The Russia Campaign Reminds Me--

 

This is what Tenet Media was broadcasting for Putin in the U.S. They support Elon Musk, Trump, RFK Jr, and violent protests. 1/ pic.twitter.com/s3C2BPCZl6

— Karen Piper (@PiperK) September 8, 2024

If you take a look at the topics above, you'll note among other things--misogyny.  This was a key part of the 2014 "Gamergate" dry run and a big part of the attacks on Hillary Clinton. It's why my ears perked up at the allegation that gamers were part of the Russian disinfo targeting for the 2024 election. (And minorities--that voter suppression technique that was used pretty well in 2016, both by Brad Parscale for Trump as he admitted and by the Internet Research Agency on "parallel tracks".) 

Flashforward to 2024, and we have Tucker Carlson, whose Putin interview and Moscow supermarket adulation were both deemed surprisingly cringey even to producers of Kremlim-inspired sludge, calling women in the US military: feces. 

Tucker Carlson is revolted by our war wounded.

He compares them to literal shit.

He will almost certainly have a position in the second Trump Administration.pic.twitter.com/5QSoyVvHjH

— Veterans For Responsible Leadership (@VetsForRL) September 8, 2024

Little Jimmy and the Operation: A Trump Fable

 

Trump: Can you imagine you're a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, Jimmy, I love you so much. Go have a good day in school and your son comes back with a brutal operation. pic.twitter.com/ChmwpavFAH

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 7, 2024

The school nurse can't even give out aspirin*, and now kids are supposed to be getting "a brutal operation" in school? What "brutal operation"? Are they handing out appendectomies? Emergency tracheotomies? Is there a full surgical theater in your son's or daughter's school you need to worry about? (Are they more likely to be slapping on tourniquets in the case of an actual bloody emergency--all too probable.)

Long story short--Little Jimmy is not going to get his Liitler Jimmy whacked off while at school. Teachers are paying for glue sticks and dry erase markers out of pocket and supposedly school districts are doing bottom surgery on your precious wee manlet? You would think Trump of all people would be skeptical about the promise of free vaginas being handed out. And it's not escaping me that he is afraid for little Jimmy, not little Agatha getting a double mastectomy. 

This is not happening. This is on the "furry kids using a litter box at school" level of not happening. It's simply nucking futz. It's on the same level of not-happening as the supposed latest term-post-birth abortion. He's now said it more than once, and maybe that means it's going to be a part of stump speeches, now. And it speaks to other fears parents might have: their boys aren't transgender--but just a bit queer. Maybe they are autistic, artistic, kind, sensitive, don't do sports, respect women, aren't about to grow up and ride a Lingam-1500 male-insecurity wagon with truck nuts and a Trump flag to their he-man signifying maleness job. Maybe they just have to also compete with girls who are smart as fuck and might be better at them in things. 

This Isn't Good Journalism or Good Politics

 

On last night's exclusive ABC interview with the president of the United States, we saw a very confused man ask a question, lose track of the answer, then ask that same question moments later as if he didn't ask it at all. Many, many times. (See how this works?)

I'm talking about George Stephanopoulos, of course, who sounded like he trying to take the car keys away from Daddy while Pops was trying to win the Indianapolis 500.  I don't know what it did for ABC's ratings, but I know what it did for my opinion of journalism today.  That's right--my priors were reinforced. And if you thought Biden was an old man in denial about the approach of time, you probably came away the same way, and if you thought he was doing a good job as president and to leave him the hell alone about one debate, you probably didn't see anything that worried you--

Except for the fact that this wasn't journalism. It was a staged event with false stakes imposed on it--every bit as much a media presentation as a softball interview. It didn't have to be "adversarial" in tone to keep the question of whether the Reaper was playing keepsies with the Commander in Chief's marbles. If Biden sounded confident, he was too confident. If he sounded dismissive.... etc. 

But how you deny you've lost it without sounding in denial? (A-hah! A "Non-denial denial"!) How do you dismiss the results of a debate vs. the results of a strong legislative agenda? (The time for dismissing the debate and pointing to the scoreboard was probably before the debate, but then we would have had chin-stroking about "Why is Biden avoiding a debate?" Bad faith is bottomless when the floor is shame, and people stop having any.) 

