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Correcting Some Mischaracterizations About Republicans - GNR for Bluesday, January 10th [1]
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Date: 2023-01-10
We are now 10 days into January, 2023. And, we need to clear the air.
The republicans have just proven they are no longer capable of marching in mindless goosestep solidarity. It’s probably because some of them are so mindless they’ve started missing the steps and stumbling all over their already pitiful legacy of deception. As part of their bungled ascension in the House, they took us back to the chaotic days before our Civil War (which we think is actually one of their triple secret, “don’t say it out loud” goals). It took only 15 votes to achieve full emasculation.
It’s quite popular to take every opportunity to belittle the feeble achievements of the republican party. This is unfair, and to be frank, far too republican of us. We should be gracious and give them credit for the positive impact they’ve had on some parts of our society, like the substantial gains in employment opportunities for fact checkers, unethical shoddy defense attorneys, and forensic accountants.
Beyond those obvious beneficiaries, we’ve identified several other areas where republicans have improved lives for persons not members of the 1% or currently awaiting indictment.
Mute button repairmen are seeing more work than they can handle. Although, the republican cancelling headphones appear to be a scam (people are saying it’s a Bannon/Wohl co-production).
Bar lowering attendants are now in heavy demand outside of Limbo competitions.
Memetragers (those who collect and republish memes, cf, The Lighter Side, below) are drowning in page clicks. Now, if they could only figure out how to monetize them.
Whistle manufacturers (ya gotta have something to blow, don’t you?)
The Legacy of James Buchanan is grateful to be out of the basement.
Every village needs its idiot; every tavern needs its loudmouth at the end of the bar. Now that so many of them have been jailed for insurrection, idiot and loudmouth placement services are flourishing.
Deprogrammers, exorcists, psychiatrists, and psychologists have seen a surge in the pool of potential clients. As a bonus, the pool is easily identified because of the red hats.
The spited face caucus has inspired a renaissance in the prosthetic nose industry.
The sour grapes caucus has reinvigorated bad whine production.
After a huge increase in involuntary asphyxiation deaths, development of SCHITABA 1 gear occurred in record time. Sales are exploding.
gear occurred in record time. Sales are exploding. Republican have also done wonders for rehabilitating the reputations of wastrels, ne’er do wells, and other disreputable bottom feeders the world over. Compared to republicans everyone else is eligible to be nominated for sainthood.
The demand for feck is astronomical. Since republicans continue to suffer from a complete lack of natural feck, and they need at least a modicum to function, they are forced to purchase feck on the open market. The funny thing is, no matter how much they buy, they just can’t manage to hang on to it.
Another misperception we should address is the characterization of republicans as horseshit2 artists. This is flat out wrong. There is nothing artistic about what they do. 100% pure unadulterated, extra-pungent Grade-A horseshit just fountains out every time they open their lying mouths. It appears to be a natural byproduct of them being so completely full of it. Scientists have reported that republican produced political methane is more of a danger to the planet than whatever is generated by all the rest of farm animals combined.
The list of republican fakery goes on and on, fueled by an endless stream of self-serving lies and lazy reporters who are unwilling to challenge clear, easily debunked, obviously false, and wildly inflated claims about things that just aren’t true.
Republicans tell us they are strong on defense, yet they instigated costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq without discernable exit or victory strategies. They claim to be strong on the economy, yet they have a long legacy of badly breaking it and needing Democrats to bail them and the country out. Their claims about being staunch supporters of the middle class are belied by their repeatedly promised healthcare and infrastructure plans being nothing more than wisps of mirages; because of the way any tax cuts they’ve passed skew damn near exclusively to the ultra-rich; and by their relentless attempts to pass anti-union, anti-labor, and anti-worker laws and regulations. There’s also that whole “Back the Blue” thing that’s only valid if the Blue aren’t going after republican criminals. Their words are almost always contradicted by their actions.
