presidency begins its final days (Are they really?) Our President has decided to pick up the pace of federal executions by adding 5 executions to his administrations Thursday schedule, as in this Thursday December 10th.

All told that will be 13 federal executions carried out and completed since this past July when executions once again became a thing for presidential administrations to do! And that was after a 17 year break in federal executions going back to the Early administration of President Bush the second.

If he succeeds and the 5 executions go off as planned, President Trump will leave office (will he ever leave?) having executed 1/4 of all federal death row prisoners… making him the number one execution president in over 130 years! And his Attorney General, William Barr, says that the administration will most likely be scheduling more executions right up until President-elect, Joe Biden takes over.

Maybe we’ll even have an execution on inauguration day! Wouldn’t that be biblical? And dare I say appropriate in a macabre, ironic and evangelical sort of way? Ironic Especially since the President-elect has pledged to work towards ending the death penalty for federal prisoners. And evangelical because who is more Christian and Evangelical that our Bible reading and waving (more waving than reading…by a long shot!) than our President Trump?

And since Mr. Biden has pledged to work toward ending the death penalty once he becomes president, you can understand why our current President and his most avid supporters are in a hurry too. And if the 5 scheduled to be put to death on Thursday are indeed severed from this mortal coil then President T. needs only 2 more to top the last record of 14 set in 1896 by President Grover Cleveland. (from NJ of course…sorry C.C. We all know how much you wanted this to be you)

But to be fair and ironic it was Joe Biden, who was a Senator way back in 1994, who voted for a crime bill that added 60 federal crimes for which someone could be put to death. And he was there when The federal death penalty was reinstated in the modern era by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, also known as the “Drug King Pin” statute. No doubt it was reinstated to help fight the “War On Drugs” which we all know has been going very well for drugs and not too well for us…and I wonder how many drug “Kingpins” got the death penalty anyway?

However, executions on the federal level have been rare, and the government has put to death only three defendants since restoring the federal death penalty in 1988 and most Americans now lean towards life sentencing rather than death sentences for several reasons: 1, It’s cheaper because law suits on behalf of those sentenced to death drag on for years and cost the government a fortune to defend…up to 8 times more according to a 2008 government study. 2, The National Academy of Sciences determined that at least 4% of  people who are on death row were innocent. 3, statistics have proven that people of color are more likely to be sentenced to death and disproportionately so.

So why kill people with the public’s money when sentencing someone to life is cheaper, the risk of killing an innocent person for a crime he or she did not commit is ended and the egregious mistake of using racism as an excuse for such an extreme punishment is eliminated…not to mention that killing someone for killing someone else is…while sadly still debatable, a thing that I believe the human race should move beyond.

But hey, if you’re not a fan of lethal injection at U.S. penitentiaries because it’s too namby- pamby then you can take solace in the fact that the drug used to carry out death sentences is no longer readily available and our Justice Department has recently updated their protocols to allow for executions by firing squad and poison gas! I kid you not. So maybe there will be a firing squad plying its trade in Terre Haute, Indiana while at the same time our new president is sworn in, in Washington D.C.?… Could happen…

Critics of President Trump’s recent execution escalation have said that the restart of executions in an election year was politically motivated, helping the President to further his claim that he is the law-and-order president… but President Trump has always been a supporter of the death penalty and in a 90’s Playboy interview, he even described himself as a strong supporter of capital punishment, saying, “Either it will be brought back swiftly or our society will rot away.”

And he was a big supporter of the death penalty having been recommended for the “Central Park 5” who were convicted for the aggravated assault and rape of a white woman jogging through Central Park in New York City in April of 1989. The 5 convicted teenagers (black and Latino) who had maintained their innocence even after having signed written confessions, later had their convictions overturned when the real killer (a white man) was caught with the help of DNA evidence and confessed to that crime and a series of other murders.

In fact President Trump still maintains that the Central Park 5 should still be put to death because they confessed to the crime, (even though they were later proven to have been coerced and their crimes uncommitted)… because if you confess to a crime you should suffer the penalty… Now I would call that being Ultra-Biblical or maybe even Anti-Biblical depending upon which of the Testaments you prefer, but perhaps our President simply likes his confessors to not be living just like he likes his heroes to not be captured?

Anyway, it should also be noted that many states with death penalty laws have halted executions recently over concerns that the rampant spread of the coronavirus (remember that?) would put lawyers, witnesses and executioners at too great a risk but the Trump administration has decided to press on regardless of the danger, real or imagined, imposed by the virus, to anyone.

And it should also be mentioned that last year our state prisons carried out a combined 22 executions but as a consequence of the health precautions that states have taken this year, just seven prisoners have been executed in 2020 and none since July. So the Federal Government could out execute every state in the country this year, if they hurry, before time runs out and the prisoners catch the virus and die. Remember, convicted felons on death row are people too…until they are not.

So, only 41 days left until Inauguration Day 2021 when time runs out on the Trump administration (will it ever?) and their chance to execute our death row inmates before Covid19 does!

So Stay Tuned! Who will be the winner of this year’s title and crowned king of death? (at least for death row inmates)… Will it be the Grim Reaper or…

His Apprentice?

Yeeeeeeeeee Hawwwww!

Remember when President Trump said this about the Coronavirus way back in April of this year?

“I thought about it,” he said. “I said maybe we should ride it through. You know, Ride it like a cowboy.” Had that been done, President Trump said, health officials estimated 1.6 to 2.2 million people in the U.S. would die.

And now here we are 7 months later and a few days after Thanksgiving in America and what are we doing?

We’re riding the Coronavirus like a cowboy!

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Hawwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

Are we having fun yet? Over 260,000 dead American citizens to date. Over 13 million reported cases. 200 thousand new cases per day. Almost 2,000 dead Americans every day. And now 500,000 expected to be dead by March of 2021…right up there with a yearly death toll running neck and neck with those two other apocalyptic American horses; cancer and heart disease.

Somewhere along the line Our President and his team of experts lost interest, along with his supporters and what appears to be half of the rest of the country! It was those lousy ratings his press conferences were getting I guess…

And then of course there was the campaign, the golfing, the pep rally comedy tour, his own coronavirus brush with death, the campaign again, and finally over 80 million citizens voting him out of office in what he called a “landslide mandate from the American People”!

…That’s what he called it when it happened to Hillary Clinton in 2016!

But now he says that he won’t go because the election was too close and that people really love him except for those Americans who are cheats and voter frauds and election thieves and Godless lovers of Satan, …

…you know… the other 250 million Americans who apparently don’t appreciate a good horse when they see one. ..One they can ride like a cowboy!

But don’t panic America because according to the White House Science Department “ending the COVID-19 pandemic” is the top accomplishment of  President Trump’s first and only term! It’s His TOP accomplishment!…

And in just a little less than 2 months President Trump and his White House staff and all of his men can ride that #@%#! accomplishment and the apocalyptic horse they came in on straight on outta town… just like a cowboy!

…And Good Riddance!

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HAWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!