Politics: The Complete Sedition Caucus

I am not the person who can be credited with coming up with this term. Also note that sedition is just a term used to describe these 147 people, but they did not commit sedition. It is still a term that is used and is the most widely accepted. Some call them instead the treason caucus. I prefer the term sedition even if those two words mean the same thing.

Who are these people and how are they infamous? Well, let’s get to why they are important. On the day of the storming of the capitol, there were people who were planning to vote against the certification of the election. They may not have realized what they were doing. After all, it would not have been Trump who would have become president if they succeeded, which they weren’t going to do while having a minority in the House. It would have been the Speaker of the House, namely Nancy Pelosi, who would have become president as she was next in line that was not part of the elected tickets. This is why there is a perfect conspiracy theory of her being the one responsible for the riot of January 6^th that only first was spread months after. As usual, we get the perfect conspiracy theory from conservatives far too late for it to make sense anymore.

Now, I’m going to mention all of them by name. All are Republicans. First, I will mention those who are serving in the House. Then, I’ll mention the senators. An asterisk next to their name means that they were doing their job for only three days when they made this vote. Edit: This was not accurate when I originally posted it, but I will now have all of the asterisks that belong once you are seeing this. I took out one that was there in error. It is worth noting that not all new House members are in this and never are all of the new Senate members either.

Alabama’s Congressmen: Robert Aderholt, Mo Brooks, Jerry Carl *, Barry Moore *, Gary Palmer, and Mike Rogers. Arizona’s Congress people: Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar, Debbie Lesko, and David Schweikert. Arkansas Congressman Rick Crawford is one.

California’s Congressmen: Ken Calvert, Mike Garcia, Darrell Issa *, Doug LaMalfa, Kevin McCarthy, Devin Nunes, and Jay Obernolte *. Colorado’s Congress people: Lauren Boebert * and Doug Lamborn. Florida’s Congress people: Kat Cammack *, Mario Diaz-Balart, Byron Donalds *, Neal Dunn, Scott Franklin *, Matt Gaetz, Carlos Gimenez *, Brian Mast, Bill Posey, John Rutherford, Greg Steube, and Daniel Webster.

Georgia’s Congress people: Rick Allen, Buddy Carter, Andrew Clyde *, Marjorie Taylor Greene *, Jody Hice, and Barry Loudermilk. Idaho’s Congressman Russ Fulcher is one. Illinois’s Congress people: Mike Bost and Mary Miller *.

Indiana’s Congress people: Jim Baird, Jim Banks, Greg Pence (brother of Mike Pence), and Jackie Walorski. Kansas’s Congress people: Ron Estes, Jacob LaTurner *, and Tracey Mann *. Kentucky’s Congressman Harold Rogers is one.

Louisiana’s Congressmen: Garret Graves, Clay Higgins, Mike Johnson, and Steve Scalise. Maryland’s Congressman Andy Harris is one. Michigan’s Congress people: Jack Bergman, Lisa McClain *, and Tim Walberg.

Minnesota’s Congress people: Michelle Fischbach * and Jim Hagedorn. Mississippi’s Congressmen: Michael Guest, Trent Kelly, and Steven Palazzo. Missouri’s Congress people: Sam Graves, Vicky Hartzler, Billy Long, Blaine Luetkemeyer, and Jason Smith.

Montana’s Congressman Matt Rosendale * is one and Nebraska’s Congressman Adrian Smith is another. North Carolina’s Congress people: Dan Bishop, Ted Budd, Madison Cawthorn *, Virginia Foxx, Richard Hudson, Gregory F Murphy, and David Rouzer.

New Jersey’s Congressman Jeff Van Drew is one and New Mexico’s Congresswoman Yvette Herrell * is another. New York’s Congress people: Chris Jacobs, Nicole Malliotakis *, Elise Stefanik, and Lee Zeldin. Ohio’s Congressmen are Steve Chabot, Warren Davidson, Bob Gibbs, Bill Johnson, and Jim Jordan. Oklahoma’s Congress people are Stephanie Bice *, Tom Cole, Kevin Hern, Frank Lucas, and Markwayne Mullin.

