The republican party, as it currently exists, is a hollowed out shell. Any pretense at principles was jettisoned along with the Fairness Doctrine back when Saint Ronnie the Repugnant masked his predations behind his Aw Shucks persona. Long before that, any claim to innovative thinking and real problem solving absconded with the receipts before we reached the end of the Teddy Roosevelt administration. Any appreciation for actual intelligence got pink slipped by the Baby Bush (aka Shrub) crowd while they were busy touting their compassionate brand of conservatism. Most recently, the Former Guy sounded the death knell for honesty, integrity, compassion, and responsibility. This current set of (R) miscreants are considerably less interested in public service than they are in participating in criminal conspiracies. The only two constants over the last hundred plus years of republican activity are servicing insatiable greed and the gnashing of teeth over unwarranted grievances.
In their relentless march from the party of Lincoln to the pathetic party of liars we see today, they’ve worked very hard to assume the mantle of our country’s historic oppressor classes. They’ve adopted red hats as symbolic red coats and replaced the stars and stripes with the stars and bars. They’ve even embraced white hoods and brown shirts as legitimate political players and welcomed them into their coalition of the despicable.
They’ve spent years using bad political theatre to breed, or more accurately inbreed, a group of politically illiterate, wildly misinformed, Dunning-Kruger all-stars, as their contribution to promoting bad citizenship.
Together with the incessant lies promulgated through their official propaganda arm (Fox, Sinclair, hate radio, et al), they have effectively turned the brains of their base into wads of inflammable, gasoline soaked cotton batting. Their whatever-the-opposite-of-shining-is lights run around throwing burning matches at the base in hopes of igniting rebellion. It’s not a pretty picture. Nor is it in any way within the universe of patriotic behavior.
It’s easy to show just how much of a lie the idea of “compassionate conservatism” really is. Looking solely at economic policies that support the most needy among us, republicans have vigorously opposed:
- Social Security
- Medicare
- The Affordable Care Act
- Other health programs (Medicaid & CHIP)
- Food Programs (SNAP, WIIC, CSFP)
- The enhanced child tax credit
- Low Income Energy Assistance
- Increasing the Minimum Wage
- Capping the price of Insulin and other drugs
- Investments to repair deteriorating infrastructure
- Making the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes
A simple test you can give to give any republican voter:
- Name one initiative that republicans have championed from cradle through implementation that has significantly benefited the life of any American who wasn’t already rich.
- Name any program that improves peoples lives that republicans have enthusiastically helped to enact (since the formation of the EPA under Nixon).
They’ll likely try to cite tax cuts and deregulation. The tax cuts went the rich and the deregulation led to East Palestine. Debunk! Debunk! Debunk!
Bad faith. Bad conduct. Bad No policies. Bad Hair. Big lies. It’s who they are. It’s why we’ll keep making progress until the insanity of this generation’s fascist challenge fades away.
We have the power. We have the ability. We can and we will do this.
Slava Ukraini!
Remember the Children
Screw you, Samuel Alito
Stephen reviewed the recent CPAC fiasco.
There’s some news to share.
Closing in on the Creep
If he got advance notice of this development, it might be why tfg went off on Alvin Bragg at CPAC. I’d be totally ok if Alvin is the first one to cross the indictment finish line.
AlterNet: David Badash: 'Final stages': Top Trump advisor Hope Hicks just met with Manhattan district attorney’s office
Hope Hicks, the longtime Donald Trump confidante and his former White House Counselor, met with the Office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Monday afternoon.
“The appearance of Ms. Hicks, who was seen walking into the Manhattan district attorney’s office in the early afternoon, represents the latest sign that the prosecutors are in the final stages of their investigation,” The New York Times reports, noting she “is at least the seventh witness to meet with prosecutors since the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, convened a grand jury in January to hear evidence in the case.”✂️
“Two employees of Mr. Trump’s company have also testified, as have two former executives of The National Enquirer who helped broker the hush-money arrangement, as well as a lawyer for the porn star, Stormy Daniels,” says The Times.
Hicks, who admitted to lying for Donald Trump in sworn testimony to federal investigators working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, had been distraught after the January 6 insurrection. She resigned as Counselor to the President January 12, 2021,
How Is the Orange Chowderhead Preparing for His Incarcerated Future?
I’m glad you asked. It looks like he’s on an express flight to Egypt to visit a certain river instead. He spends more time on DeSantis than he does on his own defense. He’s so incredibly shallow, he’s swimming in packages of desiccants. By the way, I’m partial to Meatball Ron.
