One thing I found ironic is the suggestion that the Republicans continue to be the party of Lincoln, representing the general ideas about equal rights for our Black citizens; and that the Democrats represent the party of Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, and others that worked to suppress Black rights. I know that is how it was back in the antebellum days and perhaps may have been correct if one goes back to as recently as 1960; but since then things are totally different. The parties have changed roles.

1860 brought us the Civil War which was a war about the rights to hold Black folk as slaves. Leading up to it various compromise were worked in Congress trying to keep the balance between the slave and free states in an attempt to keep the nation together.  As opposition to slavery grew, the election of Lincoln, showed the power of the slave states in the national government would be lessened and slavery imperiled.  Eleven states voted to leave the Union to form their own country: the Confederate States of America. They were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennesssee.

There are lots of folk out there who say that the choice of 75 million Americans was ignored when Trump was declared the loser of the 2020 presidential election. Trump himself told how the 75 million votes were more than any other sitting president running for reelection in the U.S. history. Were the American folk supposed to believe that the 82 million votes for President-elect Biden were never cast? It was going to be all right to ignore the choice of 82 million voters to please the 75 million; or to give the guy who got the most votes of any sitting president running for reelection the win even though he got less than his opponent.

I know – president-elect Biden got illegal votes so he really did not get 82 million votes. If we only counted the legal votes – we are not told how to distinguish between the legal and illegal – then all Trump’s 75 million votes were legal. He just need someone to find that 8 million of Biden’s votes were illegal so that he could have won 75 million to 74 million. Too bad there wasn’t someone he could call to pressure them to find them like he tried to do with the Georgia secretary of state.

Do you recall a couple or more years back during the Trump time in office that there were seven United States senators who went to visit Moscow over the Fourth of July? It was quite inexplicable to me at the time why during the celebration of our nation’s independence seven senators would be hobnobbing with Russians who wanted no more than to destroy our way of life which they came quite close to doing on January 6, 2021.

These senators, the Moscow Seven, had somethings in common. They were all Republicans. They were all white men. They ranged in age from their late fifties up to their early eighties with most being in their sixties. They were: Sens. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), Steve Daines (Mont.), John Hoeven (N.D.), John Neely Kennedy (La.), Jerry Moran (Kan.), John Thune (S.D.) and  Ron Johnson (Wis).

Yesterday, January 6, 2021, which was described in Congress as a day of infamy, at 8:00 a.m. I wrote the following which was hours before the attack on Congress began:

“In your longest days would you ever expect the person who occupied the same office as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln or any other president would call for people to come to Washington for a “wild” time with the intent of overthrowing the duly certified election results. It never happened before in this country which prided itself on the peaceful transfer of power from one party to another. Doesn’t it make you question the intent of Trump? Would you be happy if he succeeded in having his followers move into Congress, take over, and proclaim a new government under Trump? Is that what you want for the United States? It is what he wants.”

Here’s what USA said a few days ago:

‘WASHINGTON – A city accustomed to mass protests is gearing up for especially intense ones over what should be the most mundane of political events: the counting of Electoral College votes during a special joint session of Congress.

At the urging of President Donald Trump, however, die-hard supporters are planning to descend on the nation’s capital Jan. 6, to pressure Republican lawmakers into aligning themselves with the doomed effort to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

Knife fights, shouting matches, and verbal harassment of Trump opponents accompanied previous demonstrations following Biden’s election win in November. Now federal and local law enforcement are bracing for what may be the most intense Trump protest yet as Congress is poised to formally declare Biden president-elect.

Various Trump groups are promoting the demonstrations online. One called “#StopTheSteal” operates the website “WildProtest.com,” which proclaims that “PRESIDENT TRUMP WANTS YOU IN DC JANUARY 6.”

“Be there, will be wild,” says one flier.

The event has been co-signed by incoming members of Congress Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

On Friday, New Year’s Day, Trump tweeted that the “the BIG Protest Rally” in Washington will be at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 6. “Locational details to follow,” Trump said.’

I assume you like I have always dreaded this time of year when Congress meets to decide who will become president of the United States. I never quite figured it out totally how the election meant nothing; the Electoral College meant nothing; and all that counted was  whether Congress approved of the election results. You know, it wasn’t the people electing the president but Congress.

I think the first time I was cognizant of it was when Ike, the time when as young teenagers we went around shouting “I like Ike” without really knowing what it meant. We did know Ike was a great general who led us through WWII to victory. It was only natural that we liked him. Who after all does not like a winning general. No one ever went around shouting they liked William Westmoreland who had a noted career in the military but did not do to well in the Vietnam War not understanding the politics behind it.

One should initially define terms:

HOLODOMOR  – the state sponsored famine brought about in Ukraine enacted by Joseph Stalin and his Soviet Government to cause a genocide of Ukrainians in 1932 to 1933 during which an estimated 12 million (one author); or 7 to 10 million (2003 UN statement); or 3.3 to 7.5 million (other experts) died from starvation.

MISTER JONES – A movie about a young man from Wales named Gareth Jones who was characterized as a young idealist who was naive. He was fluent in French, German and Russian called an “extraordinary linguist.” When in the Soviet Union he heard from a couple of women about the famine he went there to see it first hand and reported on it. He would later be murdered by the NKVD the day before his 30th birthday.