Oregon’s Congressman Cliff Bentz * is one. Pennsylvania’s Congressmen: John Joyce, Fred Keller, Mike Kelly, Daniel Meuser, Scott Perry, Guy Reschenthaler, Lloyd Smucker, and Glenn Thompson. South Carolina’s Congressmen: Jeff Duncan, Ralph Norman, Tom Rice, William Timmons, and Joe Wilson.

Tennessee’s Congress people: Tim Burchett, Scott DesJarlais, Chuck Fleischmann, Mark E Green, Diana Harshbarger *, David Kustoff, and John Rose. Texas’s Congress people: Jodey Arrington, Brian Babin, Michael C Burgess, John R Carter, Michael Cloud, Pat Fallon *, Louie Gohmert, Lance Gooden, Ronny Jackson *, Troy Nehls *, August Pfluger *, Pete Sessions *, Beth Van Duyne *, Randy Weber, Roger Williams, and the late Ron Wright.

Utah’s Congressmen: Burgess Owens * and Chris Stewart. Virginia’s Congress people: Ben Cline, Bob Good *, Morgan Griffith, and Robert J Wittman. West Virginia’s Congress people: Carol Miller and Alexander Mooney. Finally, we have Wisconsin’s Congressmen: Scott L Fitzgerald * and Tom Tiffany.

The senators are class one senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, and Rick Scott of Florida, the class two senators of Cynthia Lummis * of Wyoming, Roger Marshall * of Kansas, and Tommy Tuberville * of Alabama, and the class three senator of John Kennedy of Louisiana.. 

There is a scandal right now with one of the Congressmen mentioned, Matt Gaetz. LegalEagle did a video on him and his alleged crimes. We’ll see if this gets him out of office or if they won’t care about this in the end.

LegalEagle’s video on Matt Gaetz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpDIJHWg0Pw

Now it should be noted that there were plenty of people who didn’t vote to overturn the election for president. Most of the Republican senate was that way as was nearly half the Republican House. While there was a link to a planned 12 then 13 people in the senate total who were going to vote against it, a good chunk of them didn’t after the storming.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/05/really-bad-day-dirty-dozen/

(Does not include the planned Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, James Lankford of North Dakota, Steve Daines of Montana, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Mike Braun of Indiana, and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia) 

It is also worth noting that relating to the vote at hand, there were 126 people on record as supporting the Supreme Court case of Texas versus Pennsylvania which violates at least one Amendment if not two. I’d have to check the list of this again just to see who here is not among those who voted against the certification of the presidential election results because maybe they saw the light. Also, one of the points regarding this mess that I just now thought of is that they were only voting against the results of just one of the elections even though plenty all took place at once. What would make the presidential race invalid, but not any of the others?

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/12/27/2001412/-A-breakdown-of-all-126-seditious-Republicans-who-signed-on-for-a-coup-d-tat?detail=emaildkre

(Includes, among others, Louisiana Congressmen Mike Johnson, Steve Scalise, Ralph Abraham, Clay Higgins, Indiana Congressmen Trey Hollingsworth, James R. Baird, James Banks, Arizona Congressmen Debbie Lesko, Andy Biggs, Missouri Congressmen Sam Graves, Vicky Hartzler, Blaine Luetkemeyer, Jason Smith, Ann Wagner) 

Of course, while the people who voted against the certifications of the results of the presidential election did not commit sedition, those who stormed the capitol did. Some of them are or were elected Republicans. I read that it might be over 50, but am unsure of who all did it. I would need to check to see who all was at the rally Trump did and then marched to the capitol like he wanted them to. I have the link to at least one of the politicians who was responsible for them. If you do not mind supporting a Republican super pac, then donate to Run for Something which seeks to get rid of all of these people from office. Also donate to the Democratic pac Operation 147. 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/1/8/2005864/-West-Virginia-Republican-lawmaker-arrested-for-his-role-in-storming-the-Capitol?detail=emaildkre

