Skip to content

The January 6th Committee closes up shop

Monday, December 19, 2022

I watched a good deal of the January 6th committee’s hearing and I’ve downloaded their report, which you can find here. I haven’t read the whole thing, but what I’ve read so far is well structured and persuasive, but when you come right down to it, it’s a fairly easy case to prove. Trump is obviously guilty of trying to subvert the constitution.

I’m not as certain as some that the Republican Party’s current disarray will lead to more electoral defeats down the road, but I’d like to hope that will be the case. I’m wondering what effect the inevitable investigation into the January 6th committee will have. Maybe they’ll just concentrate on Hunter’s laptop. They’d probably be wise to do that, because although no one but the whackjobs cares about that issue, it’s also unlikely to cause much of a backlash. Going after the January 6th folks might be a bit different. If and when McCarthy gets his speakership it will be interesting to see how he responds to the inevitable demands for such an investigation.

On a bit of a side note, one of the folks demanding such an investigation will no doubt be Marjorie Taylor Greene. I noted during the hearing that the committee featured a January 6th text message from her to the White House. She was afraid for her own personal safety because she had heard that at least one of the rioters was armed, so she wanted the White House to get them to back off. She’s the person who said if she’d been in control she’d have armed the protesters. Funny how her position changed. Yet another great piece of trolling by the committee.

Filed in The Very Stable Genius | | Comments (0)

Does she contradict herself?

Tuesday, December 13, 2022

It’s not exactly an original observation, inasmuch as Republican irrationality is nothing new, but this one really struck me. It seems that Ronna McDaniel wants to know why Republicans are not voting for every single Republican, no matter how half assed or fascistic, or both, that a given candidate may be, as we find when she is confronted even in the friendly environs of Fox News:

“Would you publicly say that Donald Trump bears any responsibility for some of the losses in the midterm elections?” Varney asked McDaniel.

“You know, I don’t like this,” McDaniel said. “I don’t like these parceling out because he supported Ted Budd, who won. And he supported J.D. Vance, who won.”

But why are Republicans going and voting for one Republican and not the other?” she asked.

“Trump,” Varney shot back. “Isn’t that the answer to your question? You actually posed a question. The answer is Trump. Isn’t it?”

“I’m saying I’m not into the blame game right now,” McDaniel replied. “I think we’ve got to do an analysis. I think it’s too quick.”

So apparently McDaniel really wants to blame someone for the Republican’s relatively dismal mid-term performance, but on the other hand, she doesn’t want to blame anyone if that anyone happens to be Donald Trump. There must be a way to blame Democrats for the fact that Republicans aren’t voting for Republicans.

This exchange is enlightening for the fact that Varney pushed her to blame Trump. Fox has apparently made a decision that it’s time for Trump to go down the memory hole, but 99% of Republican politicians are still too afraid to go there.

McDaniel is right that Republicans need to figure out why they are becoming unpopular with the non-fascists who still cling to the “R” label, but it’s unlikely that any analysis they do will come up with reasonable answers. If they astound us and do come up with reasonable answers, you can bet that Republican politicians will pay no attention. In the next two years, for example, we can expect the Republicans to do all they can to wreck the economy so they can blame it on Biden, pursue pointless “investigations” that will make Behngazi look statesmanlike, and prove beyond doubt that if given the opportunity they would strip Americans of rights that have been seen as basic for generations. One thing we can not expect is any significant number of Republicans putting the constitution, country, or the public interest over party.

Alas, they may get away with it, since there’s every reason to believe the Supreme Court will give them the right to legally steal elections and legislative majorities through voter suppression and gerrymandering.

Filed in Republicans | | Comments (0)

More legal illogic coming down the pike?

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

This is sort of a follow up to one my recent posts, in which I wondered what type of pretzel logic the Supreme Court would use to reject a case brought by Jews who claimed that they had a right to abortion services as their religion does not hold that life begins at conception. So, here’s another case discussed at Lawyers, Guns & Money:

A restaurant in Richmond last week canceled a reservation for a private event being held by a conservative Christian organization, citing the group’s opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion rights.

“We have always refused service to anyone for making our staff uncomfortable or unsafe and this was the driving force behind our decision,” read an Instagram post from Metzger Bar and Butchery, a German-influenced restaurant in the Union Hill neighborhood whose kitchen is helmed by co-owner Brittanny Anderson, a veteran of TV cooking shows including “Top Chef” and “Chopped.” “Many of our staff are women and/or members of the LGBTQ+ community. All of our staff are people with rights who deserve dignity and a safe work environment. We respect our staff’s established rights as humans and strive to create a work environment where they can do their jobs with dignity, comfort and safety.”

