Speak, George!

Fabulist George Santos seems resigned to the fact that following the release of the scathing report by the House ethics committee on his behavior, that he may be expelled from the House of Representatives even before he is convicted of any charges and before the expiration of his current term. But he seems determined to not go quietly into the night, as can be seen from his recent statement.

Santos said that members calling for his expulsion are basically throwing rocks in a glass house because of the baggage they carry as well, and if he is expelled from Congress, then he would expect that precedent to lead to other expulsions as well.

“Within the ranks of the United States Congress, there’s felons galore, there’s people with all sorts of sheisty backgrounds, and all of a sudden, George Santos is the Mary Magdalene of the United States Congress,” he said. “I don’t want to work with a bunch of hypocrites. It’s gross. I have colleagues who are more worried about getting drunk every night with the next lobbyists that they’re going to screw and pretend like none of us know what’s going on and sell off the American people.”

“Not show up to vote because they’re too hungover or whatever the reason is, or not show up to vote at all and just give their card out like f***ing candy for someone else to vote for them. This s**t happens every single week. Where are the ethics investigations?” he continued.
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Santos made clear in the space that he will not resign and that he wants to see the House “set this precedent” and expel him from Congress based solely on the ethics report, saying that he will “stand for expulsion” to make the House take a vote on it.

“Start the new precedent that the moment anybody is accused of anything, I expect everybody to start being expelled. And that means there’s a s**t ton of members that should be getting expelled following my expulsion,” Santos said.
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Santos said he expected to be expelled from Congress because he “can do math” and count the votes.

“I know I’m going to get expelled when this expulsion resolution goes to the floor,” he said.

Maybe the only good thing that may out out of Santos’s brief tenure as a member of congress is if he exposes the seedy underbelly of the body. Of course, since his own credibility is close to zero, any targets of his criticism can simply dismiss his charges as yet more lies.

It is time to call out Trump’s derangement

There is no question that serial sex abuser Donald Trump’s (SSAT) rants at his rallies and on his social media account are becoming more frequent and vicious. It seems like he never stops attacking his opponents and some of his harshest vitriol is aimed at the law clerk assisting Judge Engoron in the New York City fraud trial. Why he picks on the hapless clerk is hard to understand. The latest one was unleashed at 2:00am on Thanksgiving morning, a time when most people are asleep.

“Happy Thanksgiving to ALL, including the Racist & Incompetent Attorney General of New York State,” Trump wrote Thursday morning at 2:03 AM. He also extended his holiday greetings to “the Radical Left Trump Hating Judge, a ‘Psycho,’ Arthur Engoron, who Criminally Defrauded the State of New York, & ME, by purposely Valuing my Assets at a “tiny” Fraction of what they are really worth.” Trump also once again mentioned Engoron law clerk Allison Greenfield by name, describing her as “Politically Biased & Corrupt.”

The 45th president of the United States also attacked President Joe Biden in his early morning rant, saying he “WEAPONIZED his Department of Injustice against his Political Opponent, & allowed our Country to go to HELL.” He concluded the post mentioning “all of the other Radical Left Lunatics, Communists, Fascists, Marxists, Democrats, & RINOS, who are seriously looking to DESTROY OUR COUNTRY.”

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What privilege looks like

A video of a man, a former state department official and reportedly an advisor to president Obama, harassing a street vendor in New York City has gone viral.

The street vendor in Manhattan who was racially harangued about the Gaza conflict woke to huge lines of well-wishing customers on Wednesday as the the former state department official who was filmed berating him was arrested and charged with racial harassment and stalking as a hate crime.

Mohammed Hussein, 24, was back to work at the Q Halal Cart grill on Wednesday on the corner of Second Avenue and East 83rd Street, with lines of customers queuing for food in a sign of support.

Hussein has said he is still shaken by the encounters with Stuart Seldowitz, 64, who repeatedly harassed him with Islamophobic invective. Seldowitz called Hussein a “terrorist”, said 4,000 dead Palestinian children in Gaza “wasn’t enough”, called the Prophet Muhammad a “rapist” and told the vendor he’d be tortured “when they deport you back to Egypt”.The vendor repeatedly asked Seldowitz to leave him alone in the clips, to which Seldowitz was filmed replying: “Why should I go. Why should I go? Tell me why I should go? I’m standing here. I am an American. It’s a free country.”

