Obscenely evil

Helps to explain Tucker Carlson

Mr. Carlson’s mother, Lisa McNear Lombardi, was born to a third-generation Miller heiress, debuted in San Francisco society and met Richard Carlson, a successful local television journalist, in the 1960s. They eloped to Reno, Nev., in 1967; Tucker McNear Carlson was born two years later, followed by his brother, Buckley. The family moved to the Los Angeles area, where Richard Carlson took a job at the local ABC affiliate, but the Carlsons’ marriage grew rocky and the station fired him a few years later. In early 1976, he moved to San Diego to take a new television job. The boys went with him — according to court records, their parents had agreed it would be temporary — and commuted to Los Angeles on weekends while he and Lisa tried to work out their differences.

But a few months later, just days after the boys returned from a Hawaii vacation with their mother, Richard began divorce proceedings and sought full custody of the children. In court filings, Lisa Carlson claimed he had blindsided her and left her virtually penniless. The couple separated and began fighting over custody and spousal support. Mr. Carlson alleged that his wife had “repeated difficulties with abuse of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines,” and that he had grown concerned about both her mental state and her treatment of the boys. On at least one occasion, he asserted, the boys had walked off the plane in San Diego without shoes; the mother’s own family members, he said, had urged him not to let her see the children unsupervised. He won custody when Tucker was 8, at a hearing Lisa did not attend: According to court records, she had left the country. She eventually settled in France, never to see her sons again. A few years later, Richard Carlson married Patricia Swanson, an heiress to the frozen-food fortune, who adopted both boys.

For many years, Tucker Carlson was tight-lipped about the rupture. In a New Yorker profile in 2017, not long after his show debuted, he described his mother’s departure as a “totally bizarre situation — which I never talk about, because it was actually not really part of my life at all.” But as controversy and criticism engulfed his show, Mr. Carlson began to describe his early life in darker tones, painting the California of his youth as a countercultural dystopia and his mother as abusive and erratic. In 2019, speaking on a podcast with the right-leaning comedian Adam Carolla, Mr. Carlson said his mother had forced drugs on her children. “She was like, doing real drugs around us when we were little, and getting us to do it, and just like being a nut case,” Mr. Carlson said. By his account, his mother made clear to her two young sons that she had little affection for them. “When you realize your own mother doesn’t like you, when she says that, it’s like, oh gosh,” he told Mr. Carolla, adding that he “felt all kinds of rage about it.”

Mr. Carlson was a heavy drinker until his 30s, something he has attributed in part to his early childhood.

[...]

Night after night, hour by hour, Mr. Carlson warns his viewers that they inhabit a civilization under siege — by violent Black Lives Matter protesters in American cities, by diseased migrants from south of the border, by refugees importing alien cultures, and by tech companies and cultural elites who will silence them, or label them racist, if they complain.

[...]

Carlson’s on-air technique — gleefully courting blowback, then fashioning himself as his aggrieved viewers’ partner in victimhood — has helped position him, as much as anyone, to inherit the populist movement that grew up around Mr. Trump. At a moment when white backlash is the jet fuel of a Republican Party striving to return to power in Washington, he has become the pre-eminent champion of Americans who feel most threatened by the rising power of Black and brown citizens. To channel their fear into ratings, Mr. Carlson has adopted the rhetorical tropes and exotic fixations of white nationalists, who have watched gleefully from the fringes of public life as he popularizes their ideas. Mr. Carlson sometimes refers to “legacy Americans,” a dog-whistle term that, before he began using it on his show last fall, appeared almost exclusively in white nationalist outlets.

[...]

“Tucker Carlson Tonight” has featured a string of segments about the gruesome murders of white farmers in South Africa, which Mr. Carlson suggested were part of a concerted campaign by that country’s Black-led government. Last April, Mr. Carlson set off yet another uproar, borrowing from a racist conspiracy theory known as “the great replacement” to argue that Democrats were deliberately importing “more obedient voters from the third world” to “replace” the current electorate and keep themselves in power.

[...]

Mr. Carlson is powerful at Fox not merely because he is the network’s face but because he is also its future — a star whose intensity and paranoid style work to bind viewers more closely to the Fox brand. [...] Last year, Mr. Carlson began producing original content for the network’s nascent streaming service, Fox Nation, and quickly emerged as one of the few Fox stars whose presence could lure viewers to fork over additional dollars. Fox does not divulge audience numbers for the service, but last May, Mr. Murdoch told investors that his star had helped increase Fox Nation subscriptions by 40 percent. Executives talk openly about Fox Nation as a boycott-proof version of Fox News — a walled garden where Fox can collect revenue directly from its viewers as carriage fees from cable providers decline.

[...]

There is almost no traditional news at all on Fox Nation, but lots of Mr. Carlson — a thrice-weekly talk show called “Tucker Carlson Today” and goading documentaries like “Patriot Purge,” which presented the Jan. 6 insurrection as a false-flag operation by shadowy actors determined to persecute innocent Americans.

[...]

