The 14th Amendment Section 3: Giving Aid or Comfort to the Enemies Thereof.

My babysitter has arrived and is downstairs logged into his workplace in Milwaukee. In a little bit, we of negative COVID tests will join the Junior Son and family of negative COVID tests for pizza dinner. Funny how something I would have thought to be so exceedingly normal is right up there with a State Dinner. Seriously. Senior Son has not seen Little Miss and Young Sir since October, and they are totally revved up that their Bumple is here for a couple of days. If you haven't guessed, they call him Bumple, The only one missing is Mrs. Senior Son who is holding down the fort at home. I am just glad to have a babysitter for tomorrow. 

Tomorrow is eye #2, and if the results are anything like eye #1, as I expect them to be, I am totally psyched to get this done. I really had no idea how yellow my world had become. Who knew? I am looking forward to even better colors with two working eyeballs. 

I really do want to be done with Feckless Loser and look forward to when, like my cataracts, he is scraped away. However, this past week, the specter of his existence wafted across the news-scape and once again we were reminded of the sadness of the last four years. Watching the footage of the mob attacking the Capitol was frighteningly sad. Hearing them call "Naaaaaancy!" again and again, and knowing they had created gallows on the grounds for Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Pence was like some kind of bad movie. Only it was the real thing and we were watching it unfold live as we watched more than a few senators look away, doodle on pads, read magazines, generally ignore watching tape of what had happened scant weeks ago outside that very chamber. It was as if they were not present, much less bothered by the attack directed against them. 

So the senate acquitted the pathetic shell of a human formerly known as Feckless Loser, on the grounds that they didn't think the Constitution allowed for impeachment after a person leaves office. Which, for the record, it does. But even convicting him would not have removed him from office; instead, it would've assigned responsibility for his words in the hours leading up to the insurrection. Instead, the Republican senators absolved him....or did they? 

Senator Mitch McConnell, probably one of the guiltiest members of Congress to aid and abet this White House in its attempted destruction of the United States as we once knew it, lashed out after the vote in which he voted to acquit:

January 6th was a disgrace.  American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like. Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the Vice President. They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he'd lost an election.

 

Former President Trump's actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty. The House accused the former President of, quote, 'incitement.' That is a specific term from the criminal law. Let me put that to the side for one moment and reiterate something I said weeks ago: There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President.

Yes, McConnell's speech is powerful, but admitting there was a problem while refusing to act on it is just as deceitful as the act itself, if not more so. He ends this accusation of Constitutional dereliction of duty with this:

We refused to continue a cycle of recklessness by straining our own constitutional boundaries in response. The Senate’s decision today does not condone anything that happened on or before that terrible day. It simply shows that senators did what the former president failed to do. We put our constitutional duty first.

By not giving this speech before the vote, Yertle the Turtle let the senate do something much worse than "not condoning" the action of this Feckless Loser -  he allowed that chamber to refuse to assign responsibility to the heinous acts, and opened the door to permit another run at the presidency in 2024.

In other words, Mitch McConnell is full of shit. 

So now, people are trotting out the 14th Amendment, Section 3:

Fourteenth Amendment 

• Section 3

  No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Hmmmm. Do you think telling the mob that you love them constitutes aid or comfort? What aid and comfort did Feckless Loser give his Vice President while he was being hunted down? Eleven minutes after being informed Pence was being evacuated from the Senate floor for his own safety, at 2:24 pm EST, Feckless loser tweeted :

Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify.

He knew his VP was in harm's way and he tweeted that shit. 

In the greater scheme of things, I would rather see them use the 14th Amendment, Section 3 to prevent Feckless Loser from ever running again. If they won't convict him because they think the post presidency impeachment is unconstitutional, why not use the Constitution to restrain him from any other attempts at elected office? This would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Meanwhile, where the hell is Pence in all this? Why is he silent? Why does he not speak about the events of that day? His silence is not deafening; it's perplexing. What is this man so afraid of that he won't speak out?

