Salem Political Snark

Angry Owl's 2021 predictions for Salem, Oregon

It's always a pleasure to be able to share local predictions for the coming year from Salem's most famous life form, Angry Owl. Here are Angry Owl's Twitter tweets -- better termed "hoots," of course. 

They're funny and wise. Since Donald Trump has been permanently banned from Twitter, I'm recommending that his 80 million or so followers migrate over to Angry Owl's account. 

After all, there's way more truth in a single Angry Owl tweet than in the countless tweets Trump inflicted on the nation. Enjoy...

Insurrection at Capitol today caused by the Cult of Trump

This is what happens when people fall under the spell of an authoritarian cult leader.

A woman died today in the Capitol building after a mob incited by Trump stormed the building in an insurrection aimed at stopping Biden from being declared president-elect by Congress.

Who is responsible for her death? Who is responsible for the first invasion of the Capitol since the War of 1812? Easy answers.

-- Donald Trump, of course. He urged his cult members to march to the Capitol today. Trump deserves to be impeached for this act of sedition.

-- Everybody who voted for Trump in 2020 after watching him trash every norm of decency, truth, and patriotism.

-- All the cowardly Republican politicians who stood by as Trump lied about the election being stolen from him.

-- Each of the Senators and Representatives who signed on to the coup attempt that sought to replace the will of the voters with Congress choosing to give Trump a second term.

-- Whoever in law enforcement who did an amazingly crappy job at protecting the Capitol from a totally predictable angry Trump mob.

The only good news out of today's disaster is that maybe, just maybe, it will cause those who have joined the Cult of Trump to find the guts to abandon the worst president in our nation's history.

There's so much blame to pass around for today's horrific insurrection it will take quite a while to sort out who the worst offenders are.

Fortunately, Democrats will control the presidency and both houses of Congress following the highly encouraging wins of Warnock and Ossof in the Georgia Senate runoffs on Tuesday. An investigation by the Justice Department should make sure that this debacle never happens again.

It seems clear that the insurrectionists who broke into the Capitol were treated much more gently by law enforcement than Black Lives Matter demonstrators who actually had a good moral reason for their protest. Why? This needs to be looked into.

Most importantly, let's try to never forget how fragile our democracy is. A good share of the Republican Party, a majority, seemingly, is OK with Trump trying to steal the election from Biden.

This is scary. The coup attempt by Trump and his cronies will fail. However, there's no guarantee that a smarter, and equally malevolent, president couldn't hatch a similar plot that would succeed. We can't become complacent about our democracy or we'll find one day that it has been taken away from us.

Here's some of the tweets that popped up in my Twitter feed today. They paint a disturbing picture of today's insurrection by Trump cultists. 

Coup attempt by GOP on January 6 is beyond disgusting

If you're a Republican who isn't planning to end your allegiance to the GOP, either you are unaware of the highly unpatriotic coup attempt being planned by your political party in Congress on January 6, or you're OK with this shameful effort to overthrow the lawful result of the 2020 presidential election in favor of a wanna-be authoritarian, Donald Trump.

I'm hoping that the former is the case.

Maybe you've been busy with Christmas and New Year celebrations and haven't paid much attention to the news. In that case, I'm sharing some Twitter tweets and a Washington Post opinion piece that will bring you up to speed on what a dozen Republican Senators and reportedly at least 120 Republican House members are plotting to do next Wednesday.

That's when the usually ceremonial counting of the Electoral College votes will take place. Sure, there's a process laid out in law for what's to be done if a state has two slates of contested electors. But all the states have certified their slate of electors, so there's no decision for Congress to make about who gets each state's electoral votes.

Which isn't stopping the coup attempt. Any Republican who doesn't condemn this disgusting plot to subvert our democracy -- a first in the history of the United States -- has decided that loyalty to Trump is more important than loyalty to our nation. 

Check out a Washington Post opinion piece, "Cruz disrupting the electoral college count won't change anything. It can still hurt democracy."

Sen. Ted Cruz’s 11th-hour effort to derail certification of Joe Biden’s election victory is the wrong solution to a non-problem at the wrong time. Fortunately, it also won’t succeed, but it nonetheless provides one more alarming sign of the perilous state of our democracy.

Cruz (R-Texas) and 10 colleagues announced Saturday that they will vote to challenge electoral college votes in “disputed states” when Congress meets Jan. 6, though it was unclear how many states that will be. In practical effect, the move adds nothing but numbers to the process that Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) had already vowed to set into motion: two hours of debate, in both the House and Senate, on each state the Republicans challenge.

This will greatly slow what should be a straightforward process, but the bottom line is clear: Unless Vice President Pence, in his presiding role as president of the Senate, were to unexpectedly deviate from the procedures established by Congress in 1887 — a truly lawless move that would be swiftly resisted by senators and representatives of both parties — the outcome remains inevitable.

Nonetheless, the fact that a dozen senators and senators-elect, along with apparently more than 100 House members, want to disrupt congressional ratification of the electoral college result is one more horrendous sign of the severity of the disease afflicting the United States’ democratic system. It will make it even harder for Biden to heal this pathology of partisan polarization, as he has promised to do.

As shown below, Chris Hayes points out that the only evidence being put forward by Republicans of serious fraud in the presidential election is the assertion that after months of falsely claiming that this non-existent fraud existed, now the GOP is using the fact that many people in their party believe the lies they were told is reason enough for Congress to hold off on declaring Joe Biden the victor -- which he certainly is.

I've also shared a tweet that shows the names of the disgusting anti-democratic senators who have joined Ted Cruz' Crazy Club, and an assortment of other tweets -- including a series from attorney Max Kennerly debunking the ridiculous claim that fraud enabled Biden to win the election.