Though Mr. Carlson claims his show to be “the sworn enemy of lying,” Fox’s lawyers acknowledged in 2020, in a lawsuit accusing the host of slander, that “spirited debate on talk-show programs does not lend itself well to statements of actual fact.”

  NYT

Fortunately, not all children abandoned or mistreated by their mother turn out to be unmitigated, lying assholes.

Good news and bad news

The good news is another Oath Keeper pled guilty on seditious conspiracy charges. The bad news is another Oath Keeper pled guilty on seditious conspiracy charges.

A second member of the Oath Keepers facing a seditious conspiracy charge for his role in the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol pleaded guilty Friday and is preparing to cooperate with prosecutors.

Brian Ulrich, one of 11 Oath Keepers facing the gravest charges to emerge from the Jan. 6 attack, pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and obstruction of Congress’ electoral vote-counting session. He follows Joshua James, an Oath Keeper who provided personal security to Roger Stone, who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy last month.

  Politico

I'm glad they're getting these assholes to admit and cooperate, but I'm afraid what's going to happen in the end is that the Oath Keepers are going to get all the blame, and once they're prosecuted, the administration and congressional criminals involved will be off the hook.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump admin meddling at CDC

New evidence of political interference in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s early pandemic response raised fresh questions in Congress on Friday on how to prevent future meddling and strengthen public trust in the health agency.

  Politico

I have a suggestion: Keep Republicans out of government. They don't believe in it anyway.

Emails detailing how Trump administration officials intervened to take out “offensive” language that raised “religious liberty concerns” from CDC guidance to faith communities in May 2020 were released by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis ahead of a Friday hearing on the scientific integrity of public health agencies.

[...]

Friday’s hearing follows the release of an April 29 report from the Government Accountability Office that found employees at four public health agencies did not report their concerns about the political interference they saw in their workplace. They said they didn’t because they “feared retaliation,” were “unsure how to report the issues” or “believed agency leaders were already aware.”

[...]

Just 44 percent of Americans say they trust what the CDC says about the coronavirus, according to a January NBC poll. That dwindling number could jeopardize the government’s ability to effectively communicate with Americans about current and future risks to their health.

[...]

The GAO found all four of agencies — CDC, Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response — did not have procedures on how political inference in their work should be reported and handled.

And having a Trump judge overrule the CDC doesn't exactly help. 

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

January 6 Committee hearings schedule

All hearings will be publicly televised.  There will be 8 (at least) held in June, beginning June 9.

Be there.  "Will be wild," to quote someone integral to the investigation.

Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol Hill insurrection, told reporters Thursday that the committee will hold eight hearings spread out through the month of June.

Thompson said the hearings will be a "mixture of some prime time and some regular" and they "will tell the story about what happened." Thompson also said he expects "at this point the first hearing is June 9th," though that date did not appear to be finalized.

[...]

Thompson also said the committee will be reaching out to more members of Congress as soon as this week that they want to speak to -- including Republicans in both the House and the Senate.

[...]

Thompson also said the committee will be reaching back out to the three lawmakers it initially asked to speak with by the end of the week. Those three are: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Jim Jordan of Ohio.

[...]

Rudy Giuliani is expected to appear next month before the committee, according to sources familiar with the matter, CNN reported Wednesday. That expected appearance comes after months of negotiations.[An] online presentation, which would include links to key video evidence, would be in addition to a traditional written report, according to a source familiar with the committee's work.

  CNN

Election reform begins with multiple parties

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Money laundering is a dangerous business

An informant who aided federal investigators with key documents and information about the German financial company Deutsche Bank and aided in a probe into former President Trump’s dealings with the bank was found dead in Los Angeles County on Monday.

Valentin Broeksmit, 46, was confirmed deceased by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner. His cause of death at this moment is under investigation.

His body was found in the early morning hours on Monday at Woodrow Wilson High School, according to the Los Angeles Times. There was no evidence of foul play

[...]

Broeksmit was reported as missing by the Los Angeles Police Department in April 2021 and last seen driving a 2020 red Mini Cooper, which was later recovered without Broeksmit inside.

Broeksmit was the son of the late Deutsche Bank senior executive Bill Broeksmit, who died by suicide in 2014.

Valentin Broeksmit had a trove of bank documents and cooperated with the FBI amid an investigation into the financial giant over alleged money laundering operations and other fraud allegations.

[...]

Scott Stedman, a reporter for Forensic News who worked with Broeksmit to uncover Deutsche Bank’s connections to Russia, said he didn’t suspect foul play in the death of his friend.

“Val’s father took his own life in 2014 and it consumed Val in recent years.

  The Hill

Wheeeee

Former president Donald Trump said he feared protesters would hit him with tomatoes, pineapples and other “very dangerous” fruit at his campaign rallies, declaring in a sworn deposition that “you can be killed if that happens.”

Trump’s comments about the potentially lethal effects of projectile produce were made public Tuesday with the release of excerpts of 4½ hours of videotaped testimony in a lawsuit filed by a group of protesters who allege that Trump’s security guards assaulted them in 2015.

