An Open Letter to Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema

It's time to break the filibuster.  

You saw today a Republican party that is no longer interested in the truth and beyond that, has little concern for the future of the American Republic.  

You've been told this would happen.  You've seen the same unbelievable, incredible subversion of the GOP, dishonesty on top of dishonesty, lies on top of lies and the same self intestest that was slowly easting away at the foundation of our country, our constitution and the freedoms it guarantees.  You'd have to have been living under a rock not to see it.  

You both have achieved admirable political success, being Democrats elected from states where it is not easy for Democrats to win statewide elections.  You're intelligent people, both of you show consideration and concern for people and a desire to help them.  You can discern right from wrong and both of you have made statements that make it clear, at least to me if not to your constituents, that you are diametrically opposed to Trumpism.  

As reasonable senators, obviously completely aware of what happened on January 6, and having been involved in that experience, you expressed your desire for an investigation to move forward by the vote you cast today.  Thank you for doing that, it was exactly the right thing to do.  Now I am going to ask you to take the next step, and keep doing what is right for our country, and that is to get rid of the filibuster so that those who were responsible for January 6 can be brought to justice.  Do it.  The greatest leaders American has ever had are those who have been willing to set politics aside, along with their own personal ambitions, and do the right thing.  Sometimes, they've had to pay a political price to do it, sometimes people recognize the good thing they've done and rewarded them accordingly.  But this could very well be the place in history for which you were elected to the Senate.  

But there's a little more to it than that.  

Voting rights need to be protected.  Will that be your legacy?  Senator Sinema, your state's legislature is making the whole state look ridiculous with its "cyber ninja audit" looking for evidence of voter fraud that's not there, spending the taxpayer's money on a wild goose chase, attempting to justify anti-American, anti-constitutional proposals to restrict voting.  You could help improve Arizona's image by stepping up and doing the right thing.  The Republicans are never going to pass any laws to protect voters, especially not minority voters and you know that.  

And it seems this would be the time and opportunity, Senator Manchin, for you to get some of the things West Virginians need and have been asking for.  Rural hospitals in your state are closing.  I just read about another one in Mingo County that got put out of business by COVID.  Where is that, exactly, on the Republican agenda?  The other big issue for your state is job growth.  Yes, lots of West Virginians voted for Trump, but they've felt ignored and neglected for a long time.  You can change that.  Your party is the one that is best positioned on the issues that are important to West Virginians and they're now the only party that actually believes in negotiation and compromise for the benefit of the people.  

Democrats have a window of opportunity to get things done.  Bi-partisan would be great but its not going to happen.  

Do you care about people like me?  I'm a native Arizonan, by the way, born and raised in the Grand Canyon State.  My parents moved there in the mid-1950's from West Virginia, partly for the climate but mostly for the job my Dad worked at to provide for his family.  So I've got roots in both states, Senators.  I'm your constituent.  And I am asking you to do the right thing. 

Protect the American Constitution and the American Republic.  Protect voting rights.  Do the right thing.  End the filibuster.  

The Arizona Sham Audit is Absolute Proof That There Was No "Massive Voter Fraud"

Arizona State Senator Paul Boyer, a Republican, says that the current audit of Maricopa County 2020 general election ballots "makes us look like idiots."  

He is right.  

Even though there were absolutely no indications of any reason to conduct an election audit or recount in Arizona following the 2020 election., and without a single piece of evidence to justify it, Arizona's legislature compelled the state's taxpayers to underwrite the expenses for four separate audits, complete with plenty of observers from among the extremists and conspiracy theorists, along with a recount.  What those independent auditors found--all experts in election audits, all non-partisan and committed to the accepted principles of election audits, all verified by even the extremist and conspiracy theorists who observed--was that Arizona's 2020 election outcome was accurate.  The recount produced an additional handful of votes for both candidates, fewer than a hundred total, which actually boosted Biden's total by about 50 votes.  That's not unusual, even in an election as close as this one.  

But the auditors found absolutely no evidence whatsoever of fraud, and not even as many of the quirks and "irregularities" that accompany a typical election, largely because a much larger percentage of the population used the mail-in or drop-box route, which eliminates the "irregularities" that occur with the various methods of voting in person.  

