One of the titles for the devil is the Prince of Lies. I’m pretty sure the king, queen and remainder of his Court of Lies are all republicans.
From the Unamerican Activities Committee in the 50s, through the John Birch Society, the Moral Majority, the private militia crowd (3%ers, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, et al), the Teabaggers, the Freedumb Caucus, and finally today’s MAGAots and QAnon conspiracists, republicans have a lot of extremist idiocy to atone for. When the Democratic Party told its white supremacists and bigots to go piss up a rope in 1965, they ignored that advice and found a home in the republican party getting into bed with a bunch of rich assholes and commie hunters. They invited the unchristian Christians into the marriage and have been on an express train to hell ever since.
From north to south — LePage to DeSantis; from east to west — McCarthy to Murdoch; from their honorary republican icons — Putin, Bolsanaro, bin Salman, Orban, LePen, and even Kim we are told more outrageous lies per hour than there are people in the country. Any sense of shame was jettisoned years and years ago.
We aren’t talking about little white lies, modest exaggerations, or mild puffery. These aren’t accidental misstatements or even “alternative facts.” We are far, far beyond euphemisms. These are giant, stinking, scabrous lies; the kind that get people killed; the kind that every moral teaching throughout history decries.
Vast caravans of Al Queda terrorists trudging thousands of miles to the border; brigades of Antifa rioters raging through the streets (and the Capitol); pizza parlor pedophiles; Hunter’s laptop; her emails; and so on back to Whitewater and beyond.
No ludicrous accusations too absurd; no ridiculous charge too nonsensical. Just make up any old stupid shit to deflect from the actual crimes being committed. The rubes will swallow it whole and beg for more. They don’t even need the jests, because they always hear what they want to hear.
The republican party could not exist without their media echo chamber to reinforce their lies and their continuing assault on truth. Murdoch and his ilk have much to answer for.
If hell doesn’t exist, it needs to be created, so these bumblefucks can be segregated away from the rest of us like they’ve been demanding since before the country was founded. More than 700 years ago, Dante Alighieri might just have had our future republicans in mind when he reserved a place for them in hell. He assigned barrators (corrupt politicians) to Bolgia Five in the Eighth Circle where they while away eternity, standing in a river of boiling pitch (tar). Do you think McCarthy and McConnell know what’s waiting for them? Those who betray their country are destined for Antemora, Round Two of the Ninth Circle, where they are forced to endlessly eat (a la Jeffrey Dahmer) each other. Maybe Donnie and Jared can be cannibal compadres.
Anyhow, that’s for after they shuffle off. Before that happens, our duty to our nation is to call out the lies, bear witness to the perfidy, and to help educate our fellow citizens to the daily depredations of the republican cult. Because we care for the future, we mark ourselves as activists, as patriots, and as humanists. Complacency is complicity. Let’s go ahead and vote the liars out.
Stray related thought: The republican party has worked very, very hard to morph itself into an asshat Ouroboros, sustained entirely by the lies it excretes back through the tail it’s so busy swallowing. The cycle of unreason is close to being broken. It’s either going to chew off its own tail or choke on its own bullshit.
GET OUT THE VOTE!
We have the power. We have the ability. We can and we will do this.
Slava Ukraini!
Remember the Children
Screw you, Samuel Alito
Dolly is a national treasure and so is her parody voice. [1:43]
What news, through yonder TV/internet breaks?
Even with the Braindead Ruling, There Is No Reason to Panic
A tfg appointed judge ruled in favor of tfg. The ruling is farcical on its face and will be overturned on appeal. It was a bad ruling. Let’s review:
Salon: Dahlia LIthwick: Is This Time Different for Donald Trump?
The old law school aphorism holds that “if the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.”
With Tuesday night’s Justice Department filing in response to the search of Mar-a-Lago for classified stolen documents, it’s safe to assume we are quickly achieving peak table pounding. In part because the Artist Formerly Known as President (there should be an unpronounceable symbol for this phrase) has burned right through his last competent attorneys, the yelling like hell has consisted mainly of posting about QAnon and 4Chan as opposed to any recognizable or coherent legal analysis.✂️
It is slightly amusing to consider that Trump and his attorneys in fact brought all of this down upon themselves with their request for a special master. The legal argument upon which he seems to have settled on today is that the FBI is bad at housekeeping and made a mess during the raid. (Marie Kondo #protip? If those classified nuclear documents don’t spark joy, it’s probably time to give them away).
It’s easy to forget that what the Artist Formerly Known as President is now ensnared by is not simply the law, but also the facts. That’s why attempts to compare what he did to what Hillary Clinton did are so fatuous. What Clinton did not participate in was persistent and knowing obstruction. She cooperated with authorities and testified on multiple occasions. Facts still matter, which is why waving around the text of the Espionage Act and threatening riots on the streets as if this were an apples-to-apples comparison to Clinton might make for good television, but it isn’t law.