“I wanted to have people be ready because we were put on alert that they were going to do fruit.”

  WaPo

I'm howling.

He added that “tomatoes are bad” and that “some fruit is a lot worse.”

[...]

"[P]ineapples, tomatoes, bananas, stuff like that."

[...]

“But it’s very dangerous. … I remember that specific event, because everybody was on alert. They were going to hit — they were going to hit hard,” he said.

Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

P.S. When Letitia James gets him in a room for a deposition in her financial fraud investigation, it's going to be six kinds of awesome.

Big oil is pure evil

You've heard the stories, but you haven't heard any like this, because there aren't any.

How is this even possible?

It was worth getting everybody all a-twitter, I guess

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 7/9/22:

In case you need a reminder

Nearly a year and a half later, surprisingly few understand what January 6 was all about.

Fewer still understand why former President Donald Trump and Republicans persist in their long-disproven claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Much less why they are obsessed about making the 2024 race a referendum on the “stolen” election of 2020, which even they know was not stolen.

January 6 was never about a stolen election or even about actual voting fraud. It was always and only about an election that Trump lost fair and square.

[...]

The Republicans’ mystifying claim to this day that Trump did, or would have, received more votes than Joe Biden in 2020 were it not for actual voting fraud, is but the shiny object that Republicans have tauntingly and disingenuously dangled before the American public for almost a year and a half now to distract attention from their far more ambitious objective.

That objective is not somehow to rescind the 2020 election, as they would have us believe. That’s constitutionally impossible. Trump’s and the Republicans’ far more ambitious objective is to execute successfully in 2024 the very same plan they failed in executing in 2020 and to overturn the 2024 election if Trump or his anointed successor loses again in the next quadrennial contest.

[...]

From long before Election Day 2020, Trump and Republicans planned to overturn the presidential election by exploiting the Electors and Elections Clauses of the Constitution, the Electoral College, the Electoral Count Act of 1877, and the 12th Amendment, if Trump lost the popular and Electoral College vote.

The cornerstone of the plan was to have the Supreme Court embrace the little known “independent state legislature” doctrine.

[...]

The independent state legislature doctrine says that, under the Elections and the Electors Clauses of the Constitution, state legislatures possess plenary and exclusive power over the conduct of federal presidential elections and the selection of state presidential electors.

[...]

The Supreme Court has never decided whether to embrace the independent state legislature doctrine. But then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in separate concurring opinions said they would embrace that doctrine in Bush v. Gore, 20 years earlier, and Republicans had every reason to believe there were at least five votes on the Supreme Court for the doctrine in November 2020.

[...]

Pence declared Joe Biden the 46th President of the United States at 3:40 a.m. on Thursday, January 7, roughly 14 hours after rioters stormed the US Capitol.

[...]

Trump and his allies and supporters in Congress and the states began readying their failed 2020 plan to overturn the 2024 presidential election later that very same day and they have been unabashedly readying that plan ever since, in plain view to the American public. Today, they are already a long way toward recapturing the White House in 2024, whether Trump or another Republican candidate wins the election or not.

[...]

Trump and Republicans are preparing to return to the Supreme Court, where this time they will likely win the independent state legislature doctrine, now that Amy Coney Barrett is on the Court and ready to vote. Barrett has not addressed the issue, but this turns on an originalist interpretation of the Constitution, and Barrett is firmly aligned on that method of constitutional interpretation with Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, all three of whom have written that they believe the doctrine is correct.

Only last month, in a case from North Carolina the Court declined to hear, Moore v. Harper, four Justices (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh) said that the independent state legislature question is of exceptional importance to our national elections, the issue will continue to recur and the Court should decide the issue sooner rather than later before the next presidential election.

[...]

The Republicans are also in the throes of electing Trump-endorsed candidates to state legislative offices in key swing states, installing into office their favored state election officials who deny that Biden won the 2020 election, such as secretaries of state, electing sympathetic state court judges onto the state benches and grooming their preferred potential electors for ultimate selection by the party, all so they will be positioned to generate and transmit alternative electoral slates to Congress, if need be.

Finally, they are furiously politicking to elect Trump supporters to the Senate and House, so they can overturn the election in Congress, as a last resort.

[...]

Trump and the Republicans can only be stopped from stealing the 2024 election at this point if the Supreme Court rejects the independent state legislature doctrine (thus allowing state court enforcement of state constitutional limitations on legislatively enacted election rules and elector appointments) and Congress amends the Electoral Count Act to constrain Congress’ own power to reject state electoral votes and decide the presidency.

[...]

The last presidential election was a dry run for the next.

[...]

Editor’s Note: J. Michael Luttig, appointed by President George H. W. Bush, formerly served on the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for 15 years. He advised Vice President Mike Pence on January 6. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.

  J. Michael Luttig at CNN

And, staying with that sentiment, Ted is like a rebellious teenager to Juge Luttig.

The McCarthy hits just keep on coming

Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, feared in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack that several far-right members of Congress would incite violence against other lawmakers, identifying several by name as security risks in private conversations with party leaders.

