Which side are they on? This has been very interesting to watch. They literally didn’t know what to do. So they did everything. Yeah, they just love democracy in action — unless a Democrat wins in which case it’s obviously cheating and requires many more restrictions. The right wing media didn’t know how to read this because the fact is that the entire GOP caucus is very extreme and they are basically on both sides. So they went both ways, sometimes during the same program. Some Fox hosts were concerned that the Republicans looked foolish but they’ve since realized that their audience doesn’t care about looking foolish. I mean, come on. This is a party, a media and a movement that has been genuflecting to Orange Julius Caesar for the past six years. Clearly, looking like a bunch of clowns is not a problem for them. By the way …
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Not really. The inmates will be running the asylum no matter what. Today is the second anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. On that day a group of right wing extremists breached the U.S. Capitol, declaring, “this is OUR house.” They ransacked the place and attempted to hunt down Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi with the intention of staging a coup d’état. Two years later we are witnessing another group of right wing extremists attempting a takeover. This time, they’re staging an insurrection against their own party by refusing to allow a new speaker to be elected unless their demands are met. And unlike two years ago, they’re going to be successful. Yesterday, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy endured a third straight day of ritual humiliation as his party was unable to get the 218 votes needed to grant him the Speakership after 11 rounds of voting. This is the first time since 1859, on the cusp of the Civil War, that the process has taken this many votes.
If you have the time, click through to that link for a thorough January 6th timeline. It’s as astonishing today as it was then. And considering what these people are doing today on the House floor, it’s clear they were not in any way chagrined. They are still making a mockery of the United States by acting like petulant children who will burn the place down if they don’t get their way. And keep this in mind:
Here are some more cute baby animals just because we need to see more cute baby animals right now.
Friday Mini-Heap… “I didn’t come here to propose a return to illiteracy in order to recover the knowledge of Paleolithic tribes. I regret all we may have lost, but I never forget that the gains are greater than the losses” — a transcription of part of a 1983 lecture by Italo Calvino on the written word and the unwritten world Epictetus and Epicurus are “resurrected” using AI language, imaging, and video tools to debate the nature of happiness — created by Caleb Ontiveros The subtitle of her first book was “A Little Treatise on the Weakness, Frivolity, and Inconstancy, That Is Wrongly Attributed to Women” — philosopher Gabrielle Suchon wrote it—in 1693—to help women “protect themselves against servile constraint, stupid ignorance, and base and degrading dependence.” Julie Walsh (Wellesley) gives us a tour of her ideas “What is Black existentialism?
DOJ examines Trump’s actions Donald Trump likes to use variants of “nobody’s ever seen.” It seems Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team of investigators are gathering evidence against him the likes of which nobody’s ever seen (Bloomberg): Officials in several states confirmed they have complied with an early round of grand jury subpoenas from Smith’s office. One set of material reviewed by Bloomberg from a key battleground in Nevada shows Trump’s 2020 campaign representatives lobbing accusations of fraud and mismanagement at local officials in the days after the election. Attorneys working under Smith are also poring over dozens of interview transcripts from the congressional panel that just wrapped up its own Jan. 6 probe, said people familiar with the investigation, who asked not to be named to discuss information not yet public. That includes testimony from White House aides who said Trump knew he lost the election and at least one Republican official who linked the former president to efforts to seat alternate slates of electors in some states he lost.
The pandemic increase in the length of the average workweek has been completely reversed.
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Insurrection Caucus knocks J6 anniversary off front pages Leaders of the GOP’s House Insurrection Caucus are heavily invested in screen time. Not on their smart phones. On your television and social media feeds. Governing is not what they are in Washington, D.C. to do. Accruing power is. Interviews on Fox News and other outlets (even MSNBC these days) builds a national profile, grows online followers, and expands fundraising opportunities. Personal fame, acquired through political performance, is a more rapid, more certain path to power than the drudge work of crafting sound legislation and shepherding it through Congress. The Insurrection Caucus came to be influencers, not legislators. Donald Trump brought celebrity with him to the job of politics. But the 2020 loser is sidelined in Mar-a-Lago awaiting indictments. Republicans lacking his preternatural skills at self-promotion have discovered that keeping the press focused on themselves involves being destructively and performatively anti-establishment. Sex and drugs and rock and roll was for liberals. Trashing hotel rooms does not get press coverage. Trashing Congress does.
It was 2.30am in Bochum before Niels finished setting up his security and self destruct mechanisms on my new laptop, as we sat in my gloomy little box of a room in the Mercure Hotel. About a decade ago, chain hotels universally abandoned the idea of a central bright light to illuminate a bedroom, in […]
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This will be especially welcome to Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss who Trump has inexplicably decided to target again just this week in his usual grotesque fashion. This is from Tuesday: Around midnight last night, for reasons that aren’t yet clear, Donald Trump used his social media platform to launch a new offensive against an old perceived foe. It started with this unfortunate missive: Soon after, the former president published another item, accusing Freeman of election crimes, followed by a third missive, in which the Republican asked, “What will the Great State of Georgia do with the Ruby Freeman MESS?” Trump concluded that he’s battling “the evils and treachery of the Radical Left monsters who want to see America die.” Both items referred to “suitcases” filled with ballots that Trump believes Freeman opened, all as part of the crime that was committed only in his imagination. In case anyone needs a refresher, it wasn’t long after the 2020 elections when the nightmare began for a clerical worker in a county election office in Georgia and her mother.