…

I mean, if it’s all about personal values and freedom and such, why can’t we just refuse to serve Christians if we find them outrageous to our value system? I do however await the legal “logic” by which the Supreme Court finds this illegal but refusing to serve gays totally legal.

I’ve read a bit more about the court’s deliberations in the case in which it just heard arguments, so I’ll predict the “logic” they’d employ.

The case they just heard involves a website designer who has never been asked to design a wedding website for a gay couple, but brought a preemptive action seeking to enjoin the state from maybe applying an anti-discrimination law to her just in case anyone ever asked her to design such a page. In the olden days (5 or 10 years ago) the case would have been dismissed for lack of standing, but times have changed.

The court will likely rule that requiring her to design such a site (even though she apparently just sells pre-made templates) would violate her rights of free speech, as it would in essence be requiring her to engage in speech (designing the website) in which she does not want to engage. In the case of the restaurant, it will be easy enough for them to rule that there’s no speech involved, that they are merely selling a product and they aren’t allowed to discriminate among potential customers for that product based on religion, race, or sex. They’d be right, by the way, so far as the restaurant goes, but they’d still be wrong about the web site designer. Their problem, of course, is that such a decision would also bar anti-LGBT bigots from denying restaurant services to gay folks, so they’d have to come up with some anticipatory logic to allow that.

I should add that if the anti-LGBT case came to them first, they could easily find that speech was in fact involved, since the restaurant could argue that merely allowing the group to meet there could be considered an endorsement by the restaurant of their lifestyle, etc. But that same logic would apply to the fundamentalist Christian group, so if they were to bar the gay folks first they’d have a tougher time when the Christians showed up.

Filed in Lawyer stuff | | Comments (0)

An additional bright side to yesterday’s election

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

We can certainly celebrate Senator Warnock’s victory over the former football player. The country has come to a bad place when a major political party sees fit to nominate someone who is obviously brain damaged, in addition to all his other issues.

There is yet another bright side to Warnock’s victory, besides the political. At least it’s a bright side for those of us who contribute to political campaigns. I would estimate that for the past 6 months or so I received about 30 emails and texts a day soliciting money on Warnock’s behalf. It takes time to delete them all, so over that time period I’ve probably spent a couple of hours doing exactly that. In the process, from skimming the subject lines (I never read the emails) I learned that 1) things were looking terribly down from the Senator, and 2) things were looking great for the Senator. I also learned that he was being outspent by a lot, even though the newspapers seem to say that the reverse is true. I understand that they do what they think they have to do to raise money, but it is some time a little irritating to see emails on the same day with contradictory subject lines.

Don’t get me wrong, I contributed to the guy several times, which is probably why I received so many emails and texts. It does get a little over the top, though.

I do think that a little too much has been made of the fact that his victory assured the Democrats of an expanded majority. My guess is that Sinema and Manchin will now be even worse, though it’s possible that Sinema will mend her ways a bit to stave off a primary challenge, but not until the current Democratic House majority is gone, so she can make sure that the Republicans in the House can hold the debt ceiling hostage.

Postscript: Looks like PZ Myers, over at Pharyngula, had a similar reaction.

Filed in Ramblings | | Comments (0)

An upcoming challenge for the not so Supremes

Monday, December 5, 2022

It will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court handles these cases if they make it to the highest court in the land:

The ACLU is bringing a suit against Indiana’s regressive, sadistic abortion ban based on the fact that it infringes on the religious rights of anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the fantasy that life begins at dinner the night before. Jewish people, for instance, don’t believe the fetus has a soul until it draws its first independent breath. We prioritize the life of the pregnant person above the life of the fetus for the entirety of the pregnancy, including in situations that put the pregnant person’s emotional health at risk. With the imposition of the GOP’s fetus-fetish laws all over the nation, however, Jews and others whose religions don’t subscribe to the ideology of these nutters are fighting fire with fire.

Right now the court is poised to rule that a business can refuse to do business with gay people on religious grounds. There have already been a host of rulings exempting Christian fundamentalists from following facially neutral laws, such as the Hobby Lobby decision in which the court essentially ruled that a corporation, a creature of statute and not, despite what Mitt Romney and most other Republicans may think an actual human being, can have a religion and is therefore entitled to some of the protections provided in the so called Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

So, eventually, the court is going to have to come up with a rationale for ruling that a cake maker can refuse to make a cake for a gay wedding based on his or her deeply held religious conviction that gay people should not be allowed to marry, while at the same time ruling that the extreme religous beliefs of extreme Christian sects should bind people who do not share those religious beliefs.

