I say YES. YOU say NO....Numero Tre! Enjoy!
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Illinois, you just have to remember that Santos was one of The Beatles (since he has the IQ of an insect that should be easy).
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This was the opportunity…
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Love those memes.
Lowering the Barr
Without shame
Jan 31
Photo credit: Win McNamee
Determined as we all are to stay steady, sometimes it's really difficult to fight off dismay and anger at what's happening to our country and the world.
The news fatigue is real. We are buffeted by unending stories of domestic instability over our democracy, our health and safety, and our constitutional rights. War is raging in Europe, bloody crackdowns are occurring in Iran, and China is increasingly belligerent. Oh, and of course, there are also the climate crisis and the lingering pandemic.
In this seemingly unrelenting negative news cycle, a blockbuster report like The New York Times' "How Barr's Quest to Find Flaws in the Russia Inquiry Unraveled" can slide into the category of "old news" without the full attention it deserves. That would be a shame. For despite its understated headline, the piece raises serious concerns about powerful government officials and the milieu in which they operate.
As close followers of current events, many of you likely either read the original article or saw follow-on reporting and analysis. It is a careful and comprehensive piece of journalism. It paints a narrative through context, fact finding, and illustrative anecdotes about how the former attorney general, William Barr, blatantly overstepped the bounds of his office.
While Republicans have argued that Democrats have politicized the Department of Justice, the evidence presented here proves it was Barr who did exactly that in order to justify President Trump's unfounded (and self-serving) conspiracy theories. Rather than search for the truth, Barr worked to obfuscate it. That he knew better makes the offense all the more disgraceful.
The article focuses on the lengthy, costly, and ultimately fruitless "investigation" by John Durham of conspiracy theories Trump promulgated about Russian election meddling in 2016. Trump claimed that law enforcement and the intelligence community (whose work ultimately was included in the Mueller report detailing real Russian election interference) were merely "deep state" operatives seeking to undermine Trump.
We put "investigation" into quotes here because, as the article makes clear, Durham and Barr's approach was not "let the facts lead us to the truth" but rather "how can we validate the malarkey the president says he believes to be true." Although, after reading this reporting, it now seems that Barr himself had come to at least consider, if not fully embrace, these feverish fantasies. The entire article is worth a read, as it is full of jaw-dropping details.
There was great fanfare on Fox News and other right-wing media outlets (not to mention from the man in Mar-a-Lago) throughout Durham's endeavor. It stemmed from a widespread belief that once Durham started digging, he would find smoking guns of Democratic duplicity everywhere. Conservative media platforms primed their readers and viewers with a sense that a judgment day loomed ahead, and that it might bring down not only Biden and the current Democrats, but Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to boot.
All this is catnip for conservatives, red meat for reactionaries.
Durham is but the latest former Trump administration official to see that tenure damage, if not ruin, a previously respectable reputation. As Durham's work concludes, the "sound and fury" that accompanied his appointment have eroded to the point of "signifying nothing." One can only speculate what Shakespeare would have done with a character like his.
Or like Barr, for that matter.
Barr's resume of government service in more conventional Republican administrations might have suggested a different code of conduct. But alas, he did the nefarious biddings of Trump almost to the end. Last year, Barr went on a PR tour for his book, One Damn Thing After Another. The title suggests a man eager to set the record straight with hard candor. The reality was far different. Barr was not a truth teller but a toady to the Trump party line, the facts and the health of American democracy be damned.
There has been a lot of talk over the last several years about how history will judge Trump and his cronies harshly — Barr included. One gets the sense that most of this crowd really doesn't care. If they get their way, there won't be much teaching of factual history anyway. In the meantime, they can hunker down in their lucrative fact-free echo chambers.
There was a time when the media and political landscapes were far less fractured. Public censure meant a lot more. Shame and embarrassment were deterrents. Sadly, Trump demonstrated that extreme right-wing politicians could embrace shamelessness as a successful campaign strategy. And so too could an attorney general, in a craven exercise of illegitimate power.
Wondering how Barr's book sales went. I was always dismayed that there wasn't some come uppance for him. I saw him as VERY richly deserving. I hope in the end (and especially if nothing else comes on) that Barr's book flops. He is a part of the people who have helped create the daily fare of having the Loon be a part of almost every conversation on the news. Now along with him we have to deal with two years of one of his favored bootlickers.
