Bright sunshine and warm temperatures still this early-evening Tuesday here in California’s Central Valley — another early hint of summer as it supposedly climbed into the 80s late this afternoon.
Apparently, too much shit is going on as 2022 is rightfully hurdling right along — time flies when you’re having fun, amirite?

One horrid, festered-sore embedded within our lives is Republicans. Hugely cruel, ignorant, and pure, 100-percent shameless. Also hyper-hypocrites without a care in the world — obnoxious gall:

This dude just asked a Supreme Court nominee, "Do you think we should catch and imprison more murderers, or fewer murderers?" with a straight face. https://t.co/T6TAPkeCvK

— Ben Dowsett (@Ben_Dowsett) March 22, 2022

GOPers have acted the pricks in the current Ketanji Brown Jackson SCOTUS-nomination hearings — although Lindsey Graham stormed out in a huff and nasty turd Tom Cotton acted the bitch, the whole point these assholes made was about their own selves as victims of race, sexual weirdness, what-the-fuck-ever and how a black woman can’t be trusted and must have a hidden agenda.
Paul Waldman at The Washington Post this afternoon nails it — Republicans are way-disturbed:

Republicans know they can’t stop Ketanji Brown Jackson from being confirmed to the Supreme Court. Since they don’t hold a majority in the Senate, they cannot simply refuse to allow her nomination to be considered.
Given her sterling record and lack of disqualifying misconduct, they won’t be able to turn any Democrats against her.

What they can do is use her confirmation hearings for other political purposes, as both parties always do in these situations. Some Republicans have chosen to do so with bad-faith attacks on Jackson; Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), in an apparent attempt to secure the QAnon vote when he runs for president, tore a few sentences in previous rulings and writings out of context to make the repulsive accusation that she is “soft” on child porn.

But so far, their clearest focus has been on their own victimization.
You may be under the hot lights and being cross-examined, they are telling Jackson, but we are the real victims here.

You can see it in the multiple times senators have brought up prior judicial nominees who were either deprived of their supposedly deserved place on the high court or mistreated by cruel Democrats before taking their seats.
The average voter may not recognize all the names in the GOP’s parade of decades-old judicial martyrs (Miguel Estrada, Janice Rogers Brown), but the activist base knows them, if only as victims of some long-ago Democratic treachery.

It all culminates with Brett Kavanaugh, the victim to beat all victims, his name invoked again and again. How can the poor Supreme Court justice even bear to get out of bed in the morning, knowing only that he’s a hero to his party and will be making the country’s laws for the next 30 years or so?
What a nightmare it must be for him.

So GOP senators repeated again and again that they would never abuse Jackson the way Kavanaugh was treated.
“You’re the beneficiary of Republican nominees having their lives turned upside down,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) told her, adding that “Most of us couldn’t go back to our offices during Kavanaugh without getting spit on.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) agreed, telling Jackson that “No one is going to inquire into your teenage dating habits,” though “dating habits” is an interesting way to refer to what Kavanaugh was accused of.
“We won’t get down in the gutter like Democrats did during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings,” said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).

To all this umbrage, one might respond, “Let us know when Jackson is credibly accused of sexual assault.” But this has nothing to do with her.
The point is that Republicans know the sense of victimhood ties their entire movement together, and the more it is nurtured, the greater their chances of keeping that movement mobilized in November’s midterm elections, the 2024 presidential campaign, and everything that happens between and beyond.

So of course this has become yet another forum for Republicans to claim victim status, given the absolutely central place this occupies in their political project.

The main-major reason Republicans can’t really govern — they don’t know how and don’t want to learn/find out how. Victims of the meanie left — babies galore!

Fart in the closed-circuit wind:

Stink or not, here are once again…

(Illustration out front: ‘National Buffoons,’ by Daryl Cagle, found here).