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As Susan Collins (R-ME) put it: “S. 1 would take away the rights of people in each of the 50 states to determine which election rules work best for their citizens.” That is rich, considering that in some GOP dominated states laws are being passed to allow GOP state legislators to determine - by overthrow of a legal election, if necessary - who 'wins'. I don't see how Collins' nose isn't 30 miles long, the woman lies so much.

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Just a few thoughts on those Republican ideals.

Government close to the people- 600,000 deaths in covid states making up their own rules.

Strong national defense- got us into Iraq with contractors making billions and American lives lost.

Freedom- to stand in line for hours on end in Georgia a year ago to simply vote in a primary election in the nation that is supposed to be a beacon for democracy.

Limited taxes- actually no taxes for the wealthiest among us who can buy the present leaders in power and get tax codes passed just for them.

Please list for me the Republicans who are speaking out about the failures of these “Republican Ideals” in our land.

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Fortunately I had listened to people in the “know” the night before last. They all reiterated this procedure was merely to present Manchin’s ideas but knew the Repubs under Mitch’s thumb, wouldn’t budge.

I watched Amy Klobuchar tonight on Maddow and she is taking the Rules Committee on the road, starting with Georgia. This move is to fire voters up by letting them know what is at stake for them.

Susan Collins makes me just want to vomit but it’s Mitch who I would like to squeeze his triple chin into mincemeat.

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Morning, all!! Morning, Dr. R!! Today sucks. Feel free to pass me by. I am on a bit of another lane today; besides, most of you are reflecting our thoughts admirably about yesterday's tragic vote.

Anybody remember the Kerner Commission? That's the body that LBJ put together back in 1967 to study why there was so much "rioting" in the streets starting in 1965. Interesting that the rise in civil unrest began after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was enshrined into law.

"In his remarks upon signing the order establishing the commission, Johnson asked for answers to three basic questions about the riots: 'What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again?'"[1]

Got time to read 426 pages? Me neither. I copied this summary of the summary from Wikipedia instead. Notice how Biden is attempting to do what this commission had recommended, but was not acted on at the time, (though the book that came from it was very popular).

"The commission's final report, the Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders[4] or Kerner Report, was issued on February 29, 1968, after seven months of investigation. The report became an instant bestseller, and over two million Americans bought copies of the 426-page document. Its finding was that the riots resulted from black frustration at the lack of economic opportunity. Martin Luther King Jr. pronounced the report a 'physician's warning of approaching death, with a prescription for life.'[3]

"The report berated federal and state governments for failed housing, education and social-service policies. The report also aimed some of its sharpest criticism at the media. "The press has too long basked in a white world looking out of it, if at all, with white men's eyes and white perspective.'

The report's best known passage warned: "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal." The report was a strong indictment of white America: 'What white Americans have never fully understood — but what the Negro can never forget — is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.[5]

"Its results suggested that one main cause of urban violence was white racism and suggested that white America bore much of the responsibility for black rioting and rebellion. It called to create new jobs, construct new housing, and put a stop to de facto segregation in order to wipe out the destructive ghetto environment. In order to do so, the report recommended for government programs to provide needed services, to hire more diverse and sensitive police forces and, most notably, to invest billions in housing programs aimed at breaking up residential segregation."

Here is the link from Wikipedia. I had found the actual report in pdf form, but the browser was not secure so I did not want to post it here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerner_Commission#Report_summary

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I am an American citizen. I have lived in Copenhagen, Denmark for 45 years. After many years of experiencing life in a well-functioning social democracy in Denmark, I am convinced there is a solution to the political horror playing out in Washington DC.

To save democracy in the United States at this juncture, we need the formation of a third political party to replace the Trumpized Republican party. This new party would be based on traditional Republican ideals and thoughts and provide a proper counterpoint to the present Democratic party. A viable third party could be made up of voters who espouse the true ideals of the Republican party and provide present day disenfranchised Republican voters with a viable alternative. It would take some time for this new party to grow and become powerful enough to rival the present Democratic party, but it would compete with the present party of Trump and McConnell which would eventually wither away. In time, perhaps, America too, could have a political structure which would enable the formation of coalition governments which would be more representative and responsive to the varied and disparate peoples and ideologies in the United States.

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My first thought on this is that it resembled a sequence in a repeated nightmare, you know what is going to happen but you plod on irremedially nonetheless to the end....you can't help yourself; a Senatorial Groundhog Day. I trust that the whole Democratic Caucus will be using their coming "holiday" to wake up a little more to their truely desperate plight and not just to emphasize the heroic nature of their "failed" attempt to rise to the level of their illustrious predecessor, Abraham Lincoln. He was beaten in his first joust for a Senate seat by Douglas but persevered with strength, conviction and guile to win after a dire fight and free ALL the people from the "yoke" of Calhoun's State rights.

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“How is it possible to square states’ rights and equality without also protecting the right of all adult citizens to vote?” It’s not. Which is the point. These “election security” laws Republicans are passing are designed to end equality. Inequality isn’t an accident, it’s the goal. Republicans are originalists in the ugliest sense of the word. The original Constitution held that only white males have the right to vote. As far as the GOP is concerned, amendments and laws passed since 1783 that guarantee the right to vote for minorities and women are illegitimate. They are working hard to undo them.

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All 50 Republicans! I am baffled as to how not even one of these legislators could put country above party.