[...]

But Mr. McCarthy did not follow through on the sterner steps that some Republicans encouraged him to take, opting instead to seek a political accommodation with the most extreme members of the G.O.P. in the interests of advancing his own career.

  NYT

Well there's a surprise.

In the phone call with other Republican leaders on Jan. 10, Mr. McCarthy referred chiefly to two representatives, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Mo Brooks of Alabama, as endangering the security of other lawmakers and the Capitol complex. But he and his allies discussed several other representatives who made comments they saw as offensive or dangerous, including Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Barry Moore of Alabama.

[...]

After Jan. 6, Mr. Gaetz went on television to attack multiple Republicans who had criticized Mr. Trump, including Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a member of the leadership team.

Those comments by Mr. Gaetz alarmed Mr. McCarthy and his colleagues in leadership — particularly the reference to Ms. Cheney, who was already the target of threats and public abuse from Mr. Trump’s faction in the party because of her criticism of the defeated president.

[...]

“He’s putting people in jeopardy,” Mr. McCarthy said of Mr. Gaetz. “And he doesn’t need to be doing this. We saw what people would do in the Capitol, you know, and these people came prepared with rope, with everything else.”

Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican, suggested that Mr. Gaetz might be crossing a legal boundary.

“It’s potentially illegal what he’s doing,” Mr. Scalise said.

[...]

Speaking about rank-and-file lawmakers to his fellow leaders, Mr. McCarthy was sharply critical and suggested he was going to tell them to stop their inflammatory conduct.

“Our members have got to start paying attention to what they say, too, and you can’t put up with that,” he said, adding an expletive.

And yet, now they're all giving everybody a pass.

On Jan. 10, he urged his fellow G.O.P. leaders to keep a close eye on members like Mr. Brooks and Mr. Gaetz and asked them to alert him if they saw any potentially dangerous public communications.

Mr. McCarthy said it was particularly unacceptable for lawmakers to attack other lawmakers with whom they disagreed about the outcome of the 2020 election: “That stuff’s got to stop.”

“The country is too crazy,” Mr. McCarthy said. “I do not want to look back and think we caused something or we missed something and someone got hurt. I don’t want to play politics with any of that.”

And then he went down to Mar-A-Lago.

During the Jan. 10, 2021, phone call, Mr. McCarthy was speaking with a small group of Republican leaders, including Mr. Scalise, Ms. Cheney and Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, as well as a number of aides.

It was on this G.O.P. leadership call that Mr. McCarthy told his colleagues he would call Mr. Trump and tell him, “it would be my recommendation you should resign.”

[...]

The House minority leader has in recent days lied about and tried to downplay his comments: Last week, after The Times reported the remarks, Mr. McCarthy called the report “totally false and wrong.” After Mr. McCarthy’s denial, a source who had confidentially shared a recording of the call with the book’s authors agreed to let The Times publish parts of the audio. In the days since that recording has been made public, the Republican leader has repeated his denial and emphasized that he never actually carried out his plan to urge Mr. Trump to quit.

About time to admit this was not leaked by Liz Cheney, who has been getting the blame for it since the audio clip only has her and McCarthy on it.

On the leadership call, Mr. McCarthy, Mr. Scalise and others discussed several other lawmakers who had made provocative comments around Jan. 6, including Mr. Moore and Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas. Ms. Cheney, who was on the call, suggested Ms. Boebert was a security risk, pointing out that she had publicly tweeted about the sensitive movements of other lawmakers during the Jan. 6 evacuation.

[...]

On the Jan. 10 call, Mr. McCarthy said he planned to speak with Mr. Gaetz and ask him not to attack other lawmakers by name. The following day, in a larger meeting for all House Republicans, Mr. McCarthy pleaded with lawmakers not to “incite” but rather to “respect one another.”

Does he know his colleagues?

But in his determination to become speaker of the House after the 2022 elections, Mr. McCarthy has spent much of the last year forging a closer political partnership with the far right, showing little public concern that his most extreme colleagues could instigate bloodshed with their overheated or hateful rhetoric.

In recent months Mr. McCarthy has opposed punishing Republican members of Congress who have been accused of inciting violence, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and, most recently, Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, who posted an animated video on social media that depicted him killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, the left-wing Democrat.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What else will we learn about Madison Cawthorn before he's voted out of office?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  Ask, and you shall receive.

Sadly, knee-jerk America will elect Republicans

They'll blame Democrats, not Putin.

The war in Ukraine will result in expensive food and energy for the next three years, the World Bank has warned, intensifying fears that the global economy is heading for a rerun of the weak growth and high inflation of the 1970s.

In a gloomy analysis, the Washington-based development organisation said there was a risk that persistently high commodity costs lasting until the end of 2024 would lead to stagflation – sluggish activity combined with strong cost of living pressures.

[...]

As a result of trade and production disruptions caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Bank is forecasting a 50% rise in energy prices this year. It expects the price of Brent crude oil to average $100 a barrel in 2022, its highest level since 2013 and an increase of more than 40% compared with 2021. Prices are expected to fall back to $92 in 2023 but will remain well above the five-year average of $60 a barrel.

