Category Archives: current events

You can’t blame Trump supporters for being mad

They came to Washington D.C. in the days before January 6 to fight like hell against a stolen election. Trump and his dark money allies had spent $50,000,000 on ad buys hammering home the infuriating message that, like the lying Black guy before him, Biden was an illegitimate lying bastard fake presidential cuck. Trump himself tweeted this invitation:

On the morning that a Black pastor and a Jewish journalist replaced two die-hard Trumpist senators from Georgia, giving the illegitimate Sleepy Joe a razor thin majority in both houses of Congress, Trump’s most passionate people were there, fired up and ready to be wild and Stop the Steal.

What most in that large MAGA crowd did not know was that Trump had been meeting with a group of elected GOP representatives and senators, working the phones to state officials, threatening and cajoling state election board members, including a few he summoned to be his guests at the Trump Hotel.

They also probably had no idea he’d been working tirelessly to convince the DOJ to release a statement indicating widespread voter fraud, even though none was found, had considered replacing the acting AG with an American Eichmann-type, an ambitious weasel named Jeffery Bossert Clark willing to do whatever it takes, had wildly right-wing lawyer (John Eastman) writing a literal script for Pence to nullify Biden’s victory under bizarre, even absurd, constitutional claims.

They didn’t know Trump’s inner circle, Steve Bannon, Rudy, felon Bernie Kerick, John Eastman and others were in a war room at the Willard Hotel, paid for by the Trump Pence 2020 campaign, providing tactical support while the Stop the Steal rally and the MAGA riot were taking place.

They knew Mike Flynn, Rudy and Sidney Powell were in and out of the Oval Office, along with the MyPillow guy, in the days leading up to the Capitol riot, that Trump was capable of any lie that could possibly benefit him. Many in Trump’s crowd may even have known there was no evidence to establish any detail of Trump’s lie about a stolen election, a conspiracy in which Democrats and treasonous Republicans, including Federalist Society judges he had appointed for lifetime tenures on the federal bench, had worked together to victimize Trump.

If they had known all that, it would have made no difference to people eager to fight for the higher truth. Trump may be a compulsive liar, but he also knows exactly what his audience wants to hear to fire ’em up.

On the Opposition side, the Democratic party, we have incomprehensibly spineless leadership. The party’s hand-wringing leaders have been in deadly embrace with corporate titans and their legions of lobbyists, in spite of almost half of its shaky House majority Progressive Caucus members. This collective lack of spine and corporate dependence was accelerated by Bill Clinton, a people pleaser and the greatest Republican president of the twentieth century, under whom the corporate donor grip on the party was cemented. Clinton and the DNC were handsomely rewarded for the party’s unapologetic move to the political right, in terms of corporate generosity. Obama opted out of public financing of his first presidential campaign since he had out raised McCain by a good margin, largely from the financial sector.

In the swamp that is Washington D.C., where a coal lobbyist like Joe Manchin III, as chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee, freely casts the deciding vote on whether to mitigate looming, easily observable Climate Catastrophe, the Democratic party has had the same corporately beholden leadership for decades. Leadership that, while making sure corporate donors are never alienated, has allowed the GOP to exercise almost total control over framing public debate, legislation, judicial appointments, war making and every other function of government, whichever party is in power.

Do the Democrats have a problem with messaging? They certainly do, with the excuse that their message, like their policies, is nuanced, takes complicated realities into consideration. Do Americans understand that we are the only wealthy nation that provides no paid family leave to new parents? Do Americans know that we pay the highest rates in the world for prescription drugs made by our own pharmaceutical companies? Do Americans know that the world is on the edge of literal destruction, mass extinctions and the destabilizing dislocation of millions made homeless by rising sea levels caused by global warming? That our billionaires, required to pay less tax than their counterparts elsewhere, can easily evade most tax on their income and wealth? The some of our largest corporations not only pay no tax, but receive generous government handouts, funded by tax dollars?