Vanity Fair: Bess Levin: Report: Trump Spends His Days Golfing, Workshopping Nicknames About DeSantis’s Height and Penis
Donald Trump has long been preoccupied with people’s heights. While this weird obsession doesn’t always have to do with the stature of his perceived enemies—he reportedly chose not to make Janet Yellen his Fed chair because, despite being impressed with her, he thought five three was just too short for the job—it normally does, with at least three separate opponents getting derogatory nicknames that start with “Liddle.” Aware of this fixation on his adversary’s heights, and knowing Florida governor Ron DeSantis appears to be shorter than your average US president, we remarked last week that it was “legitimately shocking” that Trump had yet to dub his would-be 2024 competition “Liddle Ron.” But apparently, he’s got something even more special in mind.
Bloomberg News reports that a typical day for the ex-president means golfing at Mar-a-Lago in the morning and plotting “his political comeback” in the afternoon. While for some, the latter would entail courting donors and fine-tuning policy, for Trump, it’s slightly different. Specifically, per Bloomberg, it mostly involves “bemoaning his lack of coverage by Fox News and other cable networks, griping about his 2020 reelection defeat…and workshopping new nicknames for his chief rival in GOP politics, Florida governor Ron DeSantis.” What pray tell is on the list for consideration? Well, there’s “Ron DeSanctimonious,” of course, but “Ron DisHonest,” “Ron DeEstablishment,” and “Tiny D.”
Yes, “Tiny D.” If one does not at all care about being perceived as a grown-up of substance who actually cares about, y’know, doing good for the country, it’s pretty perfect, as it has the double meaning of both being about DeSantis’s height and, seemingly, his penis size. Think Trump wouldn’t go there? Think again. As a reminder, since announcing his first run for the White House in 2016, Trump has referred to his own penis to other people on at least two separate occasions. First, during a Republican debate, during which he said that neither his hands nor “something else” were small, adding: “I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee.” And second, when he reportedly called then White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham from Air Force One to “to assure her that his penis was not small or toadstool-shaped, as the porn star Stormy Daniels had alleged.” (Grisham wrote of this deeply uncomfortable experience in her book.) There are other, pre–White House examples too.
Georgie Porgie Santos, Pudding and Pie. All He Knows Is How to Lie.
Santos isn’t just a rotting albatross hung around (R) necks. He’s been stapled to their chests with big honking spikes. Some of them don’t like it very much. The best service Santos can provide to the country is if he manages to drag some of his fellow liars down with him.
Politico: Olivia Beavers: New York Republicans go to all-out war against Santos
New York’s House Republicans are racing away from the walking political grenade known as George Santos.
Six of Santos’ New York colleagues, particularly the four who flipped tight battleground districts last fall, are working — out in the open and behind the scenes — to contain the blowback from the embattled lawmaker’s deceptions about his past. The first-term foursome started by breaking from the vast majority of their party by calling for Santos to resign, a move that would hurt the GOP’s already tiny majority.
And the newly elected New York Republicans are only growing louder: They’re pushing legislation aimed at hitting Santos financially, hoping to prevent the now-notorious fabulist from profiting off book or TV deals on his story. And they’re firing off fighting words on social media and local airwaves.
But their public criticisms haven’t insulated them from daily questions about his record, particularly as Democrats look to tie them to him. Their frustration, simmering for two months as negative Santos headlines build up, is close to boiling over.
When First They Practiced to Deceive ...
they didn’t take into account the possible consequences. If this one happens, it would make old Rupert’s already shriveled testicles drop right off.
Huffington Post: Lee Moran: Veterans Group To Pentagon: Ban Fox News On Military Bases
A veterans group has called on the Pentagon to ban some Fox News personalities from being broadcast in U.S. military facilities.
An advert released by the VoteVets progressive political action committee online Monday slammed the conservative network’s prime-time hosts Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity for knowingly pushing the baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump
“The most valuable weapon to the enemy is disinformation,” begins the narrator in the spot. “That’s why the Pentagon spends hundreds of millions training our troops to resist it, yet at the same time the U.S. military uses taxpayer-funded facilities to broadcast disinformation on military bases, knowingly letting false propaganda infiltrate the ranks.”
A Political Cartoon to Lighten the Mood (or Not)
I like Rob Rogers. He used to work at my local paper, until the current idiot took over editorial control, ruined the paper, and got rid of Rob.
Taking Off the Kid Gloves
I’ve been waiting for the MSM to become more aggressive with republican idiocy. It would be nice if the Nightly News sounded a bit more like an MSNBC diatribe.
Raw Story: Sarah K Burris: Trump has entered his fat Elvis stage: MSNBC host
Filling in for Lawrence O'Donnell on Monday, Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart discussed Donald Trump's speech at CPAC over the weekend that pledged, "I am your retribution."
"The crowd cheered, even if he wasn't playing to a full house," Capehart mocked of the small crowd size at the conference. "Retributions against whom, exactly? Voters who rejected the Trump brand of democratic values and hand-picked candidates? The lawmakers to impeach him twice? The federal and state prosecutors overseeing many investigations into Donald Trump? But even as Donald Trump enters his 'fat Elvis' stage, it's imperative to take his threat to democracy seriously. It's still not clear who's gonna stand up to him in a Republican primary."✂️
Former conservative Jennifer Rubin joined the discussion calling it another example of a wannabe dictator.