Seldowitz was arrested and charged at the 19th precinct on the Upper East Side on Wednesday with one count of aggravated harassment of race or religion and four counts of stalking as a hate crime.
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After the videos were shared online and Seldowitz was publicly identified, the political lobbying firm he had consulted with said it had cut ties with him, and offered to represent Hussein. “I’ll represent the food vendor pro bono if he wants to bring a lawsuit,” Gotham Government Relations president David Schwartz said.

I watched the video and what struck me was how smug and self-satisfied Seldowitz looked throughout it all, smiling all the time, full of the confidence that in this encounter with an immigrant street vendor, he had all advantages of inequality. He spoke of how he could use his contacts in the state department and in Egypt to create trouble for the vendor and his parents.

I am not in general supportive of online viral shaming because it can be abused, with edited and misleading videos used against ordinary people. But in this case, Seldowitz seems to deserve it.

Will no one speak up for white billionaire men?

Jim Irsay, the billionaire owner of an NFL football team, was arrested in 2014 for driving while impaired. In a recent news conference, he claimed that he was discriminated against because he is a white billionaire.

The longtime NFL owner spoke about the circumstances of his arrest in an interview with the HBO show Real Sports that aired on Tuesday. Irsay later pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of operating a vehicle while impaired after initially facing four additional counts of possession of a controlled substance.

“I am prejudiced against because I’m a rich, white billionaire,” Irsay told HBO’s Andrea Kremer. “If I’m just the average guy down the block, they’re not pulling me in, of course not.”
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Police in the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel pulled Irsay over after observing a man in a Toyota Highlander driving slowly, stopping in the roadway and failing to use a turn signal. Authorities discovered various prescription drugs in Irsay’s vehicle along with more than $29,000 in cash.

A toxicology report showed Irsay had the painkillers oxycodone and hydrocodone as well as alprazolam, which is used to treat anxiety, in his system at the time of his arrest. Officers on the scene said he had trouble reciting the alphabet and failed other field sobriety tests.

Of course he’s right. The US is highly biased in favor of poor and people of color who get all manner of preferential treatment, especially from the criminal justice system. Kudos to Irsay for having the guts to point this out, even though he will suffer all manner of consequences for doing so, such as (oh, the horror!) being criticized by the media.

Meanwhile a group associated with Stephen Miller , serial sex abuser Donald Trump’s close advisor, has filed a lawsuit against the department store chain Macy’s charging that it “perpetuate[s] illegal racial discrimination — denying career advancement to white straight men.”

It is about time that we stood in solidarity with straight white men who have suffered for so long in silence as gays and people of color and women have been given preference over them.

The problem with Dollar stores

In the US, so-called ‘Dollar stores’ are ubiquitous. There are two very close to where I live. These stores offer all manner of items, food and household goods, priced at around a dollar, so that makes it cheap to shop. As far as I can tell, their model is to buy large stocks of items that manufacturers want to offload at hugely discounted prices for whatever reason and then resell them. This means that what you find in the stores is highly variable from day to day, depending on what items manufacturers were clearing out. You just have to try your luck.

In the latest episode of his show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver says that the business model of these companies is to make profits by understaffing its stores and underpaying its employees. While these stores are sometimes the only retail outlets in poorer neighborhoods and thus seem to serve a need, another problem (that Oliver did not address) is that by using their size to get huge quantities of stuff at low prices, they often drive existing mom-and-pop stores in those neighborhoods out of business. Thus the need they are serving is one that they helped create.

Joe Biden’s age and popularity

Yesterday, Joe Biden turned 81 and it was yet another occasion for the media to fixate on his age. Ir has become a staple of the news to say that voters are concerned about his age. Why is that news? If any pollster asked me if I was concerned about his age, of course I would say yes. But that does not mean I think he is unable to be president. It becomes news only if there are signs that his age is affecting his ability to serve as president. And as far as I can see, he seems to be able to do so. I may not agree with some of the things he does – I am furious about his support of Israeli atrocities in Gaza – but there is no sign that he does not know what he is doing.

And yet, serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) is 78, just three years younger than Biden, who says the most outlandish things and showing signs of cognitive decline and yet there is hardly any focus on that.
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Protests worldwide increase at Israel’s assault on Gaza

As the death toll from the Israeli assault on Gaze rises to horrifying levels, with bombing attacks on even hospitals and refugee camps, protests against those policies have also increased, both in the US and around the world. Many of the critical voices in the US have been Jewish.

