Another dreary shutdown drama

Once again we are going through the shutdown brinkmanship, with the September 30 deadline for passing a bill that funds the federal government approaching and the Republican party in the House of Representatives in seeming disarray and unable to agree on any of the 11 separate appropriate bills that they must bring to the floor for a vote. They cannot seem to even agree on the terms of what they normally do in such situations and that is punt, by passing a continuing resolution that funds the government at the current levels for a short time while they try and work out a solution.

After the last elections in 2022, Republicans had a 222-213 majority which means that they could afford to lose at most four votes if all Democrats are present and vote as a bloc against them. Currently it is 221-212 because of two vacancies due to one member from each party having resigned and special elections to fill their seats to be held only in November. And the Republican nutters in the House Freedom Caucus have used that small majority as leverage to threaten to vote against any spending bill and shut down the government in order to get … it is not clear exactly what, other than a spending total that is smaller than what the Republicans agreed to during the debt ceiling standoff.

We have seen this film many times before, so much so that it has become a joke. I know someone who works for the federal government. When an earlier shutdown was imminent that would have sent all employees home, they received detailed memos of what they had to do to shut up shop and turn out the lights, and and what they could and could not do while the shutdown continued. But this has happened so many times, that they now know the drill and do not need to to be told. It just occasions rolling of the eyes,

No one other than journalists in the media who are assigned to cover that beat seem to talk about the shutdown. It just does not seem urgent. By now it just seems like political theater that is not worth bothering about, even though a shutdown is a deadly serious.matter that will inconvenience a vast number of people.

No, not the dog!

Author Michael Wolff is known for his gossipy, lightly sourced books that dish insider dirt. The stories he relates are titillating but not to be taken at face value since they lack convincing evidence. But they do serve as a measure of the zeitgeist within the political establishment and his latest book has an indicator of how low Florida governor Ron DeSantis has sunk because he provides an anecdote that, while having dinner at the Tucker Carlson home, DeSantis apparently irritated Carlson’s wife by dominating the conversation and may have actually kicked one of the family dogs.

The DeSantis couple allegedly failed “to read the room,” especially with Carlson’s wife, “a genteel, stay-at-home woman, here in her own house,” Wolff notes. “For two hours Ron DeSantis sat at her table talking in an outdoor voice indoors, failing to observe any basics of conversation ritual or propriety, reeling off an unselfconscious list of his programs and initiatives and political accomplishments.”

Making matters worse, Wolff claims, an “impersonal” DeSantis seemed dismissive and may have used physical force against one of the Carlson family’s four beloved spaniel pups.

During the dinner, Wolff writes, “DeSantis pushed the dog under the table. Had he kicked the dog? Susie Carlson’s judgment was clear: she did not ever want to be anywhere near anybody like that ever again. Her husband agreed. DeSantis, in Carlson’s view, was a ‘fascist.’ The pot calling the kettle even blacker. Forget Ron DeSantis.”

Is the story true? Who knows? But kicking people’s pet dogs and cats is something that is beyond the pale for anyone. This is the behavior of cartoon villains and even an allegation of doing so is damaging. Even some of the cult followers of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT), although ever-willing to overlook his groping and other assaults of women, may find it hard to forgive their idol for doing so, unless they could be persuaded that the pet was the Devil incarnate or Joe Biden in disguise.

Adding to DeSantis’s woes, a new poll finds the one-time SSAT-slayer slipping to fifth place in New Hampshire polling.

Maybe we should bring out a DeSantis lettuce to see which lasts longer.

The legal woes of Trump’s cronies mount up

The indictments by Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis against serial sex abuser Donald trump (SSAT) and eighteen others over their efforts to overturn the election results continues to have fallouts. Last month I wrote about grumbling by some of the other defendants as to why SSAT’s PACs are not paying their legal fees since they were acting in his interest and sometimes on his instructions. I said that this might portend that they might seek to defect from SSAT in an effort to reach favorable plea deals.