Making Attorneys Get Attorneys
The Rudi Giuliani attorney mentoring program is having some real successes these days. Everyone who’s been through the course is helping to give prosecutors purpose and meaning.
NPR: Deepa Shivaram: Oath Keepers attorney has been charged with conspiracy and obstruction of justice
An attorney for the far-right, anti-government group the Oath Keepers has been indicted in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Kellye SoRelle, who was arrested in Junction, Texas, is latest person with ties to the group to face charges stemming from the insurrection. A grand jury in Washington, D.C., handed up an indictment charging her with four counts, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding and obstruction of justice.
She is expected to make her initial appearance in federal court in Austin, Texas.
SoRelle is a lawyer and close associate of Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers. Rhodes and other members of the group are slated to go on trial at the end of September on seditious conspiracy and other charges for their alleged actions in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. The government says they sought to use force to stop Congress' certification of Joe Biden's election win.
Lock Him Up
The petri dish masquerading as a shirt closet masquerading as an unshaven wreck of a man, known as Steve Bannon, is going to get sentenced just in time for the midterm elections.
Business Insider: John L Dorman: Federal judge dismisses Steve Bannon's request for a new trial after contempt of Congress conviction
A federal judge on Friday dismissed former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon's request for a new trial.
Bannon argued that there were faulty instructions given to the jury during his trial, including the omission of his defense theory. However, US District Judge Carl Nichols disagreed in his ruling.
"Defendant's arguments relating to the jury instructions, while certainly well preserved, do not demonstrate a serious miscarriage of justice," Nichols wrote in his ruling.
Whatever the Opposite of Feeling Bad for Someone, This Is It
A candidate maxim has officially entered the lexicon — “Everything he touches dies/turns to shit.” I expect to see this phrase included in the next version of Merriam-Webster and probably a posthumously revised Funk and Wagnalls. Shitter meet Truth Social; Truth Social, shitter.
Raw Story: Svea Herbst-Bayliss: Deal partner for Trump's Truth Social fails to get backing for SPAC extension -sources
(Reuters) - The blank-check acquisition firm that agreed to merge with Donald Trump's social media company failed to secure enough shareholder support for a one-year extension to complete the deal, people familiar with the matter said on Monday.
At stake is a $1.3 billion cash infusion that Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which operates the former U.S. president's Truth Social app, stands to receive from Digital World Acquisition Corp, the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that inked a deal last October to take TMTG public.✂️
Most of Digital World's shareholders are individual investors and getting them to vote through their brokers has been challenging, Digital World Chief Executive Patrick Orlando said last week.
Digital World needs 65% of its shareholders to vote in favor of the proposal to extend its life by 12 months for the move to become effective. By Monday evening, far fewer Digital World shareholders than those required had voted in favor, the sources said.
You Cannot Make This Crap Up (Unless You Are a Demented Republican)
I have no words.
Huffington Post: Mary Papenfuss: Trump Rally Highlighted Jan. 6 Prisoner Who Posed As Adolf Hitler
Of all people to highlight at his weekend Pennsylvania rally, former President Donald Trump gave stage time for a single Jan. 6 rioter from New Jersey who dressed like Adolf Hitler and told co-workers that the führer “should have finished the job,” according to investigators.
Convicted insurrectionist Timothy Hale-Cusanelli’s aunt pleaded for sympathy for her nephew from the stage at Trump’s rally Saturday in Wilkes-Barre.✂️
But she omitted a few salient points about Hale-Cusanelli, who was found guilty in May of multiple charges in the riot, including civil disorder and obstruction of an official proceeding.
When working as a security contractor at Naval Weapons Station Earle in New Jersey before his arrest, Cusanelli often made white supremacist and anti-Semitic comments to co-workers, according to a federal court filing against him last year.
Republicans Badmouth FBI… Wait. What?
First here’s a refresher on what the FBI is all about.
So, after the classified document raid, a bunch of the dumbly & blindly faithful MAGAots jumped off the Back the Blue bandwagon and commenced to whining about defunding the FBI. They must be Egyptian dual citizens, since they are clearly in de Nile. Maybe there’s another explanation. Maybe they just don’t give a shit about law & order, after all.
The Nation: Kali Holloway: Republicans Ramp Up Their “Defund the FBI” Stunt
For roughly two weeks now, since the FBI executed a court-authorized search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence for documents pilfered from the White House by the former president, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has been calling for the dissolution of federal law enforcement. “Defund the FBI!” Greene tweeted on August 8, a sentiment she would echo in multiple follow-up posts, coupled with demands that the Justice Department be dismantled and Merrick Garland—against whom Greene has filed impeachment articles—be removed as attorney general. A few days after her original screed, Greene shared a campaign-style grainy montage of Fox News talking heads and cable news clips, a series of sound bites meant to terrify white conservatives into believing that the FBI is enforcing the law with color-blind vigor. “Joe Biden has weaponized the FBI and DOJ against President Trump and his supporters,” the accompanying text on the post warned. “This isn’t the first time. and it won’t be the last.” The only surefire way to fight to the power, the ad suggests? With a “Defund the FBI” hat or T-shirt, which Greene just so happens to be selling on her fundraising website for $30 a pop.
