So, Iowa Picked the Rapist with 91 Felony counts?

 

I don't especially enjoy the primary season because the idea of caucuses themselves are dense and dumb to me--what the whole fuck is going on with those? People are dropping votes randomly into paper bags and empty popcorn buckets. Who knows who is showing up? (I see no ID's in the deep freeze, they don't need these when the voters are all Y.T.'s.) 

And then there's Iowa itself--an entire state that feels like a FOX news set-up in a rural PA diner no more than ten miles from the nearest militia training site. What gets me is the state gets these political creatures camping out among them, speechifying at them, trying to shake hands with them for at least six months out of the year, and when the inevitable man/woman-in the street interviews take place, they just say the most normie, uninformed things. Like, one guy was hung up on where Vivek Ramaswamy was from because of 9/11. There were no Hindu people with Indian ancestry having anything to do with that. And if he was concerned, how about looking up anything at all ever? Candidates do townhalls, have debates, have featured articles in newspapers and magazines and there's FUCKING WIKIPEDIA and some dolt allowed to vote doesn't know where this man's people are from. OR who did 9/11. 

One young lady said she was just thinking about Jesus and how he died for our sins, and wasn't that why Trump was going through all these trials? No, damn it, I want to yell--you weren't thinking that; Trump and every asshole warming up the crowds for him told you that and it somehow drilled its way into the thing you pick out sandwich fixin's with. Being in trouble for defaming one of his rape/assault/harassment victims has NOTHING to do with you. He stole government docs belonging to the US Gov't which is basically all of us, and that is a crime against you. The insurrection was a crime against our government. Also against you. 

How in the hell did about half the caucus goers decide the guy who has been determined to be a rapist and a fraud, is twice-impeached, and had a whole bathroom's worth of White House docs, PLUS, horked out of his Florida home is still somehow fit to be president?

So Much for the Bentley Bomber

 

At the top of the above picture, just past the border checkpoint, you can see a car frozen in air after its driver had made some very poor speed-related decisions. This unfortunate launch of a generally land-based vehicle resulted in an explosion that Fox News, among others, wanted to term a terrorist attack. 

It wasn't, but a lot of right-wing fear-mongers jumped on the news:

Ted Cruz reposting noted journalist Benny Johnson to say his "worst fears" were confirmed is amusing to me in a way I don't think Sen. Cruz would understand. 

Sometimes I think to myself that conservative "news" outlets and the politicians they have a symbiotic relationship with are just cynical liars, but I also think they do believe their own bullshit. People who say things like "open borders" in all serious are like people who say "post-birth abortion"--what they fuck are they on about? It's delusional. They assumed that OF COURSE an explosion on a bridge was terrorism. Because OPEN BORDERS: is why! I think there's some people this morning who are mad their talking point got, um, exploded.

But man, I am still trying to wrap my head around who is doing terrorism in a Bentley. That is a distant Saudi prince with Jason Chaffetz's turkey in his lap kind of high-priced terrorism....

Violence By Other Means

 

The promised indignant rampage of aggrieved MAGAs never did materialize, probably in part chastened by the real world sentences of the leaders of the 1/6 melee and with no clear goal available to them (stop Trump's arraignment today, and it only goes on another day...), so we never saw the American Carnage that marked the end of Trump's brutally stupid one-term reign. 

But what we did see was a brutal violence against truth--as in the above screen cap from Fox News, describing Biden as a "Wannabe Dictator" who had "his political rival arrested". Or, maybe, Biden is a president whose DOJ followed up on leads that Trump took documents that he had no business having, asked nicely to get them back, and then was lied to and had to issue a search warrant because they were after all, the property of the US Government, and not Mr. Trump's. Culminating in the selection of a Special Counsel once Trump announced he was running again for the office for which his one-term, twice impeached ass was manifestly unfit.

It has nothing to do with President Biden. Trump took the docs himself and is responsible for what he did with them--period. Trump choose to pretend he didn't still have docs when he did--he failed to turn over docs that were requested. He can pretend he thought they were his, but the law says no. The Presidential Records Act, which a lot of people think let Trump off, does no such thing--it reiterates that government documents created are the property of the US government and not the President. And Trump stopped being president January of 2021, no matter what fantasies his lil fanclub wants to entertain. This warping of reality is a form of violence. It is intended to create a false impression with the idea that people might act on that. Blame Biden for what, as anyone understanding the rule of law might understand, any AG might have charged Trump for. 