"This is once more the quiet part out loud. This is Donald Trump acting like a tin pot dictator aspires to be," she began. "This is a sort of stuff that guys in funny uniforms with lots of phony medals on them say to their supporters. And it's a way of enlivening them. It's a way of combatting democratic institutions. It's a way of putting everyone on notice, and it's a direct attack on the rule of law, unlimited government, on the Constitution itself. So, the only thing that is different this time around is, as you point out the audience was pretty puny. And secondly, that he actually said, it rather than simply imply it."
Another of tfg’s Bad Faith Bad Guys Faces Consequences
I’m not worried about justice taking too long as long as the grind is exceedingly fine. There sure are a lot of enablers and abettors to pillory, aren’t there?
Salon: Gabriella Ferrigine: Ex-Trump ethics lawyer may face disbarment for allegedly trying to influence Hutchinson testimony
A former Trump White House ethics lawyer accused of seeking to influence former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony to the House Jan. 6 committee was hit with a complaint from a group of prominent attorneys on Monday.
Hutchinson, who was a top aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, provided damning information during the House committees January 6 probe and revealed that her previous lawyer, Stefan Passantino, had tried to influence her testimony and encouraged her to withhold information from the committee.
In a complaint filed by the group Lawyers Defending American Democracy on Monday, several dozen leading attorneys accused Passantino of subornation of perjury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and bribery, all of which are crimes.
Another Dishonest Republican Politician Faces Consequences
This is just the first installment. She still has another trial for election fraud coming up.
Mother Jones: Abigail Weinberg: Election-Denying Former Colorado Official Guilty of Misdemeanor Obstruction
Tina Peters, the former Colorado election official who has been charged with election fraud, could be going to jail for obstructing a government operation.
Peters made national headlines last year when she pleaded not guilty to numerous felonies related to her alleged participation in a scheme to prove that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. In her position as Mesa County clerk, Peters allegedly attempted to copy software from voting machines in a ploy that allowed sensitive voter information to wind up online.
While under indictment, she launched an unsuccessful run for Colorado Secretary of State. Peters finished third, but is hoping for better luck in her ongoing bid for chair of the state Republican Party. In the unlikely event that Peters were to win the March 11 election, she could spend a some of the two-year term behind bars.
On Friday, Peters was found guilty of obstructing government operations, a charge that stemmed from her February 2022 refusal to hand over an iPad that prosecutors say she had used to videotape a court hearing. Officers had a warrant to seize the iPad. Peters was acquitted of another charge of obstructing a peace officer. Body cam footage of Peters’ arrest at a Grand Junction, Colorado, bagel shop shows Peters repeatedly yelling, “Let go of me!” as officers attempt to handcuff her.
Oh, How the MIghty, er Skeevy Have Fallen
In the world of quasi-sentient copraphages, Matt Schlapp has managed to hurt his brand by getting his perv on a little to credibly. He lacks the chutzpah to brazen it out, so he’s taking a hit. It’s exhilarating.
Slate: Jim Newell: The Saddest CPAC Ever
Picture yourself in a dark grand ballroom of a Marriott conference center on a late-winter Saturday in business-casual dress. You’re finishing watching your 16th consecutive speech of the day, since 8:30 a.m., about the need to “fight” against the “RINOs.” You get a break and go to the atrium market, pick up a soggy chicken Caesar salad wrap, and eat by yourself on a bench. You wander around the vendor area to look at Trump apparel and investment opportunities for gold or cryptocurrency, and then take the escalator back up. Through the high-paned glass windows, you look, vacantly, at the brownish-grey Potomac River and an empty Ferris wheel. It’s an uninteresting temperature outside, 47 degrees. You go back to the grand ballroom and sit for four more hours.✂️
The most notable images of CPAC, then, were the ones showing what appeared to be a consistently half-empty ballroom. And what were they listening to? Well, the hard sells of investment “opportunities” weren’t just limited to shady operators in the vendors’ room anymore. Kimberly Guilfoyle, the conservative media personality and girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., was doing it herself off of a teleprompter.✂️
This was not the relaxed, riffing Trump regaling attendees about his NBC ratings or how he saw a famous person’s boob in 1988. This was more of the dystopian, resentful Trump of his “American Carnage” inauguration speech in 2017, or his “marching over to the Capitol” speech before the mob invasion of Jan. 6, 2021.✂️
Yeah, so not exactly a sunny, “shining city on a hill” view of things. Trump’s campaign vision is more about, say, razing the communist city on the hill and its heathenistic cultural mores. He’s a lot more fun when he’s talking about how toilets don’t work anymore.
