Overcast and a bit on the warmish side this early-evening Thursday here in California’s Central Valley — maybe some showers are in the wind for this weekend, but nothing we can’t handle.
At least, for right now anyway.
Meanwhile, MAGA Republicans in Congress today acted their part — racist assholes with kicking Ilhan Omar off a House committee, yet thusly allowing AOC to tell it like it ought to be told:
Rep. @AOC defends Rep. Omar: "This is about targeting women of color in the United States of America." pic.twitter.com/clfEqHKMqF
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 2, 2023
Pema Levy at Mother Jones this afternoon nails the situation with reality background/details:
House Republicans removed Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday because she is a Black, Muslim woman. Officially, that’s not the reason. But the facts speak for themselves: The removal is the culmination of years of targeting Omar by Donald Trump, the rightwing media, and Republican lawmakers who attacked her religion, ethnicity, and history as a refugee. The GOP majority has an official reason for ousting Omar—and then there’s the reason both they and everyone else know is really behind this outrage.
Their nominal reason is that past anti-Semitic comments make her unsuited to serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee. The resolution to remove Omar contains a list of offenses. Read closely, it reveals how the party (along with some moderate Democrats) have targeted Omar since she was elected in 2018, taking her words out of context to make her a boogeyman for the right.
The first offense is a February 2019 tweet in which Omar attributed lawmakers’ support for Israel to the deep pockets of the pro-Israel lobby, touching on the anti-Semitic trope that Jews buy influence and control. That tweet caused outcry on both sides of the aisle. Omar’s response included the words: “I unequivocally apologize.”
[…]
Taken together, the resolution is a remarkable document. It details two instances where Omar’s language about Israel was careless and, inadvertently, drew on anti-Semitic tropes, followed by several itemized smears. Nearly all involve Omar’s criticism of Israel, which are valid policy positions that challenge the GOP’s alliance with Israel’s rightwing government and its policies. By ousting Omar from the committee, House Republicans hope to use their support for Israel to paper over their own party’s much deeper issues with anti-Semitism.
For instance, the resolution doesn’t mention that the new Republican majority stripping Omar of her committee assignment on Foreign Affairs has also reinstated Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to committees after Democrats (and a few Republicans) voted to bar her from them over violent rhetoric. Unlike Omar, Greene actually has an anti-Semitism problem. In a 2018 Facebook post, she accused the Rothschilds of using space lasers to start California’s wildfires. (She claimed to have no idea that the Rothschilds were frequently invoked to smear Jewish people.) She was the first QAnon supporter elected to Congress, bringing new prominence to a conspiracy theory infected with anti-Semitism. Last year, she addressed a conference hosted by Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist, Holocaust denier who spoke approvingly of Hitler right before Greene took the stage. When scrutiny ensued, she actually claimed that she didn’t know who Fuentes was.
Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) welcomed Greene as an ally in his fraught bid for House speaker last month and rewarded her with committee assignments, including a coveted spot on the House’s oversight committee. “I will never leave that woman,” McCarthy reportedly said of Greene after she helped him secure the speakership. “I will always take care of her.”
[…]
And yet, they are nobly riding to the defense of the Jews in ousting Omar. The GOP has been gunning for Omar ever since she was elected. Trump made a hobby of attacking Omar during his presidency, often portraying her as un-American and accusing her of sympathizing with the 9/11 terrorist attackers. During a 2019 rally in North Carolina, Trump spent several minutes railing against Omar as a terrorist sympathizer until the crowd began to chant “Send her back!” (Omar came to the United States as a refugee in 1995 and has been a citizen since 2000.) Trump’s presidential campaign even targeted the representative her in Facebook ads, again depicting her as a terrorist sympathizing anti-Semite. The attacks were replicated by Republicans around the country. Omar endured death threats as a result of Trump’s attacks.
Omar, speaking before the vote, asked if it is any surprise that, given the GOP’s attempt to smear the first Black president as an un-American, African-born Muslim, that the party has now moved on to targeting a Black Muslim who was born in Africa.
It’s not. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), defending Omar on the House floor, accused her Republican colleagues voting to oust Omar of racism. “This is about targeting women of color in the United States of America,” she said.
And just to be on the safe side — a full-blown lying, racist asshole opens his lying yap to scream loud the hypocrisy and bullshit deep in the GOP soul::
You lied that you were Jewish, used a fake Jewish-sounding last name and said, "Oh well, the Jews will give more if you're a Jew," and made up that your family survived the Holocaust, you ghoul. @Santos4Congress https://t.co/zFalXtHi3Y
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) February 2, 2023
Liars are lying, believe it or not, yet here we are once again…
(Illustration out front: ‘Pinocchio,’ by Enrico Mazzanti, and found here.)