A Republic--If You Can Keep It

 

This is what the New York Times chose to publish on Independence Day just one week after the Supreme Court ruled that Republican presidents are above the law. pic.twitter.com/URoJg6ohru

— @StephenWolf.bsky.social (@PoliticsWolf) July 4, 2024

The New York Times, which has been going out of their way to promote "Biden is too old and must drop out" editorials this week, decided the way to follow up on that terrible trend was to platform some mook who wants to pretend voting is a bit of hogwash. Well...not just some mook. Matthew Walther is a Catholic conservative (although it's hard to say if he just sort of is a hater in general--he calls the Constitution a "231-year old piece of toilet paper" in this screed against the Tea Party libertarians) --just like Leonard Leo and Steve Bannon and the derpsticks who ruled Trump is kind of/sort of a monarch.

Encouraging people not to vote (especially if one does, in fact, vote--possibly for Tulsi Gabbard which feels like fuckery) is a kind of voter suppression. Which is weirdly in line with Russian active measures to undermine confidence in voting. 

Democracy depends upon an engaged, informed population. The press can be a valuable part of that process of informing and engaging citizens--or it can do whatever this is. The chattering classes who write about politics are, when not encouraging apathy, so stuck on horserace politics that in the discussion of possibly replacing President Biden on the ticket have invented a fantasy horserace to write about. 

Is there nothing else to write about? Maybe how often Trump was mentioned in Epstein court documents? His new Saudi project? What Ivanka and Jared are up to in Albania and with whom? Anything to do about Project 2025--but especially how it would permit foreign nasties to interfere in our elections? (I remember when Trump wanted to cooperate with Russia on "the cyber"--do you?)

The Steaming Manure of 2000 Mules

 

Pardoned felonious dirtbag Dinesh D'Souza wrote a genuinely fraudulent book stating that the 2020 election was stolen, and absolutely everything was wrong with it. Now Salem Media Group wants nothing to do with it or the film made from it because they do not want their whole ass sued off of them. 

This is a very clear stance largely based in the very real situation that what D'Souza posits is indefensible and that he used bad false data to defame real people. You know, the same way Rudy Giuliani defamed real election workers with his false claims, and for which he is now being disbarred and bankrupt because he decided to use fraud to do treason.

(Look, you can say I'm over the top to call this "treason", but when Russian active measures support Trump, I don't equivocate about that--why? Why do they want this senile indebted corrupt and easily blackmailable asshole for president? Because he is the entire handbook of "people you would never give top secret clearance to" and there he nonetheless was. Scooping up boxes to take to Mar-a-Lago and by some accounts, having scooped some off to Bedminster while he was at it. Given his Oval office performance with Lavrov and his little gimp act at Helsinki, you want to bet he never sold assets out to his lil' friend Putin? Therefore, if I were a patriot, I would simply not accept their witch hunt intel about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, because how in the hell is that the American Way? And I would view his Mar-a-Lago docs case way differently from how blindfolded hostage judge Aileen Cannon seems to have . Are you okay Aileen? Blink or something!) 

Liar's Polka

 

Host: At the end of the book you say, the very first thing you would do if you got to the WH that was different from Biden, is you would make sure Biden's dog was nowhere on the grounds. Commander say hello to cricket. Are you trying to look tough? pic.twitter.com/oAlQBHDCmd

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 5, 2024

"Liar's Polka", not "Liar's Poker" because this woman is moving her feet all over the place but doesn't have a lick of an idea how to play a game. She doesn't just kill her own dogs, but wants to kill Biden's dog? (Hint: A potential Trump VP candidate?)

That is not a Biden problem, that is very much a Kristi Noem problem. She is very tough on livestock and her imagined conversations with world leaders, but she is as dumb as her foot and a half of natural hair extensions and her prime-time makeover. 

So here is how dumb Noem wants to be--she supposedly read the galleys of her ghostwritten political memoir, and even voiced the audio book, but is only just now realizing she never met Kim Jong Un and that's a problem. Somehow someone else's problem. She says she met other world leaders, but she isn't talking about that because...I dunno. 