(This wasn't Biden or even his AG--but the result of an investigation by a Special Counsel, yet.)

Ken Paxton Got Himself Impeached (UPDATED)

 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) impeached by Texas House of Representatives 121-23 pic.twitter.com/wlNtCgGlB2

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 27, 2023

I believe that is the Speaker of the Texas House Dade Phelan who was censured for being drunk on the floor but frankly, when I watched this without audio, I thought the man would have more slurring because I'm not saying I know drunk when I see it, but I have known drunk when I've been it. Drunk or sober, the count is what it is, and Ken Paxton got hugely impeached by the supermajority Texas House. This wasn't about liberals trying to get him, and this wasn't about RINOS trying to get him. This was about the creep of Ken Paxton's various problems becoming not just his problem, but the State Leg. problem, and they did not want that for themselves.

TWGB: The Man They Lied For

 

EXCLUSIVE: At the RNC Spring Retreat, Cleta Mitchell, a Trump atty working to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, told donors she never saw any proof that there was voter fraud with the voting machines:

"I'm ready for somebody to bring me the proof. And I haven't had that." pic.twitter.com/hsmsPnzYME

— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) April 26, 2023

Cleta Mitchell, who was on Trump's "perfect" Georgia call looking for 11K+ votes and who is currently tooling around the country talking up the prospects of voter suppression, is on tape admitting that she never saw any proof of voter fraud. This doesn't surprise me. Giuliani and Powell never had any, and to the extent Lindell thought he had any, he was mistaken, too. 

Or was it even a mistake? I mean, they all worked so hard to try and reverse the election results with no proof of the alleged voter fraud, and also, it looks like Very Smart Senators like Ted Cruz thought maybe they should just have a commission that awarded the election to Trump based on Serious Concerns. 

Not proof exactly. Just, you know. Vibes. 

If the commission “found credible evidence of fraud that undermines confidence in the electoral results in any given state,” Cruz said, it would be able to recertify the results. 

Notably, in a November 2020 call with Bartiromo that MSNBC aired last week, Cruz suggested Trump’s team of lawyers lacked “actual evidence” of electoral fraud that would hold up in court. 

On the same day as his call with Bartiromo, Cruz and 10 other Senate Republicans unveiled a plan to reject the certification of results in states where Trump contested his defeat unless an “emergency 10-day [congressional] audit” of results was completed.

See, I know Cruz can complain that he was very public about this plan, but the thing is--there was no proof, just the allegation of an inveterate liar.  Cruz himself was called out by Trump for imaginary vote-rigging in the 2016 Iowa primary, so he knows what Trump is full of. The proposed commission would be a farce based on nothing at all--so why do it, if not to set up a "steal"? 

I was prepared to do a post this evening about the opening statements on Trump's civil trial for defamation and sexual assault, because this is the nature of the man so many Republicans went to so much trouble to keep on as their president. 

But it isn't about just Trump-- there are many Republicans who just don't care if he's guilty of any crime at all. Two thirds of Republicans would support Trump for president even if he was guilty of a crime. 

Rape? Fraud? Tax evasion? Insurrection? Treason? Because they all look to be on the table. And these Republicans who don't care if he was guilty of a crime--doesn't that suggest what they might be willing to do for him? Even crimes, themselves?

Sometimes, even when you know something intellectually, you see it and it stuns you, knocking the bottom out of your world, and it feels like brand new information. Yeah. The family values party who lords their alleged faith and morality about was prepared to destroy this country to keep a lowlife predator in office because they truly nakedly stand for nothing but power, however obtained. And his moral unfitness doesn't seem to worry them at all.

After all he's done. 

Anyway Jack Smith will be looking into Ted Cruz's commission and the other recordings Abby Grossberg formerly of Fox News might have. Once again, the Fox News/Dominion matter, settled, but not over. 

It's still serving.

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. 

