An Open Letter To ‘Mr.’ Trump: WTF Is Wrong With You!

Dear Mr. Trump:

I refer to you as “Mr” because I do not recognize you as my president. Or anyone’s president for that matter. You lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes, more than any president in United States history. And with the likely help of Russian hacks, oppressive voter ID laws, other acts of voter suppression and election fraud, and an embarrassingly neutered media, you squeaked out a measly 306 electoral votes, placing you in the bottom fifth of all presidents ever.

But in true Trumpian fashion, you’ve boasted of a “massive landslide victory.” Sorry, pal. The only “landslide” was Hillary Clinton‘s, as she received more votes than any president in history except for Barack Obama in 2008. One thing’s for sure though: you were right about the election being “rigged.” For you.

Now that we’ve gotten the niceties out of the way, let me ask the most obvious question: what the fuck is wrong with you!? Seriously, do you not give a shit about your legacy, if not for yourself, at least for your kids, grandkids and future generations of Trumps? If your goal is to beat James Buchanan as the worst president in history, well then Mazel Tov, as you’re halfway there and you’ve still got five weeks till inauguration day!

Let’s start with your cabinet picks. You were supposed to drain the swamp, not restock it with self-serving corporate billionaires and other uber-rich insiders and cronies. You’ve appointed a banana-republic-worthy gaggle of unqualified, inexperienced, intellectually un-curious sexists/misogynists, racists, stabbers (ok, just one knifer, Ben Carson), fake-news-spreaders and Russian sympathizers. And your alt-right white nationalist advisor Steve Bannon sits atop this basket of deplorables. This is your idea of populism!?

And what’s with all the generals? You know, those guys you claim to be smarter than. Are you planning some kind of military coup? Besides, hanging around with generals doesn’t make you any tougher. You could hang around real-men in uniform all you want and you’re still a draft-dodging coward.

Now about that Russian hack. That you’re summarily dismissing the validity of the findings of 17 national security agencies is shameful and treasonous. You should be saying, “Yes, a Russian hack into our election process, a cyber-attack, is a major threat to our Democracy and must be subject to a full bi-partisan investigation.”Instead, you’ve disparaged our intelligence community. You blame President Obama. Or some 400-lb fat guy in his mother’s basement. What kind of message does it send to our enemies that our President-elect attacks our national security experts while defending Vladimir Putin?

Next, the conflicts of interests are not just mind-numbingly unethical, but perhaps illegal and impeachable. You’ve refused to release your tax returns and have bailed on your big press conference this week to explain how you’re going to separate yourself and your family from your business... leaving the American people with zero transparency for the first time in modern presidential history. Between your foreign investments and debt, and your domestic properties (DC hotel, for example), your conflicts are staggering. You’re blatantly putting your personal financial interests before the safety and security of the nation. Oh, and because of you I now have to add the word “emoluments” to my vocabulary.

Lastly, your utter disdain for America’s free and open press is perhaps the biggest threat to our democracy of all. Your administration’s hinted at making drastic, unprecedented changes to the media’s access to information including limiting or eliminating daily White House briefings, the Saturday morning presidential address, press conferences and the press pool. You’ve also threatened to expand our libel laws which would allow you greater ability to sue reporters and media outlets who are critical of you and your administration.

This is what fascism smells like.

Your words and actions are a constant attack on our freedoms and the progress we’ve made in our 240-year history. You are pissing all over the Oval Office and the U.S. Constitution. Shame on you. And shame on everyone who voted for you.

So no, Mr. Trump, I will never refer to you as “president.” You are not worthy of that title.

Follow Andy Ostroy on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AndyOstroy

GOP Racism and the Lost Cause

(CNN) After President-elect Donald Trump's recent victory, some of his supporters celebrated by flying Confederate battle flags from pickup trucks and waving them at rallies.

But Trump's victory may mark the resurgence of the Old South in another more sinister way: The return of "racial amnesia."

That's what some historians are saying as they watch a familiar storyline emerge. Trump's triumph is now being roundly described as a revolt by white working-class voters; racism, sexism and religious bigotry had little, if anything, to do with it.

People making this argument are following a script first honed by another group of Americans who made history disappear. After the Civil War, "Lost Cause" propagandists from the Confederacy argued the war wasn't fought over slavery -- it was a constitutional clash over state's rights, they said; hatred toward blacks had nothing to do with it.

It was an audacious historical cover-up -- to convince millions of Americans that what they'd just seen and heard hadn't really happened. It worked then, and some historians say it could work again with Trump.