They have no platform, no coherent policy proposals outside of laws to enable hatred and discrimination, and no commitment to democracy. They are without purpose; an anachronism moving forward only because of momentum and deception. The world will be a much better place when they finish swallowing their tail and disappear into their proper home — forever mired in the dung heap of history.
I know it’s a tough row to hoe, but if we all just keep giving them credit for their actions, they should slither away into inconsequentiality after a few more cycles. We have to be relentless in reminding our fellow voters of the full list of this republican party’s accomplishments — from caged children right through insurrection and up to their current blatant efforts to abolish democracy.
1 Self-Contained Head In The Ass Breathing Apparatus
2 For years we’ve been accusing republicans of being bullshitters. I think this is incorrect. While a significant percentage of them are decidedly dangerous to China shops, most are clearly horse’s asses; making horseshitters the proper descriptor.
We have the power. We have the ability. We can and we will do this.
Slava Ukraini!
Remember the Children
Screw you, Samuel Alito
Colbert had some thoughts on the House fiasco
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For you Seth Myers fans, here’s his A Closer Look on the subject from last night.
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Well, it’s that time again. The intro is done. Let us gather together and move on to the news.
Update on the Leopards Ate Their Faces Party
Or, at least they grabbed them. When Mike Rogers (Leopard Prey-AL) got his face grabbed by Richard Hudson (Leopard-NC) in a misguided attempt to prevent Matt Gaetz (Schmuck-FL) from being mauled by Rogers (Maybe He’s a Leopard After All-AL), the republican House Conference finished transitioning into a bunch of snarling, snapping, carnivorous representatives of no one at all. The article has some excellent images that I don’t have a license to share, so you’ll have to click through.
Slate: Ben Mathis-Lilley: The Defining Image of the New Congress … is a Republican being pulled away from another Republican by a third Republican who is grabbing him by the face. And there may be more of this to come!
At around 12:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, a time when most members of Congress would rather be asleep or enjoying a glass of 18-year-old Scotch that was paid for by a defense contractor, Republican California Rep. Kevin McCarthy was finally elected speaker of the House. It was the 15th vote on the speakership that had been held since Tuesday. In order to win over the last Republican holdouts against him, McCarthy reportedly had to agree to conditions that will give the far-right Freedom Caucus even more power than it had under previous GOP House regimes. The Caucus is expected to use this power to force government shutdowns and to investigate claims about Democrats that originated on QAnon message boards with names like Camouflage Daryl’s Patriot Zone.✂️ McCarthy won the next vote, though, when Gaetz and five other remaining Republican dissenters all agreed to vote “present” in order to allow McCarthy to be elected at a lower vote threshold. This is the kind of compromise that would have allowed everyone involved to save face had it not been preceded by a near-altercation and four days of failure. On Sunday, Rogers issued a statement apologizing for his behavior while Gaetz issued a statement accepting the apology. Everybody’s friendly again? Probably not: Monday, the House will take up its so-called rules package, in which some of the compromises McCarthy agreed to about how the chamber operates will be made explicit. One relatively moderate Republican has already said he’ll vote against it and, just as McCarthy could only afford not to win a handful of hardliners in the speaker vote, he’ll have to win almost all of his party’s extremism-averse representatives of swing districts in order to pass the rules. In other words, everyone who plans to be on Capitol Hill this week should remember to protect their face.
A Couple More Disreputable Face Eating Leopards Are Facing Off
If you spend all your time promoting fear and division, chances are you aren’t very good at making nice. Sideshow Boebert is still busy going after Empty Greene. There something disturbingly cartoonish about those two, making them seem less dangerous than they actually are. These are people no one in their right mind would trust to babysit their children.
Raw Story: Sky Palma: Lauren Boebert lashes out at 'unhinged' Marjorie Taylor Greene
Stemming from the internal fight amongst Republicans over who would be the next Speaker of the House, the growing rift between Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) is showing no signs of slowing down.✂️ “I have been asked to explain MTG’s beliefs on Jewish space lasers, on why she showed up to a white supremacist conference. ... I’m just not going to go there. She wants to say all these things and seem unhinged on Twitter, so be it," Boebert told the Associated Press, referring to Greene's comments where she suggested that the Rothschilds, a Jewish banking family, were connected to the wildfires in California in 2018.