Who Cares About Your Feelings, Ted?

 

Sen. Ted Cruz says the Supreme Court was “clearly wrong” and “overreaching” when it legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. https://t.co/OvGEsxKP1n

— NBC News (@NBCNews) July 17, 2022

So, if two consenting adults of the same sex have exactly the same rights as two consenting adults as the opposite sex do to form a contract that forms the foundation of a lifelong commitment to one another or the start of a family, that is materially different how, I wonder. It seems like perfectly acceptable equal treatment under the law to me. Ted Cruz thinks he knows how this is different in some substantial way. But he's the same guy who let Trump call his wife out as fugly. He's the same guy whose very pointedly Seven Mountains supporting dad probably did not kill JFK, who is expected by loyal Qanon idiots to show up in Dealey Plaza any moment now. He's very much a Dominionist himself.

The Muckrakers and the "Penitent"

 

There is a rumor about one of our GOP congresspeople that I want to obliquely address because it is not well-founded and the timeline doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense. The person in question is not someone I am a fan of, in fact, I think she is a clown who cheapens the political discourse and has no real interest in government policy as much as signifying and showing herself. 

I will not ever call out someone for fucking for money, because if you know what it is to need the money, you get it. And I also don't think anyone's abortion is immoral. If you ever did sex work or terminated a pregnancy for reasons--those are your reasons, and I don't come at someone for that. But if you ever have been there, a sex worker, or having had emergency reproductive care, you don't get to judge other people about what they have done for their lives. Good for me and not for thee isn't morality, it's just selfish and judgmental. She has done other things.  

He's Attached to Reality, All Right

 

Former Attorney General Bill Barr on Pres. Trump pushing baseless conspiracy about Dominion voting machines: "I thought, boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has lost contact with — he's become detached from reality." https://t.co/NRwraEI6rO pic.twitter.com/Mx6vQUR9Xq

— ABC News (@ABC) June 13, 2022

 Not everyone is the hero of their own story when they tell it, but very few people make themselves out to be the villain. Bill Barr might have seen through the conspiracy theories that Trump claimed showed that he won, but he helped in his way with creating the illusion that maybe there was something to the voter fraud issue all the same. And if he thought that Trump was actually not in his right mind (as it is possible that Mike Pompeo and Steve Mnuchin considered as well) then he could have just said so.

It clears Trump to claim he was detached from reality, in a way. Poor old Trump, not knowing how to handle a loss, unable to accept it in the gilded frame of reference of his towering ego.  What's a belief to someone like Trump though? He believes he's worth TEN BILLION DOLLARS, give or take. Some people believe Trump is a Christian, but I think he'd be a Hare Krishna if there was any juice to it. It's like telling him something is good or bad, legal or illegal. Believing makes it so, if you have lived an utterly unaccountable existence. 

But two things happened with the curious belief.  He had the presence of mind to try and keep contesting the election on the basis of it, and to fundraise. He's still doing the latter. There's a whole "Trump Won" grift industry out there. It's a fable, but it's profitable. Even if entirely untrue, Trump will hold onto the claims until he's wrung the last iota of value out of it. 

Barr commented that Trump started making these claims directly after the election was called, before those claims could remotely be investigated. This is because he was always going to make those claims. He laughed when referencing D'Souza's "2000 Mules" nonsense. It should be embarrassing for the GOP that people can still make money off of this bullshit, but man, they still do. It's funny that people exist to be fleeced, and it's also very much not. 

How many elected officials and party hacks have also profited off the voter fraud fable? How many people were threatened or materially harmed? It gets less and less funny. Trump is not detached from reality, but even if he was--is the party that has been his support system and cover-up team all, also, detached from reality? Not quite right in the head? 

No. They are completely sane and fully knowledgeable that the claims about Chinese thermostats and Italian satellites and Venezuelan voting machines and North Korean ballots are bullshit, but they have lied right in their voters' faces and took their money and asked for their votes. 

Let me repeat that: they are completely sane and lied right in their voters' faces and took their money and asked for their votes. 