Roger Stone pushes elector plot on tape

Doesn't it remind you a little of the "Green Bay Sweep?" It should. Like the "Eastman Memos" it really suggests the bid to just declare victory and throw out Democratic votes was always part of the plan.  We always knew Trump would plan to declare he won early and take advantage of the "Red Mirage" to pretend the election was being stolen.  Trump and friends were going to bet on their little fan club's ignorance of how voting worked to pretend the steal was a thing, when they were going to do the stealing. After the fact of course. By leaning on every GOP person with the full force of the White House and all that. 

The dumbfuck thing was how many Trump stans fell for it. And he expects they will again when he reinvokes the same busted shit from a Bedminster stage in order to pretend he was exactly right to lean on the Georgia state campaign apparatus. Does anyone seriously believe he has some new shit he didn't wave from the rafters before he got indicted in Georgia? Like since he lost in 2020? 

It sounds stupid to me, like something he's doing to once again threaten some court somewhere to gag him so he can play FREEZEPEACHMARTYR!  I think he would adore the opportunity to have posters strewn about with his mouth sealed with duct tape or the like. Poor Trumpy, celebrity, owner of Truth Social, silenced. A victim of trying to do too much, to care too much, to be too much. Why do they hate him for being so awesome?

One thing better he could do? Gather up and pay his 2020 lawyers like Guiliani (who is apparently flat busted broke) that he forgot to pay anything to. In order to prevent them explaining in detail why their holding forth totally is fraud/crime exception in their plea deal.  Since he apparently didn't pay them and they got indicted anyway. And he went and fundraised on his trials and tribulations. 

But he won't think of that in a hurry. And that's great, too. I don't care. I am rooting for maximum Trump enbuggeration. Self embuggerment. Ye olde own petard-hoistification.  I dunno. The thing of when he goes off and finally fully fucks himself. 

The Spirit of 2016 and the Illegal Meme

 

For some people, it's never stopped being 2020, and for the immuno-suppressed and their families, I get that. For me, it's never stopped being 2016, when begun, the meme wars were. The 2016 presidential election had an extraordinary amount to do with digital presence, and I don't think we've yet absorbed all of the lessons from how foreign influencers and Pepe-heads took over the conversation and suppressed part of the vote or rendered the importance of the franchise to "vibes". 

I have talked about the Brad Parscale/Internet Research Agency dual strategies at targeted voter suppression a few times in the course of TrumpWorld Grab-Bags because the similarities in tactics were tandem and synergetic. The Trump campaign in 2016 deliberately worked to target Black voters and peel them off of from the Democratic candidate. The same thing was done with the IRA. 

So if we take a look at recently convicted Douglass Mackey, who created voter suppression memes during 2016 as part of his online "Ricky Vaughn" persona, we see an individual not necessarily directly associated with a campaign or foreign influence, who nonetheless tried to influence an election through fraud. The text message, the option to vote via text, was inauthentic. The line was real, if not a valid way to vote. 

TWGB: We Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

 

So, it wasn't actually Tuesday that the indictment of former president Donald Trump happened, and I'm not really surprised, because why in the world would we take for granted something he says, anyway? While his planned protests (a disturbing idea in and of themselves) weren't especially robust, he got the turnout I should have known he would have been looking for--a lucrative one. Because it's all about that grift, isn't it? He plucked the pigeons for over $1.5 million. 

The emails are kind of disgusting if you aren't a MAGAt. Save our country (from, what, due process of a reasonably-suspected felon?) and it could happen to you! (sure, I don't know how many porn stars you've ever had to pay off to protect your presidential campaign, but sure--it could happen to you!) They operate on the same absurd logic he used during both of his impeachments--they aren't doing this to me--they are doing this to you. 

But of course that is stupid. He pays fines himself. He goes to prison alone. You, the hypothetical Trump supporter, do what political supporters of other candidates have done since forever. You loved Nixon, but now you are okay with Ford. You wanted George Bush but you got Ronald Reagan. You wanted John McCain, but you got George W.  You wanted Newt Gingrich but you got Mitt Romney--look, there has to be a morning after Donald Trump. He's not the only Republican on the face of the planet who can credibly run for president if you can call running for president after one disastrous term with two impeachments, a net loss of jobs, an insurrection and a post-presidential term classified documents scandal plus the threat of multiple indictments on the docket a credible run! 