Facts and solid evidence, however, are not the modus operandi of Trump supporters.  Operating on a philosophy of "lie until enough people believe it to create doubt," the repeated and redundant requests for "audits" would not be satisfied until an auditor could be found who, in spite of the evidence, would obfuscate the facts to create doubt.  The auditing firm, called "Cyber Ninjas," which alone should have given the good senator pause before they made his Republican colleagues look like idiots, and which indulges in ridiculous conspiracy theories, claims that they have a special piece of equipment that can detect the presence of "bamboo fibers" indicating that the ballots may have been inserted into the pile from China or Southeast Asia.  

That's where Boyer drew the line.  And I agree, though believing something like that doesn't just make you look like an idiot, it qualifies you for club membership and the card.  

Boyer and other senators could have prevented this embarrassment by simply refusing to demand yet another audit after getting more than conclusive evidence that there was no voter fraud and that Biden got more votes in Arizona than Trump did.  Period.  But they waited to see which way the wind would blow and when it became a hurricane against the idiocy of the Cyber Ninjas and the whole conspiracy theory fraud, they jumped on the bandwagon headed the other way.  Too late, but they're trying and you have to hand it to them, they have confirmed that Trump lied about a stolen election.   

The "Cyber Ninjas" with their comedy of errors, have simply underlined the fact that there was no voter fraud and that Maricopa County in particular did an outstanding job of managing an election as free of error as any in the country.  The "comedy of errors" includes the fact that they are so inexperienced at auditing, well, just about anything, that they can't competently manage the information they need to conduct their audit.  They claimed that the county deleted an entire voter database, but the county didn't delete anything. the database is right where they filed it.  The incompetent auditing firm can't figure out how to access it, which should be the first indication that they do not have a clue about what they are doing.  They apparently do not have anyone in their group who can follow instructions.  They claimed that the storage boxes had inaccurate numbers of ballots stored, but, oops, the county says they never requested to see the logs which list the boxes, by number, and the ballots they contained.  They have them, every box accounted for accurately and exactly according to the log.  

It's pretty obvious the intention in hiring the "Cyber Ninjas" wasn't to get an accurate audit of the election, it was to continue to sew doubt about the accuracy of it and to keep feeding the lie, as Senator Boyer pointed out to Arizona voters.  If they really had any genuine, real evidence that there was any kind of "fraud," even with the tiniest fraction of the ballots, we'd be hearing about that now instead of their magic bamboo-fiber detecting microscope or the fact that many of the absentee ballots appear to be machine folded.  It's good that they noticed that, since absentee, mail-in ballots in Arizona are machine folded before they were mailed.  They've also violated just about every state rule that applies to election audits, including being caught with dozens of black pens and sharpies in the counting rooms, a big no-no, and of leaving piles and boxes of ballots opened and unattended, also an audit-violating practice.  

And now, against the rules of legitimate election audits in Arizona, they are packing everything up because the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, where the audit is laid out, is being used for a while to host high school graduation ceremonies.  Such an interruption invalidates what they've done  up to this point, which isn't much, at least, it does under real  audit practices and rules.  But this isn't a "real" audit and these aren't "real auditors."  So just let that sink in.  

Maybe they think they can pass this phony audit off in Arizona, a state where many people think God lives with his many wives on the planet Kolob and requires you to wear sacred underwear around everywhere you go.  What's the next thing they will announce about the audit, that it appears some of the ballots were dipped in green cheese by moonmen? 

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, four Republicans and one Democrat, along with the Republican voter registrar and the Sheriff, a Democrat, probably brings more credible criticism than Senator Boyer.  Calling the audit a "sham" and a "con", they've pointed out the inept mistakes of the auditors, saying that it has promoted falsehoods, defamed the public servants (mostly Republicans) who ran the fall election.  Calling the accusations of voter fraud by Trump and his campaign "the big lie" they have told the state senate that this "sham" is "harming all of us" and have called on them to put a stop to the audit.  

"Our state is becoming a laughingstock" they said, in a letter that the Republican County Recorder also signed, along with the sheriff and the supervisors.  It passed that milestone when the state Senate hired Cyber Ninjas.  

Was it Our Finest Hour?

The COVID-19 pandemic is, without a doubt, one of those great crisis moments that shape and define American history.  It falls in the same category as the Civil War, the Great Depression, the totalitarian threats in Europe leading to World War 2, the September 11 Attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and Hurricane Katrina.  

