This Was Not Resistance

 

“And as you might have seen, there was some sort of rave or desert party where they were having a great time, until the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters” Speeches held at the ‘All Out For Palestine’ protest outside the Israeli… pic.twitter.com/JXLpPIvW6A

— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) October 8, 2023

Hundreds of young concert-goers were killed, survivors were raped. They were young people: not the oppressors. Resistance discriminates. It uses necessary force. This was blood lust. This is why I don't feel a part of the far left: they suck. The DSA constantly uses division and smug up-fuckery to fail to accomplish even the merest goals. I noticed fucking PLO posters carried during the anti-Iraq war march 20 years ago. Fuck, people. Concentrate on one clear atrocity and stop being fellow travelers with bullshit. 

For example, Codepink dressed in weird costumes and played Pick-me Progressives and did nothing to end the Iraq or Afghanistan Wars because no one took them seriously. They protested against striking on ISIS. Also against striking Assad for the chem attacks, which I in retrospect wish Obama did. Because fuck that guy.

And here's Code Pink seen just recently snuggling up to Marjorie Taylor Green's gym-sweaty armpit:

The war in Ukraine must END!

Today, I met brave @codepink activists who protested for peace in Bernie Sanders’ office. He had 11 of them arrested!

Peace & free speech shouldn’t be a partisan issue.

We don’t agree on most things, but we do agree Congress should STOP fueling the… pic.twitter.com/uFzenFyMNn

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) October 4, 2023

Being exactly who one might expect:

Palestinians have every right to resist with force up to and including the murder of civilians and rape currently being committed by HAMAS, but Ukraine does not have the right to resist the murdering and rapist Russians who are hell-bent on occupying them? Ok. That's certainly...a take. 

He Doesn't Have the Votes

 

So, maybe someone out there felt a bit of momentum for McCarthy when the Phantom of Mar-a-Lago dipped his oar in to endorse his speakership. Whoever felt that, felt wrong, because Lauren Boebert summed up the problems as follows:

"Let’s stop with the campaign smears and tactics to get people to turn against us — even having my favorite president call us and tell us we need to knock this off," Boebert said on the House floor Wednesday. "I think it actually needs to be reversed; the president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that, sir, you do not have the votes, and it’s time to withdraw."

Now, Trump isn't still the president obviously, but he's also demonstrably not the boss of the Freedom Caucus.  He's the leader of the Trumpiest people in the GOP--as long as they agree with him. That's a very interesting thing to know.  Trump is a figurehead, but not a respected one. He can be defied.

Anyway, McCarthy got one favorable vote today: the vote to adjourn after three votes went against him, and he wasted everyone's time to decide to put a pin in it and circle back at eight o'clock eastern standard just to decide that the definition of crazy is doing the same thing multiple times and expecting different results. 

To open up the floor to getting his nose rubbed in it starting noon Thursday? Is this a fetish he has? 

The GOP Speaking Sickness

 

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich on “Never Kevin” Republicans, such at Matt Gaetz, who are unwilling to support Kevin McCarthy:

“I think it’s a psychological problem. These guys can’t count straight. They can’t play tic-tac-toe. They can’t accept victory.” pic.twitter.com/OOnVZq6qYS

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) January 2, 2023

What's the matter, Newt?  Don't you know your own sprogs? They are angry, they want the politics of personal destruction, they are petty and spiteful. They want performative and vindictive destructiveness over functional government. They want to shut down effective government. They want to not be ignored. They aren't interested in getting a win. They want hostages. They want to be seen as dangerous. They want to be depicted as rebels and revolutionaries as a brand. 

There are people in the House of Representatives who are literally delaying the choosing of a speaker and their swearing in and all of that because it's about the brand. Of MAGA Freedom caucus people--I think. To show the power they have as disruptors: to move fast and break things or whatever the disruptor thing is these days. 

And actually, Margorie Taylor Greene knows their movement is stupid and is over it. Which is the most respect I have ever had for her:

The GOP can't do anything yet. Now, to me this suggests that the dysfunction the Republicans have right now is great--total disarray means they can't do things they want to do. But for our being a republic that is functional, this is actually really sad and MTG is actually right that elected people should be able to go do their elected business. 

