Knute Buehler: A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing? A Trojan Horse?

None of the 57 Republican candidates for partisan public office in Oregon have tried harder than Knute Buehler to disguise the fact that they and he have freely chosen to join and support Donald Trump’s Republican party.

Buehler and his fellow Republican candidates have, to this day, maintained that Donald Trump is FIT to be President and an exemplar of ethical and moral behavior. They have assiduously avoided mentioning their refusal to distance themselves from Trump by not calling for his resignation or impeachment.

Donald Trump is a despicable person, a danger to our American democracy and a crook*1. Every partisan election in Oregon and America this November will be a referendum on Donald Trump’s fitness to hold the most powerful political office on earth, health care and corruption. Republican candidates know this so they are frantically trying to hide their complicit REPUBLICAN IDENTITIES.

Deceptively shunning their REPUBLICAN label they disingenuously use the word "independent" to describe themselves. Knute Buehler’s TV ads are the most dramatic examples of this blatant deceitfulness and disrespect for Oregon voters.

So the question arises: If Knute Buehler actually believes what he says on his TV ads, which are antithetical to the Republican party, then Why is he running for partisan political office as a Republican?

People can NOT trust Knute Buehler and any other Republican candidate who attempts to deceive the voters by NOT revealing their REPUBLICAN party membership.

Do NOT be fooled by whatever diversionary issues Buehler and his complicit gang of Trump Republican sycophants pitch at you. If you vote for Republican Knute Buehler you won’t get so-called “independent“ Knute Buehler you will get fully committed Trump Republican Knute Buehler.

Donald Trump and his Republican enablers, like Knute Buehler, stand for the following:

• Republicans believe that compromise is a sin, enemies must be destroyed and power must be held at all costs.

• Republicans will blindly follow Trump wherever he leads them. There is no sign that they will stop swallowing the toxic Kool-Aid rhetoric that Trump keeps serving them.

• Republicans have a primary goal to diminish and destroy America’s social safety net including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.

• Republicans want to bring back insurance restrictions to people with preexisting conditions, unfairly forcing them out of health insurance coverage.

• Republicans are misogynist. They enforce and vote against a woman’s right to reproductive self-determination.

• The primary Republican mission is to transfer as much wealth as they can get away with from the American treasury to the wealthiest individuals and corporations. The most recent Republican tax package did just that. And for a bonus Republicans increased the national debt totally destroying the myth of the their longtime national debt hawkishness.

• Republicans are intent on destroying our environmental protections.

• Republicans have xenophobic and racist policies as demonstrated by their leader Donald Trump and by the voting record of Republicans in congress.

• Republicans, led by inveterate liar Donald Trump, relentlessly assault the truth and lie to their constituents, in fact, everyone. Republicans consider lying totally acceptable political and personal behavior. In Trump’s administration, supported by Knute Buehler and the other 56 partisan Republican candidates, transparency is a dirty word and lying is a way of life.

• The Republican notion of democracy is to restrict citizens’ access to the ballot box as much as possible and allow foreign, particularly Russian, meddling in American elections including Oregon. Their leader, Donald Trump, has publicly sided with a Russian dictator over all of the United States Intelligence agencies with regard to election meddling.

KNUTE BUEHLER IS A REPUBLICAN

Should you trust Knute Buehler whose public political judgement proclaims that Donald Trump is fit to be President of the United States of America and an exemplar of political and personal behavior? NO.

Should you trust Knute Buehler who supports and enables the fundamental Republican belief and policy that adequate and affordable health care is a privilege of the wealthy not a right of American citizenship? NO.

Dear Readers, this November’s election is not just about voting. It is about taking action to stop the erosion of our democratic values and norms, danger to your personal health care and the health of Oregon’s and America’s air and water.

Please take seriously the value of your citizenship as an Oregonian and an American and stand up for decency and democracy by helping to defeat Knute Buehler and his Republican cronies in partisan races throughout Oregon and the United States.

We need elected leaders at all levels of government who will repair the damage done to our social fabric by Trump and his enablers, not more complicit sycophants like Knute Buehler, who will make matters worse in our beloved state and country.

Thank you.

Richard Ellmyer

Oregonian by choice since 1971

NAV, Non-aligned Voter

North Portland

Author of The Ellmyer Report, a newsletter that informs, educates and influences on public policy. Occasionally distributed to more than a quarter of million readers in Oregon and beyond.

Facebook, Portland Politics Plus.
Contributor: Patch news

*1

Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father — By DAVID BARSTOW, SUSANNE CRAIG and RUSS BUETTNER for The New York Times.

President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents.

Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.

Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents

Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.

By age 3, Mr. Trump was earning $200,000 a year in today’s dollars from his father’s empire. He was a millionaire by age 8. By the time he was 17, his father had given him part ownership of a 52-unit apartment building. Soon after Mr. Trump graduated from college, he was receiving the equivalent of $1 million a year from his father. The money increased with the years, to more than $5 million annually in his 40s and 50s.

Note

Here is a short list of online news and opinion sources you will find useful and will help keep your mind healthy. You are what you read.

• Axios
• Bloomberg political news and opinion Al Hunt, Noah Feldman,
• Washington Post news and opinion Paul Waldman, Greg Sargent, Michael Gerson
• The New York Times news and opinion Paul Krugman, Gail Collins, Maggie Haberman
• Vox Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias
• New York Magazine Frank Rich, Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer
• The New Yorker John Cassidy, Susan Glasser, Amy Davidson Sorkin, Ronan Farrow
• Salon
• Daily Kos
• Huffington Post
• The Atlantic

Here is a short list of online humor sources that will help control your blood pressure, bring you a smile and a laugh:

• The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
• Late Night with Seth Meyers
• The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
• Jimmy Kimmel Live
• Real Time with Bill Maher (check YouTube)
• Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (check YouTube)
• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (check YouTube)
• Andy Borowitz
• A Very Stable Genius Randy Rainbow
• Special Category: Full Frontal with Samantha Bee Introduces This is Not a Game: The Game
  
  • Hilarious live political trivia game by Samantha Bee with cash prizes up to $5k!

FYI - Food For Thought

Republicans Take the Hypocrite’s Oath

On health care, a determination to deceive voters as much as possible.

By Paul Krugman

If you or anyone you care about suffers from a pre-existing medical condition, Republicans are trying to take away your insurance. If they claim otherwise, they’re lying.

Goodbye, Political Spin, Hello Blatant Lies

By Paul Krugman

Black is white, up is down, and Republicans are defenders of Medicare

Republicans no longer bother with deceptive presentations of facts. Instead, they just flat-out lie … The true Republican position on health care has been clear and consistent for decades: The party hates, just hates, the idea of government action to make essential health care available to all citizens, regardless of income or medical history.

How the Republican Party Lost Its Way

In the Trump administration, the rot starts at the top.

Al Hunt

Trump’s cynical carelessness is contagious. Omarosa proves it.

Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration, is author of "The World as It Is."

I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration

I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

Bob Woodward’s new book reveals a ‘nervous breakdown’ of Trump’s presidency

These articles are by politically conservative writers.

The Full-Spectrum Corruption of Donald Trump

Everyone and everything he touches rots.

Peter Wehner is an American writer and Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), a conservative think tank.

Wehner served in three Republican presidential administrations (Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush)

Vote against the GOP this November

George Will

Trump is an illegitimate president whose election is tainted by fraud

Max Boot

The only way to save the GOP is to defeat it

A cancer on the presidency

Michael Gerson