Even before 7 October, support for Israel among American Jews – who constitute the world’s second largest Jewish population after Israel – was shifting. One poll showed that while most Jews see caring about Israel as important to their Jewish identity, more than half disapprove of the country’s rightwing government. Another found that a quarter of American Jews agree Israel is an “apartheid state”, and one-fifth of those under 40 do not think the Jewish state has a right to exist.

These shifts have come with a surge in Jewish organizing on the left, with groups like IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace, which have long condemned Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, at the forefront of calls for a ceasefire and an end to US support of Israel’s war on Gaza. Since the war started, Jewish activists have shut down New York’s Grand Central station and been arrested for actions like occupying the halls of Congress and rallying in front of the home of the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, who is also Jewish.

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Santos continues to surprise

The ethics committee of the US House of Representatives has released its report on George Santos and even though we have been regaled for the past year with the audacious nature of his lies and behavior, this report was still able to provide some surprises, especially as to the nature of the expenses that he charged to his campaign.

They concluded that Santos was at the center of a “complex web of unlawful activity” as he “sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit.” The report describes Santos spinning through various alleged schemes and lies as he obtained funds for everything from casino trips to cosmetic procedures, while dealing with personal credit card debt and negative bank balances. 
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The desperate GOP effort to find an acceptable message on abortion

The recent defeats at elections has resulted in the GOP scrambling to find a message on abortion that will placate the anti-abortion zealots in their base while not alienating everyone else. Will Saletan looks at where the GOP candidates for the presidential nomination have ended up.

AS A PRO-CHOICE BACKLASH against the Dobbs decision sweeps across the country—defeating pro-life ballot measures, passing pro-choice referenda, and taking down Republican candidates—the GOP is scrambling for safe ground. The National Republican Senatorial Committee is telling candidates to oppose a federal abortion ban. The chairwoman of the Republican National Committee is advising them to settle for “reasonable limitations.”

In the Republican presidential race, the two men who stoutly advocated a federal ban on abortions—Mike Pence and Tim Scott—are gone. The candidates who remain on the debate stage or who don’t need it—Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Donald Trump—are hedging or downplaying the issue. They still call themselves pro-life. But they’re finding ways to pretend that they’re not a threat to abortion rights.
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WHICH OF THESES CANDIDATES, beneath their respective façades, is most likely to ban abortions? Here’s my best guess. DeSantis signed the strictest ban as governor, and he’s doing the least to conceal that he’d do more as president. Haley, despite her pro-choice mimicry, would sign any abortion restriction that reaches her desk. Christie is the candidate least likely to sign a ban, since he has set the highest threshold for acting without a consensus of the states. I’m excluding Ramaswamy, who can’t be trusted.

As for Trump: He doesn’t care about this issue at all. He views pro-lifers as an interest group, like the dairy industry. He thinks that by ending Roe v. Wade and giving them the “power to negotiate,” he has sufficiently bought them off. And so far, he seems to be right.

Expect more shifting rhetoric from all of them as they grope around for a formulation that is evasive and vague enough to not antagonize too many people.

It is ironic that the call to ban abortions, which theGOP long used as a rallying cry for their base and resulted in them hailing the US Supreme Court’s overthrow of the Roe v. Wade precedent as one of their greatest victories, has so soon turned into an albatross around their necks.

The need to “pass the rule” is further stymying the GOP leadership

It is when things break down that one learns how things really work. In the case of the US House of Representatives, the highly dysfunctional GOP has resulted in me learning new things every day and the latest is the need to “pass a rule” in order to more easily pass legislation.

The House has two ways to pass legislation: By coming directly to the floor for an up-or-down vote, or making a quick pit-stop at the House Rules Committee.

What’s the difference?

Bills that come directly to the House floor for a vote and bypass the Rules Committee are passed “under suspension of the Rule” and require a two-thirds majority of the voting members to pass. Bills that make the pit-stop in the Rules Committee come to the floor with certain debate parameters that must be fulfilled, but this method enables those bills to pass the chamber with a simple majority. But those debate parameters, called “the rule,” must also first be debated and voted on before the House can debate and vote on the underlying bill.
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