When a hate group tells you who they are, believe them.
Wikipedia informs us that the Bannon-scented neo-Nazi, anti-globalist, international militant right-wing militia training network, The Base (considered a terrorist organization by three of our major allies) is not to be confused with Al-Qaeda, which issometimes translatedfrom Arabic as “The Base”.
They had Trump flags and flags that said “Fuck Biden” but it was the Confederate battle flag paraded inside the breached Capitol, as incendiary and hateful to Black people as the fuckingblack and white swastikaon a blood red field is to me as a Jew, that said it all. The symbolism of those kind of symbols is hard to miss.
The mob’s message was clear, as their leader expressed love toward his flag waving followers: the world is better without you parasites andgetting our way byviolence is a party forus.
It’s like what Ted Cruz snarled at Merrick Garland a few months later while excoriating him about DOJ overreach, feds running to the aid of threatened school board members. “Jeez, it was only a Nazi salute,” he sneered “which youadmitis protected by the First Amendment,” he didn’t even have to add “Jew”, it so naturally suggested itself as the Texan lambasted the mild-manneredGarland.Cruz is that fucking good.Manyof them are, and all very fine people. Waving a Confederate battle flag, as you do, when you’re a patriot.
Hard to believe this was written by the husband of CNP member Kellyanne “Alternative Fact” Conway, one of the smartest and most brazen of Trump’s well-connected inner circle. George Conway, a Federalist Society member who was outspoken in the conservative resistance to his wife’s boss, is also a very smart lawyer who makes a case today in the Washington Post that’s impossible to refute.Using facts…
He quotes with approval Merrick Garland’s January 5th words to DOJ workers (and the rest of theworld) :
Above all, he pledged that the Justice Department has “no higher priority” and would do “whatever it takes for justice to be done — consistent with the facts and the law.” Most important, he made clear that “the Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy.” (Emphasis mine.)
He also quotes fucking Mitch McConnell, lines Mitch delivered after again orchestrating Trump’s impeachment acquittal, the first time by preventing an actual trial in the Senate, the second on an absurd technicality:
“We have a criminal justice system in this country,” McConnell said. “President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office,” McConnell added. “He didn’t get away with anything yet. Yet.”
When Trump revealed his theory of leadership, surround yourself with people less intelligent than you so that you are always the smartest man in the room, we all had fair warning and should have known what to expect.
Actually, most of us did know what to expect. Only it was worse than even those loyal people of less than average intelligence in the bunker with the mad, desperate Trump as he staged a valiant fight against reality could have imagined.
Leaving aside the obvious fact that the zealots in his war room all thought it was a fantastic thrill, with first class room service, on the house!
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is finally pushing for a carve out to the filibuster rule for voting rights legislation to stop Stop the Steal in the many states where voter suppression and voter subversion laws are now in place for the 2022 election. These anti-democratic “election integrity laws” (based on a widely debunked lie about massive voter fraud) are all presumptively constitutional, pursuant to two 5-4 rulings by the right-wing side of the Supreme Court.
The doctrinaire right-wing majority is now 6-3, thanks to the tireless work of the anonymous funders of the highly secretive, non-profit Council for National Policy, Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society. With an able assist from the Grim Reaper, Mitch McConnell, man of one principle: power. With bipartisan cover from the Democratic party’s own Joe Manchin III. With our democracy under constant, shameless, increasingly violent, attack, it would appear to be the historical moment for a man of conscience and love of country to act.
As Schumer brings this proposition to protect voting rights to the Senate for consideration, we get the sound byte from the most prominent Democratic holdout on any parliamentary rules change whatsoever. Man of principle, strutting West Virginia fighting cock Joe Manchin III, has called changing a rule to allow debate on bills (debate, you opponent of Senate ethics requirements, minimum wage, regulation of polluters, taxing corporations and helping children out of poverty) the minority wants to kill “a very heavy lift.”
You see, he explains, the Nuclear Option makes it very dangerous to change a rule that currently allows any member of the minority party an emailed peremptory challenge to kill any legislation WITHOUT DEBATE of any kind. Requiring 60 votes to overcome one Ron Johnson or Ted Cruz seems a fair bipartisan solution to Manchin– hell, look how well even the old talking filibuster protected lynch mobs from the tyranny of federal legislation!
History shows, Manchin warns, the danger of using this Nuclear Option. When Harry Reid changed it during the Obama years so every one of Obama’s appointments couldn’t be blocked this way, McConnell responded, the first chance he got, by doing the same for Supreme Court nominees! 51 votes is all any of these fine, carefully vetted right-wing ideologues need nowadays — and we see the result, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch (who the bipartian, conservative Manchin voted for) and Coney-Barrett (whose 4 vote 52-48 mandate did not include Manchin’s vote). One can imagine the devastation requiring a talking filibuster, placing the burden back on the minority seeking to obstruct would bring, even worse would be carving out part of the filibuster entirely for voting legislation. What next, abolishing the filibuster to allow debate on legislation to protect workers from exploitation by rich people?For the Communist Green New Deal?