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An update on the Barr book sales. He has only sold about 64,000 copies which is not all that much for book sales. In fact, on Twitter Barbara McQuade said something to the effect: " No one is buying your book, Bill ) ! People don't usually want to hear from the losers, she says. So, apparently it was just a reputation repair attempt. Along with Barr having a few stains that likely won't come out he has also brought along John Durham. I guess you could also say misery sometimes wants company. Another individual who once appeared to fit in with those who had ethical behaviors and moral standards, but that is no more. I think Barr sounded like he off long ago before his second AG stint. Durham -- well, maybe he will look back in regret. Maybe someone will see what they have done and what they have lost by throwing in with people who allowed suppressions, cheating and nebulous activities to be the order of the day.
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Trump Goes on Early Morning Rant Attacking DeSantis: 'The Real Ron is a RINO GLOBALIST'
By Colby Hall Feb 1st, 2023
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump attacked Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in a flurry of social media posts that blast his potential rival as a "RINO GLOBALIST."
In what some skeptics may see as trying extra hard to find an intraparty foil to attack in the run-up to his 2024 election bid, Trump appears to have landed on DeSantis as his desired villain in this professional wrestling-inspired political drama.
It started Tuesday evening when Trump posted a short 10-second video of DeSantis from roughly five years ago arguing that he wanted to be like then-GOP congressional leader Paul Ryan.
DeSantis was asked by a reporter on Tuesday how he felt about getting attacked by Trump, to which the Florida Governor ostensibly took the high road before offering a clear dig at the former president by noting how he WON his re-election.
This appeared to anger Trump or at least elicited a response that read, "Remember, I was 233-20 in the Midterms, and got 1.2 Million Votes MORE than Ron DeSanctimonious in the Great State of Florida. Also, 12 Million MORE Votes in 2020 than in 2016, and Won!"
Trump then went on a binge of reposting many Truth Social posts which were critical of Ron DeSantis, though in one instance, he added the dig, "The real Ron is a RINO GLOBALIST, who closed quickly down Florida and even its beaches. Loved the Vaccines and wasted big money on "Testing." How quickly people forget!
Lost in Trump's anti-DeSantis criticism regarding the Vaccine and Covid lockdowns is that all of that happened while Trump was serving as president. The former president has taken credit for developing the vaccine and served as the Commander-in-Chief when the lockdowns occurred. So it's unclear how this will play with a confused base of supporters.
****Note to self: Get the popcorn out!
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We are all citizens of one world, we are all of one blood. To hate people because they were born in another country, because they speak a different language, or because they take a different view on this subject or that, is a great folly. Desist, I implore you, for we are all equally human. . . . Let us have but one end in view: the welfare of humanity.
Johann Amos Comenius0 -
Ruth and Spookie -- I loved your memes and the article Ruth. Get the popcorn out indeed. The Loon has no idea of just how many enemies he really does have since they stay in the background so often -- but the rest of us know. The Loon will always have the last word so's he can prove his superiority.
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House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is having to grapple with the difference between the rhetoric that fires up the Republican base and the reality of governance. Since Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) became speaker in 2019, Republican lawmakers have been able to complain and demand without actually having to participate in legislation. Now, though, it is up to McCarthy to bring the party's rhetoric into the reality of laws, and so far it's not going particularly well.
McCarthy won the votes to become speaker by promising the far-right members of the Republican conference a number of things, including that he would not agree to raising the debt ceiling without demanding cuts in federal spending. It was a plan that sounded good to those interested in cutting the government: it would essentially hold the government hostage until they got what they wanted.
But this argument mixed together two separate things: the debt ceiling, which must be lifted to enable the government to pay for money already appropriated, and the budget, which is a plan for spending money in the future. Raising the debt ceiling is about protecting the country's financial health, and refusing to lift it would throw the country—and possibly the world—into economic chaos. Negotiating over the budget is…normal.
McCarthy is continuing to try to tumble these two things together, demanding cuts to federal spending before he will agree to raise the debt ceiling.
This is awkward for the Republicans for two reasons. First, about $7.8 trillion of the $31.4 trillion debt that now must be paid came from the Trump years, and much of it came from the 2017 Trump tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy. During the Trump years, Congress raised the debt ceiling three times.
