Was it ever in doubt that as soon as we started getting vaccinated, that people would get complacent and the first holiday weekend that came along would cause a spike in Covid cases? What’s really ironic about this is that the cases are all located in places where people haven’t been getting vaccinated much. You know, places that voted for Trump for president.
So I’m back to wearing a mask in public again. Just in case. Besides, I’ve been wearing a mask so long, it really doesn’t bother me.
I want to wish a happy 75th wedding anniversary to Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. That’s the longest marriage in presidential history. There is a lovely story in the Washington Post about them.
People often talk about the “big lie”, which had its origins with the Nazis. But now we have a new definition, as “big lie” now seems to refer to Trump’s constant assertion that he won the presidential election and is the rightful president of the US.
First, Tucker Carlson claims that the Biden administration is spying on him, in an effort to get him off the air on Fox News. Seriously? You need to spy on Carlson, when he never stops spewing lies and bullshit every day?
Second, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy pulls out his chickenshit plausible deniability to spout a non-accusation, with a call to find answers, when nobody is asking any questions. He tweets:
For the past several months, I’ve seen a disturbing trend at the National Security Agency. The NSA cannot be used as a political instrument.
I’ve asked Rep. Devin Nunes to investigate and find answers on behalf of the American people.
And finally, Gen. Michael Hayden (former director of the NSA) responds with a terse but appropriate reply:
This is not anything new. Remember Benghazi? How about Pizzagate? Don’t worry, as fast as we debunk one conspiracy theory, they come up with another, more terrifying one. In fact, to them the only thing that isn’t a real threat is the Jan 6 insurrection. Those were just tourists!
I’m back from my vacation in Iceland, where I got up close and personal with a volcano, and spent more time than you can imagine hanging out in hot water. I had a wonderful time.
So I come home to the irony that the former occupant actually wanted to use the Justice department to investigate comedy shows that made fun of him. The response from Stephen Colbert is hilarious:
Like Colbert, I’m disappointed that I didn’t get investigated.
Today there is a story that is pretty much a canonical example of irony.
The story comes from CNN, who note that one of the people charged in the January 6 insurrection and riot was caught on video using a bullhorn to heckle Capitol Police by saying that they were “protecting pedophiles”. This appears to be a reference to bizarre QAnon theories about Democrats.
However, in a true case of “I know you are, but what am I?” it turns out that the protestor with a bullhorn is a convicted pedophile who served jail time for having sex with a 14-year-old girl when he was 23. That’s also known as “statutory rape”. At the time of the Capitol riot, he was also on probation for other crimes and has an extensive criminal record. He is currently charged with 8 crimes during the riot, including spraying police with a chemical irritant, and inciting riot with the bullhorn.
Many of the insurrectionists also have previous criminal records, and some of them were also on parole or probation at the time of the riot. That, of course, has not stopped Republicans from pushing the lie that the participants in Jan 6 were law-abiding citizens who were simply exercising their right to protest.
Republicans seem hell-bent on passing off the January 6 insurrection as a normal day of tourism. They will pretend it never happened.
And now Donald Trump is claiming that not only did he win the election, but that he will be reinstalled as the president by August. Is he delusional? Is he acting crazy so that he can use an insanity defense to avoid going to jail? Is this just another grift to remove money from the wallets of his supporters? Or does he really think he can pull off a coup in August?
Vernon Jones used to be a Democrat, serving in the Georgia House of Representatives twelve years until 2021. He switched to the Republican Party in January 2021 after endorsing Donald Trump for re-election and then speaking at the 2020 Republican National Convention. He is currently a candidate in the GOP primary for Georgia governor. Jones is black, and is also known for tweeting birthday wishes to Rudy Giuliani, sharing pictures of himself with Donald Trump, and now for tweeting this:
It doesn’t get much more ironic than this. The comments on his tweet are pretty awesome, especially if you skip over the first few from his supporters.
