The Four Easiest Republican Senators to Primary in 2022

 This is my general list:

1.  Lisa Murkowski, 'independent', Alaska.  The governor of the state (currently facing a recall push)....has openly said he might run.  

2.  Marco Rubio, Florida.  Based on Florida voting public in 2020....I'd say Rubio now has a problem.  I think he could easily be defeated in a primary now.

3.  Roy Blunt, Missouri.  With some money and a little bit of recognition....I think any idiot could take on Blunt now and defeat him in a primary.

4.  Mike Lee, Utah.  Lee hasn't said if he's running.  He basically turned into a flip-flop every other week with Trump.  Anyone with a name-recognition situation probably could defeat Lee in a primary.

The Odds of Impeachment or Amendment 25 Happening?

 As of today, the House/Senate have 11 possible days to hustle up an impeachment or Amendment 25 event.  So this is a discussion of the following 11 days.

First, could they run the Amendment 25 event after 20 January?  No.  It kinda says in strong language the verbiage indicating a 'standing' president....not a former President.

Second, to test the impeachment process...you'd normally require 30 days.  To do it in 11?  I'd say it's nearly impossible.

You'd have to launch out of 10 Jan (the Sunday political talk shows) with a massive fury, and go into secret talks on 11 Jan in the House basement SCIF.  By the evening of 11 January....you'd have to have the basic draft of charges done. 

The House judicial folks would have all day on the 12th (Tuesday) to chat over this and then by that evening....send it onto the full House.  

You'd figure the 13th to be spent with the House floor very active, and a vote by noon on the 14th (Thursday)....to send it onto the Senate.

The Senate would have to collapse all other events on the 15th, and likely start on the 16th (Saturday), and they'd have to complete this by the evening of the 19th (day before Biden is sworn in).

Going the Amendment 25 way?  Witnesses would be dragged in and the House/Senate path would require a minimum of two weeks.  

So why go to openly discuss this business?

There simply is enormous fear on the part of the Democrats, and fake-Republicans that Trump will emerge in the fall of 2023, and be on the primary list for 2024.  Covid-19 mail-in procedures?  They simply won't be available to use again, and the 81-million vote-count for Joe Biden.....can't be repeated again.

Even if they completed the impeachment or Amendment 25....would that be enough to halt Trump?  No....he would just gather up the list of fake-Republicans and probably gather up primary situations to dump half of them out in 2022.  

This whole thing....a massive fear of Trump returning?  Yep, that's the bulk of this whole landscape (like a Van Gogh painting, just bigger and more than 500 different colors mixed-in).

And if Trump returned in 2024?  Well....the firing list would be over 1,000 CIA, FBI and Attorney General officials on day one.  

I admit....if this was mid-December....there would be ample time to carry out either the impeachment deal or the Amendment 25 situation.  But with 11 days?  Toss in riots and massive crowds gathering in DC....with the news media/social media players restricting information?  

It might worth the effort to take next week off and just have five TVs laid out in your living room and watching the action.  

Finally....has Amendment 25 ever been used?  No.  That's the one odd part of this story.  

My Thoughts on '1984'

 I picked up the Orwell book after I'd read Animal Farm (around 1975).  '1984' is not what I'd call an easy-to-translate-into-reality book.  

Orwell spends a lot of time describing this dysfunctional world that has evolved (he wrote it in 1948 and it was published in 1949).  Of the 320-odd pages....it's basically three sections.  Section one is the introduction and the tough part to get over.  

Section two is filler material....on how Winston Smith (chief character) fumbles around in this marginalized relationship with this Julia-character.  Orwell tries to convey some hot lusty torrid affair....which for a Brit guy usually means a unpleasant 'romp' with 'tart' gal who wears stockings, smokes unfiltered cigarettes', drinks her gin straight, and read 1960s erotic novels.  

I always felt section two could be skipped.

Section three.....Winston basically dumps Julia to the 'Thought Police' and he has some recovery phase....meeting Julia in some British cafe and regretting his hasty actions.  

Section three, you have to read over because it's the tail-end of the book.  There are no winners....it's just a smothering pile of crap left there and you feel sorry for Winston and Julia.  

If you measured it upon the story-line, it's a marginal two-star story.  However, the whole first section and description of big government and the way that society had fallen (from 1948 to 1984)....pushed the book to the five-star status.

I picked up the book again around a decade ago.  At that point, a lot of the book really did play out with modern society and the transition to social media (more so than the government itself).  But in that reading, that romantic bumbling around with the Julia-character was more apparent, and I would suggest that Orwell was a 1-star writer over romance stuff or torrid love affairs.

So '1984' stands there....one of the dozen books that I think ought to be mandated to kids in the final two years of high school (in fact, it's one of the only two fictional books...the other being 'Animal Farm', that I'd put on the list).

It's not on my list as a novel or for great reading....it's there as a piece for you to wrap up, and spend weeks or months thinking over the implications, and how things progress from point 'A' to point 'B'.