"It's already happening again," says Brooks D. Simpson, a leading Civil War historian who teaches at Arizona State University. "A lot of people are saying we're going to have to unite behind the new guy and forget what he had to say. People who feel that they are part of those populations targeted by Trump are going to be told by whites to get over it."

(snip)

How white America became good at forgetting

At first glance, comparing some Trump supporters to ex-Confederates may seem absurd, even insulting. But historians say both groups developed an uncanny ability to obscure the role race played in transformative events and to persuade millions of Americans to go along with the charade.

You don't have to pick on the South, though, to spot racial amnesia. Racism is embedded in the daily lives of ordinary Americans in ways that many forget.

Where Americans live, worship, send their children to school -- much of it is driven by race, says David Billings, a pastor who came of age as a white Southerner during the 1960s.

(snip)

A 19th century cover-up

The Lost Cause campaign offers the definitive example of racial self-deception. Before there was fake news, the Lost Cause propagandists were creating fake history.

Their timing was audacious. They didn't wait years to claim the Civil War wasn't fought over slavery. They started making those claims immediately after the war ended, when the physical and psychological wounds were still raw.

A year after the war ended, Edward Pollard, a Southern newspaper editor, published, "The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates." Former Confederate leaders began to amplify Pollard's argument that the war was over state sovereignty, not slavery. Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederacy, claimed that "slavery was in no way the cause of the conflict." Alexander H. Stephens, the former vice president of the Confederacy, argued the war "was not a contest between the advocates or opponents of that peculiar institution."

Confederate veterans' groups started to spread the myth at reunions. So did storytellers. The Lost Cause was recycled in early 20th century films like D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation," "Gone with the Wind" and Walt Disney's "Song of the South." All recast the antebellum South as a moonlight and magnolia paradise of happy slaves, affectionate slave owners and villainous Yankees.

Why would so many Southerners embrace such a big lie?

Part of it was embarrassment. They had to decontaminate history by recasting what they did as a noble cause, historians say.

They also wanted to look good to their children and future generations, Civil War historian Alan T. Nolan wrote in "The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History."

"The Lost Cause was expressly a rationalization, a cover-up," Nolan said.

Not all Confederates bought into the deceit. Historians often cite what one astonished Confederate war hero, John Singleton Mosby, said in 1902 as the Lost Cause myth spread:

"In retrospect, slavery seems such a monstrous thing that some are now trying to prove that slavery was not the cause of the war."

Their timing was audacious. They didn't wait years to claim the Civil War wasn't fought over slavery. They started making those claims immediately after the war ended, when the physical and psychological wounds were still raw.

A year after the war ended, Edward Pollard, a Southern newspaper editor, published, "The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates." Former Confederate leaders began to amplify Pollard's argument that the war was over state sovereignty, not slavery. Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederacy, claimed that "slavery was in no way the cause of the conflict." Alexander H. Stephens, the former vice president of the Confederacy, argued the war "was not a contest between the advocates or opponents of that peculiar institution."

Confederate veterans' groups started to spread the myth at reunions. So did storytellers. The Lost Cause was recycled in early 20th century films like D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation," "Gone with the Wind" and Walt Disney's "Song of the South." All recast the antebellum South as a moonlight and magnolia paradise of happy slaves, affectionate slave owners and villainous Yankees.

Why would so many Southerners embrace such a big lie?

Part of it was embarrassment. They had to decontaminate history by recasting what they did as a noble cause, historians say.

They also wanted to look good to their children and future generations, Civil War historian Alan T. Nolan wrote in "The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History."

"The Lost Cause was expressly a rationalization, a cover-up," Nolan said.

Not all Confederates bought into the deceit. Historians often cite what one astonished Confederate war hero, John Singleton Mosby, said in 1902 as the Lost Cause myth spread:

"In retrospect, slavery seems such a monstrous thing that some are now trying to prove that slavery was not the cause of the war."

The Lost Cause today?

The same dynamics that nurtured the rise of the Lost Cause are evident now, some historians say.

Those who deny that racism and xenophobia were central to Trump's victory are engaging in another Lost Cause cover-up, they say.

"Anybody who says that the recent election is not, at least in part, a racial event is functioning as an apologist, whether they know it or not, for white prejudice," says, Joseph Ellis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian.