And her operational point that voting with McCarthy, however imperfect he is, gets Republicans a path to delivering their vision and goals is more institutionalist than I thought she would be and probably no matter what, what the GOP will get. He's the front guy. The available stiff. Her ability to view his speakership as malleable and a deliverable to the Powers that Be (whoever gets leverage) is a sign she isn't to be misunderestimated. 

Anyway, Kevin McCarthy still isn't speaker. Maybe he never will be. We will see. 

TWGB: They Aren't Joking

 

There's a funny thing about Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that if she and Steve Bannon were at the head of the 1/6 insurrection, they would have won, and they would have been armed: she says she was joking, now. But she certainly was not.  We know this because we know her record. She was explicit about what she stood for--talking about "the price of blood" pre-election.  We know in December 2020 she was at the White House meeting with other GOP electeds. We know some 1/6 insurrectionists actually were armed.  What she seems to be saying, and pretending to walk back, is that she would want more bloodshed of Capitol police and possibly her own colleagues in congress. 

Ha ha. The conservatives are getting better at humor, and the libs don't like it, indeed. (See latest iteration thereof.)  Actually, we know what "only joking" means to fascists. (Can't you take a joke? Why are you punching yourself? I'm not the problem, you have no sense of humor. etc.)

When the NY Young Republicans, who I used to think were just twenty-somethings who looked like forty somethings and had the values of the 1950s and wanted to undo the civil rights movement, has VDARE's Brimelow and Posobiec, I start to think we've got people in their thirties and forties who look like they are traitors and have the values of would-be herrenvolk and want to undo Reconstruction. 

So, color me pretty alarmed by that. Also alarmed by Justice Kavanaugh hanging out with the Schlapps, you know, the CPAC wanna-be domestic terrorist Orban enthusiasts. Just a Supreme Court justice hanging out in the most partisan and kinda-fash-leaning crowd, and we're supposed to shrug about that? (And shouldn't RW SCOTUS justices be more on guard about their propriety since we know they are cozy as hell with activists? I mean, Clarance Thomas' wife is a whole activist, which is as cozy as things get.)  

It isn't a joke. 

Eric Swalwell Nails It

 

Kevin McCarthy can’t denounce Trump’s dinner with known white nationalist Nick Fuentes because if he did, McCarthy would also have to call out his new boss MTG pic.twitter.com/qjihmRc67l

— Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell) November 26, 2022

You know it's true. He needs a bigoted conspiracy theorist's support to become Speaker. He isn't interested in what he accomplishes as Speaker, he only knows that to do any of it, he needs to not alienate his own party's worst members. 

And it is the same bargain the whole party makes with Trump. They have been mainstreaming evil.

UPDATE:  Per Axios, GOP spokespersons for major Republican electeds had no comment because of course they didn't. Speaking out against evil isn't about who has got your back, sometimes it's just about whether you can find your own spine. 

Every Accusation is a Projection

 

Marjorie Taylor Greene: "I am not going to mince words with you all. Democrats want Republicans dead and they have already started the killings."

This rhetoric is dangerous and unacceptable. pic.twitter.com/2UiKXsrlsJ

— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) October 1, 2022

The luridness of the claim is lacking in details. What Democrats? What Republicans? When did the killings start and are the people anyone we know?

I mean, of course MGT might use Ashli Babbit, who ignored a warning not to enter the chamber where Congresspeople were about to perform their duty (a thing Margarie Taylor Greene simply does not understand). Clearly, MGT thinks "There but for the grace of my being connected and a Congressperson now, go I."  

And let's not stop thinking about the blutfahne.  The MAGA Republicans want to be seen as martyrs, they want to be seen as victims. It justifies their hate and gives them a permission slip for what they mean to do next. 

Just like Giorgia Meloni saying it isn't OK for her to say she is a woman or a Christian or a mother or whatever (and then what terrible thing ensues, hm? Nothing!), MGT claims she is a southern belle and then is right here trying to say she is at risk for being murdered because she does what now?

Kick protesters? Stalk activists? 

MGT starts shit and then basks in the afterglow of getting any kind of reaction. She isn't hounded for her identity, but her actions. She seems like such a wretched person. I don't want her deceased. I would like her to become self-aware. That might be punishment enough. 

