Don’t mess with Texas, eh?

Just because you all sit on the largest piece of acreage in the lower 48, you figure this gives you bragging rights? No one tells you how to live or govern, or run an electricity grid? Geez. How’s that disdain for regulation working for you now?

Try to reconcile your “Texas-sized” hubris with your powerless and freezing citizens. Pretty slow on the uptake, since you’ve been through this at least two or three times in the last 30 years. It doesn’t matter that it only happens once a decade or so. When it happens, it affects everyone and they’re suffering unnecessarily because… why? You don’t want Uncle Sam’s fingers in the pie? You don’t want to share? You really prefer to be your own country?

Your oversized ego is a giant annoyance, and your pomposity is biting you in the ass.

There’s no need to travel very far to experience significant differences of opinion regarding the politics of the day. It’s in our own families, among siblings, and parents and children.

Sometimes it’s tempting to demand or offer apologies—for coming on too strong, for thinking and believing with such rigidity the things we think and believe. Polar opposite opinions can’t both be right, can they? Is the truth found somewhere in the compromising, somehow unsatisfying middle? For the sake of peace and tranquility, do we just agree to disagree and never really move beyond that—even if the peace is superficial? Or is it always going to be our reality that we have to be ready to take the gloves off and fight for what we believe, regardless of the validity of those beliefs?

The thing is, I can’t foresee a day when I embrace the “always Trump” or a generally conservative mindset and view this as a wise and inspired way to live one’s life. I can’t picture myself ever adopting even a piece of it and considering this as having “seen the light.”  Instead, it will always suggest being stuck, living life with blinders on, a preoccupation with money and somebody’s laziness, a lack of introspection and an unwillingness to dive deeper into what Jesus and Paul and others have to say in the New Testament. It will always suggest being unnecessarily afraid of differences and change.

It will always speak darkness and some level of selfishness to me.

So… you acquit but then excoriate, claim he’s guilty, acknowledge he did what the Dems said he did, that the Dems made a strong case. Even declare that justice still needs to be pursued (it’s just that you apparently don’t want to be stuck with the mess).

There are obviously wheels turning and a plan hatched that frees you and the rest from getting your hands dirty. Leave it to the state AGs to go after Trump now. Ya, that’s the ticket.

The thing is, it looks an awful lot like you abandoned your constitutional duty to impeach in a situation where impeachment was clearly warranted. And based on a technicality that was ironed out on Day 1 of the trial, no less!

How do you get away with this stuff, Mitch? You’re a friggin’ magician.

When I sit down to write an article for our congregation’s newsletter, I do so most times with only the broadest of outlines– really nothing more than a general awareness of where we’re at in the church year, along with a desire to write something more substantive than a simple Bible study or a rehashing of calendar events that can be found elsewhere in other pages. I guess you could call it an organic process, as in “see what develops.” Or maybe it’s just hit or miss, reflective of a certain laziness.

This time around, I felt a level of anger and frustration that normally is not present. I am growing tired of Covid-19 and all the accompanying restrictions and changes it has wrought. But I am more weary still of the political animosity and manufactured confusion that continues, to some extent, to loom over the response to the pandemic.

It’s been difficult to let this go— namely that Donald Trump and the people around him decided to ignore an actual pandemic. They saw it coming and consciously decided to act as if it wasn’t coming. This isn’t how normal, caring human beings behave.

I’m hoping that the Biden-Harris administration can get its bearings and forge ahead, making progress despite the handicapped start left them by the previous administration.

Trump should have been impeached for this, nevermind everything else.

What is going on at the USPS? How is Louis DeJoy still there? Is there a connection between what we’re currently seeing and the sabotage Trump set in motion in August, or whenever that was?

Back on Feb. 3, I ordered an article of clothing from a company headquartered outside of Boston. I got word that it finally arrived at a USPS facility somewhere in the Lehigh Valley, in PA, last night, Feb. 14. I wasn’t in any hurry for this shirt, but the fact that it swirled around in a vortex and sat in facilities in MA, RI, and NH for over a week made me realize that maybe there are lingering issues with our mail service and delivery system.

And apparently, things are just going to get worse? By design? And surprise! Prices will be rising again. Wow, what a business model.  Or are they still covering their ass, doubling down to make it look like there’s no connection between current troubles and what was attempted prior to the election, that it’s just been the plan all along?