It happened quickly, spread rapidly and took a while for people to comprehend what was happening, make adjustments and adapt to it not only for our own good, but for the good of others.  In a situation like this, it has become very clear that working together and doing things that contribute to the safety and wellness of others, like, say, wearing a mask in public, will also contribute to our own safety and wellness.  We still don't know everything, but we know enough to have figured out what it will take to eliminate the threat of COVID-19 and that means that integrity demands that we step up and do our part.  

This should be one of our finest hours. I know that the teachings of the Bible aren't universally accepted by all Americans, and are also not interpreted the same way, but there is some merit in the values and principles that it promotes. The Apostle Paul, writing to the church at Philippi, made this statement: 

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.

There are many people who are, in humility, putting the needs of others ahead of themselves when it comes to this pandemic.  I think of those in the medical field who put themselves right into the direct path of people who have COVID-19 in order to take care of them.  Many of them are vaccinated now, but that certainly wasn't the case when all of this started.  Many first responders, paramedics, police officers, firemen, also exposed themselves to the virus while continuing to do their jobs.  And there were thousands of people who work in essential businesses, like grocery stores and pharmacies, gas stations and other places where the needs of daily life must be met, who showed up for work to make sure people had what they needed to make it through each day. 

Fear of the unknown is genuine fear.  As this pandemic unfolded, it provided many ways for those who implicitly believe in the practice of the Christian faith in accordance with the scripture to demonstrate their convictions and do something that was encouraging, helping people to overcome their fear of the unknown and set a personal example for others to follow which might lead to behavior that would slow the spread of the virus and contribute to recovery.  There's scientific proof that wearing masks, keeping distance, regularly washing your hands and limiting your time spent in public is highly effective in preventing the spread of the coronavirus.  

Unfortunately, the political atmosphere of our day managed to turn ways to prevent the spread of coronavirus into assertions of "guaranteed constitutional freedoms."  Minimizing the death rate, and beyond that, cheapening the lives of those most at risk by dismissing them because of their age was an appalling demonstration of selfishness that was most certainly not the kind of attitude the founding fathers imagined would be protected by freedom of speech. 

I'm guessing that being pro-life on behalf of the unborn doesn't translate over to being pro-life in protecting older people from COVID-19, at least, not enough to make the effort to wear a mask and follow a set of precautions aimed at preventing its spread.  

There's not a lot of consistency between claiming to believe the Bible and labelling it the inerrant, infallible word of God, the only rule for faith and practice, and then ignoring a good portion of what it teaches about loving others more than yourself, and Jesus above all when it comes to your complaining and fretting about what the government is doing to protect people from coronavirus.  Not because it's a deadly virus, mind you, and the risk of getting it is like playing Russian Roulette, but because you're using it to dispute the political affiliation of the officials that are issuing the order. 

We're still seeing churches elevating their claims to "religious freedom" over the health and safety of their own membership.  They contrast with churches that have discovered how to creatively move worship to small group gatherings, zoom or google meet, and put some time and effort in simply transitioning their ministry to a different method that works in a pandemic.  I saw a comment from a pastor on social media this past week who said that he has noticed far more of his parishioners remember his Sunday sermon now because he puts it on a podcast each week and they can listen on their Ipod during the week.  

For a church that exists "when two or three are gathered together in my name," a pandemic shouldn't be a challenge, it should be an opportunity.  This could have been the finest hour for American Christians and their churches, and for some, it may very well be exactly that.  If you're still fussing and fretting about your religious freedom, as many still are, then you probably haven't thought about anything that would make it so.  

The way the country has handle this pandemic made a major and drastic change in direction on January 20 2021.  Whether or not this will be seen as our finest hour probably depends and awful lot on what this administration is able to accomplish over the course of the next year.  But even prior to that, there were Americans who decided they were going to ignore the naysayers and do what Americans always do in a crisis, rise to the occasion.  It has been their finest hour.  How about you?

 

You Can't Separate Responsibility or Integrity From Free Speech

My fourth grade teacher, Edna Smith (yes, that was her real name) introduced me to the Constitution of the United States and the guarantee of liberty in its Bill of Rights. She had taught in the elementary school where I attended for something like forty years by the time I got to her fourth grade class.  She was unmarried, in her sixties and of the generation that had experienced both the Great Depression and the Second World War.  

Miss Smith was big on the practice of values. Constitution was a year-long subject which she not only made the most interesting class we had, but the most productive in terms of what we learned.  And the lessons were practical, in that she illustrated the principles and practice of the rights with the way she operated her classroom.  With each right we had in the room as a student came a level of responsibility as well, whether it was a grade we earned or a privilege we got to exercise.  That's how I learned that personal freedom has a cost associated with it that doesn't always come out of my pocket, and that it is inseparable from responsibility. 

