Another family values Republican

Thanks to Juanita Jean, RtO has become aware of yet another family values Republican who won re-election from family values Republican voters, this time in Texas.

You need to read the complete report in the Dallas News to get the full flavor of this one. Especially the senator's imaginary friend.

While not as criminous as the ineffable Scott Des Jarlais, Senator Schwertner does bring a certain special Texas looniness to the practice of family values. The evidence adds support to the idea that any Republican who speaks up in favor of family values is some kind of pervert.

Defeat lap

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan give a valedictory dress at the Library of Congress before slinking out of the House of Representatives yesterday. As is typical with Ryan, it was a mixture of cynicism, mendacity and sanctimony.

But I come not to praise or even to condemn Ryan's comments but to point out that he is damn lucky that he is a birthright citizen of the United States, because under the new doctrine of the Republican Party if he were a green card holder aspiring to citizenship, he would be deemed unsuitable.

You cannot make this stuff up.

Kill-crazy cops

Let's review the bidding in this murder.

A Los Angeles cop thought that a car he saw might have been stolen and that a man who was near the car might have something to do with it. So he killed him.

Your chance of being murdered by a law enforcement officer is more than 100 times worse than your chance of being murdered by an immigrant, illegal or otherwise.

Disarm the police.

Making the most of treason

During the period of my move over the summer I was not able to post to Restating the Obvious very often, but one of the things that struck me forcibly was the treatment of the word and concept of treason, starting with James Clapper's ill-advised use of the term following the Helsinki embarrassment when Trump  traveled thousands of miles to lick Putin's boots.

Clapper knew better. Trump's performance did not in any way meet the constricted definition of treason in our Constitution. Traitorous would've suited as well and been legally accurate.

The right-wingers jumped on Clapper's error, and that sent me down memory lane because the use of the word treason has been habitual with right-wingers and Republicans all my life, and I do believe that the same Constitution was in effect in 1952 as in 2018.

It's been a gift to a person of my sentiments that Republicans have continued since Helsinki to use the treason word.

It is always a question with our right-wingers whether they are pig-ignorant or are as knowledgable about our political history as I am but far more cynical. I can never decide. They are certainly stupid but that is not the same as being ignorant, and they're certainly cynical.

They must believe -- if they're not just  ignorant --  that virtually all of their supporters are completely ignorant, because you do not have to know great deal about American political history to remember the Republican Party's campaign slogan in the 1952 election: 20 years of treason.