  Guardian

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The lowest of the low

There's a real trio for you.  Matt Gaetz and the Gaetz Girls.

Gaetz flanked by the only two females in the House of Reps willing to sit with him.

Meanwhile, the establishment insists that Dems only push modest, incremental reforms so as not to offend corporate funders or spook moderate Republicans. Hellooooo, brilliant strategists: A primary function of the Democratic Party is to offend the corporate powers! Also, there are only about six moderate Republicans left in America, so appeasing them is not a big win — especially when it costs you the support of grassroots voters eager for a politics bold enough and big enough to end business-as-usual economics.

  Common Dreams

Mainstream Democratic punditry says Biden's approval ratings have slipped and the Dems are in danger of losing big in the midterms because Dems have gone too far to placate their extreme left. I find it hard to reconcile that belief with the fact that the biggest loss in support is coming in the younger voter column. And how can you make that pronouncement when it's just as likely that the problem is they haven't gone far enough to deliver on their promises?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump nemesis Kemp is running over Trump-endorsed Perdue

News reports regularly say Republicans are running on Trump’s “big lie.” But that suggests they are merely re-litigating his loss out of twisted loyalty to him. It’s worse: Some candidates are running on an implicit vow to do what it takes to subvert future losses.

[David] Perdue is a prime example. He has said that as governor he wouldn’t have certified Trump’s 2020 loss. That’s an implicit promise to use his power as governor in a way Kemp would not, to prevent a legitimate GOP loss from becoming official.

[...]

Analysts are already describing this as evidence of Trump’s waning influence among GOP voters. But something bigger is at stake: A decisive Kemp win would show that Republican officials can abide by the integrity of election losses and live to tell the tale — that is, without immediately seeing their careers implode in the next GOP primary.

Perdue has built his entire primary challenge to Kemp around the idea that in some vague sense, Kemp betrayed Republican voters by rebuffing Trump’s pressure to help steal the 2020 election. Trump endorsed Perdue for the explicit purpose of ousting Kemp as payback for that heresy.

[...]

Perdue recently telegraphed this again. At a GOP primary debate this week, Perdue flatly declared that Kemp had “caved and allowed radical Democrats to steal our election,” and told GOP voters that if they’re upset and angry about Democratic control, Kemp is to blame for it.

[...]

Perdue is wagering that GOP voters’ angst over losing in 2020 will make them ripe marks.

  WaPo

Looks like that may be a spectacularly bad bet.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

We need an independent investigator

There's a name for people appointed to go through documents to decide whether they are in fact privileged which I forget, but this screams out for one.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Twitter prostitution

"Sells itself to Elon Musk."  Interesting way to phrase the sale.  Do you suppose that was intentional?

I'm afraid he's going to let Trump back on.  Just in time for him to rage about the January 6th hearings supposedly coming soon.

Devin Nunes is an idiot.  He obviously doesn't know Trump.  Or he's just plain spewing bull.  (He's also running Trump's failed social media platform.)  Or, he's just saying what Trump told him to say.

Fat fucking chance.  He'll be back if Twitter permits it.

"Troth, Truth Sential."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

And, in a nutshell...

Is the Bible still allowed in Florida school libraries?

And, if so, why?  It's chock full of violence and sex and culture wars.

[W]ith Florida the latest flashpoint in the culture wars, [Chaz] Stevens decided it was time to take up arms. His target: The Bible. "My objection to the Bible being in your public schools is based on the following seven points, offered for your learned consideration," Stevens wrote.

Stevens proceeded to question whether the Bible is age-appropriate, pointing to its "casual" references to murder, adultery, sexual immorality, and fornication. "Do we really want to teach our youth about drunken orgies?"

He also took issue with the many Biblical references to rape, bestiality, cannibalism and infanticide. "In the end, if Jimmy and Susie are curious about any of the above, they can do what everyone else does – get a room at the Motel Six and grab the Gideons," he wrote.

[...]

His petitions cited a bill signed into law last month by Gov. Ron DeSantis, which lets parents object to educational materials. That bill came about after some parents complained about sexually explicit books being taught in Florida schools.

[...]

Stevens said he is particularly interested in drawing attention to the hypocrisy.

[...]

It's not the first time Stevens has made waves for his activism. In 2015, he petitioned 11 South Florida municipalities to either drop the prayer that opens their city commission meetings, or let him lead a prayer in the name of Satan.

After Stevens' requests, some Florida cities ended up dropping their moment of prayer altogether.

  NPR

Good.

Lying? Who would have imagined?

Did the Jan 6 committee not have the Meadows texts on April 22?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

On December 31, Greene reached out to Meadows for advice about how to prepare for objections to certifying the election on January 6.

“Good morning Mark, I’m here in DC. We have to get organized for the 6th,” Greene wrote. “I would like to meet with Rudy Giuliani again. We didn’t get to speak with him long. Also anyone who can help. We are getting a lot of members on board. And we need to lay out the best case for each state.”