A Pizza Pause

Dinner with a six-year old and an almost three-year old is a raucous event, especially when pizza's involved. There were timed laps around the living room, kitchen, and dining room, lots of jumping off stuff, shrieking, hysterical laughing, dog barking, airplane crashes, and general mayhem. Bedtime stories were the best...and a promise was elicited that Bumple would come back tomorrow night to read more bedtime stories. I should be just fine by then, and that would give my boys a little bonus time, too. I love that the kids cannot wait to see Bumple. I love that my boys still jerk each other's chains and laugh at their own jokes.  

Resumption of Serious Stuff. 

Everyone back on your head*

Where was I? Oh, yeah. I remember. The GOP

In some ways, Pence's continued silence speaks very loudly to the thrall in which Feckless Loser holds the Republican Party. One would hope that the base does not solely consist of the rioting mob of January 6th. One has to believe that the bulk of the party is made of individuals who believe in traditional Republican values like my dad did. Yeah, he was a Republican and proud of it, although I cannot imagine he would be proud of this GOP. What happened to those people....or are they just as afraid as Mike Pence to admit this guy was unfit for office?

There is a major disconnect for me between the long cherished positions of the Republican party and the deification of Feckless Loser. Republicans were always stolid, solid citizen types who preferred the status quo to change. That said things like, "Love it or leave it" to kids who didn't want to go to Vietnam. That claimed to support the men in blue and general law and order. They were the party of no dreams with a city over there on a hill and some sparkling stars or something. But their version of the American dream was locked in the fantasyland of the 1950s when women wore pearls to vacuum. Miss America was a paragon of American womanhood to be admired, not grabbed by the pussy. The man they nominated did all that and boasted about it. He cheated on all his wives, had kids by all three, and that was okay with them. What happened to all those good Christian folks who cherished virginity with purity rings and preached abstinence?  When that same sorry sack of orange told Nazis they were good people and later told a rioting mob that he loved them, where were all those love-or-leave Americans who fought Nazis in Europe? Why were they silent in the face of a man who trampled on all they held dear and precious? Is this the ultimate case of Follow The Money?

Mike Pence's prolonged silence matched against Mitch McConnell's speech should be cause for great debate in the Republican party. They need to take this to the general membership and not rely on mass hysteria from some small number claiming to be the "base." I don't believe for a New York minute that all those good Republican cloth coats condone the behavior of Feckless Loser and his cadre. I don't believe for one New York minute that those staunch, righteous Americans with flags on every lapel believe that the behavior exhibited by the former occupant of the White House was okay on any level. But I do believe that if the GOP does not go back to its true base membership, the Republican Party. will cease to exist. Its tent cannot hold QAnon Shaman Guy and his cabal alongside the Bushes, the Romneys, or even the Murkowskis. 

Since I am not a Republican, I don't get a vote on the future of the party...unless....unless there is change from within its ranks to bring it back to the center. But the membership must step up to do that. The vast majority of Republicans who don't buy this pay-for-play version of America have got to let their leadership know that the end of this last term was unacceptable and an embarrassment. Those who do not learn from this experience are doomed to repeat it. 

And you thought GROUNDHOG DAY couldn't possibly be real.

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Anyone wanna register as a Republican just for the hell of it? 

It might be one way to move them back to the center, dontcha know?

*BONUS JOKE*

an oldie but a goody and a Ziggy favorite - #257

A man goes to hell and the devil greets him. He takes him to a hallway which has three doors. "You gotta choose one to spend the rest of eternity in," says the devil.

So he takes him to the first door and he opens it and sees everyone standing in fire up to their shoulders. He decides that's not for him and asks to see what's behind the second door.

Everyone in the second room is raking brimstone. The smell is terrible, and the skin on their hands is peeling off. He decides that's not for him either. 

He asks to be shown the third option. The devil opens the door and the man sees everyone standing around in shit drinking coffee. The man thought that was pretty bad, but at least they could drink coffee so he told the devil that looked okay to him. 

So the man wades in, grabs a cup of coffee and is talking to one of the guys. They converse for a few minutes when the devil returns.  "Okay, guys, coffee break's over. Everyone back on your head."