There are abundant examples of Trump's explicit racist statements. He didn't campaign in dog whistles; he used a bullhorn. He once called Mexican immigrants "rapists" and proposed a travel ban on all Muslims entering the United States. Even Republican House leader Paul Ryan once said Trump's comment that a federal judge couldn't do his job because of his Mexican heritage was "the textbook definition of a racist comment."

Trump's rise to political prominence was driven in part by a conspiracy theory coated in racism.

Trump led the "birther" movement that repeatedly implied Obama was an illegitimate president who was not born in the United States. The president was eventually forced to release his original long-form birth certificate to quell birther rumors. Trump's demands that Obama prove his citizenship evoked the slave era, when freed blacks were often forced to show their "certificate of freedom" to justify moving about in public.

(piece goes on for quite a bit on this issue)

"Fuck You, Donald Trump" by Chris Cluwe

Fuck you, Donald Trump.

Fuck you for being a hypersensitive, grossly plump caricature of a human being; a squirming mass of cockroaches lurking under a skinsuit veneer.

Fuck your wanton plundering of our social fabric, your willingness to tear down the structure that allows you to exist, your glorification of the worst parts of humanity, all in the name of your own insatiable greed and depravity.

Fuck your racebaiting, fearmongering, Nazi-enabling rhetoric that allows the darkest and most destructive corners of our collective zeitgeist free reign to terrorize the rest.

Fuck your ignorant paucity of intellect, your narcissistic belief in your own ego, your inability to recognize your own descent into fascism.

Fuck your promotions of white supremacists to positions of power, of science denying crackpots to oversee our future, of bootlicking toadies to oversee your transition.

Fuck your misogynistic views on women’s rights, fuck your archaic beliefs on the freedom of press and religion, and fuck your idiotic venality when it comes to the destruction of a country that, while not always achieving freedom for all of its citizens, has done the best to get there in the entirety of recorded human history.

Fuck you, Melania Trump.

Fuck you for being willing to support this disgusting slime mold because it means you can live a life of privilege and luxury, never mind the hardships that will befall women across this nation due to your husband’s philistinic views.

Fuck you for posing for puff pieces in entertainment magazines while the cabal of shitgoblins your partner is assembling gets ready to reverse everything that has allowed you to possess even the most moderate amount of power.

Fuck you for taking the easy choice, the choice to suck the dick of a loathsome troll in order to wear Hugo Boss dresses, instead of taking a stand in order to protect the fifty percent of our population who shares your gender.

Fuck you for smiling and waving at the cameras when your husband is on record as saying, “Grab them (women) by the pussy. You can do anything.”

Fuck your betrayal of everything Susan B. Anthony and other suffragettes fought for, fuck your tacit acceptance that a woman should be an accessory to a man, fuck your self-centered interest in insuring your own well-being over the well-being of the country that allows you such a lifestyle.

Fuck you, Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Trump Jr.

Fuck you for being willing lackeys of this pusillanimous ape, for carrying his water on television and in media interviews.

Fuck you for clinging to his hairy teat, for not finding the courage to strike out on your own, for not recognizing that even though you can’t choose your parents, you can certainly choose your own path in life.

Fuck you for normalizing this piece of shit wannabe-Hitler, for treating his wretched series of business enterprises as anything other than the fraudulent snake-oil jobs that they are, for bowing beneath the lash instead of standing tall and making your own way, despite the loss it might incur.

Fuck you for the hate and pain you will inflict on hundreds of thousands of American citizens because you couldn’t muster the courage to say, “No, this isn’t right, and even though I’m related to you by blood, I refuse to proceed with this abhorrent state of affairs.”

Fuck your greasy, slimy, frat-house words and beliefs, your ideals that would tear us apart, your craven unworthiness to occupy a public space that you achieved through no merit of your own, one which you have no idea what to do with other than to cause hurt.

Fuck you, Jared Kushner.

Fuck your anti-Semitism.

Fuck your quisling compliance, your willingness to see those like you tortured and degraded in order to further your own lot in life.

Fuck your manipulation of our media through your financial control of the Observer, fuck your sheltered life of wanton privilege, fuck your inability to understand the arc of history.

Fuck everything you do to uphold a wretched lout who would suffer no qualms in ordering you in front of the firing squad if it meant he might live another day.

Fuck you, Republicans who refuse to disown this bloated leech.

Fuck your cowardice, your disavowal of the solemn duties of your office — keeping this country safe from tyrants and demagogues.

Fuck you for meekly bending the knee in compliance, instead of speaking truth to power.