It seems that our former President didn't get the connection from his Constitution teacher. Nor did very many of the people who voted for him and continue to support him.  

Long before he ran for President of the United States, Trump was an agenda-driven demagogue.  He's left a very clear record in words and deeds that make it very clear his only interest in this country is the benefit that it can provide for him.  Patriots obey the laws regulating and governing activities involving business and foreign interests.  They don't dodge their responsibilities as citizens, including trying to cheat on or avoid paying taxes, or use a phony excuse for avoiding military service.  They don't knowingly lie in order to undermine a free and fair election.  They don't gather groups of subversive, conspiracy theorists and Constitution-haters to rallies to attack Congress while it is performing one of its constitutional duties.  They are not pathological liars, making up their own set of facts and reality while speaking to the American people from its highest office.  

Trump is no patriot.  

So the owners of the social media outlets who will no longer allow his hateful lies and treasonous incitements to be publicized over their airwaves are not only completely within their rights, but they are exercising a level of responsibility that is consistent with what the founders envisioned when they wrote the Constitution and defined the principles of individual liberty.  They have correctly discerned Trump's complete lack of responsibility and integrity and by separating those values from his words, he deserves no outlet to spread his poison.  He has not earned the right to have a public platform.  

American Students Need More Teachers like Miss Smith

The curriculum in schools needs to beef up the social studies objectives, especially when it comes to Constitutional history.  It needs to be paired with the values that are necessary to make individual freedom work for everyone and that means that responsibility must be taught, illustrated and modeled by those who teach it, and by politicians who want to use its power.  

The Constitution is a great document, but without the application of personal responsibility, integrity, the recognition and respect for the equality of our fellow human beings and American citizens given at a cost of personal sacrifice, it is just another collection of words expressing meaningless ideals.  Miss Smith understood those principles, believed in them and lived them.  There are other teachers whose passion for life and liberty have led them down the same path.  We need more of them.  

We also need more leaders who will stand up to bullies like Trump, who endanger our freedom and undermine our trust.  Taking away his tweeting ability is as patriotic an act as volunteering for military service.  

Beating Voter Suppression Laws

 Just before running for governor of Georgia in 2018, Secretary of State Brian Kemp purged the state's voter registration rolls.  Purges like this in southern states are a common attempt to suppress black voter turnout because the African American population in southern states tends to be less educated and poorer than the white population and, because of past history, more reluctant to venture into courthouses and public buildings to re-register.  

Kemp purged over 200,000 names from the voter registration rolls but wound up winning the election over Democrat Stacey Abrahms by just 55,000 votes.  Abrahms was able to motivate many of her supporters by pointing to the suppression efforts of her opponent and by organizing an effort to get the disenfranchised voters back on the registration rolls before the election.  

Abrahms' efforts to get past the attempts to suppress black votes continued into the 2020 Presidential election cycle and are given the credit they are due for flipping the state's electoral votes from Trump to Joe Biden, the first Democrat to carry Georgia since Jimmy Carter did in 1976.  In spite of obstacles put up to try and discourage black voters from showing up, a long list of tactics that include everything from having fewer voting machines and polling places in predominantly black precincts to outright intimidation of black voters standing in line waiting to cast their ballots, the supression effort failed.  

The predominantly African-American base of Democrats in Georgia has been bolstered in the past couple of decades by an influx of mostly "liberal yankees" moving to the sun belt in Georgia mostly because of the jobs.  It's been coming, but it took a measure of activism to get a higher percentage of the black vote out than normal, and disgust with the sitting President among the professional transplants now living in Georgia and flip the state.  

That's how its done. 

The Democratic party needs to organize a Stacy Abrahms-Keisha Lance Bottoms type of activist effort to boost voter registration rolls with Democrats and then to keep it going so that those voters make it to the polls and cast their ballots, prepared to endure whatever obstacle gets thrown in their path to make sure they cast a ballot.  That certainly needs to happen in states like North Carolina, Texas, Florida, Arizona and Nevada where the influx of people from more politically liberal parts of the country is making a big difference in the ability of Democrats to win statewide elections.  But I say it should be happening in every single state.  Even in places that seem hopeless for Democrats, like West Virginia or Alabama, there are pockets of voters who can make a difference in a state legislative race or even a congressional district.  Every victory counts.  Register new voters, train them to recognize the obstacles and work to get them in line at every single election.  Every.  Single.  Election.  

