Miami: Just saying. This is a national problem in cities big and small, red states and blue states. It’s a terrible thing and these ghouls like DeSantis trying to make it into a “woke” issue are lying assholes.
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This would be funny if it didn’t mean that Marge Greene could end up being a “mainstream” Republican politician once the smoke has cleared: Tensions inside the conservative House Freedom Caucus have reached the point that some members are floating the idea of purging colleagues from the group. At least two hardliners have discussed — and proposed to Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (R-Pa.) — trying to boot members who no longer meet the group’s standards, according to three Republicans with knowledge of the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity. The lawmakers declined to name who’s behind the ouster calls, underscoring the sensitivity of the situation. While the members suggesting a purge did not specify the people they want to remove, they are signaling that one target of any ejection push is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Some in the Freedom Caucus have focused on Greene, who’s become a close ally of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, to illustrate their fears that certain group members are too aligned with GOP leaders and too outwardly critical of the group when it splits on certain issues.
I don’t know what to make of this but it’s fascinating: Russia did not face an imminent security threat to justify its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Russia’s Wagner mercenary outfit, said in a bombshell video posted on social media Friday. “The Armed Forces of Ukraine were not going to attack Russia with the NATO bloc,” Prigozhin explained in the half-hour tirade released by his press service. “The Russian Defense Ministry is deceiving the public and the president,” he added. Prigozhin’s comments were at odds with the casus belli given by President Vladimir Putin when he ordered troops into Ukraine last February, although the private army chief avoided personally attacking the Russian leader.
Sand kittens! The North Carolina Zoo is excited to announce yet another recent birth: three sand cat kittens (sexes unknown at this time) were born on May 11. Small enough to fit into the palm of your hand, the kittens were born to first-time mother Sahara, 3, and father Cosmo, 9. It marks the third birth at the Zoo in less than two weeks. On May 20, a giraffe calf (male) was born, and a chimpanzee infant (male) was born on May 21. This marks the first litter for the sand cat pair. Cosmo previously fathered daughter Layla, now living at the Greensboro Science Center. The Zoo plans to offer a public naming poll for the kittens. Details will be announced soon on the Zoo’s social media channels and website. The mom and triplets are doing well. The trio are beginning to explore their surroundings in the Desert Habitat. Lucky guests may be able to catch a glimpse of them in the coming days. Though they appear adorable with big ears, eyes, and petite frame, looks can be deceiving. Zookeepers are quick to tell you they are wild, ferocious animals that should never be kept as pets. These small and mighty hunters kill venomous snakes in the desert.
Is staying out of jail easy, too? Because this animation popped up first thing, and because former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, saw fit to retweet it, I decided to read Fred Kaplan’s Slate column about Donald “I alone can fix it” Trump’s boast that he could end the Ukraine war “in one day.” Kaplan writes of the conspirator-in chief: His one term in the White House should have disabused him of this notion. The fact that he still believes in his unique talents as a deal-maker—after his bargaining tactics with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran accomplished nothing or worse—suggests he is incapable of seeing the world as it is, or at least of learning any lessons from it. One anecdote alone is worth your time. After George H.W. Bush was elected president in 1988, Trump lobbied to become his Russia negotiator on strategic nuclear arms. Bush’s aides had a good laugh. Instead, Bush chose a seasoned diplomat, Ambassador Richard Burt, and later: Around 1990, when Burt was beginning a new round of Soviet–American nuclear arms talks, he ran into Trump at a reception in New York.
John Eastman’s disbarment proceedings “Hundreds of ordinary people have been convicted of attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, yet not one member of Trump’s inner circle of coup-plotters has faced real accountability for it,” Greg Sargent writes this morning in the Washington Post. That may soon change for attorney John Eastman who pleaded the Fifth Amendment over 100 times during questioning by House Jan. 6 committee. Accountability for Eastman remains professional, for now. He faces disbarment in California: Eastman faces 11 charges from the California State Bar, most concerning his lawyerly lies about election fraud. Importantly, the bar also accused Eastman of advising Vice President Mike Pence that a fabricated legal rationale empowered him to reverse or delay the presidential electoral count in Congress. “No reasonable attorney with expertise in constitutional or election law would conclude that Pence was legally authorized to take the actions that respondent proposed,” the bar states in its charges. It adds that Eastman knew those actions would violate the law and the Constitution.
I realize that many people are probably sick of hearing about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis now that he’s fallen in the polls and looks less like a real threat to win the nomination. He’s an unpleasant person and it’s vaguely uncomfortable to even read about him which is no doubt why his slide has invited what seems like dozens of new entrants into the race. They all now think they could be in second place in case Trump trips on the golf course and breaks a hip. It’s still quite early in the process and DeSantis has a lot of money and is, by all accounts, putting together a serious campaign so it’s too early to write him off. But there’s no need to dwell on his candidacy quite as much now that he’s lost his luster. But I think it’s probably a good idea to continue to keep and eye on him regardless of his presidential ambitions. Of all the candidates, he best represents the next generation of GOP leaders and his political philosophy is something quite new for the Republican party. It’s not the conservatism that dominated the GOP since the 1950s but neither is it Trumpism, to the extent that such a thing even exists without Trump.
Donald Trump once told his ecstatic rally goers his philosophy of life: My whole life, you know what I say? ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll just figure it out.’” It’s worked for him up until now. As it happens one of his top proteges, “My Kevin” McCarthy has adopted the same attitude. Punchbowl reports: Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s long-term strategy is this — he has no long-term strategy. The California Republican has shown, to a remarkable degree, that his day-to-day, week-to-week style in running the House is to essentially push through — to just keep dancing — and deal with problems as they come. Get through today and worry about what happens next when it happens. McCarthy won the speaker’s gavel in January after 15 grueling rounds of voting, granting a host of concessions to the conservatives in the process. These promises put McCarthy on a collision course with President Joe Biden and the Democrats over the debt limit, yet McCarthy had finally become speaker, his longtime goal.
Trumpism has come to this “When Democrats control the House we pass the laws—when Republicans control, what do we get? We get stupid stuff like this dumb hearing,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.). Lieu appeared with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes after Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on special counsel John Durham’ report on his investigation into the F.B.I.’s investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election. (If you have to read that again, I’ll wait.) And what did Durham find after four years? CNN summarizes, “that the FBI should have only launched a preliminary, but not full, investigation into connections between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.” A New York Post editorial considers that “gross FBI and Justice Department malfeasance.” Democrats on the committee consider the Durham report, which did not dispute Robert Mueller’s conclusions (and multiple convictions) surrounding 2016 Russian interference, a frivolous waste of time.
“Unliveable in 20 years”? A tweet from Austin, Texas got my attention the first thing this morning. “It’s been hotter before, but this is the most miserable I can ever remember Texas weather feeling. First day of summer and the heat index is 120 at 5pm. The state is going to be unlivable in 20 years,” said freelance journalist Christopher Hooks. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes replied, “I really think people vastly underestimate the effect that climate change is going to have on the livability of the Sun Belt.” Saul Elbein, a staff writer for The Hill from Austin, cites the media for decades of failure to properly warn the public of the risks posed by climate change. Scientists themselves have too long “soft-pedaled” climate change, allowing motivated doubters to write them off as acceptable long-term risks: The findings published Monday in Nature Climate Change suggest a fundamental weakness in the past 30 years of communication by climate scientists: a profound difficulty in assessing the possible impacts of breakdowns in the Earth’s biggest and most complex systems.