CPAC: Mining the Kampf

 

What I need you to understand is that I stood here for about half an hour yesterday and this guy NEVER broke character

He wept sitting on the bench

He wept sitting on the floor

He tallied days on a chalkboard set up for the purpise pic.twitter.com/dgGag1Qcjn

— Laura Jedeed (@LauraJedeed) August 5, 2022

Oh, look!, It's the Walkaway stool pigeon Brandon Straka, who gave considerable help to the DOJ and is now doing performance art.  Also too, we can see the dear motherly comforter Marjorie Taylor Greene. She should have anointed his feet with spikenard and rubbed it in with her double-processed hair while she was at it. 

If anyone thought the Viktor Orban shit was going to be the principal shame of CPAC 2022.2: Fascism Boogaloo (no, actually....) Why no! It's the attempt to recycle the insurrectionists into martyrs (yeah, they love martyrs, these guys) and blame the FBI and DOJ and the 1/6 Committee for thinking a whole violent episode to try and overthrow the government is something worth prosecuting. (Rep. Andy Biggs suggested defunding the DOJ which is definitely "Defund the police" if I ever heard it.)

Every conservative who faces any kind of accountability is automatically a victim. Alex Jones is supposedly a victim. Trump is a victim. Everyone at CPAC is unfathomably stricken and can barely stand all their various oppressions. 

Rick Scott thinks the liberals are the real book burners. They aren't actually burning any books, while neo-Nazis are closing libraries, but whatever. Ted Cruz explores kiss my ass's gender as being outside of the binary by proclaiming kiss my ass's neo-pronouns as "kiss my ass". Kiss my ass has decided that "kiss my ass" better describes the entire vibe of kiss my ass's gender expression, which is neither male nor female but definitely has a whole lot to do with ass. (All across this land, English teachers are weeping because the previously understood definition of pronoun, it is no more.)  Matt Schlapp is also Team Fuxxor the Binary, considering USAself to be USA/USA's. I'll try to honor that. 

USA's partner, Mercy, has shown her quality to be strained. This whole event is a showcase of grievance, racism, and grifting.  And for what it's worth, if you thought you saw Nick Fuentes there, CPAC says you did not.  (Just like TPUSA, one never admits groping with groypers.) 

I will refrain from asking where is a ginormous meteor or sudden sinkhole when our idiot culture deserves one but look at these sideshow geeks. Just take them all in, in all their pugnacious and howling glory. Or at any rate, their salacious and growling gloryholes, where they pleasure their political id as if we can't see what they are up to. 

They are talking up their 1/6 antics etc. to themselves.  From the outside, how weird and cultish that seems! We should never fail to deride these bitter pitiful people. And never let them arise from their mental cells to strike out at our democracy like they did on 1/6 again. 

Four Women and a SOTU

 

Behind President Biden at the State of the Union Address this evening were Vice-President Kamala Harris and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, two women on a stage that for so long never had us. In the audience were Republican Representatives Margorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, who behaved in a way that made me ashamed for them. They were without dignity; they were partisan hecklers at a solemn event. They were there to be seen and we saw them. 

I am so ashamed for them that we saw them, because I don't know that they know how to be ashamed for themselves. Maybe they could be taught shame, as if they were still toddlers and the experience of being seen by others in public was still new. 

They tried to start a "Build the Wall" chant. It's an affront to sense. FYI: the wall was always stupid. It's a material, not a legal barrier, that can be easily thwarted by such things as "over, under, around, and through. " Anything that might costs millions if not billions to maintain across a thousand miles and can still be overcome by cheap ladders, by pick and shovel, by a flotilla of fucking inner tubes on the water  at the edges, that is made of steel but has feet of clay and gets toppled by a hard rain, is a stupid tribal fetish, not an immigration solution. 

Sticking with it is appalling dopiness. It's just sad. 

AFPAC and CPAC Are Like Peas and Carrots

 

“I do not know Nick Fuentes. I have never heard him speak, I have never seen a video. I do not know what his views are so I am not aligned with anything that is controversial,” she said.