An all-out assault in the courts should also accompany the activist efforts.  Most of the voter suppression laws that the GOP is getting passed are unconstitutional.  Some courts will rule against them, some won't, but getting as many laws overturned and legal precedents set is important.  This is an important battle that must be won for the sake of our democracy itself.  

This is an important battle that must be won for the sake of our democracy itself.  

It starts with me.  I will make whatever effort I can make in order to help make sure everyone has access to a ballot and a way to vote and that they are encouraged and motivated to do it.  I made phone calls in 2020 and had a lot of fun doing it.  I live in a state that is reliably Democratic so I found a way to volunteer to make calls to people in Wisconsin.  It was a lot of fun, I had some engaging conversations and hopefully helped get people to vote who might not otherwise have made the effort. I've signed up to help in 2022 and I'm looking forward to it. 

The frustration people feel about these laws definitely motivates people to do something about it and helping get massive numbers of voters to the polls in spite of the restrictions is the best way to work the system at the moment.  Once politicians are elected who will pass laws to make voting more accessible and easier, the battle has been won.  Let's keep beating them.  

The Show is Over, The Case is Closed and That's All, Folks!

Trump lost and it was a legitimate election.  There was no voter fraud.

So you still believe the election was stolen from Trump?  Prove it.  All the states certified their votes just like they always do.  Several of the ones challenged by Trump's legal team went through the whole process of auditing machines, doing recounts and getting affidavits and testimony from the poll watchers, more than double the usual number this time around because Trump had been floating the idea that if he lost it would be because of fraud during most of his first term.  

So wrap your mind around this idea, if you have a mind and you can do it.  

There was no voter fraud and Trump lost.  

Maybe you need to sit down with a piece of notebook paper and a pen, like you did in junior high, and write "There was no voter fraud" a hundred times, followed by "Donald Trump lost" a hundred times.  

Sidney Powell, one of the attorneys Trump hired to bring the fruitless, baseless lawsuits filed in over sixty different courts has admitted that "no reasonable person could take [Trump's] claims of voter fraud seriously."  That's her defense against potential lawsuits stirred up by the phony claims she and Giuliani trotted around the six states where they originally tried to make the charges stick.  Apparently, she was right.  Over sixty very reasonable judges, including some on the federal bench that Trump himself appointed, agreed with her more recent assessment, that no "reasonable" person could believe Trump's lies, that there was no evidence of voter fraud and that the election results, as certified, are accurate.  

The multiple recounts, audits, checks on voting machines, and vote-counting machines have since backed up the courts' rejection of every single lawsuit that was filed by Trump's attorneys.  There were a few changes in vote tallies here and there, but in tens of votes, not anywhere close to the thousands that would have been necessary to overturn the election results, if that were even possible.  Trump himself admitted to the lies when he openly asked the Georgia Secretary of State to "find" twelve thousand votes somewhere.  No reasonable person could misunderstand exactly what he meant. ;-)

Even hiring a Trump-supporting consulting firm to recount ballots in Maricopa County, Arizona, behind closed doors, no one allowed in, sharpies and black pens in hand, has not produced a shred of evidence of any kind of voter fraud on anywhere near the scale it would take to change the results.  The results of the recount leaking out have produced, well, nothing except solid verification that the count was accurate.  No reasonable person who knows the circumstances would believe otherwise anyway.  But so far, all they've come up with is some muttering about absentee ballots not having a fold in them.  Keep in mind, those ballots were run through the machines at least six different times after the initial count was made.  Also keep in mind that Arizona allowed voters to return their absentee ballots to their precinct voting location on election day, which would mean that they didn't have to be folded.  

But it's gullible people that are the target of this dead ballot recount, not the reasonable people to whom Powell is referring. 

Reasonable people, a description that characterizes a majority of Americans, are expecting Trump to be charged and tried for the crimes he committed which are listed in the Mueller Report (yes, he still can be) his first and second impeachment and related to the insurrection he clearly incited on January 6.  Reasonable people are planning to turn out in massive numbers in November of 2022 to help Congress raise its intelligence level by ridding it of more Trump enablers and conspiracy theorists.  America is moving forward, as it should be, without him, as it should be.  

Facts are facts.  End of story.