It should be an easy task for a court that is willing to look to the writings of a 17th century witch burner to determine what women can do with their bodies in the 21st century. Besides throwing democracy out the window, the court has pretty much given up on being consistent or intellectually honest.

Filed in Creeping Totalitarianism, Hypocrisy, Lawyer stuff | | Comments (0)

Looking ahead

Sunday, December 4, 2022

Over at Hullabaloo Tom Sullivan writes about one of the many problems besetting the Democrats: the aging and consequent ossification of many of their elected officials, 89 year old Diane Feinstein, who is almost certainly in at least the beginning stages of dementia, being a prime example. Not only do these politicians lose touch with their constituency as they grow older, but they tend to become more bound to a way of thinking that exalts members of the club over duty to constituents. Why, for example, did Nancy Pelosi and her minions do everything in their power to protect Henry Cuellar during his primary, when he votes against virtually everything they try to do?

At least Nancy had the grace to step aside recently.

Here in Connecticut we have a few aging politicians who should consider retirement as an option in the near future. I have no quarrels with Blumenthal or Courtney, but at some point you have to step aside and let the younger generation take charge, for after all, it is they who will be living with the results of what Congress does now. I’m not suggesting either of them, or any other Connecticut politician that shall go unnamed, should step aside immediately, but I do think it might not be a bad idea for them to be looking for potential successors and doing what they can to make sure they are replaced by a young Democrat with good progressive credentials. Blumenthal will be 82 when his new term expires. That would be the optimal time for him to close out an honorable career in favor of a younger person who can carry on in his place. In Courtney’s case, in an ideal world he and party leaders would scout out for an ideal replacement, and spend some time preparing the district for that person’s candidacy. The Second is sort of a tough district, considering all the yahoos, whose numbers increase as you drive up 395. “Grooming” a potential replacement might not be a bad idea, and anyway isn’t grooming what we evil Democrats do?

Filed in Democrats | | Comments (0)

All your base are belong to us

Friday, December 2, 2022

There certainly is a difference between the two parties in this country. The Fascist Republican party goes out of its way to cater to its fringe base, while the Democratic Party goes out of its way to alienate what should be its base. In this case, I’m talking about unions, which were once a major political force in this country and were also a solid part of the Democratic base.

Unions have lost a lot of their power, and some of that loss is attributable to their own missteps. I recall, for example, the unions abandoning the Democrats in 1972 because the party dared to nominate a guy who opposed a war that subsequent history has proven we should never have fought.

But lets get back to the present, when the Democrats see fit to pass legislation that imposes a settlement on railroad workers that essentially sells out the union members and gives a gift to the railroads, which have been systematically exploiting the workers and allowing rail services to deteriorate in order to maximize their own profits. We read here that a group of labor historians has penned a letter to Biden opposing what the Democrats are doing:

That view, expressed in an open letter to Biden and Secretary of Labor Martin Walsh, was that Biden screwed up. The letter, which Barker helped write, said the historians are “alarmed” by his decision to impose a contract four unions rejected despite the “eminently just demands of the railway workers, especially those that provide them with a livable and dignified work life schedule.” Railroad workers are fighting a corporate regime that has shrunk the industry’s workforce by 30 percent in recent years then blamed crew shortages on the “supply chain” and imposed draconian work schedules that have workers tired, sick, stressed, and unable to spend meaningful time with their friends and families, all while raking in record profits. Four unions have rejected the tentative agreement and freight rail workers generally support a strike because they view the corporate greed motivating these decisions as an existential threat to their industry and the safety and economic security of the American people.

How can I complain? The legislation was bi-partisan after all! Of course, these days almost all bi-partisan legislation amounts to a Democratic surrender to Republicans along with Manchin and Sinema. The Republicans got a bill that benefits corporations that will no doubt contribute to their coffers, while the Democrats got a bill that will make it easier to lure more working class folks to vote against their own interests and for the Republicans. So, a great opportunity for the republicans to firm up their monetary base and add to their whackjob base. Win-win for the Republicans, lose-lose for the Democrats.

By the way, if the grammatically defective title to this post confuses you, the explanation is here.

Filed in Democrats | | Comments (0)

I’m on Mastodon

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

I’ve never been much of a Twitter user, and I very much welcome its possible demise as a result of the Elon Musk wrecking ball. I haven’t gotten around to terminating my account, since I’m a very lazy person, and they likely make it as hard as possible, but I have signed up for the open source, non-profit alternative: Mastodon. It appears to have all the functionality of Twitter but has enough protections built in to avoid becoming the right wing cesspool that Twitter is fast becoming.