On the GOP side you have the dozens of well-funded academic and policy initiatives by the Koch network amplified through Rupert Murdoch’s relentless media blitzkrieg, using simple, enraging arguments, often based only on strong opinions, to convince half the country that the Democrat [sic] party is a bunch of radical Communist puppets who work for, as Florida senator Marco Rubio accused them the other day, Marxist corporations here in the USA. Last week Little Marco told a conservative group:

“They are the product of decades of anti-American indoctrination at our elite universities and they feel no obligation to America or its national interest,” the Florida senator said of America’s corporate leaders. “I’m not here to tell you big business is the enemy. But I’m here to tell you big business is not our ally in the fight against socialism.” . . .

. . . “The real fight isn’t about the tax rate on billionaires,” Rubio said. “The real fight is about a small, radical, but incredibly powerful minority that wants to… erase our culture and traditions, throw away our values, and walk away from a free enterprise economy that is still the envy of the world.”

source

We all know the real enemy here, don’t we?

So, like I said, don’t blame MAGA nation for being good and goddamned mad.

Filibustering the Right to Vote

Seeing it from their point of view, American Nazis are right to fear both federal government coercion/law enforcement and majoritarian tyranny/democracy. Their party has only one idea, outside of loyalty to a dangerous maniac they fear: cripple the government, take it over, bend democracy to the needs of the few, the entitled, and fuck the rest of these “entitlement mentality” putos.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is arguably the most effective anti-racism, democracy protecting law in our history. It cured much of the abuse it was enacted to fix. It enjoyed broad support under Nixon, Reagan, Bush I and, under Bush II it was reauthorized in the Senate 98-0, just a few years before Dubya’s appointee John Roberts took a sharp gut hook to it, pulled it hard and gave the Voting Rights Act a nice, thorough evisceration [1].

Check out the numbers the Voting Rights Act kept getting reauthorized by in Congress:

(that Senate tally for 1982 doesn’t look right)

Here is what is included in the proposed John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act that Republicans unanimously (minus one) filibustered for the 3rd time the other day

Here’s a good, short video tour

Heather Cox Richardson:

Republicans are holding tight to the idea of pre–Civil War Democrats that our system of democracy gives to the states alone the power to determine how people within those states live, and who in those states gets to vote to determine those rules. After that idea led to the Civil War, Republicans overturned it with the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, which give the federal government the power to protect equality within the states.

Since World War II, the federal government has taken that charge seriously, protecting minority voting in the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the Civil Rights Act of 1960, and, most thoroughly, in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Since the passage of that measure, Congress repeatedly reauthorized it by large, bipartisan majorities, most recently in 2006, when the Senate voted unanimously in favor of it. But then in 2013 the Supreme Court gutted that law, and now, only 8 years later, Republican senators claim federal protection of voting rights is an assault on states’ rights.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-4-2021?r=74gv9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=

One year anniversary of 2020 election cigar

[1]

A guided tour through the benign seeming, bloodlessly vicious Roberts decision, and highlights of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s brilliant dissent are at https://wp.me/p2DHRV-j6q

Why incoherence is so dangerous

It is pointless to have a discussion with a person taking an incoherent position. Not only will you learn nothing, but no problem can ever be resolved reasonably.

If someone is content to stand on incoherent “logic” there is very little you can really do about changing their mind. A person clings to an incoherent position because he truly believes it. There is almost no way to move them off of their deeply held belief.

I know that ‘incoherent’ sounds judgmental, but consider a few examples, from the world of recent politics. and one drawn from my personal life.

Take Joe Manchin III’s warning to progressive Democrats to stop playing games if they want his obstruction of Biden’s agenda to end.

Manchin, enjoying his moment as the most powerful man in the Senate, timing his pantsing of Biden perfectly for maximum political effect, calls “bullshit” on the progressive caucus for not trusting a suddenly all-powerful rich guy opposed to a $15/hr minimum wage to vote for the Democrats-only Climate Catastrophe mitigation and social spending infrastructure bill after the bipartisan bill, which addresses long overdue disasters in waiting like crumbling bridges and treacherous roads, is passed.

His reason for not signing on to Build Back Better — he insists he is concerned with the cost of the radically scaled down proposal. In all the months he’s been fighting against it and making progressives cut programs from it, he tells us he has not had a chance to grasp the finances of the proposal.