If I were writing '1984'?  That whole final seventy-odd pages?  It'd go into the garbage can and I'd give some type of positive spin that maybe Winston and Julia found some way out of the mess....they left for Panama on some freighter, and that the collapse of the perfect-state had started to occur with public rebellion.  It'd be something like how Casablanca ended, with Rick and Louis staying around while Ilsa got on the plane to leave.  

The Reichstag Fire 'Trigger'

 So, this is a little history 'chat'.

The Reichstag....was the German version of the capital building, and they started up on this project in the summer of 1884.  It's a key element to state that the decision for the new structure came after what you'd consider total unification of the Prussian 'state' (most set this as 1871).  

Now, I need to add this dynamic to the story.  When you look at the grand nature of this (it was a very impressive building....656,000 sq ft/61k sq meters).  It took ten years to finish (1894 it was done).  If you attempted this today, with the crappy planning style that exists (BER Airport is an example)....it'd probably require over 25 years to complete the project.

It sat there as a major part of German government operations....throughout WW I, and throughout the Weimar Republic period....then 27 February 1933 comes up.

The Nazis had been in power for roughly a year.  It was not what you'd call a solid or anchored period of power.  

On the evening of 27 February, a fire started up.  By the morning of the 28th.....it was fairly damaged.  

What came to quickly occur....a Dutch guy (Marinus van der Lubbe) came to be accused.

The story?  What the Nazis started to paint up was that this guy (who was a Communist) as the fire-starter, and after a complete investigation....they settled upon the idea that he alone (no other help) created the fire.

The court case ended, and this van der Lubbe character was executed for his 'crime' (Feb 1934....roughly a year after the fire).

So historians are mostly stuck on this issue.  No one is sure about van der Lubbe having started the fire.  

Members of the Communist Party of Germany at the time?  Well...they often hyped up that van der Lubbe was more or less a 'half-wit' or mentally disturbed.  There's not fantastic proof to this suggestion.  

In the 1960s, a book came out in Germany and the discussion turned to the idea that van der Lubbe was a pyromaniac (he 'enjoyed' fires).  Shortly after this book came out....then another discussion started up that it was a Nazi invention, and van der Lubbe was just a pawn in this whole game.

Around twenty years ago, another book came out (using Moscow data/files) and the entire fire was blamed upon the Nazis.  It was a creation to solidify their political platform.  The problem with this book is that it took a lot of Stassi (Nazi Secret Police) information, and was more or less what they believed.  

What happened in 1934, after the fire episode?  Well...the Constitution got changed....both the President and Chancellor positions were set into one single job (of course, going to Hitler).  Public opinion was heavily in favor of the Nazis at that point.    

The 5 March 1933 election, the 12 November 1933 election, the 29 March 1936 election, the 10 April 1938 election, and the 4 December 1938 election....all went heavily toward Hitler and the Nazis.  

You could have sat around any pub in the summer of 1933, and a fairly decent chat of the Bundestag fire would have come up....with the Communists bluntly targeted as 'bad boys'.

Even today (2021)....the argument of who set the fire is still debated.  But they all agree....this one single fire really set into motion the public support of the Nazi Party.

So it's just odd of looking at the 6 January 2021 episode in DC, and just kinda asks....how much of this reflects upon the Reichstag Fire 'trigger'?  It just looks a lot like a scripted event.  

Chief of Capital Police, and Congressional Sergeant-at-Arms....Gone

 It's an interesting twist to what happened on the 6th of January.  Both the Congressional Sergeant-at-Arms and Chief of the Capital Police are gone now.

Did both screw up?  This is a matter of debate.  

The Capital Police chief has been around for roughly two years.  

Sergeant-at-Arms Paul D. Irving?  He'd been there since 2012.  

I suspect that everyone around the Senate and House....felt that they had a high degree of protection, and in the end....it seemed like the 'total' force were just simply a group of glorified door-guards.  

Who gets the jobs next?  Unknown.  I think in both cases.....if you offered the jobs out....they might get 300 resumes each, but this grouping might not be high-quality folks who are up to the job.  In some ways, I'd suggest that the two folks walking in (probably by the  end of February)....will do a brief period (maybe 18 months), and then leave/retire.

If you listed out the job-requirements for the Sergeant-at-Arms job....it basically goes to three key functions: basic security at the doorway to the House/Senate (only the Representatives/Senators get in),  handling of protocol/ceremony (like  the inauguration), and finally handling unruly/bad behavior of the Senate/House members.

On the last piece....the bad behavior....agents of the Sergeant-at-Arms are there to basically drag out anyone in the structure who is obviously acting erratic, drunk, or threatening folks.  

The odds that both will be filled by female candidates?  Oh, I'd give that betting odds of a 75-percent chance.  But whoever applies....they'd probably have to be in their mid-50s, and have twenty-plus years of law enforcement background.