Bright sunshine, warm temperatures this mid-day Monday here in California’s Central Valley — another work week twitches to life again with various insane scenarios.

A way-enormous insane crack in the sense of America nowadays are Republicans — tweet of the day … so far:

“Legitimate political discourse” https://t.co/g7t4rDgXVG

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) February 7, 2022

Last Friday, in the aftermath of the Republican National Committee vote to censure Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the GOP officially went bat-shit lying crazy, claiming the House Select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection/riot were after ‘“ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”‘
Later, they explained it was really the white-collar insurrectionists/rioters they were talking about (who organized/incited the event) and not the knock-down, violent mob that actually stormed the US Capitol.
The world screamed: Bullshit!

Added insult to insanity — Danny Rodriguez (from the tweet above) confessed in an interview last December: ‘“Trump called us. Trump called us to D.C. … If he’s the commander in chief and the leader of our country, and he’s calling for help — I thought he was calling for help … Are we all that stupid that we thought we were going to go do this and save the country and it was all going to be fine after? We really thought that. That’s so stupid, huh?”‘

Another insane stunt of the way-obvious ‘don’t-believe-your-lying-eyes’ routine (per The Week this afternoon):

On the other hand, there are a few GOPers who seem eager to cast blame for the insurrection … on Democrats.
Axios reports that the Republican “shadow committee” looking at Jan. 6 wants to pin blame for the day on “negligence at the highest levels” for failing to properly secure the Capitol. (Again, this is echoing Trump. “If Nancy Pelosi does her job on security, there is no ‘Jan. 6,'” he said last week.)
And Politico reports that some of the Trumpiest Republicans — folks like Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) — are eager for the party to aim the Jan. 6 committee at Democrats and “deep state” accomplices in the Justice Department, assuming the GOP wins a House majority in this year’s midterm elections.

Taken as a whole, the GOP outlook seems to be this: Jan. 6 is no big deal and also Democrats must be punished for allowing it to happen.

Sounds/looks about right.

As Max Boot ominously concluded at The Washington Post this morning: ‘The Jan. 6 Party has little in common save its name with the one I joined in the 1980s. It is no longer a conservative party but a radical nationalist-populist party that poses a dire danger to U.S. democracy — and to the lives of ordinary Americans. The fact that so many voters are flocking to the Republican banner anyway sends a dismaying signal about America’s future.‘

Here we are, yet once again…

(Illustration out front found here).