These are not arguments that can be countered successfully by arguments based on fact. The Build Back Better plan was intended to pay for itself by increasing taxes on billionaires and corporations to just under what they were before Trump slashed them in a $1.9 TRILLION dollar giveaway to America’s wealthiest. Manchin is against raising taxes on the wealthiest and expresses concern that the unfunded bill will be far too expensive.

He takes up the Republican mantra of “fiscal responsibility”, whenever “tax and spend” Democrats have the presidency and majorities in Congress. What kind of Commie economy destroying bullshit is trying to get a $15/hr. minimum wage?!!

Republicans are also united against increasing the IRS budget for law enforcement so that tax evasion by corporations and billionaires can be detected and the scofflaws can be fined, taxes collected. Figure that one out. Manchin, apparently, is also against this, along with funding for enforceable ethics standards for members of Congress .

Now, without taxing the wealthiest, since we can’t pay for this (and it’s not like the $7.8 TRILLION [1] — over ten years– for our military, don’t even suggest that!) we have to cut some of the things that will unfairly impact the wealthy, even if they also help millions, including millions of children growing up in dire poverty.

Dental, vision and hearing as part of healthcare for seniors? COMMUNISM! We all know that the teeth, eyes and ears have nothing whatsoever to do with a person’s health! Same for those too poor to afford decent childcare, eldercare, go to junior college, a few weeks of paid leave for new parents and so forth. HOW WE GONNA PAY FOR IT? DON’T TELL ME TAXES OR ENFORCEMENT OF THE TAX CODE OR TIGHTENING UP ETHICS RULES ON SITTING LOBBYISTS/SENATORS!

You can agree or disagree with Manchin’s conservative positions, his constant, roosterish sabotage of Biden’s presidency, but it is difficult to find coherent reasons from someone iike Manchin. They will say or do anything to maintain their position and their power. Incoherence is no longer any kind of handicap in public life.

Look no further than the new governor of Virginia, former CEO of the Carlisle Group, just a regular dad in a vest concerned with “parents’ rights.” You see, he is strongly against the teaching of Critical Race Theory to Virginia kids, since it is a divisive theory that views American history through a lens that makes former slaveholders and those who took up arms on their behalf look like bad people and presents a false view of a racially divided nation where racism is embedded in every aspect of our legal and social system.

The theory is not taught in any Virginia school, except perhaps a law school here or there, and the only exposure any child or parent will ever have to it is in the denunciations of cynical, dog whistling politicians like Mr. Youngkin, and around the clock on Murdoch’s FOX news, but IT WORKS. White people as a group are afraid of the voting power of Black and brown people and demonizing Critical Race Theory works wonders mobilizing that terror. It is a terror former governor of Virginia Thomas Jefferson knew well:

“Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever…”
—Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1782

Jefferson was referring to the “hideous blot” on our nation’s ideals and morality that was represented by chattel slavery. Glenn Youngkin has vowed that ugly shit like this polarizing history will never be taught in his state, where (victimized, “white”) Parents’ Rights will be respected.

Coherent? Not particularly. A potent political message? Indeed. Particularly when Joe Manchin III is on board, fighting the president’s signature policy initiative in the name of imaginary “bipartisanship” — he stands with the solid 50 vote GOP bloc that will oppose anything that would make Biden look like a competent deal-maker.

Like the filibuster Manchin is devoted to, his kind has been a feature of our democracy since the days when slavery was being debated in the Senate. For a few generations they were known as Dixiecrats, guys who protected the right of angry mobs to lynch what are now politely called “n-words” without the damned federal government swooping in tyrannically to crush States’ Rights.

Personal anecdote:

Someone expresses anger, judges you harshly for being narcissistically unaware of your ongoing violation of a long standing moral rule they made years ago and never told you about. When they tell you about this long violation, you can apologize, but you are still accountable for violating an agreement you never even knew about!

How fucking dare you?!! You don’t get to use the fucking f-word, you fucking fuck, because you use it abusively while I only use it as a last resort, in justified outrage. My right to continue being angry at you, in spite of your so-called “apology”, is not in dispute.

Without the guide of Reason, in other words, laying out an argument based on things that can be reasonably agreed on, we are only flailing emotional creatures subject to being inflamed by appeals to loyalty from those who speak loudly to our anger, fear and other strong emotions that keep us from asking reasonable questions, confident that we will get a reasonable answer.