I’m still experimenting. I haven’t yet posted anything, but I’m going to post a link to this article as soon as I upload it, mostly just to get myself going. My Mastodon handle is: @ctblue@mastodon.world. You have to choose a server, as there are a lot of them scattered all over the world, but you still have access to Mastodoners everywhere. I recommend it to anyone not wishing to massage the egos of billionaires.

One of the folks I’m following is George Takei, of Star Trek fame (if, like me, you’re old enough to remember the original series). He “reblogged” (I guess it makes sense that they can’t use “retweeted”) a post from a guy named Jay Kuo, about election denialism in Arizona. I thought’s I’d pass this along from Kuo’s piece, since this post has to have some sort of subject.

Kuo relates that there are a couple of counties in Arizona, with whack-a-doodle majorities on their election boards that have threatened to refuse to certify their results in accordance with state law. One has caved, but the other has not, though neither has come up with a legitimate reason for the threat. Here’s what I thought was sort of funny:

In a twist of irony, if the 47,000 Cochise county votes were ultimately are excluded from the final official tally, that would flip Arizona House District Six and the state schools’ chief winner from Republican to Democrat, earning the GOP a truly karmic result. The exclusion of so many votes is highly unlikely; most election lawyers view the case as open and shut and expect the courts to compel the Cochise County supervisors to perform their ministerial duties and certify the damn election results

You have to suspect that the election denials and the voter suppression tactics of the fascist party have, in many instances, dampened their own voter turnout. It would seem, for instance, that mail in voting would be a natural for its aging base and telling people their vote won’t count is hardly a good way to get them to the polls. They are likely betting that they come out as net winners, but one must wonder. Who knows how this last election would have turned out had the Republicans not killed so many of their voters by discouraging them from getting vaccinated.

Filed in Announcements, Republicans | | Comments (0)

A transatlantic myth

Sunday, November 27, 2022

I ran across this article in my news feed today. It’s from the British newspaper, the Guardian. The title is what drew me to read it:

Competence, what competence? Tory chancellors like Jeremy Hunt always spell disaster

British politics are a lot like US Politics these days, with the Tory party becoming more and more the preserve of loonies, as the Republican Party has been for some time.

I gather from the article that in Britain, as here in the USA, the party of the right is credited with having a better ability to handle the economy than the party of the “left”. This is certainly a pervasive attitude here in this country, borne out by polls and much of the media. As the Guardian columnist proves, it’s not true in England, and it’s not true here. In short, it’s a myth that’s quite handy for the Republicans.

The Republican have decided to destroy the economy here, so that they can blame the Democrats, and there’s every reason to believe they will get away with it.The Tory’s don’t have the leeway that the Republicans do, because there’s no such thing as divided government there. It’s becoming more and more clear to the British people that the Tories are indeed incompetent and are interested only in benefitting the rich. It’s harder to assign responsibility here, since when the Republicans refuse to raise the debt limit and the economy crashes, they will blame the Democrats and the media will both sides the issue. That will be the case with everything else they do to tank the economy, and make no mistake they will tank it if it is to their political advantage.

But the myth will likely persist.

Filed in Economics, Republicans | | Comments (0)

A Republican with Principles! (An oxymoron, I know)

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Who says that our fascist overlord wannabes have no principles? Well, I’ve probably said it, but look, there are definitely exceptions, and I firmly believe all the other election denial liars should follow this Arizona woman’s principled example:

Liz Harris, recently elected to represent Legislative District 13, issued a statement on her campaign website saying, in part, that “it has become obvious that we need to hold a new election immediately.”

“Although I stand to win my Legislative District race it has become obvious that we need to hold a new election immediately. There are clear signs of foul play from machine malfunctions, chain of custody issues and just blatant mathematical impossibilities,” she wrote. “How can a Republican State Treasurer receive more votes than a Republican Gubernatorial or Senate candidate?”

“I call on all state legislators to join me in demanding a new election,” she added. “I will now be withholding my vote on any bills in this session without this new election in protest to what is clearly a potential fraudulent election.”

I absolutely agree than any Fascist Republican elected official who lies about election theft should take the principled position that they will not vote in state legislatures, the Congress, or any other elected body until they get a do-over, something that doesn’t exist. Obviously it’s too much to ask that they turn down the paychecks they’ll get for doing no work for their constituents.

Also, just to answer her question: a Republican candidate for treasurer can get more votes than Republican candidates for governor or Senator if the Republican candidates for governor and Senator are total whackjobs, who are so whackjobby that they can’t even put one over on Arizonans.

Filed in Crazies, Republicans | | Comments (0)