There is a Reason Kari Lake Lost

 

"There's not a darn reason we should've lost" -- Kari Lake comes close to admitting defeat pic.twitter.com/ek12xUjENy

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 24, 2023

But a recent news story tells us exactly what happened: she did it to herself.  

But according to the Republic, Lake’s loss boils down to the fact that she alienated vast swaths of her fellow Republicans, pointing to a recent analysis of the public voting records to identify the “disaffected voters” who support the majority of candidates from one political party but cast a vote for the opposing party in a specific race.

“The numbers show that while Lake claims she lost because of printer problems or other issues in Maricopa County,” wrote the Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl, “she could have won had she not turned off voters in the state’s most populous county who backed a host of other Republican candidates”:

Or long story short:

Kari Lake Lost Because Nearly 40,000 Maricopa County Voters Cast Ballots for Other GOP Candidates, But Not Her

Because maybe she needed the "John McCain Republicans" she was so hot to deride.  Maybe she made it too easy for Katie Hobbs to turn down a debate by acting exactly like the radical that Hobbs wanted to depict her as. And maybe focusing on the last election--2020--cost her 2022 because she wasn't focused on winning, but what to do if she lost. 

And bizarrely, she's still in denial-land. She's still trying to appeal her loss. Her Twitter feed and that of her "War Room" share random data points that don't prove any coordinated fraud, and she sits and bitches about her loss with people like Bannon who shouldn't be touched with a twenty-foot pole and supports Mike Lindell (!?) for RNC chair. Or Harmeet Dhillon. Depending on the day you ask. Anyone but whoever let her lose. But she ran a campaign that doubled down on stupid and is now setting herself up to look like an election denialist kook if she runs for anything else. 

And I say "Good". Better we all understand who we are dealing with so that Ruben Gallego kicks her narrow ass if she runs for Senate. And maybe she is just taking a very dishonest page from her hero, Donald Trump's, book regarding the profitability of crying "rigged". It's a pretty decent dollar--that fake indignation dollar. 

It would be lovely not to ever hear from this crank again. 

This Sums Up the Day For Me

 

You signed a bill last year eliminating the requirement for Texas schools to teach about MLK’s “I have a dream” speech. https://t.co/Lm8m1cXazN

— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) January 16, 2023

All Republicans who have promoted anti-CRT (which is so nebulous it might as well be "anti-Black History") curriculums and also who have gone out of their way to support voter suppression and create hateful divisions among people based on race and creed have no business putting Martin Luther King, Jr.'s name in their mouths--but they do try. And they do it in a way that tastes like an insult, to be honest. If they are going to stand for everything the man fought against, they could just as well choose to stay quiet and let their actions speak for themselves, because that's what will actually be remembered of them, anyway.

UPDATE: More of this, actually:

delete your tweet rand. https://t.co/KzovVTcQOW pic.twitter.com/NettLrb0HQ

— Annie Wu (all socials: annie_wu_22) (@Annie_Wu_22) January 16, 2023

We all know the senator changed his mind in an election year and supported the act he previously blocked.  But we don't forget a lot out here on the internet. 

Protecting their "Source"?

 

After the 2016 presidential election, Gregg Phillips of True the Vote claimed, without evidence, he had “verified” that over 3 million votes had been cast by noncitizens — just enough to wipe out Hillary Clinton’s margin in the popular vote tally. https://t.co/Zz3fflw3fd

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 1, 2022

Is it to protect a valuable insider or to protect the grift? Because I don't know... 

But I do know their lies are leading to voter intimidation and vote suppression right now. 

UPDATE: I mean, and always have, stuff like True the Vote is always an op.  Big money is spent telling dumb motherfuckers to go out and do maybe illegal stuff because of vague and manipulated data and it is not some grassroots concern--it's always big wheels turning. The idea that people will be arrested for interfering with actual lawful voting (because voter intimidation is a crime) could become a casus belli  for people who want to fight for the right to deny anyone the vote because of some outward stigmata of brownness, youth, or gender fuckery that makes legal papers bearing one's proper gender an issue (that common sense could easily resolve, but in tetchy ridiculous civil rights tribunal terms, would not be).

I like anything that tells these bigoted fucks "No." Like staying their armed and ready asses from continuing to intimidate voters.

