“We Don’t Talk About Epstein”
My grandkids (and I) loved the movie Encanto. There is a song in the movie, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” about an ostracized uncle who was accused of ruining a family wedding with a hurricane. I think the Republicans are trying awfully hard to write a song titled “We Don’t Talk About Epstein.”
Every day there’s some new crazy distraction, including Wednesday’s push by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. (Yes, another embarrassment from Wisconsin.) After his performance as a lawyer/lumberjack on MTV’s The Real World, and then a few years as a congressman in WI CD 7, he was back on Fox News, and now he is in Trump’s Cabinet. Please watch Sean Duffy explaining why we need to spend a gazillion dollars on a nuclear reactor to create space stations on the moon. Really, what goes around comes around: Sputnik 2025.
Meanwhile, young women are coming forward with painful testimony, reliving their abuses in order to find some sort of personal peace and sense of justice. Republicans are pushing the pardon of Ghislaine Maxwell at the expense of victims. Thousands of victims are now being told they never existed.
So will there be a crack in the cosmic egg that is the MAGA cult, or will they literally all drink the Kool-Aid? Remember one long year ago, when Trump said, "In four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good. You're not going to have to vote." He is certainly trying hard to “fix” it. Democratic legislators have fled the state of Texas to stop a quorum vote on rigging the congressional maps there. The maps would be in direct violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
From a U.S. Sen. Mark Warner press release: “On July 31st, U.S. Sens. Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine (both D-VA) joined all of their Senate Democratic colleagues in reintroducing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation to update and reinforce safeguards in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that have been eroded in recent years by federal court rulings. This legislation is especially relevant in Texas where, following historic disapproval of congressional Republicans’ megabill, Texas state lawmakers are attempting to redistrict before the 2026 elections to pick up additional Republican House seats. The move comes in direct response to President Trump’s fears that voters may flip the House in the 2026 midterms.”
So pick a distraction: firing the Bureau of Labor Statistics director over bad jobs numbers, Hillary’s emails, President Obama’s Russia investigation, Comey, Brennan, etc., etc. “We don’t talk about Epstein.” What is in those files must be really, really bad.
Keep protesting, keep calling your legislators, keep writing letters to the editor. Thank you, Ozaukee County Democrats.