It appears that Jenna Ellis, one of the ‘gaggle of crackpot lawyers’ surrounding SSAT and enabling his fruitless efforts and was one of those complainers, is turning on him

Jenna Ellis – the Donald Trump lawyer who like the former president faces criminal charges regarding attempted election subversion in his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 – says she will not vote for him in the future because he is a “malignant narcissist” who cannot admit mistakes.

“I simply can’t support him for elected office again,” Ellis said. “Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.”
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“Why I have chosen to distance is because of that, frankly, malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.

“And the total idolatry that I’m seeing from some of the supporters that are unwilling to put the constitution and the country and the conservative principles above their love for a star is really troubling.

“And I think that we do need to, as Americans and as conservatives and particularly as Christians, take this very seriously and understand where are we putting our vote.”

[Read more…]

Republicans looking for magic formula on abortion

When the US Supreme Court in their Dobbs ruling in 2021 overturned its Roe v. Wade precedent and declared that the constitution did not provide a right to abortion, there was jubilation among the anti-abortion forces. They had finally achieved their dream and red states everywhere started enacting severe restrictions on abortion, some of those having been written in advance of Dobbs and just waiting for the opportunity to pass them.

But the Dobbs decision also galvanized the abortion-rights movement. Some states expanded the right to abortion while state constitutional amendments passed by referendum in Vermont, California, Michigan, Kentucky, Montana, and Kansas. Another is pending in Ohio this November. Furthermore, this issue is seen as playing an important role in increasing Democratic party success in the 2022 mid-term elections, dashing the hopes of Republicans who had been hoping that a ‘red wave’ would give them control of both houses of Congress with large majorities.
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The Trump interview

Serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) sat down for a lengthy interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker, which I did not watch. Of course, one does not need to watch any SSAT interview to know that he will issue his usual litany of lies and whines about how he is being persecuted and Welker has been criticized in some quarters for not refuting all the lies. But William Saletan says that such criticisms are unwarranted and that she did a good job because she did remind viewers of what kind of awful person SSAT is.

Here is the beginning. and end of his article.

THROUGHOUT HIS 78-MINUTE interview with Kristen Welker, Donald Trump spewed lies and delusions. The NBC News journalist, like others who have interviewed the former president, tried to parry his propaganda but let some of it pass so she could get on with her questions. For this reason, many of Trump’s critics judge Welker’s performance a failure.

I take a different view. I’m less interested in what Welker failed to do than in what she did. She exposed, up close and at length, Trump’s psychopathologies.

Let me take you through a few examples.
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IF YOU CAME TO THIS INTERVIEW hoping that Welker or NBC News would refute every lie Trump told, you’ll be disappointed. But I don’t think exhaustive refutation is what we need. In polls, Trump is running even with Biden because many Americans are unhappy with the economy, and most see Biden as old and tired.

These people need to be reacquainted with the reality of Trump. They need to be reminded how recklessly he makes decisions, how poorly he controls his impulses, how ruthlessly he lies, and how impervious he is to correction. They need to be reminded how callously he disregards his oath of office and how little he cares about anyone but himself. They need to be reminded what a psychopath he is.

That’s what Welker accomplished. She has done her job.

Oil companies sued by California for lying about climate change

The state of California has joined several other states and municipalities in suing five major oil companies, charging that they had known for a long time from their internal science that the burning of fossil fuels was harming the environment and driving climate change but lying about it to the public.

California is suing five of the largest oil and gas companies in the world, alleging that they engaged in a “decades-long campaign of deception” about climate change and the risks posed by fossil fuels that has forced the state to spend tens of billions of dollars to address environmental-related damages.

State Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed the lawsuit Friday in San Francisco County Superior Court alleging that Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP and the American Petroleum Institute have known since the 1950s that the burning of fossil fuels would warm the planet but instead of alerting the public about the dangers posed to the environment they chose to deny or downplay the effects.

“Oil and gas companies have privately known the truth for decades — that the burning of fossil fuels leads to climate change,” Bonta said in a statement, “but have fed us lies and mistruths to further their record breaking profits at the expense of our environment. Enough is enough.”