Is it any wonder they would rather people not watch these hearings, and that they want to discredit them?  They saw who these people they have been lying to can be on 1/6 and what they are capable of if their ire is roused. And I wonder if they ever thought what would happen if those voters realized they were being used as sheep--sometimes merely used for fleecing, and sometimes served up as mutton? 

They didn't just let Trump lie in people's faces and take their money. They helped. Even when people were getting death threats. When their families were being threatened. When the violence broke out 1/6 and subsequently people died. 

Get attached to that reality. It's not even about what Trump believed. What they fuck did his little friends think? 

Jesus, Guns, Babies, and American Exceptionalism

 

Rep Brian Babin (R-TX): "The United States of America has always had guns. It's our history. We were built on the Judeo-Christian foundation and with guns" pic.twitter.com/vldB0ODaS7

— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) May 25, 2022

When Senator Ted Cruz got visibly disturbed during an interview and walked away after the words "American Exceptionalism" were spoken, something snapped into frame for me:  so much of American history seems to assume our current status in the world is the result of faith and superior firepower. The idea of the gun as a sacral part of our national religion isn't really just a metaphor for some of us--it is reality. 

The religious right has long suggested that if "they" (a tyrannical leftist, probably godless Communist, government) come to take the guns away, the Bibles are next. It always sounded like fear-mongering to me of the typical "Red Scare" tropes, but it also resonated as tangentially white supremacist to me because gun-grabbing was the impetus of the uprising in the neo-Nazi classic The Turner Diaries. I'm starting to see it, though, as an artifact of our founding myths, and it defines the divide in our politics--what makes the US unique or great? Are we a creedal nation or a story of blood and soil? And was any of this especially ordained by God? 

Leave it to the "Jesus, Guns, Babies" lady for clarifying this for me--even though she lost her bid for the GOP gubernatorial nomination (or did she? Mike Lindell is asking, so, uh, there's that). The quick capsule review of American history that a lot of people seem to have absorbed goes a little something like this: 

Christopher Columbus discovered the promised land in 1492, then the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock to form a shining city on a hill, so America overthrew British tyranny, had a civil war over states rights, freed the slaves, conquered the West (by killing most of the people previously living there) and then kicked everyone's ass in WW2 because we have nukes now, so thank you Jesus and Smith & Wesson. 

          And they called it manifest destiny. And it was good.

I may be exaggerating, but I don't think I'm off by that much. This is why CRT and the 1619 Project have set the usual suspects off--it challenges their post-Columbian chapters of the American Bible. It's like arguing against creationism.  It fiddles with a worldview where American primacy is founded in freedom and God has always been on our side. They don't see the past is existing outside of the formalized, handed-down from Mount Rushmore version*, and then continue to operate as if might made right. 

And that's where the guns come in. The iron rod is how the faithful Americans earn their New Canaan. The land is purified in blood, because we're in times of tribulation. Wars. Rumors of wars. Pestilence. Famine. You know. Same shit, different century. So you have to be morally and militarily prepared. 

And how do the people in the Church of American Exceptionalism mentally cope with the violence? It's supposed to happen.  It's the Abrahamic sacrifice to show fidelity in order to get that which has been promised. The Lord provided a sheep for the holocaust--and it's hopefully other people's babies. 

That sacrifice is supposed to make us exceptional and give us the freest and most prosperous country on earth. It's why people all over the world want to come here, after all, whether we want them to or not.

Interrupting the Solemnities

 

Democratic gubernatorial challenger Beto O'Rourke interrupted the assembled unified Republicans at their press conference whilst they were performing part of their sacred office--moving from the ritual saying of thoughts and prayers that sanctified the slaughter of the innocents, to the Ceremonial Blaming of Other Things. 

By pronouncing the feared "assigning of blame to Republicans about anything, ever", there was a narrow danger that attention might be directed at the people in the room who literally do less than nothing every single time this horrific nightmare happens. O'Rourke was expelled for the grave sin of politicizing the solemn event, because you know, people who politicize human misery are the wooooorrrrst. The danger past, the Republicans went on to assign blame to various things, like mental illness and doors, as others suggested rap music, fatherlessness, and lack of prayer in the schools. 

