The profile of the insurrectionists

I am fascinated by cults. What makes people join them and devote themselves so ardently to the cause or the leader that they will even forsake their families and friends?

The Trump cult is going to be studied for some time. A common image of the majority of Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol building on January 6th during the insurrection is that they are white men who are going through financial hardship and angry at feeling that they have been ignored and are also members of various armed militant groups. But it appears that a significant number do not fit that profile.
[Read more…]

Why did Giuliani, Powell, and Fox News pick on Smartmatic?

Smartmatic is a software company that works with election systems. They became the target of a systematic campaign by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell and Fox News personalities Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro, who accused the company of rigging the votes in order to enable Joe Biden to win. The puzzling thing is Smartmatic’s only involvement in the election was in Los Angeles county where there was never any need to to fraudulently aid Biden to win since California was assured. So why pick on this company? The answer may be that its founder Antonio Mujica is originally from Venezuela. Aha! There was the smoking gun!

On that flimsy basis this bunch of loonies spun their fantastic yarn of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, George Soros, and the international Communist movement working to steal the election from Trump. Smartmatic has had enough and, like the Dominion Voting Systems company that manufactures voting machines who were also accused by this crew of stealing the election, they have initiated a massive $2.7 billion lawsuit against these five people as well as Fox News and its parent Fox Corporation.
[Read more…]

Will Biden avoid the Obama trap?

Ryan Grim recalls how Obama, even though he came into office in 2009 in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis with much bigger Democratic majorities in both houses of congress than Joe Biden just obtained, got slow-walked by the Republicans who dangled the carrot of bipartisanship in front of him and managed to water down all his proposals. His weak response is blamed for the massive losses the party suffered in the 2010 and 2014 mid-term elections which resulted in Republicans winning the majorities in both chambers.
[Read more…]

Small but good start on Yemen

The war in Yemen is a horrendous catastrophe causing immense suffering for its people and the US has been complicit in it by providing the Saudi Arabian regime with weaponry to prosecute their attacks on Yemen. Joe Biden has now declared that the US will end its support for the Saudi offensives.

Joe Biden has announced an end to US support for Saudi-led offensive operations in Yemen, as part of a broad reshaping of American foreign policy.

In his first foreign policy speech as president, Biden signaled that the US would no longer be an unquestioning ally to the Gulf monarchies, announced a more than eightfold increase in the number of refugees the country would accept, and declared that the days of a US president “rolling over” for Vladimir Putin were over.
[Read more…]

Bernie Sanders outlines his budget plans

In his first Senate floor speech after becoming chair of the powerful budget committee, Sanders details what is in the covid relief plan that his budget committee is drafting and says that it contains the fulfillment of the promises that he and many other Democratic leaders made to voters during the last election about what they would do if they got the majority. He says that they are obligated to carry them through. As usual, he focuses on the things that are important and does not take his eye off the ball and does not get distracted.

[Read more…]

The sorry state of the Republican party and conservative media

The fact that the Republican party leadership put QAnon Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene on the House education committee tells you all you need to know about how craven they have become. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has issued a mealy-mouthed statement about their decision not to do anything. It appears that she received a standing ovation from the Republican caucus. The Republican party leadership was willing to strip former Iowa congressman Steve King from all his committee positions for his hateful statements but is not willing to do the same for Greene although she is even crazier than he is, as hard as that is to believe. It should be noted that she has not publicly recanted her statements, instead choosing to tout her support from Trump. Her and her party’s defense is that she made them before she was elected to Congress.
[Read more…]

Why I do not invest in art or the stock market

While the GameStop controversy has faded from the news headlines, the issue is still roiling the markets. I was listening to an analyst who was saying that the people who are driving up the price of the stock may themselves end up losing a bundle. Some analysts are calling it yet another bubble that will burst at some point and then the stock price will revert to a more realistic value. But what is a realistic price of that stock? It seems to me that the price of a company’s stock is not based on anything tangible.
[Read more…]

The anti-vaxxers seem to be more militant than the anti-choicers

We know that the anti-abortion crowd can be very militant and resort to extreme violence, to the extent of murdering people who provide abortion services. But I notice that recently anti-vaxxers seem to be approaching and even exceeding that level of fervor, as can be seen when protestors temporarily shut down a covid-19 mass vaccination site that had been opened in the Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles.
[Read more…]

AOC’s experience during the insurrection

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been scathing in her attacks of some House members and senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley for their roles in instigating and supporting the insurrectionists, calling for them to resign or be expelled from Congress. In her recounting of the details of what she personally went through, you can understand why. It is pretty harrowing.

In an account remarkably candid for an American lawmaker, Ocasio-Cortez recounted going into hiding as rioters scaled the Capitol on 6 January, hiding in a bathroom in her office while hearing banging on the walls and a man yelling: “Where is she? Where is she?” She had feared for her life, she told an Instagram Live audience of more than 150,000 people.

“I thought I was going to die,” she said. “And I had a lot of thoughts. I was thinking if this is the plan for me, then people will be able to take it from here.”
[Read more…]

QAnon, the Republican party, and the Know-Nothings

In a recent comment, Who Cares compared the current Republican party to the Know Nothings of days gone by. I had heard of the Know Nothings and was curious about them, mainly because it was such a weird name for a political party. But I knew nothing (Ha!) about them and decided to look into this and found this article by Zachary Karabell that took a deep look at their sudden emergence in the 19th century and their equally sudden collapse. He compares them more to the QAnon movement within the Republican party rather than the party itself, but that may be a distinction without much difference.
[Read more…]