“How can you say it’s untenable?” Donald asked. “I don’t know what that words means, but it’s not that, it’s the opposite. It’s totally tenable.”
“No, it’s not,” Mitch said. “You came up with this elaborate and cockamamie scheme, and it’s not going to work.”
“Wait,” Donald said, “wasn’t it George Washington who said, ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it’?”
“Um, no, Donald,” Mitch said. “George Washington said. ‘I cannot tell a lie.’ It was Adolf Hitler who talked about the big lie thing.”
“Well, whoever said it, it’s working for me,” Donald said. “I started telling my big lie early and often and, as a result, all those suckers believe it to be true and I’m going to finish off the Dems once and for all and be re-elected in 2024.” So thank you Hitler. Thank you for my totally tenable blueprint. Now get on board, Mitch, or get out of my way.”
Written for these daily prompts: Fandango’s One Word Challenge (untenable), Your Daily Word Prompt (elaborate), Word of the Day Challenge (early), and Ragtag Daily Prompt (finish).
The mayor was reviewing the latest election returns and turned pale. “The results thus far are murky,” he said to his campaign staff, a deadpan expression on his face. “I prefer to wait until 100% of the votes have been tallied. Each vote is precious and I won’t concede until every single one has been counted.”
As the hours went by, it was clear that his opponent had won the election. It wasn’t even close. The mayor stood up, his face glowing red with anger and perspiration. “This can’t be right. They stuffed the ballot box. The voting machines have been hacked. The election was rigged. I declare myself the winner. I will not concede.”
“But, sir, the voters have spoken and you lost,” one of the mayor’s aids said.
The mayor glared at the aid, pointed a finger at him, and said, “You’re fired.” Then he took his dinner plate and threw it against his office wall. “I won and now they’re trying to steal my victory from me. I will not leave the Statehouse. Dammit, if Trump can get away with this kind of crap, why can’t I?”
Written for these daily prompts from yesterday: The Daily Spur (mayor), Word of the Day Challenge (election), Your Daily Word Prompt (murky), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (deadpan), My Vivid Blog (prefer), E.M.’s Random Word Prompt, (precious), and Ragtag Daily Prompt (glow).
Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.
How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.
If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 8th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.
This was originally posted on April 8, 2018.
The Personification of Thwart
When I saw today’s one-word prompt, “thwart,” the name of the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, immediately came to mind. McConnell’s primary mission when Obama was President was to thwart everything Obama did.
Obama was elected in 2008. When McConnell became the Majority Leader in 2010, he said that his “number one priority is making sure President Obama’s a one-term president.” Fortunately for America, he failed.
In 2016, McConnell said, “One of my proudest moments was when I told Obama, ‘You will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy.’”
As justification for thwarting Obama’s Constitutional right to appoint a Supreme Court Justice after the sudden death of Antonin Scalia in early 2016, McConnell said, “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.”
But in January of 2017, McConnell changed his tune. When newly elected Donald Trump nominated U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge Neil Gorsuch to fill Scalia’s vacancy, Democratic senators vowed a fight, insisting on keeping the rule that a majority of 60 votes be required for confirmation. That’s when the man who prevented Obama from filling the Scalia’s vacancy said, “Apparently there’s yet a new standard now, which is not to confirm a Supreme Court nominee at all. I think that’s something the American people simply will not tolerate.”
Is this not the height of hypocrisy? And that is why I consider Mitch McConnell to be the personification of thwart.
I’ve always thought of myself as a glass half full kind of guy. But I’m sorry to say that I no longer feel that way. Any optimism I have felt in the past has been displaced by an overwhelming sense of doom. I have lost hope for America.
Why? Well, while 85% of Democrats say what happened on January 6, 2021 was “an insurrection,” 56% of Republicans describe it as “defending freedom.” Basically, according to the Republican way of thinking these days, left-wing violence is anti-American terrorism, but right-wing violence is understandable, and even justified. It’s patriotic, they believe.
Yesterday I posted about how the Republican senators blocked the efforts by Democrats to pass legislation that would guarantee voting rights to all Americans. Not one Republican lawmaker in either house of Congress voted in favor of ensuring voting rights for all Americans.
Why else am I pessimistic? Republicans in red states spent much of 2021 hunting for the alleged widespread voter fraud that the former president told his supporters cost him the election. Of course, they never found any. Still, last year was characterized by a wave of Republican-led voting restrictions fueled by Trump’s Big Lie. As a result, 19 states, most of them controlled by Republicans, enacted 34 laws that made voting harder, while many blue states expanded access, particularly to mail voting. And with the federal voting rights legislation having been stymied by congressional Republicans, that trend is likely to continue — and maybe even accelerate — this year.
Additionally, at least 15 Republican candidates for secretary of state in 13 states have publicly gone on record questioning the legitimacy of Biden’s victory last November, despite no evidence of significant fraud. In all but one of those states, the secretaries of state oversees the electoral process.
And if all that’s not bad enough, at least 57 people who took some part in the January 6th attempt to overturn the election are currently running for elected office. This includes some candidates who breached the Capitol and face criminal charges. More than two dozen are running for Congress, state legislatures, or other statewide offices. At least five are running for governor in their states. Can you believe that?
So, sadly, I don’t see anything on the horizon that is going to bring our country back together.
This, That, and the Other 