The State of US

February 8, 2021: The latest Heather Cox Richardson blog gives a good primer for today.  Note also the comments at the end of the below blog.  Mine is one of them.

also February 8, 2021: “Why You Can’t Understand Conservative Rhetoric” 

February 9, 2021 3:30 a.m.: hours before the Impeachment trial begins, Grievous Constitutional Crimes.

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For those who need/want some background on today’s USA: an excellent CNN Fareed Zakaria special, “The Divided States of America.  What is Tearing Us Apart”, airs at 9 p.m. EST on Saturday February 6.  (Tonight.)  This is an encore of the program we watched last Sunday.  All information is available here.  The program is very well worth your time.  We’ll watch it again.

It’s Saturday morning, Feb 6, and I’m getting set to publish this post.  Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to remove newly elected Marjory Taylor Greene of Georgia from her committee assignment to House Education and Labor committee.  It was not a straight party line vote.  11 from her party agreed the decision was correct.

About the same time, the former President of the United States  said he wouldn’t testify in his own behalf at this, his second, impeachment.  At about the same time, a major manufacturer of voting machines, indicted by innuendo in the just completed U.S. election, sued several persons and companies for several billion dollars.

I don’t need to provide chapter and verse on any of these.  They were all over the U.S. media, and there was more that any citizen could easily find out simply by watching TV or listening to the radio or reading the newspaper.  Overnight Just Above Sunset summarized this matter, here.

Monday begins the Second Impeachment trial of the ex-President In the U.S. Senate, only the third President in history to have been impeached.  This is a trial for the history books for those who come after us to learn about.  This is about a crime whose culmination on January 6, 2021, was witnessed directly by the Senators sitting as judge and jury, some of whom may well have been advisors, albeit quiet.  I could go on.

That is how it is in the United States of America on Saturday morning, February 6, 2021.  Every single one of us in one way or another are on trial next week.  We all fit in.  As my headline suggests, WE are US, the United States; the world will see and judge US by what our elected representatives have done and will do.

Feb. 2, 2021, in the rotunda of the Capitol, in memory of Officer Sicknick, the policeman killed in the insurrection at the Capitol Jan. 6, 2021.

My Jan. 6 blog, published as the insurrection began, can be reviewed if you wish: here.  I wrote many times about the state of our Union as I saw it between the November 7 election and today (See postnote).  I expected to take a vacation from politics in those 77 days….  That didn’t happen.

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Usually in history this interim period between Presidential election and inauguration in the U.S. is generally a non-event regardless of who wins the U.S. Presidency.  A transition peacefully happens from one administration to another, most commonly going from the first term to a second for the incumbent.

(In my life-time this would be: a fourth term for Franklin Delano Roosevelt; second terms for Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama; one term only for Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Trump.  John Kennedy was assassinated in his second year in office. Jerry Ford was a caretaker President, coming from Speaker of the House of Representatives, for two years after Nixon resigned, and was unsuccessful in running for his first full term.  He came to the position via the vice-presidency after Spiro Agnew resigned the office in 1973.)

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In the wake of the controversial election 2000, I kept all of the newspapers between that contested election and the final decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on or about Dec 12, 2000.  I still have the papers, and I was going to throw them out this year, but given the events this year, they will join the collected newspapers from 2020-21 for my descendants to toss or keep when the time comes.  Yes, it’s nuts…but harmless.

I’ll probably watch as much as possible of the upcoming proceedings next week, as I can.  This impeachment hearing will be a civics lesson for the future generations who will be impacted by the results.

In the meantime, watch the machinations of state legislatures and the national legislature, and get on the court as a citizen – we are the government.  Already, I have heard it said that there are over 100 proposed amendments to election law in the various states most of which are designed to tighten voting law, not to the advantage of the common citizen.

As I say above, “every single one of us in one way or another are on trial next week”.  Everyone can impact on this, and I hope everyone weighs in for the right of the franchise…and that everyone will prepare to cast an informed vote for candidates for all offices in 2022, and thereafter.

Watch also the apportionment of voting districts as mandated by the just completed 2020 census.  Learn how your state apportionment will be made, and by whom.

Sign seen on a fence at 27th and Lake Street Minneapolis Jan 31, 2021.

This is well worth reading: “Those Damned Canadians“, Just Above Sunset.

POSTNOTE: As noted I had planned to take a vacation from politics between Election Day and Inauguration (Nov. 7 – Jan. 20.  That turned out to be a fools errand, due to the chaotic events we have all experienced.  There were politics related blogs on Nov. 7, 15,18; then again on Jan 1, 5, 6, 12, 13, 15 (Q-anon), 16, 20, 23, 24, 25, 27.

Enjoy the Super Bowl….

4 replies
  1. norman hanson
    norman hanson says:

    Dick: Going forward with the impeachment trial of Trump (He has already been impeached twice which should support his always modest claims that he has done better than any other POTUS and that he is smarter than everyone just like the Sheldon Cooper character i the Big Bang Theory on TV) even though he will not be convicted, of course. As the POTUS, Trump took a sworn oath in which he committed to upholding and supporting the Constitution of the United States of American…AND THEN…tried to facilitate a coup to overturn that so important definition of America…the America that he always claimed to make great again…what, by overturning the Constitution. The impeachment trial will serve the purpose of reminding Americans just what Trump tried to do to stay in office including disenfranchasing the 80-million people who did not vote for him!

    Reply
  2. Mary A Maher
    Mary A Maher says:

    Is an impeachment not convicted a victory? Does it give the impeached and loyalists bragging rights to have ‘dodged’ again? Does it expose the bias of those trying the case? Even though we all saw what happened on January 6th there remains a solid segment of America that can not and will not accept responsibility as the direction they received to act came from POTUS. Will the simple process of shaming the president with a second attempt prevent ‘ever running for office again’? The character we are watching has not changed his stripes since he began his quest to rule America…why does anyone think this will make an impact….why does anyone think that decision makers will actually vote their conscious but even more concerning is if they do vote their conscious at the end of the trial how will an intelligent, non-biased, truth seeking voter react to leaving them in office in the future??

    Chiefs by 7.

    Reply
    • dickbernard
      dickbernard says:

      Re your long paragraph, my contention is that the purpose of the trial is the need to establish a record for the history of our country, however much time we have left for this experiment in democracy. “The character” has indeed been impeached twice. In the legal system that would be an indictment, and indictments are much more than mere accusations. Of course the judge and jury are likely to not rule based on the evidence, but based on other things. We shall see. “The character” and his followers will make history, and not in a way that they likely would prefer.
      As for your second paragraph, it’s about to begin on my TV, and I don’t follow the game, so not even sure who the other team is! One will win, we’ll watch parts.

      Reply
  3. Beulah Forbes
    Beulah Forbes says:

    For me, it’s like watching police killing unarmed people and the final outcome is that they were within their rights to do so. The lies of the last 5 years to some, is like the last 500 to me. America was built on lies that have festered to the point of insurrection, people don’t know what to believe, even when it’s in your face and on TV. That path is predictable, the 80 million must be the change we’re looking for!

    Reply

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