Seth Abramson tells us:

Well after dark on January 5, 2021—just 15 hours before an insurrection against the United States government incited by the President of the United States—Nebraska Republican Charles W. Herbster, at the time the National Chairman of the Agriculture and Rural Advisory Committee for the Trump administration, attended a private meeting of Trump family members, Trump administration officials, Trump campaign advisers, January 6 organizers, and at least one member of the United States Senate at Trump International Hotel in Washington.

Abramson says Herbster says those present were Don Junior, Eric, Michael Flynn, Peter Navarro, Corey Lewandowski, David Bossie, Adam Piper, executive director of the Republican Attorneys General Association, and Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville. Your basic nightmare … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on But the jobs.

Things conservatives say you shouldn’t lose your job for:

1. Being in an industry that causes environmental problems

2. Being a racist, sexist, and/or insurrectionist idiot online

3. Competition from foreign imports during a Democratic administration

4. Not wanting to provide women with birth control.

Things conservatives say you can lose your job for:

1. Having any non-conservative views your employer doesn’t like

2. Trying to organize a union

3. Your employer’s desire to offshore or outsource your job

4. Bain Capital deciding to acquire and “restructure” your employer

5. Using birth control or having an abortion

6. Cheering for the wrong sports team… actually pretty much everything not … Read the rest

So what’s the thinking here, that job-existence overrules all other considerations? That if people have jobs setting fire to California forests they must continue to have those jobs because otherwise it’s ayleetizm?

John Kerry telling middle aged workers he's sending to the unemployment line to learn to code is some real John Kerry stuff https://t.co/BOlpOCKize

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) January 27, 2021

Of course if The Market closes down jobs that’s a whole other story, nobody cares about those workers, but if it’s a matter of shifting to less destructive forms of energy, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS RUN WILD.… Read the rest

Remember four years ago watching that guy’s executive orders in horror?

Biden yesterday:

President Joe Biden on Tuesday ordered the Department of Justice to end its reliance on private prisons and acknowledge the central role government has played in implementing discriminatory housing policies.

In remarks before signing the orders, Biden said the U.S. government needs to change “its whole approach” on the issue of racial equity. He added that the nation is less prosperous and secure because of the scourge of systemic racism.

But it’s also less…all of those things it likes to see itself as. Decent, fair, one of the good ones. Rights-based, egalitarian, justice-seeking.

Biden directed the Department of Housing and Urban Development in a memorandum to

… Read the rest

Problem.

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress, a CNN KFile review of hundreds of posts and comments from Greene’s Facebook page shows.

Greene, who represents Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, frequently posted far-right extremist and debunked conspiracy theories on her page, including the baseless QAnon conspiracy which casts former President Donald Trump in an imagined battle against a sinister cabal of Democrats and celebrities who abuse children.

In one post, from January 2019, Greene liked a comment that said “a bullet to the head would be quicker” to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In other posts, Greene liked comments about executing FBI agents who,

… Read the rest

Let’s protest against…frontline healthcare workers?

Lives are being put at risk and the care of patients disrupted by a spate of hospital incursions from Covid-19 deniers whose online activity is channelling hatred against NHS staff, say healthcare and police chiefs.

In the latest example of a growing trend, a group of people were ejected by security from a Covid-19 ward last week as one of them filmed staff, claimed that the virus was a hoax, and demanded that a seriously ill patient be sent home.

“He will die if he is taken from from here,” a consultant tells the man on footage, which was later shared on social media. Following contact by the Guardian, Facebook took down footage and

… Read the rest

Putin sends the cops to tear apart Navalny’s apartment and headquarters:

Police have raided Alexei Navalny’s apartment and the headquarters of his Anti-Corruption Foundation in Moscow after investigators opened a new inquiry into alleged breaches of coronavirus restrictions during last week’s mass protests.

On Wednesday evening police banged at the door of Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, who yelled back that her lawyer was on the way. At the same time, a close Navalny ally, Lyubov Sobol, demanded that police identify themselves as they prised open the door to a studio that broadcasts Navalny Live.

Investigators searched the offices of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, the team that put out a recent investigation into a £1bn palace allegedly built for Putin’s personal

… Read the rest

It’s an anniversary.

https://twitter.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/1354353459219156992

My grandfather, Siegfried Herrmann, was one of them. His parents and brother were not, burned in gas chambers and shot on a death march. We must remember. #Auschwitz76 https://t.co/QVuYSPGjoP

— Dr. Victoria Herrmann (@VSHerrmann) January 27, 2021

Every day we commemorate the victims & educate about the tragic human history of #Auschwitz.

Follow @AuschwitzMuseum
Please RT if you do.
Support our mission & let people know we are here. pic.twitter.com/3hKYKDvHql

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 26, 2021

… Read the rest

Enlightenment.

Thoughtful feedback I received from someone who undoubtedly considers himself a “progressive.” pic.twitter.com/ATlaxbQ9HC

— Abigail Shrier (@AbigailShrier) January 27, 2021

Why would anyone have any reservations about this form of activism?… Read the rest

Republicans are all like “It’s not such a big deal.”

Regardless of the explanations and justifications, the procedural vote is just the latest, clearest sign of fading Republican support for finding Trump responsible for the Capitol riot three weeks ago.

You can see their point. It was almost three weeks ago. Generations have been born and died since then. Memories have faded. It’s in the past now. Nobody gets hot under the collar about the War of 1812 and it’s the same with this.

Shortly after the incident, Lindsey Graham – one of the president’s closest allies in the Senate – said the president’s actions “were the problem” and that his legacy was “tarnished”.

Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reportedly

… Read the rest

The Republicans are so shameless.