Meadows does not appear to respond.

By January 17, Greene was suggesting ways to keep Trump in office, telling Meadows there were several Republicans in Congress who still wanted the then-President to declare martial law, which had been raised in a heated Oval Office meeting a month earlier.

Greene texted: “In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall (sic) law. I don’t know on those things. I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next. Please tell him to declassify as much as possible so we can go after Biden and anyone else!”

  CNN

It's something at least

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Religion, courts, and sports

Gee, I woner what they'll decide.  

And how long before they'll decide to reinstate morning prayer in school.

The plaintiff has already lost in the lower courts.  This is the new way of making law in America: bypass Congress and go straight to the Supreme Court.

Read the article. There was an interesting progression of events, as you can imagine, intended to get this to SCOTUS.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Russian oil depots on fire

Large fires broke out early on Monday at two oil depots in the Russian city of Bryansk, less than 100 miles from the border with Ukraine, in a potential act of sabotage by Kyiv.

[...]

Bryansk, which is less than 100 miles north-east of the Ukrainian border, serves as a logistics base for Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine.

  Guardian

What makes them think it wasn't a Russian act of sabotage?

Military analyst Rob Lee said that the footage suggested the fire was “probably” caused by Ukrainian sabotage. “It sounds like something is flying through the air before the explosion. I think it was probably a Ukrainian attack, but we cannot be certain,” Lee said.

“The fact that it was two separate sites not far from the border is important,” Lee said, adding that the fires may have been caused by a Tochka-U tactical ballistic missile, which he said had the range to reach both targets if deployed near the Russian-Ukrainian border.

[...]

According to Baza, a Telegram news channel with links to Russian security services, the fires were caused by Ukrainian drones.

[...]

The Russian defence ministry has promised to bomb targets in Kyiv in response to what it said were “terrorist and sabotage” attacks on its territory carried out by Ukraine’s “nationalist regime”.

Russia has suffered a series of major fires at state facilities across the country in recent weeks.

On Friday, 17 people were killed after a huge fire broke out at a key Russian defence research institute in Tver, north-west of Moscow. On the same day, a major chemical plant not far from Moscow caught fire. Russia, where accidental fires are common due to dilapidated infrastructure, has blamed the fire in Tver on ageing wiring.

Or possibly Russian protest.

Or possibly Ukrainian protest.

Blinken and Austin in Ukraine

A US official said Joe Biden would on Monday formally nominate Bridget Brink as US ambassador to Ukraine, a post that had remained vacant for more than two years. Brink, a career foreign service officer, has been US ambassador to Slovakia since 2019.

  Guardian

Pop quiz: Which Republican asshole will be the first to block the nomination?

Is it just me, or does it seem inappropriate for Blinken and Austin to be wearing big smiles?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

As if

There is nothing you could do or show that will shake Trump voters off their stand.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Durham is still at it

And as long as there's information against him like this coming out, his investigation will never end.

In case you need refreshing, he's investigating the investigators of the first impeachment of Donald J Trump.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Poor memory

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said under oath Friday that she doesn’t remember whether she urged Donald Trump to invoke martial law in order to remain in power ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration.

[...]

Greene is fending off a push by voters in her district, supported by the campaign finance reform group Free Speech for the People, to disqualify her from reelection, citing the 14th Amendment bar on insurrectionists from holding federal office.

  Politico

Of course she remembers. That was a very memorable day. She would remember if she talked to Trump on that day. And she remembers their conversation.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Naming names

Republican members of Congress were heavily involved in calls and meetings with former President Donald Trump and his top aides as they devised a strategy to overturn the election in December 2020, according to new evidence filed in federal court late Friday.

[...]

Lawmakers who attended meetings, in person or by phone, included Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and numerous members of the House Freedom Caucus, according to Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Meadows who provided key testimony about the conversations and meetings Meadows had in December 2020.

The new evidence underscores the expansive cast of elected Republicans who had ultimately enlisted themselves in Trump’s last-ditch effort to cling to power. Members traded theories about ways to push then-Vice President Mike Pence to single-handedly stop Biden’s election, they parried with the White House Counsel’s Office on the boundaries of the law regarding presidential electors and they met directly with Pence’s staff to encourage him to take direct action on Jan. 6, when Congress convened to count electoral votes.

[...]

Some of the GOP lawmakers were present in December meetings, Hutchinson recalled, when members of the White House Counsel’s Office raised significant legal doubts about a plan for pro-Trump activists to submit “alternate” electors in states won by Joe Biden.

Others attended a Dec. 21 meeting where Rudy Giuliani, then the president’s personal lawyer, and some associates advocated a plan for Pence to unilaterally refuse to count Biden’s electors and instead send the election back to various GOP-controlled state legislatures to replace Biden’s electors with Trump’s.

The panel also released text messages between Perry and Meadows about replacing Justice Department leadership before Jan. 6 with officials thought to be more sympathetic to Trump’s claims of voter fraud.

[...]