The Stupid, It Burns
Update to the story below: The Supreme Court declined to hear the case, so add one more case to tfg’s loser column. I think he just hit the row limit in Excel.
Salt Lake Tribune: Byron Schott: These Utah brothers want the Supreme Court to remove Joe Biden from the White House, reinstate Donald Trump
The suit, which leans on baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 elections, seeks to kick President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and nearly 400 members of Congress out of office and reinstate Donald Trump to the White House — though a legal expert says there’s very little chance of that happening.✂️ The lawsuit claims members of Congress violated their oaths of office by allegedly failing to investigate and covering up evidence of foreign election interference that rigged the election against Donald Trump.✂️ Brunson’s suit claims rampant fraud invalidated his vote for Donald Trump in 2020. The complaint asks that the 387 members of Congress who voted to certify Biden’s election be immediately thrown out of office and barred from ever running again. Biden and Harris would also be removed from the White House and banned from running, as would former Vice President Mike Pence.
Florida Orange Man in Danger of Succumbing to Heavy Shoefall
The Georgia prosecutorial kitchen is heating up. Donnie can’t stand it and he can’t get out. In the immortal words of Grouchy Cat, “Good!”
CNN: Sarah Murray, Jason Morris: Georgia grand jury investigating Trump and 2020 election aftermath completes its work
CNN — The Atlanta-area special grand jury investigating whether former President Donald Trump and his allies violated the law in their efforts to overturn the 2020 election has completed its work, according to a new court filing. — The Atlanta-area special grand jury investigating whether former President Donald Trump and his allies violated the law in their efforts to overturn the 2020 election has completed its work, “Given the special purpose grand jury’s delivery of its final report, the undersigned’s recommendation, and the Superior Court bench’s vote, it is the ORDER of this court that the special purpose grand jury now stands DISSOLVED,” Judge Robert McBurney, who has been overseeing the Fulton County special grand jury investigation, wrote in Monday’s short court order. Special grand juries in Georgia are not authorized to issue indictments. But the panel will issue a final report that serves as a mechanism for the special grand jury to recommend whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should pursue indictments in her election interference investigation. Willis can then go to a regularly empaneled grand jury to seek indictments.
There’s movement in New York as well. I wonder if Vegas is giving on odds on Habba retaining her law license.
Salon: Samaa Khullar: Trump lawyer Alina Habba in "judge's sights" over courtroom stunts and "frivolous" claims: report
The judge overseeing New York Attorney General Letitia James' $250 million civil lawsuit against former President Donald Trump said he is prepared to sanction his attorneys if they don't stop their bad-faith delay tactics. Judge Arthur Engoron refused to dismiss the case against the Trump Organization for business and tax fraud, saying he was unmoved by the arguments repeatedly given by Trump attorneys Alina Habba, Christopher Kise and Clifford Robert. Habba in particular has "found herself in this judge's sights, after repeatedly trading barbs with him in court in a manner rarely seen in the profession—frequently interrupting him on the bench, accusing him of unfairly siding against the former president, and making snide remarks about his law clerk," The Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery reported. Trump's own legal team has quietly criticized Habba's behavior, urging her to cut the theatrics and save it for her many appearances on right-wing TV channels, according to the report.
It looks like the feds are loading up for boor too — the orange Florida boor to be precise.
Bloomberg: Zoe Tillman, Chris Strohm: Trump Special Counsel Bolsters Team With Anti-Graft Specialists
The special counsel investigating former President Donald Trump brought on two current and former long-time career prosecutors experienced in handling complex public corruption cases, according to a person familiar with the matter. Special Counsel Jack Smith has tapped Ray Hulser, a veteran prosecutor who previously led the Justice Department’s public integrity section, and hired David Harbach, who previously served as counsel to a Trump adversary, former FBI Director James Comey, according to the person who asked to remain anonymous. The two attorneys have prosecuted some of the most high-profile public corruption targets of both political parties in recent years, including cases against Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and former presidential candidate and Senator John Edwards.
