Bingo

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

UPDATE:

Meanwhile in Afghanistan

Well, well, well

According to a long-form piece published by The Washington Post on Sunday, [Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)] was furious that lawmakers were being forced to evacuate and yelled at the Senate sergeant-at-arms, "What are you doing? Take back the Senate! You’ve got guns. Use them.”

We give you guns for a reason,” Graham reportedly continued. “Use them.”

  The Hill

And one did. And now the GOP wants his hide.

“I heard when the 75 senators were confined in a room with about 75 staff people, Lindsey Graham with his mask off started screaming at one of the officers — I think it was one of the captains — saying, ‘How come you didn’t protect us? It’s doing your job,'” Brown told MSNBC's Ari Melber about one week after the attack.

"He was screaming at an officer,” said [Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio)]. “He had his mask off screaming at this officer from 5 feet away — I was maybe 10 feet on the other side — that the officer, the police, didn't do enough to protect us."

[...]

According to the Post's report, Graham also called former President Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump, giving her suggestions on what her father should say to appeal to the rioters to calm down and vacate the Capitol.

“You need to get these people out of here,” Graham reportedly said to Ivanka Trump over the phone. “This thing is going south. This is not good. You’re going to have to tell these people to stand down. Stand down.”

“This thing is going south." Almost sounds like he was in on "this thing", and the use of "you" almost sounds like she was, too.

"They could have blown the building up. They could have killed us all. They could've destroyed the government," Graham said to reporters one day after the breach. "Lethal force should have been used. ... We dodged a major bullet. If this is not a wake-up call I don't know what is."

[...]

On the day of the attack, Graham called for the rioters to be "prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law" and agreed with then-President-elect Biden that the breach had been an "insurrection."

And yet now they've been transformed by GOP propaganda into patriots.

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

Not good

Republican Glenn Youngkin pulled off the upset in Virginia, defeating Terry McAuliffe in the governor's race. And in perhaps an even bigger stunner in New Jersey, Republican Jack Ciatarelli leads by about 1,200 votes out of 2.3 million over incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, who had been favored.

The New Jersey race is likely headed for a recount, but just the fact that the election is this close shows how much energy Republicans had on their side heading into Tuesday night.

  NPR

If Democrats can't deliver, the country will be turning to authoritarians.

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

UPDATE:  Interesting...

But she is also a Republican.

UPDATE:  Murphy wins, and GOP cry foul.  They're going to do this every time a Democrat wins a close race.

Lordy

Is this the best MAGA money can buy?

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

Abortion rights: Winning a battle, but losing the war

On Monday, when the [Supreme] court heard oral arguments in two challenges to the law, Texas found itself in trouble. Five — and perhaps as many as six — justices seemed to have grave concerns about Texas’ strategy to nullify the right to abortion. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, for example, said the law was designed to prevent abortion providers in Texas from presenting a “full constitutional defense.”

But if you’re starting to think the justices’ concerns with S.B. 8 might mean they are committed to protecting abortion rights, don’t. The objections we heard on Monday, especially from the justices whose votes will be crucial in any case where abortion rights are at stake, had much less to do with abortion than with the Court’s desire to protect its own power.

  Politico

Congress seems to be the only branch that isn't all about protecting its own powers.  And perhaps the one that should do it most of all.

[C]onservative groups pleaded with the court that states could use the same strategy to gut other rights, including ones about which the court’s conservatives care a great deal. The justices seem intent on expanding the right to bear arms and the free exercise of religion. States could use S.B. 8-style laws to frustrate those ambitions. If the court held that abortion providers could not sue Texas, that would be a way of surrendering some of the court’s own authority. And as much as this court may be ready to reverse Roe, allowing Texas to make this kind of power grab is another thing entirely.

[...]

In fact, abortion rights barely appeared in the justices’ questions in the two cases, one brought by abortion providers, a second brought by the Justice Department. “There’s a loophole that’s been exploited here or used here,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh said. “It could be free speech rights. It could be free-exercise-of-religion rights. It could be Second Amendment rights.”

[...]

That means that Roe v. Wade, which could be on the chopping block as soon as next year, is nowhere close to safe, no matter what happened on Monday — and in fact that Monday could be just the first step of many on the way to overturning Roe.

[...]

[T]he court’s conservative supermajority still seems to be gunning to curtail abortion rights. The justices have a perfect opportunity to take a shot at Roe this term in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center, a Mississippi case involving a ban on abortion at 15 weeks.

[...]

Roe protects a right to choose abortion until viability. Mississippi bans abortion before viability. To side with the state, the court has to say that Roe was wrong about viability — or that there is no right to choose abortion.

[...]