This is how Republicans demonstrate that they are so very serious about gun violence, in addition to mentioning Chicago. They will probably all go to a nice NRA event in a couple of days and their jowls will cease to quiver with rage about the heathen who violated their safe space with the threat of accountability and reality-facing. 

Ah! There it Is!

 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) argues Roe v. Wade being overturned won’t be that bad:

“Angry leftists, many of whom are pretty ignorant and don’t even know what overturning Roe means, I think a month afterwards are gonna be surprised — ‘Wait, nothing about my life changed.’” pic.twitter.com/GATZKcVG26

— The Recount (@therecount) May 9, 2022

The condescension! The paternalism! The implication that "You silly bitches would be just fine with your rape babies if you weren't being such stupid sluts about it." (And it will only take a month to settle you! Think about that! A month to get over the loss of a right we've had for 50 years.)

When people concern-troll and tone-police about the optics of actually peaceful sidewalk demonstrations by pro-choice advocates, just keep in mind that this is the guy we're up against. Is Cruz trying to convince a single supporter of the right to choose of anything at all by calling us "ignorant"? He makes sure to add "angry", as if the prospect of fully realized human beings having to beg for recognition vs. the projection of humanity the Bible-bangers want to bestow on the 6-week sprog wasn't something to be good and infuriated about. 

"There, there little dummy. Lie back and enjoy it." I mean, it's a gift, right?  It's an opportunity! 

Tell that to the girls as young as five years of age who have gotten pregnant. Tell that to the already-existing children who could lose a parent to an ectopic pregnancy. 

I don't know that protesting outside of the homes of the justices likely to vote against a human right will change their core beliefs, but it will certainly let them know the opposition exists and is robust. I also don't believe that right-wingers are the least bit honest with us or themselves when they pretend the pro-choice contingent is verging on terrorism by simply speaking out (and I wish our elected leaders would push back on the hypocrisy of this instead of eagerly adopting that frame). I think we know full well who has a history of behaving like terrorists. 

Cruz needn't worry about this turning into another, say, January 6th, after all.  Even if he is very worried about whether a terrified Sam Alito has probably gone into hiding somewhere. Probably Cancun. 

TWGB: Senator Lee Is a Wrong Number

 

I have long thought to myself that Republicans like Senator Lee are simply folks with whom someone like myself can not speak--we share a country and a generation and a common language, but our cultural references are still wholly out of tune. And as for the 1/6 insurrection attempt. it didn't actually surprise me that both Trump and Giuliani wrong-dialed Lee in the hopes of reaching some other senator--because of course Lee was still on their speed-dial and I never thought that, given the participation of thirsty wannabes like Cruz and Hawley, that Lee would be far behind in joining whatever fuckery the certification-opposition had in mind. 

Did I think he was an instigator though, and actually tried to promote Powell's bullshit and Eastman's well before 1/6? Like, as of November 2020? Wow. Ok. That was something else. Take the idea that he was texting Meadows that Powell was a straight shooter. Now, I would not have thought Lee was one of the people urging on a meeting of the minds between Powell and Trump's various campaign lawyers and the White House lawyers who saw little problem with putting on their campaign hats. I was sure the braingenius who invited the Kraken in was Giuliani himself.

But there Lee was. And it wasn't until the press conference where she introduced the stupidest Dominion conspiracy theories ever that were obviously going to get everybody sued that Lee apparently recognized that Powell was all crackers and no soup? 

It seems extraordinary, but wow--the conservative folks sure exist in a whole other informational ecosystem, so, maybe? I mean, how else does Eastman's alternate elector slate scheme seem like a likely successful thing--except in a peculiar microcosm where democracy isn't supposed to be an American ideal? Would it somehow make more sense to him that state legislators in say, Pennsylvania, for some reason, could decide that people voted wrong because the state legislators themselves passed a dumb voting law and invalidated all the votes of that state? And so the state legislature would throw out those insane stupid bad presumed legal but apparently not votes, 

They Couldn't Spoil It--Almost

 

I think I could take a moment to acknowledge something really good and historic happened yesterday and really leave it at that...