Don’t forget that Alvin Bragg has a few spitballs in his arsenal that were strengthened by the release of tfg’s tax records.
Daily News: Daily News Editorial Board: What Trump tried to hide: The long-secret tax returns show that he’s not so rich or so smart
As David Cay Johnston laid out in these pages yesterday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has the goods to nail Donald Trump for tax fraud. The DA should move forward quickly on an investigation and prosecution. Johnston, the premier Trumpologist, made his conclusions using six years of Trump’s personal and business federal tax returns that House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richie Neal published before handing the gavel to Republicans, who fiercely opposed the transparency.✂️ He’s not such a rich man. His adjusted gross income was negative, mostly from a Net Operating Loss carryover of $105,157,825. He had to pay the IRS $707,123. No wonder the fraud didn’t want Americans to see.
The ‘I Like Andy Borowitz’ Regular Bi-Weekly Feature
Apologies for this being slightly outdated. It was just too good to let pass.
The New Yorker: Satire from the Borowitz Report: Herschel Walker Offers Kevin McCarthy Seven Hundred Dollars to Abort His Speaker Bid
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a possible solution to the stalemate that has gripped the House of Representatives, Herschel Walker has offered Kevin McCarthy a check for seven hundred dollars to abort his bid for Speaker. Appearing at the Capitol, the N.F.L. great said that he had already written the check and hoped that it was sufficient to “take care of this.” Referring to McCarthy’s campaign for Speaker, Walker said, “Mistakes happen, and, when they do, it’s best just to make them go away.”
A Literary Assessment
I look forward to hearing opinions on today from more of our literary greats.
The Atlantic: James Parker: All the Pretty Republicans — If Cormac McCarthy interpreted the humiliations of Kevin McCarthy
And there were men there in attendance there with double faces, as they had been sutured one face to another with catgut and diabolic needle, and women with the nostrils of dragons. Monstrosities of democracy they came forth in their pomp in the noon of the day. From the backwoods, from the boggy peninsulas. From the gleaming mall-lands. From the sucking swamps. Sun it did throb like a thumb in the eye of God. And the chamber was a cauldron of mockery, bepopulate with jeerers and carousers. He would be Speaker of this chamber. O he would. Most keenly. To wield the gavel was his life’s whole grail and summit. For this he had flattered the whims of the autocrat, the golden maniac. Had stood next to him with bozo straight face when the stars themselves were shaking with awful laughter. Had prostrated himself in Florida. And was it Justice now that they refused him this office, at the last? His own people? The Floridian in particular, with luscious hair and grin infernal?
The Real Knowledge of the Ancients Put the lime in the concrete and shake it all up. GoodNewsNetwork: Andy Corbley: Secret to Durability of Roman Concrete that Has Stood Test of Time for Over 2,000 Years Finally Discovered When it comes to explaining Roman engineering, people looking to demonstrate their genius have a variety of use cases, but the secret to why their concrete has remained when even modern buildings crumble after just a few years of disuse has eluded scientists. However at MIT, scientists have cracked their concrete code to show that Roman concrete was self-repairing—it could naturally close cracks in as little as 2 weeks.✂️ It created a kind of volcanic ash rich in lime and calcium, which form chunks of white material called lime clasts. Ancient recipes dictate this ash was an important ingredient, but modern analysis looking at the presence of the lime clasts in the ash has essentially written it off as “low-quality control.” “The idea that the presence of these lime clasts was simply attributed to low quality control always bothered me,” said MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering, Admir Masic. How About Something Tasty to Close Out the News? I truly wonder what kind of drugs they take to think this stuff up. Scientific American: Saugat Bolakhe: Flavor-Enhancing Spoons and Chopsticks Could Make Food Taste Better Foods high in sugar and salt can be unhealthy, but these additives are too delicious for many of us to give up or reduce in a big way. What if we could somehow enjoy their taste without actually eating them? A student team has now designed a spoon with a structure that stimulates taste buds to produce a sensation of sweetness—without adding calories or chemicals. The project follows previous work involving flavor-enhancing cutlery, such as chopsticks that amplify saltiness with a mild electric current. Musical Interlude
Ever since U2 released this back in 1987, this song, about a search for meaning, has highlighted the importance of the journey, even if the result is never completely attained. Seems somehow appropriate to our struggle, doesn’t it? Playing for Change does another of their bang up jobs with this version of I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.
