After a week — I’m back!
First real post in seven days. During this time I went through a final edit of my first novel I’m self-publishing — read about the whole project here, and the post from last Saturday here.
Updates on the matter as they become available.
And the news cycle didn’t take time off, though. All kinds of shit, a lot on how the T-Rump was way-involved with an insurrection (voting machines) to Republicans acting like assholes (like normal):
“Read the room, buddy,” She says to a maskless Glenn youngkin.
— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) February 4, 2022
Asshole Youngkin, however, is of the don’t-give-a-shit crowd — nutshell via HullPost this afternoon:
“Governor, where’s your mask?” the woman called across the checkout aisles to Youngkin, who appeared to be one of the only unmasked people in the store.
“We’re all making choices today,” replied Youngkin, who was being taught how to ring up items by a masked grocery store worker.
The woman fired back: “Yeah, look around you, governor. You’re in Alexandria. Read the room buddy!”
Apparently, Alexandria is an area in Virginia still sane.
Despite the weight of the last week on the circus-clown car that’s the Republican party, today was more than a clincher. Wing-nutters, which the official GOP program is nowadays, are fueled by not being able to read the room. Or if you do read the room and just don’t give a shit, that approach is good for you folks, too.
In modern/recent American history there’s never been a more nasty, piece-of-shit group of people than the Republican party. And although it has been decades in the making, probably going back maybe originally to Dick Nixon, then Reagan/Bush One, and the Atwater code of bullshit-lie performance art, the Palin/T-Rump cruelty, and culminating now into a crowd of horror-show, conspiracy-influenced thugs who will throw absolutely anything at the wall and see if it will stick.
Hypocrisy and irony, not to mention lying in the actual face of reality, are not even on the table for the GQP. Case in point is a massive Orwellian excretion:
Very nasty and unfair of the NYT to quote us verbatim https://t.co/RXCeg27K1m
— Brian Tashman (@briantashman) February 4, 2022
In censuring two pro-democracy Republicans the point of the crazed gaze (the New York Times): ‘“Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger crossed a line,” Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, said in a statement. “They chose to join Nancy Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.”‘
In another Jan. 6 discharge today in near-about the same time frame — Mike Pence grew a pair (who’d known?):
here's the clip of Pence saying "Trump was wrong" to insist he could've overturned the election — a notion he describes as "un-American" pic.twitter.com/HlUF9yXnMr
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 4, 2022
The T-Rump will wax insane, you can count on it. Pence might leave a mark — analysis via Aaron Blake at The Washington Post this afternoon:
Speaking at a Federalist Society event in Florida, Trump’s loyal second-in-command addressed the issue more head-on than before. He did so after Trump said over the weekend that Pence could’ve and should’ve tried to unilaterally overturn the election.
“I heard this week that President Trump said I had a right to overturn the election,” Pence said. “President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election.”
Pence added quickly that “frankly, there is no idea more un-American” than the one Trump pushed.
The substance of Pence’s comments weren’t much different from what he’s said before. But on Friday, he tied it all together and directly invoked Trump in a way he hadn’t before — and in a way that’s very likely to stick in Trump’s craw and force a more direct clash between the two of them.
…
But Pence went further still Friday, saying not only that what Trump did was wrong and that his idea was “un-American” but that it was corrosive to democracy and that it’s something Republicans should abhor.“If we lose faith in the Constitution, we won’t just lose elections — we’ll lose our country,” Pence said.
Pence added: “Under Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution, elections are to be conducted by the states — not by Congress.”
He said Congress’s role is merely to count the votes. He also warned about what would happen if Trump’s standard were to be applied in the 2024 election, suggesting Vice President Harris could try to unilaterally overturn an election for the Democratic ticket.The big takeaway, though, is Pence directly saying Trump was wrong. There’s a reason he avoided that for the past 13 months.
And it would’ve been easy to merely restate what he’s said before without invoking Trump.
Republicans are asshole anti-democratic repugnant — Noam Chomsky explains:
Whoa. Chomsky sure looks and sounds old — what the faded-shit does that say about me?
And yet even a week later, once again here we are…
(Illustration out front is of a New York state high-school student exhibit: ‘The piece was displayed during student-driven art show at Shenendehowa High School. It consisted of at least 12 identical black-and-white pictures of Donald Trump. There was also a sign above the pictures that read, “Draw on Me.” Using markers from the art classroom, some students opted to scribble critical messages and profanities on the pictures‘ — and found here).