I don’t know. Though, how quick can recovery be after having your knee caps smashed?

I love how news outlets are framing the impeachment vote yesterday– i.e., there has never been a more bipartisan vote in the history of impeachment votes.

Trump was still acquitted, 57-43!

But hey, at least this one was closer to 2/3 than the previous trials over the course of our history, the most recent a little over a year ago– for the same guy. Gotta take some consolation in that fact, I guess.

The Republicans are a special group of flunkies, Mitch McConnell at the head of the class. They couldn’t muster the courage to vote to impeach, but Mitch offered a strong rebuke after the vote, tore the little man a new one, after the vote. But why? Was it just an attempt at offering balm to the millions who now know for sure that Mitch and company are still in Trump’s pocket? Was it just McConnell trying to salvage some self-respect, or a signal that he and the rest knew Trump was guilty as sin but geez, they have their own hides to save?

I think it’s safe to say that no one is ever going to be impeached.

This time it was apparently because of a technicality which the Democrats clearly proved was no precedent on the first day- the part about Trump no longer being in office. It takes hardly any imagination whatsoever to envision a scenario where this would have mattered not at all to Mitch and Co., if a Democrat was on the hot seat.

Ok, Democrats, it’s time to get on with the work you were elected to do. Please pass some legislation and address the pandemic now. And a note to the press—forget Donald Trump even exists, at least for a few days. Give us a break from his ugly mug for a bit. We need time to gird our loins, cleanse our palates, and prepare for the cascade of acquittals in all the pending civil cases.

Cowards.

Truly defensive. Amateur. Video montages conveniently taken out of context. Talking louder and angrier as a way to compensate for a lack of substance. All Trump’s defense lawyers proved is that, given enough time and creativity, people are capable of offering a rebuttal to just about any argument.

Many of us know what we saw—a POTUS who groomed a mob over a period of years to do what it did on January 6. We all saw it, even as we’ve interpreted it in different ways. A mob of angry, misguided, and gullible people broke into the Capitol because they loved their President and believed everything he told them, including the oft-repeated big lie about a stolen election.

The extent to which members of Congress were actually threatened will probably never be known, though the human tendency is toward a flair for the dramatic and overstatement. Do we know for sure what the mob would have done if they had found Mike Pence or Nancy Pelosi? Would they have indeed followed through on their mob-induced, crazed threats? Who knows? That’s not what this impeachment trial is about.

It’s about what the President of the United States said and did—and didn’t say and do—that day and the days leading up to it. The fact that most Republican Senators will not be moved to convict says less about Trump’s innocence or guilt than it does about these Senators’ desire to save their own skins. And to hell with the rule of law, the Constitution, and the Republic.

Legitimate concern dismissed as partisan bickering, as much ado about nothing.

Some Senators doodling while others are trying to present evidence and appeal to the gravity of the situation.

Are Paul, Hawley, and the rest simply blowing it off as over-reaction and political theater, or can they not stand to face a certain reality?

The picture that ends up being created is one of minds made up, blind allegiance, fear of the mob, er Base, and a classic case of CYA and looking out for #1. As seemingly forceful and substantive as the Democratic argument has been, what we end up seeing are too many Republican Senators dismissing it out of hand, as if none of it matters, as if it’s just a vendetta born of long-held animosity– which in part it probably is.

Still, what is it going to take for them to see it as more than that? We’re likely never to know.

On the Impeachment front, the prosecution has had a couple days to make their case. They’ve been pretty convincing, though it’s not like there isn’t any evidence to support their case. The defense has tomorrow and Saturday, in which they will reveal their own video footage and harp on a phrase Trump used in his speech at the Ellipse on 1/6. They have a flimsy case but will do their best to convince they have an ironclad one.

When all is said and done, there most likely won’t be enough votes to convict, so we will have spent all this time and energy on a futile pursuit, and more than half the country will go on feeling like justice once again has not been served, the rat once again has gotten away with something gravely serious, and many will once again settle for bitterness, anger, and frustration.

Last night, there was not one second of primetime programming dedicated to anything else going on in the nation and world— at least on the station I was watching. It was all focused on the Impeachment trial. Nothing about Covid or vaccination efforts, nothing about other legislation or anything else newsworthy. It was like Trump was still in office. Trump front and center, the whole night.

It is maddening beyond words that we are still having to pay so much attention to such a mole hill of a man. This in itself should somehow be an impeachable offense.