The panel concluded: “It is also now clear that Mr. Trump never telephoned his Secretary of Defense that day to order deployment of National Guard, and never contacted any federal law enforcement agency to order security assistance to the Capitol Police.”

  Politico

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Putin doesn't look great

Video clips and still images of Putin's conference with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu have been making the rounds on social media. While the Kremlin indicated that the two met to discuss Russia's military strategy in Mariupol, a strategic port city in Ukraine where Putin has declared "success," onlookers from afar have focused on how the president looked.

In the images, Putin can be seen gripping the table between him and Shoigu, as well as slouching down in his chair. Speculation soon spread that he could be in bad health, though rumors have previously surfaced in recent months that the leader could be suffering from an illness. The Kremlin earlier this month denied that Putin had undergone surgery related to thyroid cancer, online outlet The Moscow Times reported on April 1.

"Is this just me or Putin really looks less healthy and sound with each and every day of the war?" Illia Ponomarenko, a reporter for the website The Kyiv Independent, tweeted. "I can see a drastic difference between now and late February."

  Newsweek

In the footage posted online by the Kremlin, the 69-year-old Russian president grabs hold of the corner of the table with his right hand as soon as he sits down for the meeting, and keeps hold of it for the entirety of the 12 minute clip.

Mr Putin can also be seen intermittently holding the edge of the table with his left hand

  UK Independent

He may be sick, because there have been lots of stories about him sitting at a table that appeared to be over 6 feet long for his meetings with people seated at the other end, and in this video, the two men are practically in each other's faces across a small table. Putin, like Trump, is all about appearance. I think he wouldn't put out a video like this unless he wanted to show himself as strong at a time when he's weak. Like Trump on the balcony at the White House when he got out of the hospital from Covid and obviously wasn't recovered.

There's this article from November 2020 (keeping in mind that the source is not a particularly reliable one):

VLADIMIR Putin is planning to quit early next year amid growing fears for his health, Moscow sources claimed last night.

  The Sun

If that's true, he may have been planning to take Ukraine in a flurry of photo ops (as the story is that he thought they'd take it in a few days and is furious about the reality), and then step aside in glory.

Observers who studied recent footage of Putin noted his legs appeared to be in constant motion and he looked to be in pain while clutching the armrest of a chair.

His fingers are also seen to be twitching as he held a pen and gripped a cup believed to contain a cocktail of painkillers.

Speculation that his 20-year-reign - second only to that of Stalin - could be nearing an end grew earlier this week when laws were drafted to make him a senator-for-life when he resigns.

[...]

However, the president’s staff have repeatedly played down rumours that he is paving the way for a political exit.

And the Kremlin today insisted Putin was in "excellent health" and "everything is fine with the President".

They created a monster, and the monster is loose

Florida passes the "Stop Woke Act"

The bill, passed by the state legislature on March 10, specifically targets discussion in both K-12 and higher education that “espouses,” “promotes,” or “advances” prohibited concepts. The bill, formally titled “Individual Freedom,” is described by Gov. DeSantis as targeting “critical race theory” and preventing students — including those at universities and colleges — from having to “engage with discriminatory content” or “rhetoric.” The Florida House of Representatives staff’s analysis of HB 7 explains that it prohibits “instruction” or any “required activity that espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels” someone to “believe” prohibited concepts.

  The Fire

"Prohibited concepts".

Fascists on the quick march.

DeSantis will be running for president in 2024.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

He asked for Biden; he got Blinken and Austin

I honestly don't think Biden should go, but I do think he should offer more weapons and planes.

He's toast

Madison Cawthorn fucked up big time when he let slip that his Republican colleagues have orgies and do drugs.  They're after him now.

Cawthorn acknowledged the photos in a tweet Friday, saying they were from a vacation on a cruise and were taken before he ran for Congress.

“I guess the left thinks goofy vacation photos during a game on a cruise (taken waaay before I ran for Congress) is going to somehow hurt me?” Cawthorn said.

  The Hill

'Fraid so, Skippy. You're not Brett Kavanaugh.  

His comments about “the sexual perversion” in Washington made on a podcast, which he later admitted were exaggerated, drew the public disapproval and disavowal of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy as well as other Republican leaders including those in his North Carolina congressional caucus.

[...]

Cawthorn, who was paralyzed from the waist down as a passenger in a car accident in Florida in 2014, in recent months has called Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “thug,” suggested teetotaling Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has a drinking problem, and racked up a collection of traffic transgressions including speeding, driving with expired tags and driving with a revoked license. He has court dates in May and June.

[...]

Cawthorn, 26, was raised in a conservative Baptist community in Henderson County, North Carolina, and has staked his political persona on arch-traditional Christian principles and the insistence of the importance of a kind of hypermasculinity.

  Politico

You could have bet your life on it.

“I subscribe to Judeo-Christian beliefs,” he continued. “I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I think if you think about my political ideology, where it really stems from, you know, my ethics and my morals and what I think is right and wrong, you look to ancient Jerusalem, you got ancient Judeo-Christian values. So right and wrong,” he continued. “I also cling to a lot of traditional values and a lot of traditional ideas, because they’ve worked in the past.”