A very heavy lift. Get a winch, hook it up to your Maserati and start lifting, you preening, bought and paid for corporatist motherfucker. You can drown your sorrows on your yacht afterwards. Meantime, put your back into it and remember to use your knees.
And is it wrong to have a crush on the most right-wing representative in the Congress?
As we come up to the first anniversary of Trump’s gentle, peaceful, patriotic riot at the Capitol, after weeks of frustrated, manic arm-twisting of Republican election officials in several states, desperate Oval Office meetings with Q-Anon Trump dead-ender loyalists like Mike “Lock Her Up!” Flynn (who urged martial law) Sidney “Release the Kraken” Powell, personal attorney Rudy, and the MyPillow CEO, after replacing leadership at the Department of Defense right after the election and instituting a new rule for deploying the National Guard, and finally, right before certification of Biden’s win, assembling a large angry mob, whipping it up and sending it to the Capitol, a ragtag team of co-conspirators, including “alt-right” Council for National Policy member Steve Bannon and several demented authoritarian-leaning legal scholars/conspiracy theorists, sitting in a nearby war room to engineer the blocking of Joe Biden’s presidency by a coordinated plan of objections to certified electors, enabled by an insane “legal” stand by Mike Pence, by a riot, by any means necessary, it’s hard to avoid thinking about it as I drink my coffee today.
You’ll recall that immediately after the riot, when order was finally restored, the rioters allowed to go in peace, and the constitutionally mandated session continued, 147 Trump loyalists in the House, and something like a dozen in the Senate, tried to carry out the mad plan they’d hatched with Trump, insisting that since, as Lyin’ Ted Cruz put it, polls showed that millions of Americans believed the boldfaced lie that the election had been stolen, so there had to be a ten day freeze so yet another investigation could take place to prove a counter-factual case they had lost in court more than 60 times since Biden’s clear victory in the election.
The Trump appointee in charge of cyber security for the election announced, as Barr had informed Trump before parachuting out of the administration just in time, that there was no evidence of fraud that would have changed any election result anywhere. Trump promptly fired his disloyal appointee, expressed great disappointment in Barr and kept doubling down on his lie that he’d been robbed.
Right after the riot a bunch of Trump’s cabinet, including the moronic Betsey DeVos and McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao, immediately resigned in protest, with days left in their terms (none will comment now, per their actual loyalties and common interests).
After the riot marquee Republicans, top Trumpers, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, people who’d resisted acknowledging that Biden was the president-elect, for crucial weeks and months leading up to the final day to overturn the election results and the riot, all denounced their enraged leader for launching his reckless and desperate attack on a joint session of Congress doing their constitutional duty.
“Trump and I, we’ve had a hell of a journey, all I can say is count me out, enough is enough,” said Lindsey Graham, from the floor of the Senate immediately after the January 6 Stop the Steal riot. “If you’re a conservative this is the most offensive concept in the world — that a single person could disenfranchise 150,000,000 people.”
You can parse this for obvious bullshit, clearly the most offensive concept in the world to a modern, American conservative is the idea of millions of Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, big city dwellers, college students, unionists, liberals, progressives, socialists, anti-racists, minimum wage earners and poor “whites” voting for politicians who will not reflexively favor the super-wealthy and corporations, thereby ousting the “conservatives” from power. Hence John Roberts casting the deciding fifth vote to overrule president George W. Bush and a united Congress (98-0 in the 2006 senate) to make partisan/”racist” voter suppression laws the new constitutional norm (unless you can successfully prove in federal court that they are ONLY racist, and intentionally so, of course, as the Founders intended).
But back to Lindsey, who like his buddy in the House Kevin “not as upset as some people” McCarthy, and even Grim Reaper Mitch McConnell, condemned Trump’s mad, violent plan to maintain power. Trump still hates McConnell, the man who made his biggest achievement, the Trump Court, possible, for belatedly congratulating Biden on his win, for not having Trumpie’s back about the Big Lie being TRUE. McCarthy headed to Mara-Largo where he was reminded of the irresistibly delicious taste of his master’s nether sphincter, he came back fighting the Steal, his story changed to 100% incoherent. Here’s the highly principled, persecuted single white male from South Carolina’s current stance on the man who tried to do the thing most hateful to conservatives:
“It’s his nomination if he wants it, the Republican base appreciated him, we don’t appreciate all the things he does sometimes, but from a policy point of view of he was the most successful president, from a conservative’s point of view, since Ronald Reagan. It is his nomination if he wants it and he will be in the White House in 2024 if he wins a disciplined campaign,” Lindsey Graham told the FOX audience last week.
