The election is fast approaching and Joe Biden is maintaining his lead nationally over America’s Impeached CEO/Dictator and petulant man child Donald Trump. The odds of the Democrats keeping the House also looks very good right now and the Dems may even take back the Senate. Since we’re Arizonans here at the Bucket, we’re concerned about the Senate race here and it appears that Democratic candidate Mark Kelly has a commanding lead over Martha McSally.
We’ve posted before about Trump’s rubber stamp McSally. She ran for the Senate in 2018 and got trounced by Kyrsten Sinema, who became the first Democratic Senator since the 1990s. Then Arizona Governor Republican Doug Ducey (pronounced douchey) appointed her to serve in the late John McCain’s seat until the 2020 election. So, McSally got rejected but still got a Senate seat: par for the course in Republican America (see Donald Trump losing the popular vote in 2016 and George W. Bush losing the popular vote in 2000 and still ‘winning’). The majority of Arizonans, who are mostly Independents, clearly don’t like her and her attack ads against Mark Kelly are not only stupid but misleading and mostly false. But’s that not surprising. Look who’s her idol. . . the biggest pathological liar this country’s ever seen.
We think that the photo-toon below of Ms. McSilly kissing Trump’s ass . . . (oooops, that’s his face. . . easy to get confused). . . perfectly sums up our feelings on the soon to be ex-Senator from Arizona.
The cowardly, obsequious Senate Republicans are in quite a pickle and stand to lose the Executive Branch, House and even the Senate by continuing to prop up Trump. It reminds us of the classic Twilight Zone episode called Its a Good Life, in which a spoiled, petulant little boy (played by Billy Mumy) with extraordinary powers terrorizes everyone in the community and no one stands up to him for fear of being ‘sent to the cornfield’. They just repeat over and over how great he is and that everything he does is ‘real good’, while the terror goes on and on and on. Sound familiar? In 2020, Republicans are living in their own self-manufactured Twilight Zone. Like this video from the Lincoln Project says, may they all suffer the deserved consequences for their fecklessness in letting democracy die in America.
You’d think Ducey would reconsidering reopening or at least mandate wearing a mask in public but nooooooooooo. Our douchey governor recently stated that Arizonans are just going to have to get use to the coronavirus. Wear a mask, if you think it’s wise, or in other words, consumer beware. What a douchebag! Fortunately, for Arizonans, local municipalities are looking into mask-wearing mandates since Ducey seems reluctant to. . . you know. . . be a leader. Ducey can’t seek re-election in 2022 because of term limits. But unfortunately, we’ve got two more years of this Trump asskisser, who’s done absolutely nothing for this state other than typical Republican shit: rip away at regulations in order to privatize federal lands and services thus starving the government for the good of corporate America and the plutocrats who control it. His now dismal legacy on coronavirus may finally lift the stranglehold the GOP has had on this state since the 1960s.
If there’s one thing Republicans know, it’s that when election time comes around, they can always ratchet up the fearmongering propaganda that there’s a border crisis that only the good ol’ GOP can resolve. They’ve been doing it during every election since 9/11. Remember in 2014, it was Ebola, Benghazi, ISIS, Obama and the border. How about 2006, ol’ Dubya and the GOP, trying to distract everyone on the clusterf*ck in Iraq, warned of an unsecured border and sent troops to secure it. They know that their core base of white christian conservatives react strongly to fear and there’s no better fear provoker than a bunch of illegal, brown skinned immigrants approaching the border. Gee, what a coincidence that a caravan of immigrants just happens to be approaching America and will make it to our border right around election time. Hmmm…let’s think like Fox News, a.k.a. the Republican Propaganda Network… maybe the immigrants are nothing more than crisis actors being paid under the table by GOP operatives? Could this be fake news? A great big nothing burger?
This whole spiel is playing more like a Monty Python sketch. I mean the caravan is just inside the Mexico-Guatemala border, still at least 800 miles away from the nearest border in Texas, and almost twice as far to the Arizona border, but the media is covering it like this group was right at the U.S. border. Plus, they’re being portrayed by American CEO/Dictator, Donald Trump, like they’re a band of thugs and criminals and the media is buying into it. He’s even admitted there’s no proof of terrorists being in the throng. So here we are watching the slow motion advance of a band of unarmed, poor, desperate immigrants who are escaping violence in their home countries and meanwhile, our Republican leaders are lining up tanks at the border to mow down these ‘menaces’. There have been more people protesting Trump on any given weekend than there are people in the caravan and yet this band of walking immigrants is getting more coverage (especially Fox News) than any group of protesters. But the media keeps brainlessly repeating Trump’s narrative that there doesn’t seem to be a way to stop these marauding foreigners from making a run on our borders.
Arizona made headlines last week when teachers walked out of their classrooms on strike trying to get improved pay and teaching conditions. This on the heels of Arizona Governor Doug Ducey (pronounced douchey) half-hearted, perfunctory offer of a 20% raise in salary by 2020. But teachers counter that it doesn’t address other demands of the teachers like better pay for support staff, yearly teacher raises, a restoration of school funding to 2008 levels and no new tax cuts until the state per-pupil funding reaches the national average.
Not surprisingly, Arizona Republicans have started attacking the teachers, because that’s what they do. House Majority Leader John Allen, R-Scottsdale, said the strikes amount to class warfare creating “strife between the haves and the have-nots” and that taxing the rich is precisely the way to undermine economic recovery. “I’ve never gotten a job from a poor person,” Allen added. What an arrogant asshole! Another Republican leader, Maria Sims from Paradise Valley, claimed the strikes are part of a national socialist movement (calling Joseph McCarthy). Sorry to burst your bubble, Ms. Sims. Teachers aren’t communist bastards; they just want a living wage and better working conditions.
There is some promising news for sane Arizonans. Last week’s special election in congressional district 8, which includes the old, white, conservative, retiree-from-the-Midwest bastion of Sun City served as a wake up call for the state’s GOP. Democratic candidate Tiral Hepinini lost by only five points to Debbie Lesko in a district that has gone overwhelmingly to Republicans in the past two elections. This has conservatives in this state sweating bullets. If there is indeed a blue wave sweeping the nation, with anti-Trump sentiment rising, it’s indeed possible that Democrats could actually make a dent in this state and considerably weaken the Republicans’ stranglehold (and we do mean stranglehold) on this state. A purple Arizona could very well be in the works and we’d love to see Trump supporter Doug Ducey back peddling his overpriced ice cream again instead of ‘leading’ this state.