Greene is only the loudest voice in a chorus of conservative politicians and commentators—including Representatives Paul Gosar and Jeff Duncan, as well as MAGA Republicans from Candace Owens to Liz Booth—who are also calling for the defunding of national law enforcement, as well as far more lawless violence. Trump-pardoned felon Dinesh D’Souza called the FBI a “gang of dangerous criminals” that should be “shut down.” Colorado’s twice-arrested House freshman Lauren Boebert also demanded that FBI funds be dissolved. Florida state lawmaker and US congressional candidate Anthony Sabatini did his best Don Corleone impression, advocating for the FBI to be “gut[ted] like fish,” while Florida House contender Republican Luis Miguel, announced via Twitter, “Under my plan, all Floridians will have permission to shoot FBI, IRS, ATF and all other feds on sight!”
Not so long ago, these same conservatives wouldn’t shut up about how much they “Back the Blue,” sloganeering they invoked against progressive calls for reallocating bloated police budgets. Just this past May, Greene leveraged the phrase “party of defund the police” as a stand-in for the GOP’s tired “soft on crime” criticism of Democrats, and she later blamed “left-wing policies of defunding the police” for rising crime rates. She has personally called for the arrests and prosecutions of—bear with me; the list is lengthy—reproductive justice activists, anti-fascists, Black Lives Matter protesters, Nancy Pelosi, film crew members from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and a Hill staffer who ripped down an anti-trans sign she put up. Just like Trump—who used the Espionage Act against at least five whistleblowers and journalists, asked advisers if unarmed BLM protesters could be shot “in the legs or something,” had the Justice Department go after reporters and political adversaries, and in 1989 took out a full-page ad calling for the state to murder five innocent Black and brown boys—Greene is fine with weaponizing law enforcement.
World News from Another Country Where I’ve Been Told They Speak a Pidgeon Form of English
While we’ve been caught up in secrets gone walkabout, there’s some news from the UK. Seems that total plank, BoJo is leaving Number 10. He could’ve at least had the decency to wait until we finish flushing our own Clown Car Commissar down the crapper. Watching two different conservative bunches of asshats self immolate at the same time is quite confusing. Fortunately for us, the Juice Media produced this handy video to explain the current situation. [3:24]
Spoiler Alert: Brexit loving, tax slashing, conservative ideologue Liz Truss was the winner of the race to replace BoJo. May her reign be brief.
Sparky McCarthy, the Endangered Pacific Coast Chowderhead
Other republicans practice to deceive. McCarthy practices to dimwit. This dude is an embarrassment to embarrassments. This is just the latest in his long, long string of “open mouth, insert foot, chew vigorously” stabs at pontification. He’s all of Judy’s road companions wrapped up into one heartless, cowardly, brainless co-conspirator, minus any of their redeeming qualities. He’s in acute danger of stabbing himself in one of his two faces every time he holds a fork.
The Setup:
The Analysis:
Wonkette: Doktor Zoom: Kevin McCarthy Sings The Body Electric, Twirling, Twirling, Twirling Towards Freedom!
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy gave the GOP prebuttal to Joe Biden's speech Thursday night, and it was pretty much exactly the festival of grievance and performatively hurt feelings you'd expect in presponse to Joe Biden's speech explaining why MAGAtroids are dangerous to the USA. He demanded that Joe Biden take back his mean mean slur that Trumpy Republicans are acting like a bunch of "semi-fascists," because how dare Biden demean the loyalty of the third of Americans who voted for Donald Trump, although McCarthy claimed it was half the country. Pretending that his own Republican House colleagues hadn't overwhelmingly voted against certifying a legitimate election, McCarthy was very very How Dare You, insisting that Biden had "chosen to divide, demean, and disparage his fellow Americans – Why? simply because they disagree with his policies."✂️
The what of what, now? The electric cord of liberty still sparks in our hearts? The smoke alarm of bad metaphor has gone off in my head, so let's run McCarthy's comment through the wood chipper of rhetorical analysis.✂️
Speaking of, apparently McCarthy's speechwriter was trying to pull off an inspiring allusion to something Abraham Lincoln said — many people don't know he was a Republican! — about the Declaration of Independence, except for the vital difference that when Lincoln said it it didn't sound like a fucked up home improvement project on Reddit.