It will then take time to get a decision holding that S.B. 8 is unconstitutional; an order blocking it will be appealed to the conservative Fifth Circuit, which will likely side with the state and force abortion providers to appeal to the Supreme Court again. All of this will take time. In the meantime, pregnant women in Texas will have to travel out of state for abortions or other forms of reproductive health care.

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

Manchin doubling down on assholery

But he'll hold the entire country hostage.  What's worse is he was highly involved in getting the $1.75 million compromise approved, and now he says he won't vote for it.

What an asshat.  Kyrsten Sinema must have been getting more publicity than he was.

So stop it.  And join your party.

MAGA

Hey, asshat, maybe it's the other way around.

Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida, Hawley addressed the issue of “manhood”, which he said was under attack, and called for men to return to traditional masculine roles.

  Guardian

Not many men look less alpha than Josh Hawley. But he sure knows his base. Toxic masculinity group.

As well as pornography, Hawley tied the supposed decline in masculinity to issues including unemployment, people marrying at a later age and the preservation of liberty.

Amazing.

“Can we be surprised that after years of being told that they are the problem, that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing into the enclave of idleness and pornography and video games?” Hawley said.

What do you think Hawley would say about the social theory that poor - mostly black and brown - men who fall to drugs and crime are products of their environment? That social conditions are responsible for their behavior? Hmmm?

Hawley, 41, did not cite sources for his belief that men were watching pornography more frequently.

Gee, could that be because he doesn't have one?

In the address, Hawley said he wanted to discuss “the left’s attempt to give us a world beyond men”.

Let me think about that for a while. Sounds like it might have some merit.

“They want to define the traditional masculine virtues – things like courage, and independence, and assertiveness – as a danger to society.”

Which qualities in females he calls feminism and denounces it.

“Boys are increasingly treated like an illness in search of a cure.”

“Hollywood delivers the toxic masculinity theme ad nauseum in television and film,” he said, going on to link traditional masculinity as “vital to self-government”.

“Observers from the ancient Romans to our forefathers identified the manly virtues as indispensable for political liberty,” Hawley said.

Could I see some citations for that, too? Also, he's right about Hollywood delivering toxic masculinity ad nauseum, just not in the way he apparently thinks.

Hawley offered few solutions to the problems he claimed to present. On Monday, he used Twitter to promote his new podcast, co-hosted with his wife.

Should have known there was a grifting angle to it.

Do it!

UPDATE:

He just doesn't want to give up anything at all

It would show weakness.

In the filing, in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, John Laster, the director of the National Archives’ presidential materials division, laid out for the first time exactly which documents Mr. Trump was asserting executive privilege over. The former president is hoping to prevent the documents from being reviewed by the House committee empowered to investigate the mob violence at the Capitol.

[...]

Trump has asserted executive privilege specifically over 770 pages of documents, including 46 pages of records from the files of Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff; Stephen Miller, his former senior adviser; and Patrick Philbin, his former deputy counsel. Mr. Trump is also objecting to the release of the White House Daily Diary — a record of the president’s movements, phone calls, trips, briefings, meetings and activities — as well as logs showing phone calls to the president and to Vice President Mike Pence concerning Jan. 6, Mr. Laster wrote.

Mr. Trump has also asserted executive privilege over 656 pages that include proposed talking points for Kayleigh McEnany, his former press secretary; a handwritten note concerning Jan. 6; a draft text of a presidential speech for the “Save America” rally that preceded the mob attack; and a draft executive order on the topic of election integrity, the filing states.

  NYT

I really want to see that draft. If Trump - or Stephen Miller - had a hand in writing it, it could say extreme things his lawyers told him not to in the final speech. Wouldn't be the first time.

Trump asserted executive privilege over 68 additional pages, including a draft proclamation honoring the Capitol Police and two officers who died after the riot, Brian D. Sicknick and Howard Liebengood, as well as related emails; a memo about a potential lawsuit against several states that Joseph R. Biden Jr. won in the November election; an email chain from a state official regarding election-related issues; and talking points on alleged election irregularities in one Michigan county.

[...]

[A] lawyer for Mr. Trump argued that the materials must remain secret as a matter of executive privilege. The lawyer said the Constitution gave the former president the right to demand their confidentiality even though he was no longer in office — and even though President Biden has refused to assert executive privilege over them.

We think he's wrong about that, since the idea of privilege is attached to the office and not the individual, but may be able to successfully argue it.

On the other hand, I don't know what all will qualify as privileged - or would if he were still president - but I'm pretty darn sure telephone and visitor logs don't. Under privilege you might not be able to know WHAT they were talking about, but you certainly can't be barred from knowing they talked.

Its outcome will carry consequences for how much the panel can uncover about Mr. Trump’s role in the riot, pose thorny questions for the Biden administration and potentially forge new precedents about presidential prerogatives and the separation of powers.

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