A quick look around confirms that we are living in largely incoherent times where a strong, angry argument — denying there is anything that can be fairly talked about — is enough to carry the day, whatever the merits, or senselessness, of that argument may actually be.

[1]

The House passed a $768 billion 2022 defense policy bill on a 316-113 vote late Thursday — authorizing a $24 billion increase to topline spending over the Biden administration’s budget proposal — a move that potentially lessens debate conflict as the legislation moves forward.

source

Hostage holder blasts colleagues for holding infrastructure bill hostage

Fossil fuel lobbyist/senator Joe Manchin III, a cartoonish rich southerner used to telling those less well off what they actually want and deserve, decried the members of his party who are holding the bipartisan infrastructure bill “hostage.” He made his hostage video, demanding that progressives in his party trust people like him, and the several bipartisan Republicans who have been outspoken about the need to address climate catastrophe — wait, that would be zero Republicans– as Biden met world leaders to plan for reducing the mass extinction zombie apocalypse that will be unleashed if the climate continues to warm at its present rate.

Manchin III waited until his party’s president was at the world climate summit to withdraw his support for even the severely truncated Build Back Better that gave Manchin everything demanded on behalf of his fossil fuel donors and his own coal interests. What is Manchin’s actual policy position? He’s a Republican, the largest recipient of fossil fuel money in the Senate. Here is the one man filibuster’s semi-coherent sounding defense of his latest obstructionist stunt:

I looked up whether the coal magnate, who has been opposing tax increases on billionaires and corporations to fund the initiatives of Build Back Better, had voted for or against Trump’s massive tax giveaway to corporations and the wealthiest Americans. Manchin III was as good as his stated anti-debt principles on that vote, though his staff’s spelling on the press release was about as good as Trump’s.

Have a look at how Manchin phrased his opposition and disappointment not to be able to support Trump’s Short Sided [sic] 1.9 trillion dollar tax break for the wealthiest Americans. If only the sides had been longer!

https://www.manchin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/manchin-disappointed-to-vote-no-on-short-sided-and-rushed-tax-bill-

The conclusion of his statement on why he couldn’t vote for Trump’s bipartisan tax bill:

“While I am disappointed that we were not able to take advantage of this historic opportunity and pass real tax reform, I will continue to work with President Trump to help the working class and reign in our debt – something I know he cares deeply about.”

Joe Manchin III

That’s “rein in,” genius…like the reins mounted ICE agents used to whip them Haitians at the border, yee hah!

Incoherence is no longer a problem

If emotion is the only reliable indicator of what we should believe, incoherence is no longer a valid critique of anything. Facts are not only inconvenient in political debate, they are irrelevant to millions of Americans. Listen to any of Joe Manchin III’s recent statements for a potent example of willful blindness and easily demonstrable, bombastic, self-righteous incoherence.

With the fire hose of false fecal matter constantly streaming from the Trump machine it is easy to lose track of single details.  In fact, that’s by design of the fire hose of diarrhea, it just keeps coming, it’s revolting, maddening, and the latest burst instantly covers the disgusting stuff already on the ground.  It’s exhausting to be exposed to this kind of unyielding onslaught and in the end enough good, reasonable people tune out that it becomes easy for evil plans to flourish.

On New Year’s Eve 2021, a few days before Trump and his enablers made their final push to pressure Pence to resteal the Stolen Election, with the outlandish Eastman memo, days before the storming of the Capitol, the Washington Post ran an article with the curious title of 

Pence seeks rejection of lawsuit that aimed to expand his power to overturn the election

The lawsuit was brought on behalf of Trump’s bid to overturn the election by one of the most openly idiotic members of Congress, Trump die-hard Looey Gohmert of the great state of Texas.   Gohmert’s suit sued Pence to make him give Pence the power to overturn the election.   

You get the theory of the lawsuit?   Gohmert sued Mike Pence, as Vice President, to force him to give himself the power to overturn the election on January 6th, leaving it up to a willing House to vote Trump into office for another four years.

The Washington Post explains what was unusual about Gohmert’s moronic, frivolous lawsuit.