He’s behind you, congresswoman!https://t.co/kivga9Wyti

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) February 26, 2022

This is very funny, because this woman is clearly clued into the whole RW vibe: a Qanon, a friend of Alex Jones. She seemed to greet Fuentes warmly when she showed up, so, it feels weird that she, a fellow traveler with Paul Gosar, who made the AFPAC to CPAC circuit last year, is in any way confused about what she was doing there. Of course, she was just there to connect with der jugend and talk about Christianity. Her brand of white supremacy is theocratic. Why shouldn't we think she's just confused about the stupid things she sometimes does and says?

She's so busy after all. Being a thirsty dominionist stunt queen takes every ounce of her Crossfit enhanced fake weight pressing body builder shagging physique. And as Stew Peters would tell you, isn't that typical of such a RINO?

I think it's great that these things happen at the same time and basically down the street from each other, anymore, because you get to see the sort of fluid exchange of ideas between the two supposedly not at all being the same thing nope not hardly groups. Like, would Papa John Schnatter tell AFPAC that with the right PR he could have weathered the cancellation of saying the n-word like dozens of times? They might have laughed at, not with him, but CPAC listened while he said that, and also that Joe Biden somehow convinced Putin to launch an invasion of Ukraine to distract from stuff happening in the US.

Wow. Russia has probably invested billions with a b on this one and committed thousands of lives to somehow distract from Joe Biden's shit. You can't get a lot of people to say something that "edgy" out loud where people can hear, but CPAC drew that exact too racist to make pizza sort of moron. Cheers, CPAC!

Soup to Nuts

 

Just to clear things up, @RepMTG

Gazpacho: a vegetable-based Spanish cold soup
Gestapo: Nazi Germany's secret police pic.twitter.com/T9q76r706G

— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) February 9, 2022

Surely, there are more important things in the world than Rep. Greene (R. Crossfit) confusing the Nazi secret police for a cold tomato-based soup, but before you send me off to the goulash, maybe we should just admit it's weird as hell that this elected official keeps making weird statements about the Holocaust, or the Rothschilds, or comparing things to Nazis, or talking about the oxymoronic "corporate communism" in a way that demonstrates she is profoundly unconcerned about whether she is making any sense at all, or is just using scary words to scare other underinformed people.

She's a conspiracy theorist by nature, a lovechild of Dunning-Kruger and Robert Welch, Jr. She plays a long game of connect the dots where some of the dots aren't even on the same page. Conspiracy theories are like a choose-your-own adventure book that exceeds even the imagination and arcana of a Dan Brown novel. What she chooses to believe is that the people who disagree with her, all of them, are somehow associated with the actual worst people of history, whoever she at the moment thinks those people must be. 

So, she violates mask rules because the people who told her to do a very basic and sanitary thing that does work offends her. Oh, and let's not even pay notice to whether the fines she has racked up are ones she can easily ignore as a person of personal wealth, when people with far more exposure than she has, like retail workers, don't even make what she has raked up in fines in their yearly salary and have ample reason to want protection. How dare peons tell her what to do though! So they must be the oppressors, and she the victim. (The people who study abusers call the technique she uses quite automatically "DARVO.")

Of course! And no doubt, pointing out that she is a bear of very little brain is only another of the oppressions she faces from the elitists in the Vichyssoise government she finds herself somehow a somewhat participating member of.  

It's a little too pat to say that this sort of thing makes her a propagandist, only really capable of effectively communicating to the like-minded. It's a little raw to say that pointing out her obvious shortcomings only adds to her victim-mentality and feels like a pile-on by "elitists" to people sympathetic to her. Both are a little bit true. But I still think it's valid to point out this damn dumbass doesn't know what the fuckall she's talking about and is a danger to herself and others.  And people who are sympathetic to her are also damn dumbassses and if they want more abuse, my word, it is made fresh daily.  Sign up for the full subscription. 

Or stop being dumbasses, totally your call. 

Trying to Shame the Shameless

The problem with things like a censure vote against Rep. Paul Gosar (AZ, Repulsive) is that, while necessary, it also served to give the similarly-shameless, violent-minded and dishonest people in the GOP caucus something to grandstand about. And that is starting to feel like most of them, these days.

If ever an example of defense through "whataboutism" was ever mounted, it was on display here. The craven Rep, McCarthy displayed the permissiveness of a man led by his party rather than the other way around. Rep. Lauren Boebert used the opportunity to spread lies and hate. 