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/2/16/2016369/-57-elected-Republicans-were-part-of-the-Jan-6-rally-and-riot-Thousands-want-to-run-against-them?detail=emaildkre

There isn’t much else to talk about in this post. It should be remembered that there were plenty of Republicans who didn’t vote for sedition. Not even Trump poodle Lindsey Graham voted against certifying the election results. Now I need to get caught up on this blog by doing a post on the results of the presidential election that has long been delayed now. There are a lot of the really long blog posts that I need to do for different blogs sometime when I have the chance. And I’m running out of my self imposed deadlines to do it by.

Politics: Other 2020 Election Results

With only this and the presidential election results posts yet to do blog posts on in this blog, I might as well get this done since I want to get enough done before I start writing posts on the future elections in 2022. I’m not going to talk much about things as there is only one thing that does not relate to the presidential race worth talking about.

This thing is the Illinois fair tax. It was confusing and had the richest Illinoisan, Governor J. B. Pritzker, on the for side while the second richest Illinoisan was against it. It seemed confusing and the only way that I was going to vote in favor of it was if Pritzker was on the airwaves saying that he would pay more in taxes and want to do this if the law were passed like he was wanting to. But he wouldn’t want people to know that he was behind this tax, even though it was clear to many sources in the end that such a thing was happening. 

I was against the so called fair tax because I wasn’t convinced that the side in favor of it was being honest to me or anyone else. They said that it wouldn’t give the state legislature any power that it didn’t already have to raise taxes. But when I read the measure on the ballot, the very thing written said that the vote was to allow the legislature to do an increase and that it did not already have this power on its own. The measure failed and the tax didn’t pass in the end. Still, things may not have ended well as it seems the taxes are going up on everyone and not just the richer people that it might have had the measure passed. It’s hard to know for sure and that could have changed my mind on how to vote.

There are two links of which to share for this post. One is that twitter at least was doing more of certain limits with how campaigns are run. We need to make sure that social media is tracked in a well enough way. Hopefully, there will be Democrats who can learn how to best make use of social media to help their campaigns the way that Trump used to. 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/twitter-tightens-limits-on-candidates-ahead-of-us-election/ar-BB19RMNI?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout

The other one worth mentioning is something that I’m pretty sure that I haven’t mentioned yet before. It relates to the now former attorney general of Indiana. You would think that it wouldn’t make sense for an attorney general to be able to practice law without a law license. But he was still able to keep his job for a while despite not being able to practice law for a month. Still, this was a reason that the party insiders were able to oust him at the primary. It is almost a shame that the voters never got to decide his fate. But he’s out of office now and that’s all the matters. This is a good thing.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/5/11/1944343/-Indiana-Supreme-Court-suspends-GOP-AG-s-law-license-but-no-knows-if-he-can-remain-in-office

And that is it for this post. I do think that it would be best for me to finish writing the post that I want to do on this blog for the presidential race last year which will have at least two spin-off posts relating to it in the end. It’s a whole lot to write about potentially so I can only hope that I have enough time to tell you all about it and not forget any important links to it. It should finally be next month’s post in the end. Let’s end this post here.

Politics: Legal Votes

You have probably heard a new Republican talking point by now called legal votes. They love to say this and it is purposefully misleading. They are trying to get the idea that illegal votes exist and cost them elections. That is why they phrase it that way and not simply wanting all the votes counted, they have to add legal to it.

 

Journalists need to call this out whenever they hear this phrase. They should point out that all votes are legal and that a Republican led commission to find voting fraud found no fraud. There is no such thing as illegal votes as Republicans would have you believe.

 

This talking point came from Trump after the 2016 election. He was so butt hurt over having lost the popular vote by MILLIONS that he was convinced that he did win the popular vote “if you don’t count those that voted illegally.” He won an election but still didn’t like the results of the votes in the end. Thus, the inklings of the phrase legal vote came to be.