[Read more…]

Time running out for the Republican unicorn to appear

For a long time now, the Republican party establishment has been hoping for the appearance of a candidate who would be able to wrest the party’s presidential nomination from the grasp of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) and rescue the party from the clutches of a narcissist who cares nothing for the party or even policies but simply seeks to be president so that he can soothe the pain of being seen as a loser and wreak vengeance on all his perceived enemies, a list that is long and growing longer by the day. But who will bell the cat? Who will be the person who takes down SSAT by attacking him for his multitude of faults as a candidate and a person?

The most vigorous attempt to do so is by former New Jersey governor Chris Christie who seems to have decided that he is the one to bring down SSAT. But Christie himself is a highly flawed vessel. He has long and close ties with SSAT, worked on his transition team in 2016, and even tried to get a cabinet position as attorney general and is still probably smarting from the humiliation of that rejection. His chances are slim.
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The “Do you know who I am?” ploy almost never works

Pretty much everyone must have heard by now about nutcase Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert being kicked out of theater in Denver during a performance of the musical Beetlejuice for loud and obnoxious behavior, taking flash photographs, and vaping.

She initially denied the vaping charge said that she had been ejected just for enjoying herself too much by laughing and clapping but theater video showed that she was lying (what a surprise!) and that much, much more was going on.

Boebert and her campaign manager initially denied that she was vaping and said she was removed for being too loud. But surveillance video obtained by the Denver television station 9News show the congresswoman openly vaping during the performance.

Two sources also confirmed to 9News that Boebert was vaping, a prohibited action that ushers attempted to address with her several times.

A pregnant woman reportedly confronted Boebert and asked the congresswoman to stop vaping, the New York Post reported. But Boebert refused.
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The CCTV video also shows Boebert’s guest fondling her breasts after they had taken their seats for the musical performance. Boebert is also seen petting her guest’s crotch in the venue whose patrons often include children and their families.

Boebert and her date were later removed by security in the second act of the musical as their disruptive behavior continued.

The CCTV footage showed a blurred out gesture which Boebert flashed at theater security as she was escorted out. Business Insider reported that the gesture appeared to be a middle finger.

According to a report of the confrontation from theater security, Boebert and her guest reportedly became argumentative with officials. “Do you know who I am?” the congresswoman allegedly asked, according to the theater security report.

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The impeachment charade

The speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy has announced that he will support an ‘impeachment inquiry’ into president Joe Biden.

The impeachment inquiry will be handled by the oversight, judiciary and ways and means committees, all of which are controlled by McCarthy allies and since the start of the year have spent much of their time trying to make corruption allegations against the president stick.

McCarthy had earlier said that he would first ask for a vote from the full house on whether to do so. And indeed, when Nancy Pelosi was speaker he had condemned any suggestion that she might start an impeachment inquiry into serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) without first getting a vote in support.

In a sign of the paucity of the results of their efforts, reports indicate McCarthy does not yet have enough votes in support of impeaching Biden. Earlier this month, the speaker told Breitbart News, “If we move forward with an impeachment inquiry, it would occur through a vote on the floor of the People’s House and not through a declaration by one person,” but backtracked on Tuesday, making no mention of holding a vote to start the investigation.

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Trump’s obsession over the classified documents is even weirder than I thought

I have mentioned before that I just did not get serial sex abuser Donald Trump’s (SSAT) weird obsession with holding on to the classified documents that ultimately led to his indictment. I can (sort of) understand that he took some with him during his chaotic final days before he left the White. House. But why was he so obsessed with holding on to them even after he was told that he had to return them? What value could they possibly have for him?

But clearly he wanted them very badly, to the extent that he even defied his own lawyer’s advice to hand them over. His lawyer Evan Corcoran warned him that of he did not do so voluntarily, the FBI would get a search warrant from a judge for Mar-a-Lago, and that is precisely what happened. But of course, then SSAT expressed outrage at this utterly predictable outcome.
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