But I would be a whole other person if I did not take note of the churlish, contemptuous behavior of the GOP jackaloons that still wanted to be sullen and snitty about the smears that they actually made up. The reason I can't leave it alone is that it was unnecessary for them to try and damage someone's reputation with that kind of calumny, but also the nature of it ("She's a friend tto sex fiends!") is a conspiracy theory classic from the same text as blood libel--a kissing cousin, so to speak, of QAnon.

You can't get a whole bunch of people to believe a cabal of baby-eaters is running the world--but depicting a group as deviant is not as hard a lift and can be just as dangerous. They did this to make her unpalatable by pre-smearing the people who would vote for her confirmation with a kind of guilt by association, vide MTG's despicable Tweet:

She says "Any Senator voting to confirm #KJB (sic) is pro-pedophile just like she is." Right out there for the kids who are slow on the uptake and need it spelled all the way out for them. And of course, Marginal Traitor Greed is a vicious lying extremist, but...no. I guess that really is all I have to say about that. But she has definitely articulated, baldly, what Senator Hawley tried to set in motion/ 

In any case, I'd like to think that only the far-right, already Q-enmired types would think this plausible, but I can't help but notice how neatly it folds into the new claim that people opposing the dangerous and dumb "Don't Say Gay" bills are "groomers". This tactic isn't pure politics--it's eliminationist. It uses fear to silence people and wage terror on those who don't stay silent. 

So while I want to embrace this history-making moment, I am disgusted by the antics of those who decided now was a great time to play a dangerous and stupid game with the process. 

TWGB: "More Likely Than Not"

 

A federal judge ruled Monday that President Donald Trump “more likely than not” attempted to illegally obstruct Congress when he tried to subvert the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021.

from @kyledcheney @joshgerstein & mehttps://t.co/7hAY1gvB1J

— Nicholas Wu (@nicholaswu12) March 28, 2022

More likely than not that Trump committed some felonies? You know, people are saying that. All over, actually. So what are we talking about:

Carter, who sits in federal court in California, said that the plan Eastman helped develop was obviously illegal and that Trump knew it at the time, but pushed forward with an effort he says would have effectively ended American democracy. 

“If Dr. Eastman and President Trump’s plan had worked, it would have permanently ended the peaceful transition of power, undermining American democracy and the Constitution,” Carter wrote. “If the country does not commit to investigating and pursuing accountability for those responsible, the Court fears January 6 will repeat itself.”

Trump and his little friends committed felony obstruction pursuant to the fraud they perpetrated that the election was "stolen" from Trump, to steal the election for Trump.  And by spreading that fraudulent message far and wide, they framed it in words that indicated violence would be necessary. 

And what is additionally disgraceful is that US senators and congressional representatives were actively helping.  In my opinion, that makes them accomplices--more likely than not. 

You Won't Steal Our Joy

The Senate confirmation hearing of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson got super emotional when Sen. Cory Booker brought Jackson to tears with his touching testimony on racial progression. https://t.co/imXiGk6ZeS

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) March 23, 2022

Where Republicans mugging for the camera and showing every willingness to swim in the sewer to drag an exceptionally qualified Black woman through the mud for the dopamine hit of a Fox News spot exist, I am refreshed to focus on the only US Senator who brought Judge Jackson to tears, Senator Cory Booker, because he supported and respected and showed his joy for this glass-ceiling shattering woman. 

If the calumny and slander of the mugging mental mites, the political parasites, the social media self-checkers like Cruz and the drama-queens like Lindsey Graham, the unapologetic militant police state loving fuckfaces like Tom Cotton and the weasel-headed insurrectionist sumbitches like Josh Hawley made anyone ever want to take a long Silkwood-style shower, he gave us this refreshing moment, this shower of love, to study how Judge Jackson has borne up during an onslaught intended to rattle her and shake her faith. 

And she has persevered throughout questioning that has more to do with right-wing axe-grinding and the next election cycle than her own nomination. She is being accused because less qualified candidates than her were rightly challenged, but a party that no longer has a grip on right and wrong can only see tit for tat. 

