What else is new? Axios reports that there’s some dissonance in the House Freedom caucus. They’re voting for new leadership and there seems to be a bit of a problem: An influential member of the House Freedom Caucus won’t run for a leadership spot, citing a recommendation by the group’s board that Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) serve as its next chairman. “I am concerned that our group often relies too much on power (available primarily due to the narrow majority) and too little on influence with and among our colleagues,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) told his fellow members in a letter sent Sunday. “I ask that we consider how to best increase our influence while preserving our power to move policy in the right direction.
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Free speech for me, but not for thee It’s that time of year again. A nip is in the air (regionally). Christmas trees whiz by strapped to the roofs of sedan. Clauses are everywhere this time of year. Thus, Baby Jesus is battling Lucifer over the Establishment Clause. One of the battle fronts this year is in Iowa “where the Satanists have antagonized the Christians with a goat’s head wreath in the Des Moines capitol building.” See, because the Supreme Court ruled that Christians could erect Christmas displays on state property if other faiths get to erect theirs … you know where this is going. Satanists each year make a pointed point about the foolishness of it all by erecting displays honoring Lucifer. Amanda Marcotte weighs in on this less-clebrated holiday tradition: Every year, Christian conservatives discover the Satanic display and have a loud, public temper tantrum about it. In this, Satanists prove their point: Conservatives claim to respect religious plurality, but it’s a lie.
They’re all in on abandoning Ukraine and NATO A global far right get together: Allies of Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán will hold a closed-door meeting with Republicans in Washington to push for an end to US military support for Ukraine, the Guardian has learned. Members of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs and staff from the Hungarian embassy in Washington will on Monday begin a two-day event hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation thinktank. The first day includes panel speeches about the Ukraine war as well as topics such as Transatlantic Culture Wars. It is expected to feature guests including Magor Ernyei, the international director of the Centre for Fundamental Rights, the institute that organized CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) Hungary. Kelley Currie, a former ambassador under then president Donald Trump, said she was invited “but declined”. According to a Republican source, some of the attendees, including Republican members of Congress, have been invited to join closed-door talks the next day.
The latest filing takes on the Big Lie directly We are told by the TV legal beagles that, in the interest of expediency, Jack Smith is going the extra mile to lay out the case he is planning to make and it’s becoming clear that he plans to make it clear that the election was not stolen which would be a real service: Special counsel Jack Smith on Saturday sharply rejected former President Donald Trump’s contention that foreign governments may have changed votes in the 2020 election, laying bare new details about his team’s extensive probe of the matter and its access to a vast array of senior intelligence officials in Trump’s administration. In a 45-page filing, Smith’s team describes interviewing more than a dozen of the top intelligence officials in Trump’s administration — from his director of national intelligence to the administrator of the NSA to Trump’s personal intelligence briefer — about any evidence that foreign governments had penetrated systems that counted votes in 2020. “The answer from every single official was no,” senior assistant special counsel Thomas Windom writes in the filing.
This is more that just the usual, tiresome “I know you are but what am I” nonsense. He’s right about Bannon, Giuliani and Trump but not because Joe Biden is threatening to put them behind bars if he’s re-elected (like someone else we know is doing.) It’s because all of them are under indictment. Unless he knows something we don’t, Gaetz was actually let off the hook by the DOJ for his predatory behavior with drugs and underage girls. But yes, these people are accused criminals and they are going to trial and if they are found guilty they could go to jail. That’s how the Law and Order Party believes it should be for anyone but their crooked leaders.
None. None at all. I realize it’s cheap and easy to make fun of Trump and that’s not what I’m trying to do here. I just think it’s vitally important that people are reminded of what he really is and how his mental faculties are going. Everyone has a slip now and again. I do too. And I know he’s always loved to sing his greatest hits. But that’s not what these are. They’re takes on these scandals and events from the past as if they’re fresh. And he literally makes no sense at times, like the clip below when he says he wants to build a wall on Day One and literally in same breath says he already built it. Also, he is dumb as a post. The following aren’t examples of decline. He’s always been this stupid:
Economic theory vs. economic reality Reaganism was the Grinch that stole Christmases for decades. The rich got the elevator and the rest got the shaft. The chart above from Forbes is illustrative (although out of date). George Packer reflects on several books on the era for The Atlantic. One, “Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream” by David Leonhardt of the New York Times I finished recently. It examines the economic and working class realignment away from Democrats since the early 1970s. Leonhardt notes the red-shift, and that Reaganism was part of it, but sees broader trends. A more technocractic turn among Democrats took their focus off the working class and neoliberal economics ascendant under Reagan undermined labor. Leonhardt “shows that the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which liberal politicians sold as nondiscriminatory but still restrictive, opened the gates to mass immigration. The result put downward pressure on wages at the lower end of the economy.
Anything but “violent insurrection” Let’s begin with this clip from “The Daily Show”: The clip illustrates how the GOP is dedicated heart and soul(?) to fitting its square-peg worldview into an other-shaped hole. Speaker Mike Johnson, Brian Beutler offers, is dispersing “unreleased Capitol security footage from January 6 (to help pro-Trump propagandists lie about the insurrection) but not before he blurs the faces of the rioters (because the raw footage would make it easier for these lawless, often violent Trump supporters to face justice).” Johnson wants to both protect MAGA footsoldiers while aiding the right’s efforts to rewrite the history we saw with our very lyin’ eyes. That’s a rather delicate maneuver (subscription req’d): [I]t’s a policy manifestation of the MAGA code, wherein January 6 can be anything BUT a violent insurrection orchestrated and encouraged by Donald Trump. It can be Antifa, or a false flag, or tourism, or a Patriotic Protest or any combination thereof. But not what it actually was. Call if Big Lie 2 Electric Boogaloo.
The media finally caught on to his plans U.S. Presidents have been accused by their political rivals of wanting to be kings or dictators ever since the very beginning of the Republic. It’s even a charge that’s had some merit from time to time. In 1800 Thomas Jefferson charged John Adams with acting like a king when he expanded federal power and passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which basically made it a crime to criticize the government. But Adams lost his re-election and gracefully conceded, establishing the tradition of the peaceful transfer of power that until very recently was observed by every president. Then there was Andrew Jackson whom his critics assailed as a would-be king for wielding his veto pen for political purposes and challenging the primacy of the Supreme Court to decide constitutional matters, among other things. But he too left peacefully after eight years. Abraham Lincoln was repeatedly accused of being a dictator during the Civil War for implementing numerous extreme measures including the suspension of habeas corpus and the jailing of journalists.
Life’s a beach, ladies Some guy seems not to have noticed that Taylor Swift’s hottest concert ticket of the year made her Time‘s Person of the Year. Or that Barbie was the hottest movie ticket of the year. Barbie ends with joke about women’s health care. It figures some clueless guy‘s name is Ken. Alexandra Petri noticed (Washington Post, gifted): “Judge Guerra Gamble is not medically qualified to make this determination and it should not be relied upon. A TRO is no substitute for medical judgment.” — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, writing to doctors who have received a court order allowing an abortion to end a nonviable pregnancy There is no substitute for medical judgment, except the judgment of me, Ken Paxton. Am I a doctor? No. I’m something better than a doctor: a Ken. My accessories include: no medical expertise and a boundless reservoir of cruelty. And one time, I saw a horse. I have also been told that my handwriting is bad and that I am not patient. This all screams “doctor” to me. Move over Karen. Ken is here.