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Music from Ukraine
Singer-songwriter Khrystyna Soloviy, inspired by the Maidan Revolution that led to the downfall of former president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, wrote her breakthrough hit Trymai (Hold Me). More recently she has given us this adaptation of Bella Ciao (Goodbye Beautiful), an Italian folk song that became an anthem for the anti-fascist resistance, now repackaged as Ukrainian Fury.
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On the Lighter Side (with an Edge)
This next bit is a joke told by Vlodymyr Zelensky to David Letterman during Letterman’s visit to Kviv in October, 2022. It was probably translated from the Ukrainian by a local employee of Letterman’s production company. They were talking about the need to maintain humor in the face of adversity. Letterman’s full My Next Guest interview with Volodymyr Zelensky on YouTube [44:02]
Two Jewish guys from Odessa meet up. One is asking the other, “So, what’s the situation? What are people saying?” And he goes, “What are people saying? They are saying it’s a war.” “What kind of war?” “Russia is fighting NATO.” “Are you serious?” “Yes! Russia is fighting NATO.” “So? How’s it going?” “What do you mean, how is it going? Seventy thousand Russian soldiers are dead. Missiles stockpile has been almost depleted. A lot of equipment is damaged, blown up. That’s the situation.” “What about NATO?” “What about NATO? NATO hasn’t even arrived yet!”
George Santos has persisted well beyond his expel by date.
Here’s a live shot from the republican House chambers
And a matching live shot from Mar a Lago
h/t dmhlt66
Keep this one in mind for next December.
A belated Xmas wish
Katie was calmly reading a book between opportunities to vote for Speaker.
x Katie Porter, with a
little light reading 😂 ... pic.twitter.com/QkX7zkhv2x — Thursday (@ennui365) January 7, 2023
x Is it possible to love Katie Porter even more? pic.twitter.com/NiDz1gdYW2 — Mike Sington (@MikeSington) January 7, 2023
Quote(s) of the Day
The Republican Party can lead any person to believe that their promises will be fulfilled in the future. They follow the Hitler line – no matter how big the lie; repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as truth. — John F Kennedy A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends. — Henry A Wallace When a man begins to feel that he is the only one who can lead in this republic, he is guilty of treason to the spirit of our institutions. — Calvin Coolidge
A Point of Personal Pride
As nifty kindly pointed out to me on Saturday, Hakim Jeffries gave me a shout out during his speech to Congress early on Saturday morning. I am truly honored. This link should get you right to that spot in his speech, then you can watch for just a few more minutes to hear his ABCs of Democratic principles (Did he get that idea from reading some of my Evening Shade alphabet articles?) Or, you can back up to the beginning and watch the whole speech. It’s an inspiring speech and worth the effort to watch.
Closing Notes
The speculation is that Brent wrote this bluesy train song in 1984 as an extended metaphor for either a tumultuous relationship, his struggles with drugs, or the pressures of touring with the Dead. The Dead did a lot of songs about trains over the years. There were at least 17 songs credited to the Dead that feature trains. They regularly covered another 15 train songs. As an exercise for the reader, how many of those songs can you name without asking Mr. Google? This is the New Year’s Eve performance from 1985-86.
Nine hundred thousand tons of steel, out of control.
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