All but five Senate Republicans voted in favor of an effort to dismiss Donald Trump’s historic second impeachment trial on Tuesday, making clear a conviction of the former president for “incitement of insurrection” after the deadly Capitol siege on Jan. 6 is unlikely.

Just utterly shameless. Trump is a horror, and what he did before during and after the election was horrifying, including in terms that Republicans would normally sign up to (precedent, law, rule-following, respect, civility, tradition, truth-telling, Constitutionality), yet they’re still defending him.

What seemed for some Democrats like an open-and-shut case that played out for the world on live television is running into a Republican Party that feels very different. Not

… Read the rest

Another point about that evasive non-response from Essex –

“a person can experience unknown genders”

What can that possibly mean? The whole point about these oh so important “genders” is that the people who claim to have them and experience them say they know they have them, and what they are, and what we have to do in relation to the fact – the cold hard fact – that they have and experience and know them. They don’t say it’s just some vague state of mind or mood, much less that they don’t know they have it, they insist, with menaces, that it’s real and they experience it and that experience is knowledge that it’s real. The reality is … Read the rest

Ah yes the infinitude of genders again. You just can’t have too many genders.

https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1354130244609961986 https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1354130254944751618

Very cunning, very very cunning, but the problem remains – if we don’t know what they are how can the guidance guide us into the correct behavior and mode of address and belief?

We derived some wholesome amusement from the infinite genders doctrine way back in February 2017:

This is hilarious. It’s incoherent nonsense, but it’s also hilarious.

The modest title is:

What Does Multigender Mean? 10 Questions You May Be Afraid to Ask – Answered

Questions answered! Hooray! It’s always good to have an expert around.

There is an infinite diversity of genders in the world.

Each person has a totally unique

… Read the rest

Gee, if only we could do that.

Ever since President Joe Biden emerged as the winner of the United States’ presidential election, Fr John Zuhlsdorf has been carrying out exorcisms about what he describes as “fraud” and “lying” during the vote-counting process. 

The prominent priest-blogger and President Trump supporter, also claimed that his Bishop, Donald Hying of Madison, granted him the authority to carry out the exorcism rite.  

His Bishop says oh no he didn’t.

The priest-blogger did an exorcism the day before the insurrection.

“I have the permission of the bishop to say this, which increases the authority of the praying of the prayer,” he said ahead of his 5 January exorcism which he carried out in Latin.

… Read the rest

They were blocked.

The commander of the D.C. National Guard said the Pentagon restricted his authority ahead of the riot at the U.S. Capitol, requiring higher level sign-off to respond that cost time as the events that day spiraled out of control.

Is it because BLM protesters are scary while angry white guys who want to kill all the Democrats are just a little energetic?

Local commanders typically have the power to take military action on their own to save lives or prevent significant property damage in an urgent situation when there isn’t enough time to obtain approval from headquarters.

They can give the orders in an emergency.

But Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, the commanding general of the

… Read the rest

Fauci agrees that it’s nice not having Trump ruining everything.

“One of the things that we’re going to do is to be completely transparent, open and honest,” Fauci told reporters [last week]. “If things go wrong, not point fingers, but to correct them. And to make everything we do be based on science and evidence.

“That was literally a conversation I had 15 minutes ago with the president, and he has said that multiple times.”

Asked if he would like to amend or clarify anything he said during the Trump presidency, Fauci insisted he had always been candid, noting wryly, “That’s why I got in trouble sometimes.”

…

At Thursday’s briefing, Fauci was asked how it feels to no longer

… Read the rest

That’s one way of looking at it.

I think people are too quick to forget that we didn’t have the language & understanding of trans identities in the 80s that we do now. Many of the people who died would have been trans but wouldn’t have had the privilege to come out as such. That doesn’t mean they didn’t exist

— Calum McSwiggan (@CalumMcSwiggan) January 25, 2021

But it’s the wrong way. It’s not that we lacked the language and understanding of a truth, it’s that we hadn’t been bombarded with the rhetoric and bullying of a stupid ideology.

“Trans identities” are not a scientific discovery, they’re a pseudo-official name for a type of fantasy.

The fact that the ideology … Read the rest

Josh Hawley is a piece of work.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, called out Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, for claiming in a widely read op-ed that he’s been “muzzled.”

In a cover essay published by the New York Post on Monday, Hawley claimed that he’d been “canceled” and “muzzled” in the U.S. The title of Hawley’s essay is “It’s time to stand up against the muzzling of America.” The GOP lawmaker, who has been widely criticized for formally objecting to Arizona’s and Pennsylvania’s electoral votes when they were certified by Congress earlier this month, linked to the article in a tweet Ocasio-Cortez later retweeted with criticism.

You were given prime space to say this

… Read the rest

There is discussion over whether or not to charge all the insurrectionists, not because some of them were innocent bystanders but because the courts could be swamped.

The internal discussions are in their early stages, and no decisions have been reached about whether to forgo charging some of those who illegally entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, according to multiple people familiar with the discussions.

Justice Department officials have promised a relentless effort to identify and arrest those who stormed the Capitol that day, but internally there is robust back-and-forth about whether charging them all is the best course of action. That debate comes at a time when officials are keenly sensitive that the credibility of the Justice Department

… Read the rest

Four Seasons Total Landscaping won’t get him out of this one. Giuliani being sued for telling damaging lies:

An election technology company that has been the focus of consistent conspiracy theories by Donald Trump and his allies has sued the former President’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani for defamation after he pushed the “Big Lie” about election fraud on his podcast and TV appearances.

Dominion Voting Systems is seeking more than $1.3 billion in damages.

“Just as Giuliani and his allies intended, the Big Lie went viral on social media as people tweeted, retweeted, and raged that Dominion had stolen their votes. While some lies — little lies — flare up on social media and die with the next news cycle,

… Read the rest