They were who we thought they were.

There really isn't any shaming the shameless. They wouldn't censure President Trump when he said malicious things about "the Squad", so why should Gosar's video be any different? They've already made their peace with an actual insurrection where a violent mob attacked their "house". Some of these members are already, themselves, receiving death threats because of one vote that displeased the mob--and find themselves incapable of even politely requesting the temperature be brought down.

It isn't for them--it's for those who are watching and understand: these are performers, not statemen. And very bad actors, at that.  Also, if they ever want to cry about civility again, this is what should be thrown in their shameless faces. 

UPDATE: Needless to say, after many GOP members cited his taking the video down from Twitter as a sign of good faith, Gosar re-tweeted it. The thing with people who do things for attention is, if they don't get quite the attention they want, in kind or in quantity, they will escalate. That's why people like him and Marjorie Taylor Greene should not be in Congress. We will just keep seeing these conflicts and this degradation of office on repeat.

TWGB: Wild at the Willard

 

The fantastic Washington Post story regarding the "war room" at the Willard Hotel is a great start for the public recognizing that several organizations, and members of congress and close Trump associates, clearly were together before the 1/6 riot planning an insurrection. The Willard was a who's who of who's insurrectionist. It was a Trumplandian Woodstock. Flynn, Stone, Bannon, Giuliani, Eastman. Bernie Kerik was there. OAN's Christina Bobb was there, like a whole pretend journalist wearing her campaign lawyer hat. There was activity working on state legislators to see what they could do to overturn the results in their states. They were working on US Members of congress to see that they would reject certain states' electors.

(I think there have been folks who also need to be pointed out for having seen the connection to the Willard Hotel, like Sandi Bachom, and Seth Abramson. Follow them on Twitter, you guys, I do.)

Anyway, activists who were in the loop have been talking, and it sure seems like GOP members of congress and folks from the White House were all over the events of 1/6, according to Rolling Stone's reporting. 

Now, this doesn't really strike me as much more than Ali Alexander has been saying all this time: there was coordination all over the GOP. The more interesting details to me are things like Rep. Gosar actually holding out the idea of a blanket pardon to potential malefactors (which never materialized) as if to magnify on Trump's one-time promise to pay the legal fees of people who "knock the crap out of" protesters. The assurances that Mark Meadows was 100% in the loop, demonstrating that the White House would have been aware of the rough edges of what could happen (or were they even more aware than roughly? Which makes the delay of the DC National Guard being called in really suspect, no?) 

The Smokin' Crater Party

 

Marge Greene says in 2022 she is going to “blow away the Democrats’ socialist agenda,” then blows up a car with “socialism” on it with a 50-caliber rifle she is auctioning off for contributions. pic.twitter.com/b10wGwVVW2

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 18, 2021

I'm not brand new, so I know that one of the points of an ad like this is outrage and getting liberals to point to it and here I am, Pavlov's liberal, pointing. Does she even have to run ads in her extremely red district? (But of course, shhhh, this is about fundraising and whatnot). But leaving aside the Palin-crosshairs-style violence indicated and the McCarthyist claim of anything she doesn't like as socialism, and it's really just distilled trolling. Because she believes trolling is her job.

No kidding. She recently told Steve Bannon that she's the "most effective member of Congress." That's objectively nonsense. She lost her committee seats. She's responsible for no legislation. What the heck is effective--did she mispronounce "defective"?  But she trolls and gets a response. It doesn't have to be a good response. 

Not every Republican trolls at MTG's level, but they all have the same basic idea of what governing is about--do stuff libs hate, but do things that are actually...useful? No. Absolutely not. So if Governor Abbott in TX wants to concentrate on the border instead of the power grid, or MS Gov. Reeves acts bemused when challenged on his state's lousy COVID-19 numbers, it's makes sense to realize that the ad above is the goal. Ask not what good government can do for you, ask what you can do to troll the libs. 

And you get to "govern" over a smoking crater for your trouble. 

Somebody Looks Nervous About Something

 

One tell that a person is keyed up over something is the gibberish that starts falling out of their faces. Take Jim Jordan and whether he talked with Trump on January 6th. He just couldn't remember when it might have been or what they had to talk about, but it turns out there was more than one call, Matt Gaetz was in on one of the calls, and the conversation had to do with whether Trump would please call off his angry hounds at the door. As if Jordan believed Trump had control of that particular situation. And that's pretty much what Kevin McCarthy went around with Trump about on the phone that day, too. 