Fuck you for choosing political expediency over courage, fuck you for sacrificing the poor and the sick, fuck you for dragging our government into a hole from which it may never recover.

Fuck you, members of the media.

Fuck your constant pursuit of ratings, of quarterly profits, of giving this tinpot cumdumpster a platform with which he can influence a large part of our country

Fuck you for buying into the idea that racism should be afforded an equal platform with equality, for calling a Nazi anything other than a Nazi.

Fuck your smarmy thinkpieces attempting to normalize a new hegemony, fuck your cowardice in the face of totalitarianism, fuck your CEOs and VPs and executive producers who are willing to feed the innocent to the depraved in order to forestall their own demise.

Fuck you for not doing your job.

Fuck you, Trump supporters.

Fuck you for your willing ignorance, your inability to understand that a fascist is telling you exactly what he wants to do to you.

Fuck you for tearing apart the rule of law, and bringing back the rule of force.

Fuck you for not caring, for believing the easy lies you read instead of using your brain to find the truth.

Fuck you for putting your petty hatreds and squabbles ahead of everything that once made this country great, and fuck you for unwittingly causing it to fall.

Fuck you everyone who refuses to take a stand against this man.

Fuck your inability to understand history.

Fuck your selfish interests that ignore the fact that if one of us isn’t free, none of us is free.

Fuck your willingness to normalize this dictator, your filthy desire for more lucre, your inability to fight for your fellow citizens and everything this country once stood for. The Founders would be ashamed of you.

Fuck your blind optimism that things will somehow magically turn out okay, fuck your American exceptionalism draped in the corpses of communities of color, fuck your overwhelming ignorance that could be solved if you simply wished to learn and ask ‘why.’

Above all, fuck your cowardice, your self-loathing hypocrisy, your myopic blinders keeping you from identifying the single greatest threat our republic has faced since we took up arms against the British, because if someone other than you suffers, somehow that makes it just fine.

Fuck you, Donald Trump, for turning my country into something that it never should have become, for turning it into something no country should ever become.

Fuck you, Donald Trump, for driving us into conflict, one that will most likely end in violence.

Fuck you, Donald Trump.

A Truly Dangerous Candidate in Trump

WaPo says Trump is unprecedented threat to American democracy. An unprecedented editorial.

Donald Trump’s nomination is the first time American politics has left me truly afraid

Donald Trump’s NATO comments are the scariest thing he’s said

Wednesday night, Donald Trump said something that made a nuclear war between the United States and Russia more likely. With a few thoughtless words, he made World War III — the deaths of hundreds of millions of people in nuclear holocaust — plausible.

This probably scans like hyperbole, the kind of thing you hear a lot in politics. I assure you, it’s not. Not this time.

What Trump said, in an interview published by the New York Times, is that he wouldn’t necessarily defend the United States’ allies in NATO if they were attacked by a foreign power. This extended, Trump said, to the Baltic countries right on Russia’s border — countries Russia might conceivably invade.

The NATO alliance is the key deterrent against this: It is founded on a promise that an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all. Trump is directly undermining this promise.

The consequences are hard to overstate. He is trashing one of the foundations of the postwar European order, which has helped guaranteed peace on the continent for 70 years. And by equivocating on whether he would defend the Baltics, he creates a dangerous amount of uncertainty among Russians as to how seriously the US takes its NATO treaty commitments — the kind of uncertainty that, yes, could spark an actual conflict between the US and Russia.

This is what happens when you let a flamboyant reality star get this close to the highest office in the land: You get someone who doesn’t understand the machinery of state, and plays with literal nuclear fire as a result.

 

 (short answer is "no")

GOP Platform Proposes to Get Rid of National Parks and National Forests

Just flat-out barking insanity.

And there's even an anti-national park GOP caucus.

The GOP is a fucking death cult.

GOP Convention Platform Is a Haven for Religious Zealots, Bigots and Cranks

GOP Platform Committee Embraces A Purely Puritanical Agenda

So far this week Republicans have worked religiously to adopt a staunchly neo-conservative theocratic platform that embraces a strict, Puritanical view of the family and children, bans military women from serving in combat, defines coal as America’s preferred clean energy source, replaces the Constitution with the Christian bible, and in keeping with the Puritanical agenda, declares pornography a “public health crisis.” 