To win a lawsuit, a plaintiff must convince a judge that the interests of the person they are suing are opposed to their own — there must be some controversy or conflict between them that could be resolved through the litigation.

This baseless hail Mary lawsuit, which Pence and the DOJ urged the court to dismiss, did not present a genuine controversy that a court could decide.  Pence was the wrong guy to sue to make Pence the final arbiter of who won the 2020 election.   

Aside from John Eastman’s insane (but audacious) six point plan for how Pence could brazen it out on January 6th to keep himself and his boss in power, nobody has ever tried to argue that the VP effectively decides if he and his running mate lost the election that has just been certified. The notion that the loser could legally declare himself the winner of a democratic vote is classically incoherent. The DOJ, in urging the court to dismiss the frivolous lawsuit, was more circumspect than I can be.

“The Vice President is not the proper defendant to this lawsuit,” wrote Deputy Assistant Attorney General John V. Coghlan.

“The Vice President — the only defendant in this case — is ironically the very person whose power they seek to promote,” he added. “A suit to establish that the Vice President has discretion over the count, filed against the Vice President, is a walking legal contradiction.”

Pence followed the law, a crime for which a lynch mob was sent to administer justice. In the days after the riot, Pence and the rest of the GOP had their come to Jesus moment when they closed ranks behind the insane former president and amplified his Big Lie about Trump’s massive landslide victory snatched from him by bipartisan conspirators who upheld the validity of the Stolen Election.

Looking for the conspirators in the Seditious Conspiracy prosecution that should have begun months ago? Here is a partial list: Louie Gohmert, Jefferey Clark, Steve Bannon, John Eastman, Donald John Trump, Texas AG Ken Paxton, Lyin’ Ted, Madison Cawthorne, Mo Brooks, Rudy, Mike Flynn. The proof of their criminal conspiracy to overturn an election result they hated is already in the public record, Merrick.

The Lost Cause

After leaving the hated Abraham Lincoln off the 1860 presidential ballot in their states, eleven southern states seceded from the Union citing Lincoln’s tyrannical intention to restrict slavery from spreading across the new western territories. Each state declared, in their articles of secession, that slavery was protected by the Constitution and the Supreme Court (it was) and that, therefore nobody was going to restrict their rights to own as many damned slaves as they liked and work those slaves wherever they saw fit.

After the bloody civil war (The War of Northern Aggression, as it is called in the former Confederacy), after the surrender by those who had taken up arms against their country (generally called ‘traitors’) and the assassination of the hated Lincoln, the myth of the glorious Lost Cause sprung up across the south, and within decades across the entire country. The war, the Lost Cause narrative stated, had never been about slavery, it had been about protecting constitutional freedom and liberty. Secession and warfare had not been an act of bloody treason but an act of supreme patriotism, a small group of liberty lovers fighting a much larger force in the name of States’ rights, as guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.

This propaganda campaign worked so well that the Lost Cause narrative is believed by millions of Americans to this day. We can see its present day analogue in the myth of the Stolen Election that Trump actually won in a LANDSLIDE, although proof of this huge conspiracy involving Democrats and Republicans engaging in widespread voter fraud and a coordinated cover-up of this fraud has never been produced.

Proof, friends, is not needed. What is needed is belief, passion, faith, hard work and the willingness to do things others might find horrible, in the name of the highest ideals. You can then fight a bloody war and blame the people you attacked for their aggression. You can erect monuments to traitors with blood on their hands and righteously argue that they are great local and national heroes.

Anyway, here is a very good short video on the pernicious myth of the Lost Cause, the one many textbooks still teach. Enemies of critical race theory, or any theory that makes America look like a deeply divided country with an ugly racist streak, have their issue for 2022. We’ll wait to see if Youngkin can unseat the Clintonite governor of Virginia, running on the myth that the only racism in this country is the racism of the damned angry colored people. If they can pull that one off, the South may rise again.

Chilling Halloween timeline of Dems heroic fight to save democracy

After Joe Biden won the 2020 election Trump and his closest allies went into maniacal overdrive to overturn the results. He had no reason to believe he couldn’t keep himself in power.