But here's something interesting to me--while McCarthy has said he'd be fine testifying about that call before the January 6th committee, but he is indignant that his member, and himself, might have their phone records subpoenaed. Interesting. And he's not making any sense, nor is his spokesperson. 

Now, if Marjorie Taylor Green gets out in front of a camera and complains about her phone records being handed over and threatens the phone companies with being shut down, I guess I would tend to shrug a little bit at that because, um, she's certainly got a way about her. But when Republican House Leader McCarthy makes the same kind of nonsense threat, that's a little different. It's a congressional investigation into a riot/insurrection attempt that left over a hundred police officers injured in something like 1000 acts of assault and which caused damage not just to the building these member of congress work in, but to our democracy. 

It's not really any kind of over-reach for the committee to ask for those records, or for the phone companies to hand them over, even if only to rule out that GOP members of congress had any involvement. (Aside from promoting the Big Lie and making firebrand speeches in front of those people of course. Of course!)

But check out this gibberish from McCarthy's spokesperson regarding McCarthy's records: 

It is unfortunate how unserious and political Bennie Thompson has made this inquiry," Mark Bednar, a spokesman for McCarthy, said in a statement to CNN, referring to the select committee's chairman, when asked for comment on the minority leader being part of the preservation of records request. "A serious inquiry that was not politically motivated would be looking at why the Capitol was left so unprepared and how to prevent this from happening in the future -- and an authoritarian, unconstitutional attempt to rifle through individuals' call logs will not help answer that question."

Yes. A serious investigation into a crime would totally depend on looking into the cops and not the people doing crimes. This is....some kind of take, all right.

This sounds like people who want to cover something up, and you know, after Benghazi and "her emails", I'm so out of fucks with Republicans going, "Now now, we certainly wouldn't want this investigation to be POLITICAL."

Trump fans broke glass, spread feces on the walls, fought with law enforcements and tried to intimidate lawmakers for very political reasons. Crying about the politics of investigating that mess gets no sympathy from me at all. Yeah, it's political, and yeah, Republicans could turn out looking very bad--but its because of what they did and said, not because people bothered looking into it.

It looks bad because it is bad. And they look nervous and they should. 

Sociopaths Shouldn't Be in Government: MTG

Not only is @mtgreenee lying in this video regarding some form of vaccine patrol, she's encouraging violence.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is unfit for office and a national security threat in more ways than one. She's a super-spreader of disinformation. pic.twitter.com/0TWykMasP8

— VoteVets (@votevets) August 5, 2021

If someone did come up to your door and ask if you would like to be vaccinated and for some reason you don't, saying "no, thanks" would be how not-awful people deal with a human interaction. I mean, if this was a thing that was happening, and it is not  Threatening people with bodily harm who are just doing a job would be a weird instinct to have, right?

She's awful to be sure, and lying to instill distrust of government, but it's the violence that stands out for me. 

TWGB: A Little Help From His Friends?

 

Donald Trump lost the 2020 election because he was incompetent at everything, including rigging an election in favor of himself. He tried to damage his opponent's reputation with a spurious investigation in Ukraine even before the man had even won his primary (and because Trump is Trump, he was lousy at that, too, got caught and was impeached). The basis of the investigation didn't have to be real--the appearance of a problem would have been enough for Trump, and he would have been getting people to say "Lock him up!" at rallies. 

I mean, the more or less mundane Wikileaks drops from hacked Democrat emails were enough to get people chanting "Lock her up!" about Hillary Clinton, and who knows what he could have done if he actually got hold of her own emails? (Notwithstanding that too, was kind of stupid, since he ended up with the Mueller investigation.)

So why wouldn't asking the DOJ to declare that the election was corrupted have the same effect? Tell the Big Lie, have some official cover for the Big Lie, and let the fun and games begin for politicians like himself and the "R.Congressmen" referred to in the notes kept by deputy AG Richard Donoghue.