First, declaring “porn” as a public health crisis is really cover for the reality that porn is “a serious problem and health crisis” among the Christian community, particularly the Christian male, porn addicted, community. The evangelicals running the platform writing committee claim “Pornography, with its harmful effects, especially on children, has become a public health crisis that is destroying the life of millions. We encourage states to continue to fight this public menace and pledge our commitment to children’s safety and well-being.” 

It sounds as if Republicans and evangelicals have a serious “traditional Christian family” parenting problem if they can’t keep their young religious perverts off of porn sites they’re not allowed to legally visit. Their horrid, traditional family parenting, or devastating porn addiction epidemic, doesn’t mean they can start down a path to abolish free speech, or free Internet porn, for the rest of the population because they have porn-addiction issues. And, it belies their contention that they hate government intruding into Americans’ private lives, unless it comports with the Puritanical leanings of the religious right: then government tyranny and intrusions for religion’s sake is admirably godly. 

Despite a year-old SCOTUS ruling that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, and the party’s first openly-gay platform committee member participating in the debate, the RNC rejected an amendment to have a “thoughtful conversation” on same-sex marriage. The amendment didn’t demand a full embrace of marriage equality, that would be too much to ask; just that the Party “have a thoughtful conversation” on marriage equality. The openly gay delegate from Washington D.C., Rachel Hoff, said during the debate and while fighting back tears, “We are your daughters, we are your friends. All I ask today is that you include me and people like me.” About 30 delegates agreed with Ms. Hoff, but these were religious Republicans and most of the committee agreed with religious malcontent Tony Perkins not to remove traditional marriage language from the platform; social conservatives will not embrace, much less talk about marriage equality. 

It really leads one to wonder why an openly gay person would be a Republican delegate, much less ever vote for one of the hate-mongers. Never straying too far afield from the conversation on the imagined threats of same-sex marriage, religious Republicans inserted language claiming that children raised by “traditional” families are superior to those raised by same-sex couples. 

The official wording reads, “Children raised in a traditional two-parent household tend to be physically and emotionally healthier, less likely to use drugs and alcohol, engage in crime, or become pregnant outside of marriage.” Except that is patently false and yet another typical religious Republican lie. According to myriad studies, and specifically a very recent UCLA study: “There is no difference in the outcomes for same-sex couple’s children, including their general health, emotional difficulties, coping behavior, or learning behavior.”

The GOP’s Civil War Over LGBT Rights Just Killed a Spending Bill

BIGOTED ASSHOLES!

All Paul Ryan wanted was to appropriate some funds for energy and water spending: a quick and easy vote, bang the gavel, go home, and CrossFit hard enough to forget the Donald’s name. But lately, routine spending bills in the House have had a funny habit of turning into acrimonious debates over LGBT rights. 

Last week, Democratic congressman Sean Patrick Maloney proposed an amendment to a Veterans Affairs appropriations bill barring federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT employees — thus enshrining President Obama’s 2014 executive order on that matter into law. 

The amendment appeared to pass — then a bunch of Republicans switched their votes. And then Democrats chanted “Shame, shame, shame,” and the Human Rights Campaign blasted the GOP flip-floppers over Twitter, and Speaker Ryan had another fire to put out. 

Late Wednesday night, Maloney reintroduced the amendment, this time to an energy and water spending bill. Pennsylvania Republican Joe Pitts tried to split the baby, adding a line stipulating that the ban wouldn't apply in circumstances where its enforcement would violate the Constitution. Since conservatives think the Constitution guarantees Christians the right to discriminate against gay people, while liberals think it demands the exact opposite, this was supposed to let both sides win. 

And for a while there, they seemed to: The amendment passed with 43 Republican votes. And then, just before the full bill came up for a vote, Georgia congressman Rick Allen treated his colleagues to a prayer about "the gays." Per Politico: The breakdown of the appropriations process started earlier in the day when Rep. Rick Allen (R-Ga.) opened the weekly GOP conference meeting with a prayer about the LGBT issue, prior to the vote. He read a passage from the Bible and questioned whether members would violate their religious principles if they supported the bill. 

Moderate Republicans were stunned by Allen's remarks, and some walked out of the meeting in protest, according to GOP lawmakers. The appropriations bill fell 305–112, as a majority of Republicans voted it down in protest of the LGBT-rights provision. The vast majority of Democrats also turned on the bill after the GOP caucus filled it with poison pills. 

Among these was a provision barring the federal government from spending money to calculate the climate impact of regulations, one cutting off all funding to “sanctuary cities," and an amendment prohibiting the federal government from withholding funds from North Carolina if it continues to violate the president’s federal order about transgender bathroom rights.