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Reading Lincoln's rebuttal to Douglas at the Jonesboro debate I was gobsmacked by Lincoln's explanation of differentiating truths from lies. In this explanation he describes the same tactics used by Republicans today, especially the former president, where someone makes a false story or flawed analogy which is them picked up and repeated until it has the facade of truth.

"It used to be a fashion amongst men that when a charge was made, some sort of proof was brought forward to establish it, and if no proof was found to exist, the charge was dropped. I don't know how to meet this kind of an argument. I don't want to have a fight with Judge Douglas, and I have no way of making an argument up into the consistency of a corn-cob and stopping his mouth with it. [Laughter and applause.] All I can do is, good-humoredly to say that, from the beginning to the end of all that story about a bargain between Judge Trumbull and myself, there is not a word of truth in it. [Applause.] I can only ask him to show some sort of evidence of the truth of his story. He brings forwyeard here and reads from what he contends is a speech by James H. Matheny, charging such a bargain between Trumbull and myself. My own opinion is that Matheny did do some such immoral thing as to tell a story that he knew nothing about. I believe he did."

The Republican Party has been and continues to desecrate all that Lincoln stood for in becoming the old Democratic Party that Lincoln may not have destroyed but was able to reduce in size so as to make it minority power for generations.

We need a modern day Lincoln moment and why it's not coming from a northern state Republican like Susan Collins is a great disappointment. This disease can only cured from within the Republican Party by something that is in short supply: principled Senators with a moral commitment to the notion that all men and women are created equal. Until that day slavery is still with us, even if only alive in the hearts and minds of elected GOP politicians.

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Yesterday 50 U.S. Republican Senators stood up in Congress and voted to violate and trash the words of the Pledge of Allegiance. “ "I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Apparently, the idea that we are an “indivisible nation with liberty and justice for all” is no longer their view, but rather States Rights, the underlying principle along with human enslavement underlying the founding of the treasonous U.S. Confederacy is now their organizing principle.

This should shock all decent U.S. citizens. I supposes when Congress next convenes in July we can expect to see Republicans propose making the necessary changes to the Pledge of Allegiance to adapt to their new views on 50 individual states each deciding independently which of their citizens is entitled to liberty and justice.

What a shameful, performative vote in our U.S. Senate.

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I have been away for a few days, so if someone else has already made this suggestion forgive me. I am reading Adam Jentleson’s book, Kill Switch. It is about the entire history of the filibuster, and the history of the senate, up to the present day. How the filibuster was effectively used as primarily a mechanism of advantage by the minority Southern slaveholding aristocracy.

I am only halfway through the book, because I made the mistake of getting the Audible version. I keep hitting the back button, trying to keep up with the gush of names and and speech excerpts, and it is a slog when you are just listening. This is a textbook, not a murder mystery! You need a hard copy, or at least the Kindle version so you can highlight, dog-ear, and make notes. I plan to remedy that as soon as tomorrow. I am simply amazed at the comprehensive information that this author has compiled, and he presents it in story form, as if he was there for every terrible minute....

I am not trying to hawk history books on a history professor’s website, so I think we should defer to our host’s opinion of the book before you go and spend money on just my opinion. I think we are going to be deeply involved with the filibuster for quite a while to come, and this book is my way of getting up to speed for the rough ride ahead.

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Today’s Senate GOP filibuster was hardly surprising - though it was sickening all the same. IMHO, Civil Rights are too important to be left to states.

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I'm ashamed of Susan Collins. The people of Maine did not elect Mitch McConnell to be their Senator, so we don't need Susan to tell us what Mitch wants. Republicans have spoiled their own argument. States should be able to decide their own voting rights, but Senators from those same states are supposed to toe the line at the Federal level and vote how their leadership tells them to. Why have a "United" States, with a federal government if individual states can decide something as fundamental as how people should vote.

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There is a glaring cognitive dissonance in Republicans calling for citizens in individual states to decide voting rules as they purposely limit the ability of many of those citizens to vote, and thus participate in the choice.

And Republicans, to a man and woman, wear this hypocricy openly and proudly.

How much more do you need, Senators Manchin and Sinema, to get on board to ditch the filibuster?

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Susan Collins is nauseating.

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Again, I find myself totally appalled at the gameshow posing as the United States Government. I have lived a long lifetime being lied to that this was a democracy, when in fact it has been an oligarchy for that lifetime or longer. Someone mentioned recently how Hillary Clinton won the “Popular Vote” in the 2016 election that the disgusting, unqualified, mentally defective asswipe actually won by the game rules of “Electoral Votes” based on a rigged system. (Al Gore won it in 2000). That statement alone is proof that we are not a democracy. Popular Vote should be the only requirement in a Democracy.

And, I have taken to screaming obscenities at my TV when Mitch McConnell BLATANTLY LIES that there is no voter suppression in all those old Jim Crow Southern States like his, being run by the Repugnant Party who have instituted the new Jim Crow obstacles to voting. “States Rights” should not be allowed to determine which civil rights are protected, including the right to vote. This should be a federal given as proven by all the backwater, ignorant states of Dixie for much of my lifetime. I thot it had been done with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but the Supremes for some stupid legalistic nitpicking got rid of that in 2013 and the Repugnant Party is now free to go back to institute voter suppression anew, while insulting us with their lies of “protection.”

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