The second reason the Republicans' demands for cuts are awkward is that they will not actually say what cuts they want. Before the 2020 election, party leaders, including Florida senator Rick Scott, then chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in charge of getting Republicans elected to the Senate, called for cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Those take up a big portion of the annual budget: Social Security alone takes about 21%. Throughout January, Republicans have echoed calls to cut the programs, only to face a backlash.
So they have now backed off on demanding those cuts. On January 20, Trump, who in 2021 pumped up the idea of using the debt ceiling to get their way, warned Republicans not to cut "a single penny" from Social Security and Medicare. On Sunday, McCarthy said that such cuts were "off the table" (although he also insisted that the Republicans simply want to "strengthen" the programs, and Republican proposals that include that language call for raising the age for eligibility, so who knows?).
For their part, President Joe Biden and the Democrats have said that they will not negotiate over the debt ceiling. It is vital to pay the nation's debts—debts already incurred, many of them under Trump—and the security of that debt must not be questioned.
But they have made it clear they are happy to negotiate the budget, which is, as I say, a normal part of doing business.
McCarthy, in contrast, is caught between the rhetoric of the party for the past several years and the reality of the debt issue. He has to deal with the fact that a few of the farthest right members say they won't lift the debt ceiling under any circumstances. He also has to appease a number of far-right Republicans who say they will not agree to raising the debt ceiling without negotiating a plan for significant cuts to federal spending going forward. But here's the kicker: even if the Democrats were willing to let them hold the government hostage to get their way—something the Democrats utterly reject—with Social Security and Medicare apparently off the table, the Republicans cannot agree on any places to cut.
On Wednesday, Biden and McCarthy will meet in person. Yesterday, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese and Office of Management Budget Director Shalanda Young sent a memo to the Republicans pointing out that protecting the security of the national debt has always been a bipartisan commitment. This is actually not true, but the debt fights of 1866 and 1879 are not widely known, and in any case, their next point accurately reflects the outcome of both of those fights: "[T]he United States must never default on its financial obligations," they said. "Raising the debt ceiling is not a negotiation; it is an obligation of this country and its leaders to avoid economic chaos."
Deese and Young insisted that McCarthy "commit to the bedrock principle that the United States will never default on its financial obligations."
They then turned to the budget issue, asking when McCarthy and the House Republicans would release a "detailed, comprehensive" budget. Biden's will come out on March 9, and normally the two sides would negotiate over the different proposals. But the Republicans won't say what they're planning to do.
Deese and Young pressed McCarthy, writing that it is essential for the Republicans to tell the American people their plans so they can see how the Republicans are planning to reduce the deficit, "whether through Social Security cuts; cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Affordable Care Act (ACA) health coverage; and/or cuts to research, education, and public safety—as well as how much their Budget will add to the deficit with tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and large corporations," which their first bill—to make cuts to the Internal Revenue Service—would have done.
McCarthy's empty response—on Twitter—made clear just what an impossible position he's in, especially since he had to agree to a rules change in the House that would let a single member launch a challenge to his speakership. "Mr. President," he wrote, "I received your staff's memo. I'm not interested in political games. I'm coming to negotiate for the American people."
Senate Republicans, who are in the minority in their chamber, have made it clear that this is McCarthy's fight, and they are staying out of it.
At a Democratic National Committee fundraiser today, Biden mourned the loss of the mainstream Republicans of the past and lamented McCarthy's willingness to cater to extremists for power. He called McCarthy "a decent man," but noted that it was vital to know "what's more important than having the job" and to stand firm on those issues.
"I don't know what's gone haywire here with this Republican Party," he said. Looking forward to the 2024 election, he concluded, the Democrats need to be very clear about "what we stand for, what we did, and what we need to do more of, and what we're unwilling to do under any circumstances."
Heather Cox Richardson.
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Seems to fit a lot of the Reps. now as well, likle McCarthy.
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Just another way for the Reps. to be a++h++es.
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I can give this one an amen.
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Scary and unbelievable ignorance
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ruthbru,
The picture of the Beatles with George Santos was epic! I thought my husband was going to fall off the couch laughing when I showed it to him!
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There comes a day when you realize turning the page is the best feeling in the world, because you realize there is so much more to the book then the page you were stuck on.
Zayn Malik
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Just as it should be, but he'll be propped up just like he was last time. Maybe even Chachi again with money and a lawyer. It would be time for him to feel a bit of karma though for sure.
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Wholehearted agreement with this.
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