Ominous though it is that Trump would be back in the White House in 2024, before his imagined inauguration on January 20, 2025, it’s Lindsey, it’s live TV, it’s FOX. So, shit yeah, the night of the 2024 election, when partisan officials installed in Republican-controlled swing states, pursuant to Trump’s Big Lie and his then illegal plan to undo the last “STEAL” by appealing to partisans to bend the then-law just a little, declare Trump the president, he will immediately take power, the day after the election, and woe unto his many enemies.
I have to say, abhorrent as I find her hard right political views, as creepy as I find her facial resemblance to one of the most evil men in American history, I find myself loving Liz Cheney every time I hear her speak. She is clear and cuts to the chase: an American president who incites a riot to try to cling to power, after months of increasingly inflammatory lies and manipulation, making extra-legal efforts in several instances clearly criminal (come on, fellas, give me a break … you just have to say I got 11,780 fucking votes…), and allows that riot to continue for over three hours as he calls at least one Senator/co-conspirator to make sure he’s still going to do his part to block Biden, must never have power again.
For his part, the former president, who, while increasingly beleaguered, is the current leader of the Republican party with their full backing (including paying all his legal fees) is planning an alternate program for January 6. He will tell his delusional version of the story: there WAS massive voter fraud, the INSURRECTION was on ELECTION DAY, his conspiracy was only launched to right a TERRIBLE wrong, that Blacks and others who hate him, Muslims, disloyal Jews, Mexican rapists, Communists, the Chinese, the Italians, Ukrainians and Venezuelans, somehow corrupted weak Republicans like the two traitors in Georgia and too many others to name, to PERPETRATE THE BIGGEST CRIME IN AMERICAN HISTORY!!! ARE YOU FUCKING LISTENING TO ME, YOU GODDAMNED WEAK LOSER MORONS!!! WE WERE ROBBED, I WAS ROBBED AND WHEN YOU ARE ROBBED YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO FORM LYNCH MOBS TO GET BACK WHAT WAS STOLEN FROM YOU AND AVENGE THE THEFT. KILL MY ENEMIES! SECOND AMENDMENT, ARTICLE TWO, I’M STILL THE PRESIDENT — KILL THEM!!!
Meantime, in response to numerous lawsuits and civil and criminal investigations the Orange One does what he’s always done, spend a vast fortune of other people’s money to use the courts to delay and avoid justice. His son and daughter have filed frivolous motions to quash subpoenas for their testimony, which will delay things for at minimum a few months. Others in his orbit site phantom privilege to defy subpoenas and wait for a 6-3 Trump Supreme Court to hopefully back them up, eventually.
For now, in the wake of a year when a billionaire psychopath was Time’s Person of the Year, instead of say, Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, who, judging by the video of his smart move to protect the Senate from being overrun by enraged “tourists” who’d innocently broken in, possibly saved Mitt Romney’s life, we need to focus on justice being done.
As for the crowd Goodman’s quick thinking turned aside — why not kill a RINO who voted his conscience at one of the fake, evil, witch hunt impeachments of the defrauded, persecuted Leader? Death for the one public act of integrity performed in a long political career, in my opinion, is a little harsh, even if the man is an entitled vulture capitalist by trade, one who continues to vote in a Trumpist/McConnell bloc to thwart all proposed legislation, to prevent it even being debated in the senate. Preventing debate is key for Republicans — if they get to the merits of the argument WE LOSE! filibuster now, filibuster tomorrow, filibuster forever! [1].
There are good reasons for optimism, in spite of our recent history and the wild success of Charles Koch’s reborn John Birch Society Republican Party. We now know for a fact, verified by the sworn testimony of eye witnesses, what all of us were pretty sure of right after the long riot. Trump loved the mayhem, felt the love of that angry crowd during what he described as a love fest, watched it all on live TV with a little stirring in his pants. He ignored numerous urgings, from FOX news, from at least two of his children, from elected Republicans hiding from an exuberant mob of rioters, to call off his peeps. He did so reluctantly, lovingly, after more than three hours had gone by, the National Guard standing down and standing by. During the deadly assault, Liz Cheney informs us, he called at least one Senator, to make sure the plan was in place, that the Senator would do what they’d agreed on to Stop the Steal. No conspiracy, no quid pro quo, no collusion, total exoneration, I’m not a liar YOU ARE A LIAR, the real BIG LIE is your LIE, I don’t stink, YOU STINK, I know you are but what am I?
Is it sad to love Liz Cheney? I don’t feel bad. She is behaving heroically, putting democracy, in this instance, ahead of the willful destruction of our form of government, flawed though it most certainly is. In spite of the infamous spinal flexibility of corporate Democrats, I am feeling hopeful.