All federal elected officials swear or affirm an oath to support the constitution before they can assume their office. This includes the President, Senators, and Representatives to Congress. For example, here is the oath for Senators:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
Other than the choice of whether to swear or affirm, and some flexibility with the religious parts, this is required. If you break this promise, you are barred from serving in the government.
UPDATE:
And then there are those who take this sacrifice for granted, waxing patriotic while salivating for civil war. Claiming they need to destroy the Republic in order to save it in the ultimate betrayal of oaths sworn. Those treacherous snakes can go straight to hell.
— Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI), in a tweet on Memorial Day.
I’m very disappointed, very frustrated that politics has trumped — literally and figuratively — the good of the country.
— Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), quoted by the Wall Street Journal, on the defeat of the bill to create a commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection.
Just how many investigations did Republicans in Congress do over the 2012 Benghazi attack (that killed 4 Americans), which morphed into investigating Hillary Clinton’s emails, and on and on? If you guessed 10, you win the jackpot.
But the GOP is now against even a single investigation into the insurrection on January 6, even though 140 people were injured and five died. Not to mention extensive damage. Republican leaders are against it, even though they originally called for it:
[In] January, a number of Republican lawmakers, including McCarthy, argued against impeaching then-president Trump for inciting the January 6 insurrection because, they said, a “fact-finding commission” was important. “I believe impeaching the president in such a short time frame would be a mistake,” said McCarthy. “No investigations have been completed. No hearings have been held….”
And yet, McCarthy and the Republican leadership are now opposing the creation of a bipartisan commission, although the Democrats gave them all their demands: equal representation on the commission, the power to subpoena witnesses, and a final report before the end of the year.
The story is the same in the Senate. On February 13, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), tweeted: “The 1/6 attack on the Capitol was horrific & appalling. Those who planned & participated in the violence that day should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I agree w/Speaker Pelosi—a 911-type investigation is called for to help prevent this from happening again.”
And yet, Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), whom Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman intercepted and led away from the mob on January 6, today told journalist Manu Raju that he wasn’t sure whether he will block debate on the commission bill. This indicates there will not be enough Senate votes to break a filibuster on the bill.
Today, Senator Angus King, Jr. (I-ME) came out and said it: “We need answers on the 1/6 insurrection—but many of my [Republican] colleagues are indicating they will vote against an independent investigation. When people start moving heaven and earth to block an investigation, I have to wonder if there is something to hide.”
The truth is that a bunch of GOP representatives and senators are complicit. Of course they don’t want an investigation!
In the 1990s, Mississippi added a voter-initiatives process to their constitution, and since then has passed a number of initiatives. This includes an initiative passed last fall, approving a medical marijuana program for the state.
Their initiative process has an interesting requirement: in order to get on the ballot, signatures have to be gathered from 5 congressional districts. There’s just one problem. After the 2000 census, the state lost a congressional district because of their stagnant population, and now they only have 4 congressional districts.
And now, the state supreme court has ruled that the medical marijuana initiative is invalid, because it only got signatures from 4 districts, and thus should not have been put on the ballot. The legislature has tried seven times to update the language in the constitution covering initiatives, but has never succeeded, regardless of whether the legislature was controlled by Republicans or Democrats. So this is not a partisan issue.
Meanwhile, Mississippi will be one of the few states that does not have a medical program for loco weed. I guess they are loco enough as it is.
This is even funnier if you remember Snoopy fighting the Red Baron and sneaking around behind enemy lines. But like the Republicans, it was only a fantasy. Insurrection, what insurrection?
I guess it means that we really are putting the Covid quarantine behind us, if comedians are starting to make fun of what we might have to talk about when we finally get to interact with other people, face-to-face.
This guy even jumped the gun, and had to play both sides of the conversations himself!
If you want to know when the pandemic will actually be over, the answer is not that simple, but the Washington Post has a reasonable answer in their article “Is it now reasonable to discuss the end of the pandemic? Yes, but with caveats.“
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