Yes, the Bible is full of stories about Jerusalem parties in panties.

“I think that we have bred a generation of soft men and that generation has created a lot of problems in our society and our culture,” he said in March 2021 on a podcast “designed to reclaim and restore masculinity in a society that is ever more dismissive of what it means to be a man.”

Nothing says manliness like a photograph of a guy in ladies' lingerie.

POLITICO could not independently verify the photos, which are screenshots of original images. They were provided to POLITICO by a person formerly close to Cawthorn and his campaign. A second person formerly close to Cawthorn and his campaign confirmed the origin of the photos. The date the photos were taken is unclear, though they appear to show Cawthorn sitting in a wheelchair, indicating the event happened after his accident. In the photos, he is wearing a distinctive pendant necklace that has appeared in other images and videos of Cawthorn. The photos have started to circulate among political rivals.

He'll have more "vacation" time once he gets dumped from Congress (also in May).

After this story published, Cawthorn tweeted that the photos were taken of him during a game on a cruise before he was elected to Congress. “I guess the left thinks goofy vacation photos during a game on a cruise (taken waaay before I ran for Congress) is going to somehow hurt me? They’re running out of things to throw at me... Share your most embarrassing vacay pics in the replies.”

I'd laugh, but there are some ignorant MAGAts out there who are stupid enough to do it.

Also, I wonder if someone will ask Cawthorn what game he was playing?  (Maybe he does take cues from Brett Kavanaugh.)

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 5/4:  There's more.

Kudos to Estonia and Latvia

Google headlines:

Estonia has become one of the first countries in the EU to label Russia's actions in Ukraine as genocide.

The country's parliament, the Riigikogu, voted in favour on Thursday of recognising Russia's war as a "genocide against the Ukrainian people", calling on other governments and international organisations to "do the same."

  EuroNews

Yes.

Genocide is defined in international law as the targetted killing of people from a particular national, ethnic, racial or religious group, with the intention of destroying that group.

[...]

Latvia echoed Estonia's declaration on Wednesday afternoon, also recognising Russia's actions in Ukraine as a "genocide."

Estonian investigators say [Jevgeni Agnevštšikov] was one of 19 people on Danske Bank Estonia’s foreign banking team who they believe laundered more than US$1.6 billion of illicit funds for their clients.

The money allegedly originated in eight schemes in Russia, Azerbaijan, the U.S., Iran, Switzerland, and Georgia, as well as a scam that defrauded Facebook out of nearly $100 million. It flowed through Danske Bank Estonia accounts between 2007 and 2015, when the bank was at the center of one of Europe’s largest ever money laundering scandals.

[...]

“To date, a total amounting to 10 million euros in assets of suspects and third parties enriched by the proceeds of crime have been seized to secure the confiscation requirements of the state,” she added.

[...]

Investigators say the system was so effective that several of the bankers continued to use it after Danske Bank Estonia closed its foreign banking division, when they took clients with them to other Estonian banks or switched to working with Latvian banks. Some allegedly continued to launder money even after they were questioned by investigators in December 2018.

  OCCRP

Guess who was using Danske bank in Estonia? That's right. Vladimir Putin. And here's a name you might have heard:

Close to $150 million that they are accused of laundering allegedly came from a huge Russian tax fraud scheme known as the Magnitsky case. It was named after the lawyer who discovered it, Sergey Magnitsky, who worked for a U.S asset manager that had been inadvertently used in the fraud. But when Magnitsky reported it to Russian authorities he was thrown in jail, where he died of mistreatment.

"Mistreatment". Otherwise known as torture. And guess who was involved in negotiations to possibly repeal the Magnitsky Act? That's right: Donald Trump Jr, in that infamous Trump Tower meeting.

All the criminal authoritarians are connected.

This month's good news article

A coalition of small-town mayors in the Kansas City area banded together to figure out ways their governments could take action against climate change and make their towns more livable and environmentally friendly.

Damien Boley, mayor of Smithville, Mo., has a vision for a walkable community with abundant green space. It may seem risky to go all-in on climate action in a conservative-leaning county, but Boley says there's plenty of room to make real change. Mike Kelly, the mayor of Roeland Park, Kan., agrees. “One of the things we heard on the doorsteps during our campaigns is this existential dread," Kelly says. "Like, we have 10 years to save the planet, and nobody’s doing anything about it.”

[...]

Kelly and Lindsey Constance, a councilwoman from Shawnee, Kansas, got the ball rolling.

[...]

By the end of 2018, Constance and Kelly thought they detected enough interest to invite elected officials to a small meeting in the basement of Village Presbyterian Church. About 135 people showed up. They represented city councils, school boards, water boards, county commissions, even the offices of a governor and local Congressional representatives.

  KCUR

Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Meanwhile, in Jerusalem

source

It's a statement, I guess

If everyone would have joined, that would have been a STATEMENT.

The Dems need more like her

Preach, Mallory!

UPDATE 7/30:

Less than $300 ....  $235 actually.