Lincoln spoke about how all Americans were united by the Declaration — it was 1858, so he was leaving rather a lot of Americans out, but he worked on part of that later — even decades after the Founding, "as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration." The Declaration's statement that all are created equal, Lincoln said, “That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.” Now, in 1858, electric home appliances were still a good 50 years in the future, so "electric cord" would have had a far different connotation for Lincoln's audience, more in the metaphorical sense of electrifying, just as cord would have emphasized the sense that people were bound together by an invisible thread. Lincoln wasn't at all talking about what a 2022 audience would think of when they hear "electric cord." McCarthy's attempt at sounding Lincolnesque was so jolting because you can't necessarily take a phrase from the mid-19th Century and plug it in to your 2022 politics. It's just not current, so it's little surprise it met so much resistance.
The Reaction:
If we unplug the electric cord of Liberty, we must have an adaptable charger to light the freedoms of tomorrow. — @brhodes
the toaster of liberation still sizzles in the hot tub — @NilkkiMcR
“The toaster of patriotism browns the bread of freedom.” — @pattonoswalt
The NOUN of freedom still VERBS in our BODY PART — @mrbenwexler
"We choose to go to the Moon not because it is easy, but because the Moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie." — @MaxKennerly
Kevin McCarthy keeps trying to stick a fork in the wall plug of Democracy — @ShadenFreudeKid
The ice machine of democracy produces digestible pellets of good ice that cools our souls. — @WajahatAli
Perhaps the dude has been spending too much time hanging around with Herschel Walker. — @JoshuaHol
A Little Bit of Andy in Your Life
A little bit of Andy by your side
A little bit of Andy is all you need
A little bit of Andy is what you see
A little bit of Andy in the sun
A little bit of Andy all night long
A little bit of Andy, here you are
The New Yorker: Satire from the Borowitz Report: Dr. Oz Claims That Eating Classified Documents Was Essential to Trump’s Healthy Diet
PITTSBURGH (The Borowitz Report)—Eating classified documents was “an essential part of President Donald Trump’s super-healthy diet,” Dr. Mehmet Oz has claimed.
Oz, the longtime television host and, more recently, Pennsylvania’s G.O.P. nominee for the U.S. Senate, said that “classified documents, including the nuclear codes, provided the roughage necessary to keep President Trump’s digestive system humming along at the highest possible level.”
Speaking at a campaign stop in Pittsburgh, Oz said that Trump’s diet consisted of “the four food groups: the hamburger group, the ketchup group, the Coca-Cola group, and the classified-documents group.”
Reducing Our Carbon Footprint
I think the pace of the rollout of this type of innovation is ramping up. I look forward to the inevitable collapse of Big Oil.
GoodNewsNetwork: Andy Corbley: World’s First 100% Hydrogen-Powered Trains Now Running Regional Service in Germany to Replace Diesel
A regional train operator in Germany is becoming the first company to utilize 100% hydrogen fuel cell trains on their lines.✂️
In Germany and the U.S., some regional lines still use diesel-powered locomotives, which expose passengers inside the cars and at the stations to more harmful air pollutants like nitrogen oxide, than standing near a busy intersection in a city.
Along with eliminating this health hazard, the higher emissions cost of a diesel locomotive moving at slower speeds on regional lines are averaged down in national emissions figures by electric powered ones, making the whole endeavor appear less than it actually is.
Musical Interlude
On the Lighter Side
A woman of indeterminate age decided to give herself a big treat for her birthday by staying overnight in a really nice hotel.. When she checked out the next morning, the desk clerk handed her a bill for $250.00.
She demanded to know why the charge was so high "I agree it's a nice hotel, but the rooms aren't worth $250..00 for just an overnight stay - I didn't even have breakfast!"
The clerk told her that $250.00 is the 'standard rate,' and breakfast had been included had she wanted it.
She insisted on speaking to the Manager. The Manager appeared and, forewarned by the desk clerk, announced: "This hotel has an Olympic-sized pool and a huge conference center which are available for use."
“But I didn't use them.”
'Well, they are here, and you could have." He went on to explain that she could also have seen one of the in-hotel shows for which they were so famous. "We have the best entertainers from the world over performing here."
“But I didn't go to any of those shows..”
“Well, we have them, and you could have.”
No matter what amenity the Manager mentioned, she replied, "But I didn't use it!" and the Manager countered with his standard response.
After several minutes discussion, and with the Manager still unmoved, she decided to pay, wrote a check and gave it to him. The Manager was surprised when he looked at the check.
“But Madam, this check is for only $50.00”
“That's correct I charged you $200.00 for sleeping with me.”
“But I didn't!”
“Well, too bad, I was here, and you could have.”
Closing Notes
Independence Day, 1987 in Foxboro, Massachusetts.
And a bonus, from 2019, a couple of old guys still jammin’ after all these years.