I've raged, because I can, watching this, and she cannot, because she is living this and has to be professional. When Sen. Cotton accuses her of loving terrorists because of her service as a public defender, I want to intimately introduce him to the concept of due process that actually is a cornerstone of the Constitution he himself swore an oath to and is pretending now not to know about by shoving said document down his narrow throat. Also, I think GWB and company actually are guilty of war crimes and I've been saying so for years. 

When Josh Hawley accuses her, a woman and mother of daughters, of being soft on sex criminals, I want to throw out the discussion of whether he was slow as MO AG to investigate Gov. Eric Greitens' crimes until it was politically convenient to do so. His silence on Roy Moore. And the general disapprobation he is rightly receiving for this slander. 

As a woman, I cringe at the contempt and condescension thrown her way, the interruptions by men who think they are great because the Fox News camera is going to love them. I can only imagine what it would be to be a Black woman seeing this appalling display of white men in power, trying to disempower a woman every bit their equal in education and dignity, and their superior in mastery of herself. 

I have no doubt she will be seated on the highest bench, but I am appalled at this display by such obvious political maneuvers by pure partisan shitheads. Have they no shame? Of course not. Can their shame-glands be kickstarted by anything at all? I don't even know, but I have feet and time. 

TWGB: One Insurrection, Many Fronts

 

Forgive me for returning to Senator Cruz, groveller, for a minute, because he revealed a dynamic that is both faintly hilarious and deeply disturbing in that he knows that the FBI didn't fucking instigate the melee on 1/6, and he was one of the fuckfaces who gave a speech to rile up the crowd on 1/6 and also had been spewing nonsense about wanting to argue extremely dodgy Texas AG Ken Paxton's lawsuit against the states who voted the wrong way. One of the reasons he gave credence to the whole Epps thing is because he would love something else to be at fault other than literally everything he aided and abetted. And I had thought at the time that Cruz, like Josh Hawley and others, was simply playing a very cynically game and performing stupid tricks for the camera--but these tricks were at least treason-adjacent. But maybe he was an actual believer,

I mean, the insurrectionists thought he was. "What a tangled web we weave...." as the Bard might have put it. 

But the recent arrest of Oath Keepers' founder Stewart Rhodes and 10 others for seditious conspiracy changes things a bit because it looks there was an organized effort to take the Capitol and hold it and bring in more firepower in order to enact more violence for a specific end. (Getting the election decided for Trump, obvs.)  Now, hacks like Byron York or Brit Hume might be dismissive of the "attempted" insurrection in rather the way they scoffed at Trump's attempted extortion of the president of Ukraine, but facts are stubborn things, and when there is violence attached to them, they become harder to ignore. So obviously, if Rhodes and the Oath Keepers were planning before 1/6, they weren't riled up in the few days before-but were...waiting for this and dead certain Trump called them up for this--so says their lawyer!   And their readiness was exploited by cynical political machinations. 

How cynical?  I noted back in December 2020 that Trump supporters were already fomenting violence in contested states and that false electors were trying to put forward their own pro-Trump slates. I thought that was a kind of weird futile stunt then, but obviously unhealthy. But in the paradigm of the Trump Eastman memo and all that, these alternate slates existed in case Pence went ahead and rejected the confirmed states Trump wanted him to. Seven states put in alternate slates of electoral votes for Trump. The likelihood of them being accepted was remote and the process of submitting them was fraudulent, but it also looks coordinated because it wasn't just all these folks in these states having the same bright idea, right? No! That looks like a group effort. I'd love to know is Meadows has a story about that. 

Ted Cruz and His Acrobatic Spectacle

 

I've mentioned before what a loss it is to the theater that Ted Cruz went into politics when it's only too clear, his true love is performance. Last night, the senator took to television to offer yet another performance, that of a penitent, as he knelt barefoot in the snow abjectly hoping that Tucker Carlson would grant him absolution for having dared to call the insurrectionists of 1/6 "terrorists".  He admitted to using "sloppy" language in calling them that--even if it is a word he has consistently used since, well, January 7th last year. 

It is rare to see such nimble bending over backwards in a man of his age, but he has the benefit of no spine and years of practice. But I'm sure he would never take back his estimation of who the true terrorists in this country are, even if they were certainly not the ones who invaded his workplace and threatened to kill his colleagues. He's not that flexible. And he fell short of co-signing Tucker Carlson's pet (conspiracy) theory, that the FBI done did it (which had been echoed recently by the wretched Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene). But give him time. There may be new tricks in the old boy yet.