GOP Psychopath Tom Cotton

Senator: 'We have an under-incarceration problem'

(CNN)Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton spoke out against bipartisan efforts to reform America's criminal justice system at a conservative think tank in Washington on Thursday, saying, "If anything, we have an under-incarceration problem." 

"For the vast majority of crimes, a perpetrator is never identified or arrested, let alone prosecuted, convicted and jailed," Cotton said at the Hudson Institute. The Arkansas senator has been a staunch opponent of bipartisan legislation which would push to reduce mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent criminal offenders. The bill would also give judges greater discretion on sentencing for low level drug related crimes.   

Cotton called efforts to restore voting rights to felons, and making it easier for ex-felons to seek employment "dangerous." "Law enforcement is able to arrest or identify a likely perpetrator for only 19% of property crimes and 47% of violent crimes. If anything, we have an under-incarceration problem," Cotton said. "The truth is you cannot decrease the severity and certainty of sentences without increasing crime," Cotton said. "It's simply impossible." 

Criminal justice reform advocates claim the severity of the sentencing does not have much of an effect on repeat offenders and crime rates. "When he says we have all of these unsolved crimes, so that's why we should be filling the prisons even more, where is he going to get the resources to prosecute those if we're spending so much money putting a nonviolent drug offender in prison for 30 years," said Kevin Ring, Vice President of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a non-profit organization. "This is a misallocation of resources. No one is trying to make a trade off between safety and security. We're saying we can get more safety if we use our resources efficiently."

Cotton is a traitorous monster... totally lacking in humanity. Fuck him.

The Continuing Saga of Trump and GOP Assholery

 JUST IN: Ryan: We can work with Trump http://hill.cm/QnqTSsQ 

So the GOP leadership is willing to work with a man they call a "fraud" and "con artist," just not with the twice-elected POTUS Obama.

GOP Senate Will Not Even Consider Obama Supreme Court Nominee or Hold Hearings

Motherfuckers:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell says flatly that his party won't permit a vote on any Supreme Court nominee submitted by President Barack Obama but will "revisit the matter" after the presidential election in November. The Kentucky Republican acknowledged that Obama is within his rights to nominate a replacement to Antonin Scalia but said Republicans controlling the Senate would exercise their rights to "withhold" consent.

GOP Traitors and GOP Insanity

GOP Traitors: Iran Reveals Republicans Tried To Delay Release Of US Prisoners Until After Election


GOP Insanity: Republicans threaten to keep Supreme Court Vacancy open for one whole year to prevent Obama from Appointing Justice.

In Wake of Lead Poisoning of Flint, Michigan Water Supply by GOP Assholes Governor, Psychopathic Republicans in US Senate Try Desperately to Weaken EPA Regulations on Water

In a stunning display of clueless arrogance Mitch McConnell’s Senate Republicans moved forward with a vote to override President Obama’s veto of a bill that would have killed the EPA’s new clean water rule. Republicans failed to get enough votes to override the veto. The final vote was fifteen votes short (52-40) of the 67 needed to override President Obama’s veto. Three red state Democrats, Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Joe Donnelly (IN) and Joe Manchin (WV) voted with Republicans to override Obama’s veto. 

Susan Collins (ME) was the only Republican to vote with Democrats to sustain the president’s veto. In his veto message the President said, “We must protect the waters that are vital for the health of our communities and the success of our businesses, agriculture, and energy development. As I have noted before, too many of our waters have been left vulnerable. Pollution from upstream sources ends up in the rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and coastal waters near which most Americans live and on which they depend for their drinking water, recreation, and economic development.” 

The message sent by McConnell and his Republicans was obvious to all. The Senate Republican majority doesn’t care about making sure that the American people have access to clean drinking water. The crisis in Flint has taught Republicans nothing. 

Republicans originally tried to cut the new clean water rules before the Flint crisis became a national story, but after Flint, a responsible Senate majority might have reconsidered gutting clean water rules after hundreds of children were sickened with lead poisoning in an American city due to contaminated water. 

The Republican majority in the Senate is owned by corporations and big business. It doesn’t matter to them if the American people are denied access to clean drinking water. 

The Senate Republican maneuver to kill new clean water rules was all about enabling polluters. Republicans are determined to make sure that people are not guaranteed access to clean water. Without Senate Democrats having Obama’s back, the crisis in Flint could be repeated all across the country as Senate Republicans have placed the polluters ahead of the needs of the American people.