As president he’d used the powers of his office to obstruct justice for four years, and if he could obstruct it just a little more, he believed, he could remain president in spite of the sizable majority that voted against him. He had no reason to doubt this, based on his many triumphs over accountability during his long life. He has, literally, never been held accountable for any mistake, let alone crime, why should a lost election be any different?

Glenn Kirschner laid it out so clearly the other day when he was asked about Jeffery Clark, the DOJ bureaucrat who stepped forward to advance Trump’s fraudulent claim about a stolen election in the swing states where Trump hoped to disqualify electors so the House, where Republicans, the minority party, were winners in a straight majority count, two votes per state, under the weird system for deciding on a deadlocked election. Jeffery Clark (American Eichmann) wrote a letter to Georgia that Trump was trying to get the AG who took over after Barr fled to sign, days before the MAGA riot to stop the final certification of Biden’s win. The idea was to claim there was a dispute in the Electors in every swing state Trump lost and throw the decision to the House. Here’s Kirschner:

Jefferey Clark was a willing co-conspirator with Donald Trump when Donald Trump said “look, I know there was no fraud, just say there was fraud and leave the rest to me and my sycophants in Congress.” Jefferey Clark said “I got you, boss, let me draft a memo to the states like Georgia to try to corruptly overturn the election.”

There’s a conspiracy in the harsh light of day, give me three hours in front of a DC jury, I’ll prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

source

The rest of the seditious conspiracy [1] funded by a group who kicked in $50,000,000 in dark money to promote the lie that Trump’s landslide victory had been stolen by a bipartisan, international cabal of radical Democrats, traitor GOP officials, traitor Trump-appointed judges, dead voters, cheating Blacks, Muslims, Socialists, Illegals, George Soros, the Clintons, the dead former president of Venezuela, and many, many other highly nefarious characters.

While fifty million was spent on advertising the lie about the stolen election, there was another 3.5 million dollars for the organizers of the January 6 Stop the Steal Event at the Ellipse. The date was chosen because it was the last possible moment to block Biden becoming the president. They had no permit for any kind of march that day. Some of these organizers are cooperating with the House January 6 Commission (and hopefully also the DOJ) and at least one contends she had no idea a march to the Capitol, let alone a forcible invasion to stop a joint session of Congress, was part of the plan. She was well-paid, presumably, to get the permit for the Stop the Steal gathering at the Ellipse, publicize it and organize things for the passionate, animated speakers, including one in body armor, to whip up the crowd before Trump stepped up to address his fans from behind bulletproof glass [2].

The Democrats, the party whose leadership decided during the primaries that in spite of the vast popularity of his ideas for fundamental reform, and his string of victories in Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders would be replaced as the presidential candidate by moderate master of compromise Joe Biden. The party fell in behind this plan, Biden won by more than seven million votes.

Now Democrats, led by President Biden, are quickly and forcefully responding to a violent assault on American democracy, after Trump’s expensive ad campaign promoting a lie including the Communist plan to steal the 2020 election and the rest of Trump’s fight to the death against the hellish conspiracy revealed, with great coyness, by someone named Q (who has gone silent now for many months). They are planning to carefully think about many ways to combat the pugnacious real-time obstruction of the investigation into the MAGA riot on January 6..

Here is a snapshot of the bold actions being taken by the party of Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer et al in the immediate defense of our democracy.

Makes you wonder if they’d all be acting the same way if the MAGA rioters had actually put violent hands on Leader Pelosi and others they taunted and threatened on that dark day in January 2021 when an insane president, not accepting the will of the voters, sent an enraged mob down to stop business in the Capitol, with a large contingent of GOP lawmakers fully embracing his Big Lie and voting to contest the certified election results in numerous states.

[1] Seditious Conspiracy

[2] from a January 5th news report

The president tweeted Tuesday evening that he would be speaking at the Save America Rally on the Ellipse at 11 a.m.

Several pre-event rallies took place Tuesday, and DC Police said two arrests were made during the first day of demonstrations (as of the afternoon). Charges included carrying a pistol and rifle without a license, possession of high capacity feeding device, unregistered ammunition and firearms, no permit while driving an unauthorized van and possession of illegal fireworks  

Attendees rallying on Wednesday are holding the first amendment rally, “to demand transparency and protect election integrity” on the same day Congress is set to officially approve the 2020 election results. This event comes after President Trump warned via Twitter that there would be a “very big” and “wild” protest on Jan. 6 after he refuses to concede due to unfounded allegations of election fraud. 