Sometimes Mules Kick

After the trouble that Regnery went to to try and sue-proof Dinesh D'Souza's stupid Trump-fluffing conspiracy-wank over the 2020 elections, it turns out that he is going to get sued for the stupidity of naming names in his dumb movie. There's a lot of fraud to confront in the old conservative movement (slaps hood of conservative movement-mobile); you can fit so much malign intent in here. I kind of figured this might happen.

D'Souza is operating in an alternative fact reality disconnected from the idea that "the libs" that he means to own are actual people with agency, livelihoods, families, etc. He struggles to be a relevant meme-producer now that actual relevance (having peaked in his youth as a Reagan employee forty years ago) has mostly passed him by, and he dropped all credibility in the Obama years when a POC of color in office broke his brain and he thought he had to defend colonialism. 

It has to hurt when your grip on utility is owning libs and you don't even have the credit to rent libs by the day. When your multiple Twitter threads always cast doubt on your anti-socialist bona fides with the caveat that you enjoy being publicly owned. Does it hurt to be a formerly philandering felon falling while fellating Trump by fomenting fraudulence for funds, also feloniously? 

I myself could not say, because I could never imagine trying to pin a case of voter fraud on people who cast mail-in ballots at a box near to them because they just happened to be near that site when it was probably near a school or strip mall or other place they regularly habituated because it was in their neighborhood and they live and shop and do errands and take their kids places around there. That people are generally around and about a spot they live near isn't a case of fraud. It's how living in a neighborhood works. The cell phone geolocation thing is dumb and bad and D'Souza should feel bad.

But he won't until he is sued for a lot of money, and I hope other people join in, because, hey--this is America. And while I don't think the defamation suit will fix the little red wagons of the people who believe the Big Lie about voter fraud (any more than a suit against True the Vote and the obvious federal case needed there would), maybe it would discourage the next Big Liar. 

And sometime that much itself feels like a win. 

Reality is What Red State Governors Can Get Away With

 

NEW AUDIO: Brian Kemp says he is open to banning contraceptionhttps://t.co/8SVPoL2uT0

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) September 15, 2022

I noted in my comments regarding Sen. Graham's 15 week abortion ban proposal that it is always reasonable to define Republicans as being just as extremist as they tell us they are--and here is another proof.

Gov. Kemp., who isn't the biggest fan of democracy, doesn't care that a lot of women do use birth control or at least feel like this is a good option for women to have.  If the Dobbs decision means he can ban birth control, despite the needs or desires of the women of his state, he feels like this is okay--because once you start culling the voter rolls of voters you don't think are with you, you stop giving a fuck about whether you are aligned with the voters' needs or concerns. You just side with the right-wing ideologues who brought you. 

Georgians, check your voter registration. If you are not on the rolls, you have until October 11.  Your governor does not care about your choices and wants to take them away. 

I hate governors who want to take rights away. This is why I am dead-set against Doug Mastriano in my neck of the woods, who is the same or worse. He scoffs at "my body, my choice", too. And I will live with my body my whole life, but I won't live comfortably if I didn't fight against someone who wanted to make choices for everyone else without considering their whole life experience and reality. Or rather, just keep government out of it. 

It's not their right. And they should not be in a position to pretend it is. 

UPDATE: Because we are not ever finished with radical Republican, woman-hating ideas, I have two related stories to add. First, there's a Michigan candidate for Attorney General who thinks Plan B should be treated like fentanyl. Yes, Plan B, the "morning after pill"--which is an emergency contraceptive. If life starts at conception, preventing conception would be, um, not taking a life. Don't worry, though, because the gentleman would do this having no idea how any of that works. He is just really certain that if you were the recipient of unexpected penis, you need to deal with unexpected fetus. And carry it all the way through. Why yes! He is a Republican. (My beloved friends and acquaintances let's don't ever have GOP AG's. They really are the worst.)

The other vicious nightmare of a potential Republican future is criminal penalties for abortion patients. They want to imprison people who terminate pregnancies, or worse.  Probably the death penalty. After all, if you want to say abortion is murder, what better way to signify that you are "pro-life" than to put someone to death for ending a pregnancy? And I can easily imagine people on death row for miscarriages, because why wouldn't someone with their head up their ass about the "miracle of life" add miscarriage of justice to the tragedy of potential life lost? 