 

All votes are legal and the type of widespread fraud that would somehow only prevent certain Republicans from winning just isn’t real and is illogical to anyone with half a brain. So even if alien bugs from outer space crawled up into your ear and took half of your brain away, it still would not make sense for the phrase legal votes to be popularized to the point of being used as much as it is. This phrase needs to die and people need to call it out for the shit that it is.

Politics: Why We Should Want the Best in the Opposing Party to Win

While it is normally wrong to assume that both sides are just as bad as the other one when it comes to a subject, there is something that I feel needs to be addressed as I have heard quite a baffling thing from voters of both parties. 

When my sister was posting on facebook about which Democrat they wanted to win the nomination in 2020, one of my relatives wanted someone who he felt would lose the election if he were the nominee or do terribly as president in the off chance that he won. Why would you want the other party to fail? We should want a president or any elected official of the other party to do well. I mean, this is our country that they are elected to lead and we wouldn’t want bad things to happen to this country just to see our opponents fail.

When I was talking to an uncle recently about the Republican primary for Missouri senate and how I felt that there were terrible candidates in it, he was wanting the man who waved guns at people to win the nomination as he felt that this would ensure that a Democrat would win this seat in the future. Again, this is an absurd thing to think and a risky choice.

Many people wanted Trump to win the Republican nomination in 2016 as they felt that he would have no chance of winning the election against a Democrat. But a bunch of dumb scandals and the fact that Hillary Clinton underestimated Trump made the idea that a horrible person winning the primary would lose the election wrong. This alone is reason why I, a Democrat, would be as okay with a good Republican winning as I would with a bad Democrat losing. I would be fooling myself if I felt that there are only good Democrats and no good Republicans. I’d be happy with a Republican like Larry Hogan being president and I’d want there to be no political future for the likes of a Democrat like Michael Madigan.

So if you ever hear someone of either side sharing the idea that they want failure for the other side, remind them that the other side is good in some ways and in the event that your own party were to lose, you’d want someone good on the other side instead. Why set up things for a loss when you should want success for your country, state, or other states? I want good people to win regardless of the party they are in and you should too.

Politics: 2021 Elections

I might do multiple posts on the 2021 elections as more information becomes available with them as time goes on. But I’m going to mention what I know thus far about this year’s and I might do a round two about this sometime after the primaries for some happen and other dates for other elections become known.

The Virginia governor race has no incumbents in the race due to the dumb laws that the state has. There are no gubernatorial term limits, but incumbents can’t run for reelection. Does that make sense? I might talk about this some, but am considering myself disinterested in this for now. Maybe I’ll change my mind later.

The Virginia attorney general race has Democrat Mark Herring running for reelection. He has had some scandal, I think, involving blackface. I think that he apologized for it. There are others in the race including a primary challenge that Mark will have to face. Mark is one of the attorney generals helping with the good side of the Obamacare case. I hope to hear the results of that at some point in the future. I don’t know why I’ve heard about more recent cases, but not that one. It can make one feel anxious.

The New Jersey governor race has Democrat Phil Murphy running for reelection. Obviously, there are others in the race right now. But I’m not keeping track of them as I don’t care about the others in the race. I think that you should support Phil Murphy.

It is interesting to note the patterns between the regular governor elections of this cycle typically. At some point, Virginia started electing the party opposite the one just elected president the previous year. This meant that a Democratic president elected one year would get a Republican elected governor of Virginia the next. New Jersey joined in this thread as well. This continued until 2013 when Virginia elected a Democratic governor after Obama won reelection. This might have been in reaction to the scandals that the previous Republican one had.