I will be speaking at the SAVE AMERICA RALLY tomorrow on the Ellipse at 11AM Eastern. Arrive early — doors open at 7AM Eastern. BIG CROWDS! pic.twitter.com/k4blXESc0c

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2021

Bullying bullies bullying

Speaking of bully politics , I watched Josh Hawley snarling at mild-mannered Attorney General Merrick Garland Wednesday, as did fellow insurrectionists Lyin’ Ted and Tom Cotton and, in a gentler way, the folksy, 88 year-old gentleman conservative from Iowa, ancient Chuck Grassley, laying on the lash as Garland sat for more than four hours being grilled in front of a senate committee.

The Trumpists were pummelling Garland about a memo he sent to local DOJ offices advising them to work closely with local law enforcement to protect school board members against threats of violence.

The Trumpists find this memo offensive and despicably partisan, as it clearly applies only to passionate Trump voters, who are styled “domestic terrorists” if they so much as express their First and Second Amendment rights at school board meetings and some scared little cucks feel threatened.   The partisan memo, they made clear, is grounds for Garland’s removal as A.G.  

The rightwing echo chamber contends, in one endlessly amplified voice, that this intolerable memo is as explosive an affront to America as the loathsome Hillary Clinton murders in Benghazi, something so threatening to American decency and democracy that Garland must answer for it, publicly and under oath.   The NY Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns FOX and the Wall Street Journal, chimed in: 

Today Merrick Garland’s thuggishness and partisanship show him to be unfit for the Supreme Court and he is not ethical and committed to justice as Biden’s attorney general. He should go.  


A website called welovetrump expressed a similar statement,which came up number three on the Duck Duck Go search engine about yesterday’s hearing:

Attorney General Garland Won’t Deny Under Oath that Federal Agents May Have Incited January 6th. Something interesting happened this past week. Attorney General Merrick Garland was questioned about January 6th. Representative Thomas Massie from Kentucky had a straightforward question. Were federal agents present at the January 6th protest at …


Once Garland took his seat the GOP members of the committee began lustily pounding him with angry sound bytes for the right-wing echo chamber.

Tom Cotton kept calling Garland “judge” and told him, toward the end of his dressing down, that he thanks God that Garland was kept off the Supreme Court and that he thinks Garland should resign in disgrace.  Hawley was more superficially respectful, addressing Garland as General Garland, but his angry aggressiveness — in  defense of innocent parents merely expressing their understandable frustration with libtard cucks and making perfectly justifiable threats, was apparent.  He pointedly challenged Garland to call the guy on the poster behind him, the distraught father whose daughter was raped in a bathroom by a fake trans boy dressed as a girl AND WAS DRAGGED OUT OF THE SCHOOL BOARD MEETING BY SECURITY!!! a domestic terrorist [1].   

Lyin’ Ted began “For eight years under Obama the Department of Justice was politicized and weaponized.  When you came before this body during your confirmation hearing, you promised things would be different.” The four years with four Trump A.G.’s personally loyal to Trumpie, enabling their boss’s seamless obstruction of justice? Never happened, irrelevant, immaterial. How dare you?!! We’re talking about what that hateful black devil did!

Then, using his genius as a collegiate debater, Cruz forced Garland to admit that a fed up parent simply giving the Nazi salute at a school board meeting, especially if the smug, Nazi bastard deserved it, was protected expression under the First Amendment.   

I watched a GOP senator take one word from a statute — “annoy”– and focus on it to make the rest of the law Garland is intent on enforcing (to protect school board members from the physical rage of infuriated mobs) seem like liberal scolding — pricelessly sickening. 

Garland, they all agreed, owed Trump nation an apology.  Garland, who had no reason to apologize about the memo Republicans were flogging him over, acquitted himself as an earnest, mild-mannered, judicious man.   The most respectful thug ever.