The SCOTUS Dobbs decision has legitimized the logic of the clinic-bombers into law. To my mind, the vagaries of human sexual intercourse and development of human embryos are such that the law should back the whole hell off of trying to codify what is collectively right and leave a space for pregnant individuals to be respectfully treated as unique private persons with their own moral, physical, mental, economic realities. There was a lot of wisdom in the Roe decision, and today's partisan court totally lost the plot. 

Ron DeSantis: The Chicken and the Egg

 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis thought his new task force had found 20 people who voted illegally in 2020.

Now we're learning the rest of the story: Florida officials apparently told these people they could vote. - @MaddowBlog https://t.co/0uapuxrfoR

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) August 31, 2022

I've long been of the opinion that the authoritarian in part craves total control because they aren't really good at keeping things in line. The trains aren't really being kept on time, but you can wail the hell out of people who claim otherwise and it's about as good. When I see, say, Gov. Abbott send immigrants in busses off to NY or post TX National Guard at the border, it's obviously for show, but there's an underlying administrative failure there:

Is this the best use of his state's resources to deal with an issue, or is it just an ostentatious abuse of power to bolster his own public image, at the public's expense?  Is the show to hide the incompetence, or is the incompetence the point that establishes the need for the show?

The same thing goes for DeSantis--if his own state's officials created the mess where former felons believed it was fully correct to register and vote, was it incompetence that he's now capitalizing on, or was it entrapment? Did he help create the situation he's now punishing them for because his government is inept or is he a devious monster? 

As with any "state of mind arguments" (like the ever popular "ignorant or lying" question regarding politicians' pronouncement) I would say it's terrible either way. But if DeSantis did set up people just to create a voter fraud narrative, that is heinous. And if he continues to prosecute people for an administrative cock-up of his own officials--ditto.

He's a little would-be tyrant and not as "normal" a politician as his supporters want us to believe.

 

TWGB: The Damage Bad People Do

 

JUST IN: Oath Keeper Thomas Caldwell has been accused by prosecutors of keeping a “death list” that included the names of election officials on it (he calls it a benign “doodle pad.”)

In a filing tonight, Caldwell revealed the names on his pad:

Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss pic.twitter.com/HhKA3nDHJ4

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) July 30, 2022

These regular people doing a commendable job that supports our democracy were placed on a death list. A "doodle pad" about who needs to die for just doing an extremely useful and necessary job. 

Trump's lie could have gotten them killed.

Newsflash, for the idiots who think election workers at any basic site have enough input to finagle an election loss or win: fuck you. Counting is just a cumulative effort. They have no way of knowing within the process where any count stands to know how many votes it would take to shift things another way. There just isn't any dependable way to steal an election by fucking with votes, because polls aren't votes. If they were--Hillary Clinton would have won in 2016. 

The idea that the vote could be finagled with is a conceit made up by the people who want to retcon the election. That is to say--Trump election deniers. Because, and please think about this deeply and truly, if you couldn't win on your own, and didn't know how many votes you would need to win, wouldn't the easiest way to try to win be to just throw out votes that weren't for you after the fact?  That's what the Trump scheme was. He and his friends badgered election officials in Georgia and Arizona, etc., to just not count the votes that were from the people Trump preferred not be counted. 

Now, Oath Keepers are just some variety of thugs, and let's not mistake the people who Trump's permission structure temporarily and feloniously deputized in the heat of the insurrectionist moment for being sheriffs or bailiffs who could cart away the ballots that made Trump an irrelevancy. Trump gave the worst people the best shot at doing their worst.  That's why the insurrection went down the way it did. Every soft-skulled crab felt deputized that day. That's why they did their worst. They thought they were being deputies of Team Trump.  

We are learning that not only did the Secret Service, but also Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli have missing texts from that day. Wow, and how much does it definitely look like not an accident, but an "on-purpose".  Realistically, it's hard to look at the Secret Service reset as anything but a coverup based on the timing. 

I am not even sure how to convey the badness of everything Trump touched in retrospect,  But it looks like Trump's corruption damaged whole government agencies because he put bad people in charge and they, too, acted like his deputies, not like honest people.  And dishonest people can do a lot of damage.