After all, it's not like his little fan club wasn't prepped to believe that there would be voter fraud--he told them so every chance he could, and his campaign even deputized the little devils to think of themselves as his "Army" of poll watchers (and freelance voter intimidation thugs). He certainly railed against the mail-in ballots enough. (Although it is strange, isn't it, that having been certain that things were going to be rigged against himself since before the 2016 election, he never worked with congress to do anything concrete about election security?)

TWGB: Suspicious Behavior

 

I usually center TrumpWorld Grab Bags on Trump himself and his immediate circle, so I'll kick this one off with Trump, the desperate one-term wonder who for some reason was practically stalking his acting AG with concerns over imagined "voter fraud".  From the piece:

Trump’s calls to Rosen show the degree to which the president was personally involved in such efforts, however, and the ways in which Justice Department officials walked a tightrope of listening to the president while not taking any concrete actions they considered unethical or partisan. 

The conversations also offer new clues into the president’s mind-set in early January, when he entertained a plan to replace Rosen with a different senior lawyer at the department — Jeffrey Clark — who was more amenable to pursuing Trump’s unfounded claims of voter fraud. That possibility nearly touched off a crisis at the highest levels of federal law enforcement, people familiar with the matter have previously said.

It really sounds to me like Trump was pretty desperate to hold onto the presidency and was going to use any kind of power he had to try and hold onto it. Maybe that was because once stripped of some of the protections of office, he's back to being legally culpable for his own bullshit, like his and his family's endorsement of MLM products and the possible Trump Org skim from the Presidential Inauguration.  Or who knows what other things (like the still being litigated E. Jean Carroll defamation suit) that the office of the presidency sort of shielded him from. Having the White House Counsel as his taypayer-funded support system must have felt great while it lasted, since he hates paying lawyers.  (I wonder--did Giuliani miss a memo? Because Trump not paying for shit isn't new.)

But this grab-bag is going to focus on Trump allies and why House GOP are seriously wigging out right now, and I think it's because they are so culpable. Take Margarine Tater Grease--I don't know that she's the pipebomber, but she certainly thinks people should have known the bombs were there on January 5th. Now, why would she think that? 

Then there's the case of Kevin McCarthy, who wants us to know he did talk to Trump during the insurrection, but only to talk about ensuring that resources would come to where he was hunkered down ASAP--so old Kev is basically copping to knowing it was Trump, not Pelosi, who was supposed to deploy the DC National Guard. We knew that. 

See Who The GOP is Siding With

 

Sgt. Gonell, who is an immigrant from the Dominican Republic and a naturalized U.S. citizen, says that one of the Capitol rioters "saw my skin color and said you’re not even an American." pic.twitter.com/NpI2L8N1fP

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) July 27, 2021

Sgt. Gonell was a professional law enforcement officer doing his job against a criminal, domestic terrorist mob that day, and Trump's little violent fan club did not see him as a fellow American. They also called him a "traitor" and a disgrace" for doing his job that day, because they apparently had no idea that they, that day, were the barbarians at the gate. They called his fellow officer Harry Dunn racial slurs, looking past his uniform and only seeing him as a man of color and a Biden supporter. Michael Fanone was also called a "traitor", and had to plead that he had a family for fear that these people might kill him with his own firearm. Officer Daniel Hodges recounts being asked if he was their "brother" by the domestic terrorists, because they didn't understand why a white police officer wasn't on their side.

The picture these officers relate is certainly not one of a patriotic love-in that seems to exist only in the delusional mind of the loser of the 2020 presidential election. It was a largely white/Christian supremacist violent insurrection, which certainly did include people who were armed that day, or who made weapons of whatever object fell to hand. 

Republicans (other than Cheney and Kinzinger) wanted to distract from all of this. They wanted to blame Nancy Pelosi for things that had nothing to do with her, like Rep. Elise Stefanik claiming that somehow she was responsible for the security situation that day. For one thing, the Speaker of the House doesn't control the DC National Guard, the President does. (From the website: "This authority to activate the D.C. National Guard has been delegated, by the President, to the Secretary of Defense and further delegated to the Secretary of the Army.  The D.C. National Guard is the only National Guard unit, out of all of the 54 states and territories, which reports only to the President. " )

What Stefanik is doing is basically the Benghazi "stand down" ruse--claiming something must have happened that almost certainly under the circumstances makes no sense within the timing or for any plausible motivation, but might sound plausible to people who really fucking hate liberal politicians. Why in the world would Nancy Pelosi, certainly a target of the mob, not want her workplace and her very own ass defended? That's just stupid, and while Stefanik is probably not an actual idiot, she should be very definitely upbraided for promoting such a stupid easily debunked lie for no other reason than cynical politics. 