The story seems to be changing now, finally. That a third of Republicans surveyed support a violent mob’s right to object to what they’ve been convinced was a crime is troubling. That the courts can still be weaponized for agonizing delay, intolerable. But that two Republicans can stand for values higher than sheer power, and that the evidence pointing toward justice, in a court of law, appears to be so overwhelming, are very encouraging signs for 2022 and beyond. Peace be upon us all.
[1]
“I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” – George Wallace
Of course, a discerning reader of the NY Times article on the apparent uselessness of vaccinations (4,600% increase on the heavily vaccinated island of Puerto Rico!) will note the references to the great poverty of the island, and how health professionals have left in droves for better pay, and how the severely strained system really doesn’t have the resources to afford decent health care for most of its citizens, especially during a pandemic surge. Plus, the place is nearly bankrupt! Creditors are circling, getting ready to pounce. Anyone with ambition and the ability gets the hell off of Puerto Rico, apparently.
The headline and subhead strongly suggest that vaccines don’t really work against this new strain anyway. But the reader also learns about the culture on Puerto Rico where parties are held everywhere between Thanksgiving and January 6. January 6, I know, it has a special significance for the people of Puerto Rico that I don’t recall. The date rings a bell for another reason I can’t quite put my finger on.
So, a new strain of coronavirus that is five times more infectious than the original, if much less often deadly — and almost never deadly for the vaccinated — is sweeping Puerto Rico, as it is sweeping the world, and the NY Times headline is: vaccinated people getting covid in droves.
Might a better headline have been:
Impoverished US Island feels disproportionate impact of Omnicron, in spite of high vaccination rates, due to poor health services and a culture of partying continuously for over a month
The NY Times serves an important purpose and sometimes publishes great things. Sometimes you have to look past the headline, and the first few paragraphs, and take the time to read between the lines, right down to the last paragraph, focusing on what they often leave out. At such times you just have to say: what the fuck is your fucking agenda, fucking Grey Lady?
My doctor friend, who encounters Covid daily in her practice, told me a fully vaccinated person who gets symptomatic Omicron suffers a bad cold for two or three days. The unvaccinated who get infected often go to the hospital, some die.
Why is there any “vaccine hesitancy” if a vaccine is the difference between contracting a bad cold and days on a respirator and possible death? Why isn’t this the media and government’s constant message to overcome hesitancy?
Grey Lady to the rescue today:
The subheading drives it home:
The island had a 4,600 percent increase in cases in recent weeks after mounting one of the nation’s most successful vaccination campaigns.
The article describes how a huge, seemingly maskless audience, 60,000 strong, triggered a massive surge, during weeks of partying on the island with low Covid rates where 75% were fully vaccinated, proving, as the headline suggests, that the vaccine don’t mean shit.
The Fair and Balanced right-wing network that presents engagingly inflammatory opinions and let’s the viewer decide, has taken a bow today on YouTube. They headline their proud announcement 2021 Domination. They certainly have dominated on cable and in the streets (of retirement villages, anyway). Kudos to Rupert Murdoch and his stars, not only did they help put Mr. Trump into office, they helped him steer the US ship of state during his four years as the most powerful man in the world.
They may have been alarmed by Trump’s riot at the Capitol that started the year, and several of their stars, close, unofficial advisors to Trump and the government, texted him to make it stop. But then again, they were at the same time on the air blaming antifa, BLM, Communists, America haters, FBI agents provocateur and others cunningly dressed in MAGA gear and treacherously giving Trump and his peaceful supporters a bad name by attacking police in trial by combat, pretending he’d sent them, when everyone knows it was George Soros who tried to once again smear the president, right before he willingly and gracefully left office.
They have a strict vaccine policy at FOX, but spread the infectious entertainment/opinion that masks are for sissies and that real men and women say “fuck you” to tyranny and don’t take what Lauren Boebert adorably scorned as the Fauci Ouchy. Only sheep take the vaccine. And so those who take as truth the angry opinion that FOX is constantly venting, fancying themselves patriotic freedom lovers, disproportionately die unnecessary, preventable deaths, but, as we all know, the tree of liberty must periodically be watered with the blood of patriots.
Anyway, that’s all the time I have at the moment, but I wanted to share this great one two punch from the cable station that dominates the air waves like their candidate, Trump, dominated the streets against terrorists when he had an army of federal law enforcement forcibly clear the streets so he could pose in front of a famous church, with the Bible, and as proof of God’s plan, the Good Book miraculously did not burst into flames as the glaring former president held it aloft.
Their second post today was a bow for their generous donation of a million advertising dollars (tax deductible) to help out the thousands of Americans who were in the path of the recent devastating tornado in Trump country.
gratuitousblahg 