This Is The GOP

 

This is the Affirmative Action pick for Vice President. If you think this is bad, just wait til their Affirmative Action pick for the Supreme Court is handed a lifetime appointment. pic.twitter.com/XArHeTKwct

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) March 21, 2022

You might know Charlie Kirk from being a big-headed manchild without a college degree who talks to conservative youth about white supremacist nonsense, or, if you're lucky, you don't know this SOB at all.

What I do know is that the elected Vice-President of the United States has been the DA for San Francisco, the AG for the state of California, and a US Senator. That's not affirmative action, those are qualifications. That's actual work at actual jobs of importance. In the way that being a well-paid dupe peddling lies to dopes is not work. She works to make things suck less. Charlie Kirk exists to make things suck more.

Judge Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson is a highly educated legal professional who clerked with Justice Breyer and went on to an established judicial career. She has significant experience both as a defense lawyer and a judge, and has been rated by her peers (not Charlie Kirk, who is certainly not one of those) as well-qualified. 

There shouldn't need to be an answer to the mindless burblings of a racist fool, but I'm of the mind that you should call these assholes out loudly and often. And the reason is, he's only foghorning the racism to the folks too dim to hear the subtle dog-whistles blown by the more legitimate GOP spokes-cretins. (Brit Hume also made a slightly snide allusion to whether VP Harris "ticked boxes" today. Did he mean a racial box? Is he putting down her qualifications, as if no presidential ticket in history ever did not have certain voter demographic considerations in mind?)

It's a little defensive and maybe even shrill when Sen. Lindsey Graham has to tell us that the GOP are "used to" being called racists. But why have they never taken the hint and looked at why that keeps happening, especially when they elected a whole birther as president and are now using QAnon tropes against a Black woman? 

When they are supported by people who want to carry Confederate flags and think "Black Lives Matter" is a radical statement, and they cater to that ethos, maybe there's a pretty good reason they are being called that. When GOP allegations regarding "voter fraud" all seem to point to concern about turnout in places where people of color vote, they aren't really hiding anything. 

When Sen, Marsha Blackburn wonders if Judge Jackson is carrying a hidden CRT agenda through a handful of what I will generously call "misunderstandings" about what any of her prior statements mean, it's hard not to believe she is just participating in culture war axe-grinding, rather than a good-faith discussion of what Jackson's record actually shows. 

And somehow, Cruz, Sasse, and Cotton were all in their own various ways, even worse. 

This confirmation hearing is supposed to be about the nominee, and yet it is ostensibly about the Republican party and how, at a 6-3 conservative advantage on the court, they nonetheless need to grandstand about the courts. It's about the GOP. And yes, ok. We see them.

We really do. 

Newt Gingrich is Saying What Republicans Think

 

I was just mentioning that Newt Gingrich is a huge part of the reason why you have to treat Republicans as potentially hostile, but Jonathan Chait explained Gingrich's influence on today's GOP more fully in response to Newt explaining to a fish-jawed Bartiromo that in the event of Republicans taking the House back, the January 6th Committee would be going to jail.

Jail? Is investigating a presidential administration's response and responsibilities regarding a terror attack (because the riot that day was, indeed, domestic terror), then why did nothing happen to House Benghazi investigators? Could it be that no random statute exists preventing Congress from investigating matters of government that concerns them? 

Gingrich knows that. He's also just trying to inflame public opinion against the committee and try to stop them from continuing their duty because he's partisan trash. He's creating that old "permission structure".  Republicans can have their riots, whether of the Brooks Brothers kind or the more army/navy surplus style one, but Democrats are barred from complaint. Democrats should be locked up.  Hillary Clinton, Ilhan Omar, Gretchen Whitmer, any of them.

But in lieu of jailing people for assisting the January 6th Committee, there is possibly, firing them: 

The top staff investigator on the House committee scrutinizing the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has been fired by the state’s new Republican attorney general from his position as the top lawyer for the University of Virginia, from which he was on leave while working on the congressional inquiry. 

The office of the Virginia attorney general, Jason S. Miyares, said the firing of the investigator, Timothy J. Heaphy, was not related to the Jan. 6 investigation, but the move prompted an outcry from Democrats in the state, who accused him of taking the highly unusual action as a partisan move to further former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to undermine the committee’s work.