The geniuses of the GOP on the Committee were on a mission unrelated to law or justice, they were busy making Benghazi-style talking points for their base (al-Q’eada, in Arabic). Roll clip three:

“This is shameful. Judge, this is shameful. This testimony, your directive, your performance is shameful. Thank God you are not on the Supreme Court. You should resign in disgrace, judge.”

source

Come on, wrestling fans, thirty words, each one a direct knee in the nuts!  Hard to improve on that one by Cotton. 

Hawley tried hard, probably got the one about pretending Garland had called the father whose daughter had been raped by an alleged fake trans boy in the girl’s bathroom a domestic terrorist in a playable byte for OANN, Breitbart, Der Sturmer, FOX, etc.

Lyin’ Ted got in a killer shot by making the Jewish jurist admit that a disgruntled guy at a schoolboard meeting who gives some smug putz the Nazi salute is exercising his First Amendment right of free expression, something the Department of Justice is sworn to protect. Garland acknowledged that simply giving the Nazi salute is indeed expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment.

But what was your larger point, Lyin’ Ted, in making the Jewish A.G. tell America that he protects a Nazi’s absolute right to give his party’s heil Hitler salute anywhere and any place he so chooses?

All that poor guy did was give that smug school board the good old Nazi salute, no violence just a strong, constitutionally protected expression of his opinion.

What is America coming to, these senators wanted to know, when you can’t even give the Hitler salute or fly into an understandable rage after your daughter is raped in a school bathroom, by a rapist dressed as a girl?

Garland didn’t seem to have an answer beyond repeating that the DOJ is committed to making sure angry mobs don’t carry out threatened violence against school board members for things like insisting that American history courses include an accounting of slavery, segregation and violent mobs who attack and kill people they hate and never face justice.

The seething hostility of these Big Lie embracing partisans, one after another, is so reminiscent of Nazi judges and prosecutors barking dismissively at defendants during the Thousand Year Reich. They certainly deserve a big old Nazi salute!

Happy Halloween!

[1] Cotton also, inaccurately, said the high school girl

“was raped in a bathroom by a boy wearing girls’ clothes and the Loudoun County School Board covered it up because it would interfere with their transgender policy during pride month.”

The Right’s Big Lie About a Sexual Assault in Virginia https://nyti.ms/3nHQvqh

The true story of that girl’s rape in a school bathroom is more complicated and has nothing to do with gay pride or liberals on school boards.

How much of the $50,000,000 Stop the Steal ad buy did Zuckerberg keep?

As Facebook fights the increasing evidence that it prioritizes profit for its billionaire owner over everything else, I wonder why nobody is asking how much of Trump’s $50,000,000 mostly internet ad buy to promote his Big Lie about a stolen election went directly to Mr. Zuckerberg?   

How much did Facebook make, directly, from selling ads promoting Trump’s Big Lie?

It’s a wonder to me that the $50,000,000 ad buy is not more in the public mind. $50 000,000 is a mind blowing sum to spend selling any product.

Then, consider, it was $50,000,000 in dark money raised in the weeks leading up to Trump’s second impeachment, when it looked like the madman was poised to do something even more desperate than send a mob down to stop Congress and lynch his vice president after the VP was warned by conservatives with gravitss to stay away from open sedition.

They raised and spent $50,000,000 to promote a lie that fueled the rage of a mob that attacked and battled police, breached all fortifications and stormed the Capitol, forcing Congress to be evacuated, as it was certifying Biden’s victory.

How much did Mark, a man not yet forty, worth well north of $100,000,000,000, personally pocket off of Trump’s $50,000,000 mostly internet ad buy?

It’s a fair question, no?

Yer Confederate battle flag

Why do many of us, including virtually every Black American, regard the Confederate flag as a symbol of targeted hatred equivalent to Mr. Hitler’s swastika?

Historian Heather Cox Richardson:

In 1860, southern white elites declared the American concept of democracy based in equality, government based in the consent of the people, to be obsolete. They declared they were going to start a new country, based in a hierarchy of gender and race, that they believed reflected God’s will.


In a speech in March 1861, Alexander Stephens of Georgia, who would soon be the vice president of the Confederate States of America, explained to an audience that Jefferson’s belief that all men are created equal was “an error” and that anyone who still adhered to that idea was an insane “fanatic.” Stephens told listeners: “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.” 

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-26-2021?r=74gv9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=