There is also a California governor recall election with incumbent Democrat Gavin Newsom facing recall over his successful handling of the coronavirus response due to some thinking that he took things too far. Obviously, you know by just my phrasing of this paragraph how I feel about him and how he should stay in office. I urge any California’s to vote no on recall. Here are some quick links about it.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/california-governor-launches-campaign-against-likely-recall/ar-BB1eC0Oi?li=BBorjTa&ocid=mailsignout

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-26/when-is-newsoms-california-recall-election-its-unclear

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/editorial-sigh-the-bitter-costly-%e2%80%94-and-probably-very-silly-%e2%80%94-recall-nightmare-begins/ar-BB1g56ZC?ocid=mailsignout&li=BBnb7Kz

There’s another group of people worth mentioning. There is a group of governors that I’m now calling the election integrity governors. This link should include more information about it. I am talking about it since some of the governors up for reelection (or recall) are part of this group.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/9/30/1982273/-NEW-12-Governors-issue-a-statement-on-threats-to-voting?utm_campaign=trending

This group features governors J B Pritzker of Illinois, Jay Inslee of Washington state, Kate Brown of Oregon, Gavin Newsom of California, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Tony Evers of Wisconsin, Tim Walz of Minnesota, Ralph Northam of Virginia, John Carney of Delaware, Steve Sisolak of Nevada, and Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, all of whom are Democrats.

Something else worth noting is that there is a possible Alaska governor recall that could be on the ballot as well. I’d have to see why that would be in the future. I doubt that such a thing would be the only thing like it as more governors might be in danger of losing their seats when they will be up for reelection due to the pandemic than we ever would have seen before. I just hope that those that actually had a good response will get to stay in office or at least not be replaced by horrible people in the end. I also hope that the pandemic will be over by November and that at least Virginia will have its first governor since the pandemic ended.

There isn’t much else to say in this post so I will end it with a calendar of things to come. If you are able to vote in each state that has an election (even if I’m not telling you about it, as I’m only covering the statewide races with no other special elections), then here are the important dates that are known right now. The known dates are on Tuesdays.

Calendar

June 8, 2021 (New Jersey primary, Democratic Virginia primary with Republican convention taking place instead of primary)

Unknown September 2021 (potential deadlines/voting with California recall)

November 2, 2021 (general election) 

Unknown November 2021 (California recall)

Politics: The Good Eleven

I am wanting to do a post of this blog today and this will be it. I’m hoping to cover more in the future but I will be posting most of the important updates here in this introduction. You see, the random posts of this blog are ending and I’m now only going to do monthly posts of this blog. It will be on Thursdays now. It will typically be the first available Thursday so it will appear on the last Thursday of the month at the absolute latest. I’ll let you know of any other changes about this hopefully before it happens.

Now I have come up with nicknames before for people. I once came up with the four horsemen for a group of governors where three of them endorsed the fourth to blame all of his problems on a Democrat. Because of course it is a Democrat’s fault. Whose else would it be? But I am coming up with nicer nickname that also isn’t original. This is to come up with a name for good group of Democrats in Congress.

There is one group of seven and another group of four that make the good eleven. The first were the House managers of Trump’s first impeachment. They are Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Zoe Lofgren, Hakeem Jeffries, Val Demings, Jason Crow, and Sylvia Garcia. Then there are the original members of the squad. They are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib. I am calling them collectively the good eleven. I am calling them that because they are good people who know how to fight against the poison of Trump. And I want to focus on good. And that’s it for this blog post.

Politics: 2020 General Senate Results

This is not a post that I wanted to gloss over originally, but I see no other option for it than to do it today this way. I actually did want to do this in the end. The main change that you will see is that instead of doing a paragraph before most links is that I’m just putting links in at the end. All of the impeachment related links are about Trump’s first impeachment. Some of them may not relate to who all is up this time around, but were about senators that I feel was worth covering at some point in time. Some were just predictions that turned out to be wrong.

 

Class two was up this time around and Democrats did well. They had a net gain of three seats in the end, flipping four while losing just one. Both of Georgia’s seats went from red to blue, as did the seats in Arizona and Colorado. Alabama’s rental that Doug Jones had went back to the Republicans to a man who voted to overturn election results.