See, Virginia just came under new management, and now they are clearly doing things differently there.  Like, banning mask mandates (even though masks apparently help!) and setting up a hotline to snitch on teachers who might be teaching thoughtcrimes.  So why wouldn't the Virginia AG get rid of a troublesome lawyer? It's probably what Ron DeSantis would have done in his fiefdom state. DeSantis has created a climate of fear, and it really shows. 

Republicans talk a fun game about free speech, but hate being talked about. They still want to be McCarthyites and treat dissenters (even Republicans who disagree with them, who are RINOS) as somehow "un-American".  

I won't call Republicans un-American, though. Staging coups and voter suppression are as American as Red Scares and cherry pie. I am just saying they are wrong and there is never any good reason to support Republicans ever. Their policies are bad and their tactics are bad, and I can't even chicken and egg which part came first. 

This isn't a case of Newt Gingrich losing it--this is who he is and what he represents.  And others of his party in the "comment section" of life say worse all the time. 

TWGB: Adverse Inferences

 

Among all the news that was fit to give us fits this past 24 hours, you know what satisfied me? The knowledge that the "Elite Strike Farce" were now getting subpoenaed by the 1/6 Commitee. Because these were the hardcore liars and promoters of the Big Lie, and they still do. Even though they are (some of them) being sued by, for example, the voting machine companies that they defamed in their insistence that somehow, Trump could have won, but for alleged and basically unsubstantiated fuckery. This is relevant to the case of one Sidney Powell especially; in that she addressed her complaint from Dominion by saying no one was supposed to take her claims literally--a thing she veers on depending upon the day and the lawsuit. Boris Epshteyn is also sticking with his lie. Giuliani will probably end up pleading the fifth over some of it, because you know he's under other investigations. And also is a liar and knows it. 

And I genuinely don't care what happens with Jenna Ellis, because some people only exist to catch COVID from other grifters' farts and live to tell the tale. That is a legacy I can happily assign her to. Her smug theocrat face, forever sniffing plaguefart.  And living to be told about her plaguefart face and how she did lawyering for a raw minute to try to install a fascist dictator and failed. So all that remains of her legacy is plaguefart. And her face, sniffing it. 

But who was this all for? Donald Trump--one term wonder, Covid-19 patient and perennial lawsuit profiteer.  Who is a lifelong fraud and racketeer, and so are the kids he brought up in his family business, as anyone in the NY environs could have told you since the 1980s. 

So what should we make of Ivanka and Don Trump Jr. being implicated in Trump Org fuckery? I dunno--were you not anticipating this since 2015?  Do you think they will do better than Eric Trump pleading the 5th over 500 times, just like Allen Weisselberg did? 

Anyway, the Trump family was neck-deep in legal trouble and potential debt before Donald Trump decided politics was his advocation and still are today, and Trump is weighing his unannounced slush fund campaign contributions against his announced campaign contributions accountability right now, while also considering running again as a hedge against prosecutions, because he can make the sick claim that he is being prosecuted and persecuted for political reasons. 

Do I take an adverse inference from all of that? Why yes!  I think it looks bad because it is bad and I always did. So should any reasonable human looking at Trump's various fuckeries, from tax and bank fraud, to his actual sedition.

It looks bad because it is bad. It's simply always true. And the fact that the election fuckery was fraudulent is what gives his strike farce no privilege--they were helping him do a crime--stealing an entire election. They wanted to elevate him to dictator but could help us jail; this SOB. 

The Content of Their Character Is Showing

The family of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and their supporters marched in Washington urging passage of a law to protect voters from racial discrimination https://t.co/5NvZYMy5St

— Reuters (@Reuters) January 18, 2022

Yesterday, a lot of politicians were "busted" quoted MLK, Jr.'s words while doing nothing to support the goals of equality, even some who actively work against them. In order to participate in the day, it would appear that a sanitized and color-blind version of King gives them comfort, but they misconstrue the body of his work. Were he alive today, their criticisms would be similar to those made of today's Black Lives Matter activists--and we know this because we can read the criticisms from that time and compare them.

(There are also people in this country who seem to think "sanitizing" bookshelves will somehow improve upon race relations--a version of "not seeing color" that means not seeing the work of or knowing about the lives of people of color.)

But to put it simply, it's very duplicitous to praise someone for articulating a dream and then working against what would make it a reality--such as equal access to the ballot. In actuality, I would consider it very revealing of the character of those that would do so.