But she is not alone in being a signifying distraction. 

Freedom's Just Another Word For....

 

Now that the Delta variant of Covid-19 is ripping through red states, some of the elected officials are just nonplussed at the gosh-awful irresponsibility folks are showing about not getting vaccinated. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey would like people to get vaccinated and show some common sense because they "are letting us down". Well, she's right as far as that goes--grown people should take responsibility for themselves and understand the risks their behavior poses to themselves and others. But it doesn't count for a lot when you consider she knows that there is a certain population that has no choice about getting vaccinated whatsoever, and she would not impose one necessary requirement that would reduce Covid-19 spread.  Vaccine passports were prohibited. And she certainly doesn't think people should be going door-to-door proselytizing the Good News of the vaccine to people. 

But otherwise she's done all she can--what the heck? 

The problem is, folks are still thinking freedom means also being free from responsibility, and that just isn't the case. It doesn't come home to them that there are consequences for what they do sometimes until it is too late. And sometimes even after rueful experience, people convince themselves they still want to persevere in their unique denial--posing a health risk to others. 

The "mask hysteria" remains, for me, the most puzzling aspect of GOP signifying, Margarine Tater Grease recently went off on the subject of children being masked even though a child (too young to be vaccinated) recently died in her district. She's obviously doing not one single thing to mitigate the illness and death her constituents and their families may face. Because "freedom".  She's indignant people even ask her about her own vaccination status, because she would not dare to be a good example for others. She wants the power of being a member of congress and the attention it brings, but appreciates none of the responsibility. 

Louie Gohmert is Speaking "Jive"

 

ORBITS: Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) asks whether the Forest Service or the BLM can alter the orbit of the moon or the Earth in order to fight climate change during a House Natural Resources hearing pic.twitter.com/yYiOyi2cMZ

— Forbes (@Forbes) June 8, 2021

I'm seeing a lot of liberals assume that the gibberish that Rep. Gohmert is spouting here is ignorance or signs that he's nuttier than chipmunk turds, but actually, I understood what he was getting at because he isn't talking liberal language. He's talking a very specific kind of climate denialist "jive"--and I get it. I'm by no means fluent in it, but just to cut through the "Can we change the orbit of the moon?" bullshit--

 

He's being disingenuous. It's usually a kind of Christian climate denialist cop-out I think of as the "God is God" gambit. Climate change can't be anthropogenic because we're not powerful enough, and even if we were, nothing happens that isn't God's will, and since you can't change the moon's orbit or solar flares, well then! There's nothing to be done, so sorry. Nice run, old Planet Earth, but we've a place way up yonder.

(Often, it goes along with "God promised he would not kill us with a flood again", which is just--also bizarre and not right.)

It's not supposed to be connected to any science. He mentions the orbit of the earth and moon and the solar flares thing as a distraction. Scientists largely agree that climate change is mostly caused by humans. The slight changes in either the moon's orbit or Earth's around the sun are happening a a rate we wouldn't really notice. Solar flares cause barely a ripple. But the dismissiveness is the point. 

See Marjorie Taylor Green on the "so-called science" of evolution. The coronavirus had to be created in a lab because it didn't evolve you guys. That's just silly heathen science. Demons invented it in the labs with alien DNA and baby parts. That's the only thing that makes sense. Use your brain, morans!

If you wanted to question, well, how then, did anyone learn to engineer a virus except by observation of biological changes in organisms over time? Well, the moran is you, because nothing about her statement is intended to invite a debate or even a real conversation.  It signifies to people who agree with her that she's with them--it doesn't have a thing to do with the objective reality we want to talk about.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think the both of them are dumb as hell, and it's just as well. They aren't conveying anything of any sense to people who want a meaningful conversation, anyway. So maybe they deserve the Twitter outcry--it's just, they are probably wearing it as an "owning the libs" moment because they got the pointless display they wanted.