Andy Speaks
Did it really happen this way? Or is it satire? Only Andy knows for sure.
The New Yorker: Satire from the Borowitz Report: Rupert Murdoch Calls Telling Truth Under Oath Worst Experience of His Life
NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—Rupert Murdoch said that telling the truth under oath while being deposed for a lawsuit against Fox News was “by far the worst experience of my life.”
The media mogul disclosed that, when he was asked to raise his right hand and tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, “I thought I was going to be sick.”
“Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson had warned me that telling the truth would be bad,” he said. “But I was unprepared for how harrowing it turned out to be.”
“The way it works is, people ask you questions, and you have to tell them what actually happened and not something you made up,” he explained. “It was beyond beastly.”
Inside the Differences
Understanding the conservative mind set is important if we want to cure them of their delusions.
Scientific American: Jeff Clifton: Many Differences between Liberals and Conservatives May Boil Down to One Belief
Disagreement has paralyzed our politics and our collective ability to get things done. But where do these conflicts come from? A split between liberals and conservatives, many might say. But underlying that division is an even more fundamental fissure in the ways that people view the world.
In politics, researchers usually define conservativism as a general tendency to resist change and tolerate social inequality. Liberalism is a tendency to embrace change and reject inequality. Political parties evolve with time—Democrats were the conservative party 150 years ago—but the liberal-conservative split is typically recognizable in a country’s politics. It’s the fault line on which political cooperation most often breaks down.
Psychologists have long suspected that a handful of fundamental differences in worldviews might underlie the conservative-liberal rift. Forty years of research has shown that, on average, conservatives see the world as a more dangerous place than liberals. This one core belief seemed to help explain many policy disagreements, such as conservative support of gun ownership, border enforcement and increased spending on police and the military—all of which, one can argue, aim to protect people from a threatening world.
But new research by psychologist Nick Kerry and me at the University of Pennsylvania contradicts that long-standing theory. We find instead that the main difference between the left and right is the belief that the world is inherently hierarchical. Conservatives, our work shows, tend to have higher belief than liberals in a hierarchical world, which is essentially the view that the universe is a place where the lines between categories or concepts matter. A clearer understanding of that difference could help society better bridge political divides.
Making the Friendly Skies a Little Bit Friendlier to the Environment
I really hope this keeps making progress.
GoodNewsNetwork: Andy Corbley: First Flight of Regional Jet Powered by Hydrogen Fuel Cells–40-Seater is Largest Ever to Fly
A fledgling energy company looking to develop true zero-emissions aircraft just took a massive leap forward with the first-ever regional passenger flight powered principally on hydrogen.
A 40-seat aircraft took off at 8:41 am from Grant County International Airport and flew for 15 minutes, reaching an altitude of 3,500 MSL.
The flight, conducted under an FAA Special Airworthiness Certificate, was the first in a two-year flight test campaign expected to culminate in 2025 with entry into passenger service of ATR 72 regional aircraft converted to run on hydrogen.
Musical Interlude
First recorded in 1970 by the Wailers (Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer) this 2019 performance features Bunny Wailer, their last surviving founding member, in what might be his final recorded performance. He died in 2021.
I'm a rebel, let them talk
Soul rebel, talk won't bother me
I'm a capturer, that's what they say
Soul adventurer, night and day
Music from Ukraine
We haven’t visited with the Dakh Daughters recently. Hopefully, this tiny desk concert will make up for the lapse.
On the Lighter Side (with an Edge)
This first gem was gleefully snagged from an email purportedly containing a story extracted from a Facebook post. I have no clue as to its actual provenance.
RETIREE'S LAST TRIP TO COSTCO !
Yesterday I was at Costco, buying a large bag of Purina dog chow for my loyal pet Owen, the Wonder Dog, and was In the check-out line when a woman behind me asked if I had a dog.
What did she think I had, an elephant?
So because I’m retired and have little to do, on impulse, I told her that no, I didn’t have a dog, I was starting the Purina Diet again.
I added that I probably shouldn’t, because I ended up in the hospital last time, but that I’d lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IV’s in both arms.
I told her that It was essentially a Perfect Diet and that the way that it works is to load your pants pockets with Purina Nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry. The food is nutritionally complete, (certified), so it works well and I was going to try it again.
(I have to mention here that practically everyone in line was now enthralled with my story.)
Horrified, she asked if I ended up in Intensive care, because the dog food poisoned me.
I told her no, I had stopped to pee on a fire hydrant and a car hit me.
Well, I thought the guy behind her was going to have a heart attack he was laughing so hard.
Costco won t let me shop there anymore.
John Cleese explains republicans and Fox in less than a minute.
Closing Notes
After the Dylan and the Dead tour in 1987, the band almost always played a Dylan song, fronted by Bobby, in the first set. Stuck Inside Of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again was a common selection.