They've Got To Be Carefully Taught

 

When I was a kid, we got taught about the Golden Rule, and it was a pretty good rule as they go: Do unto Others as you would have them do unto You. You don't hit other kids or call them names or pick on them for being different or any of that, because if that happened to you, you would feel bad. You had to stop and think--is this how I would want to be treated? Would I want to be picked on for being different? Would I want to be teased if I was clumsy, or talked slow, or was fat or didn't have nice clothes? 

It was simple, and direct. It was about respecting others and the basis for good citizenship in the classroom and anywhere else. It wasn't new-fangled jargon, but time-tested and ancient religion-approved. 

Did I learn this concept found in scripture in a church--no. Your blogger never wandered into a formal religious setting before the age of ten or eleven. I learned it in public school, in kindergarten. Was I indoctrinated at the tender age of five to some startling multicultural program (I mean, my school was desegregated and I understood after this simple precept how racism was wrong because obviously--how would I want to be treated?) I still absorbed a lot of my culture's dumbfuck attitudes and I'm going to be sorting out the headtrip that whiteness is for a while, yet. I wouldn't say I was indoctrinated. 

Surely, not everyone who was in the same kindergarten class as me has come to my POV. We are individuals, not blank slates. We're not human Silly Putty pulling up cartoons from the Sunday funnies.

TWGB: We Said He Wasn't Right

 

President Biden threw his support behind the top U.S. military officer, Mark Milley, a day after a new book said he went around civilian leaders to place secret calls to his Chinese counterpart over concerns about then-President Donald Trump https://t.co/mgr8I1Rd7T pic.twitter.com/0PNUDrO7rx

— Reuters (@Reuters) September 16, 2021

Pause to consider for an instant what happened in a brief span--a leak from Woodward's latest book reveals that post-1/6, Trump was so out-of-bounds that Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley wanted to see to it that there were additional guardrails in place to prevent an international catastrophe from occurring.  The reality seems to be that Milley's actions weren't quite as "mavericky" as the book depicts. And I'm not privileging the insights from one view of his actions over the other, I wasn't there and am no military expert. 

What's fascinating to me is people who seized on whether Milley trying to mitigate the apparent volatility of the CinC was wrong (if not treasonous!) instead of noting that the outgoing president was, in fact, acting as if out of his goddamn mind. After all, it's not a secret that Trump made decisions after his loss that weren't really "America First" but seem like a tantrum made manifest in abrupt foreign policy dictates.  And, as I've regularly indicated here in the blog--the man is not well. Trump has boasted that he is a "stable genius" at regular intervals, and believe me, no one does that unless their intellect and stability were both seriously under question.

But Senator Marco Rubio roared out of the gate to demand that Milley be fired for his temerity.  Which is something that would just mean Biden appoints a new one (although for crying out loud--I guess GOP senators would make a "thing" out of the "advise and consent" deal. After all, blocking State Department picks, or State Department and DOD picks for insincere counterproductive reasons (for a value of counterproductive that includes national security but does not include self-promotion) is apparently the new trifling stunt from the clown shoes brigade that triflingly stunted over the Biden election confirmation. 

I could point out, as I have before, so what good does it do us that someone is telling us this--NOW? But to be clear, any corroboration that TrumpWorld has operated and still does operate around the damaged psyche of a spoiled brat with neither empathy nor loyalty is necessary to keep in view in a world where this guy is still considered a GOP 2024 presidential frontrunner, and not an epically disgraced has-been. It is also good to remind people that the current administration is coping with fall-out of irresponsible choices made by the previous administration.

And it serves to tell us who is still a deluded dupe paddling in The Former Guy's wake, incapable of committing the sin of ever holding Trump accountable for anything.  You can tell who they are, because they blame Trump's failures on the people who tried to curb his foolishness, because in a world where expertise is demonized, mere competence itself is considered suspect. 

Although, IMHO, not too many current GOP officeholders need to be overwhelmingly concerned about being considered "suspect".