 

However, the Democrats didn’t do as well as they could have. The seat in Maine was lost by the Democrats to fake moderate Susan Collins. The seat in North Carolina could have easily been flipped and given Democrats 51 senate seats, but the Democratic candidate couldn’t keep it in his pants. There were other issues like not having a Democrat in the Arkansas race, not having people know that Al Gross, the independent in the Alaska race, was Act Blue supported, and having two candidates in the Nebraska race, there were stumbles in races that could have been more important in the end than what we got. Plus, I’ll never understand why the Democrats never did ads on the government shutdown. They had a silver bullet, but never fired the gun.

 

The special elections were ultimately what helped tip the race to the Democrats. If the seat in Arizona had not been up for election this cycle, it would remain in Republican hands. The same is true with one of the Georgia races. Speaking of Georgia, for once, we can thank a third party candidate for a Democratic election win. Thanks due to the laws of Georgia and the fact that there was a third party candidate denying David Perdue an outright majority, the fact that he got the most votes didn’t matter as a run-off caused him to lose his seat permanently instead of just temporarily. That’s good because I’m sick of losing to Perdue.

 

The seats will next be up in 2026. They were last up in 2014 when Republicans gained seats. When they were up in 2008, Democrats gained seats instead. This cycle also continues the pattern of Democrats gaining senate seats during a presidential election year, something that last did not happen in 2004 or in 1996 when a Democrat last won the presidency.

 

There’s not much to say about the links at hand. I feel that I might be harder on Ben Sasse than I should be and he might not be as bad as I believe that he is. Still, there are two links that I am sharing about him that are negative. It is worth noting that Ben did vote to impeach Trump the second time around so he might not be too bad.

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/16/1986977/-Ben-Sasse-is-a-contemptible-coward-perhaps-never-more-than-when-he-s-railing-against-Trump?detail=emaildkre

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/5/18/1945931/-Slovenly-GOP-Senator-insults-high-school-grads-calls-them-unfit-mocks-psych-majors-blames-China?detail=emaildkreicymi

 

Here are the rest of the links that I’m sharing from this cycle. I know that not all of these went the way that they could have. But some were more hopeful with wishful thinking of how they felt things would go versus how they actually went. I should note that only the polls in Maine and North Carolina were wrong as the rest had at least one saying that a Republican would win and that is what happened in the end.

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/9/18/1978370/-Four-GOP-Senators-try-to-hide-their-votes-to-kill-health-care-coverage-for-pre-existing-conditions?detail=emaildkre

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/9/25/1980542/-AK-Sen-HuffPost-A-Secret-Recording-Of-Mining-Executives-Is-Shaking-Up-The-Alaska-Senate-Race?utm_campaign=trending

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/7/1984225/-Iowa-is-a-fierce-Senate-and-presidential-battleground-but-Dems-have-the-edge?detail=emaildkre

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/7/1984411/-Cornyn-s-weak-critique-of-Trump-proves-he-s-concerned-about-tight-race-with-MJ-Hegar?detail=emaildkre

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/14/1986425/-Vulnerable-Senate-Republicans-forget-who-s-president?detail=emaildkreicymi

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/18/1987586/-Conservative-Democratic-Senator-Coons-gives-very-revealing-answer-about-expanding-the-courts?detail=emaildkre

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/11/10/1994873/-Al-Gross-in-Alaska-Senate-Race-Don-t-You-For-Forget-About-Me?utm_campaign=trending

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/2/5/1916645/-14-Republicans-who-voted-to-impeach-convict-and-remove-Clinton-will-vote-to-acquit-Trump-today?detail=emaildkre

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/6/2/1949771/-Sen-Collins-Trump-did-learn-his-lesson

 

There’s not much else to say and I am ending this post around here. I wish that I could promise that I’d always have posts ready for my blogs. I am powering through this one despite feeling and being kind of sick. I shouldn’t do that ever. But if I can write it, then I will. I can only hope that nothing takes me out of writing all of my blogs with me never to return outside of a farewell post that will happen after a long enough gap. But it might be good to stop blogging.