There Are No Consequences For Losing Everything

 

What's pathetic is that nothing in this article is true, even the parts that are supposed to be:

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel grew emotional talking with former Vice President Mike Pence the day after Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol building and called for his hanging.

The Washington Post reports that McDaniel personally called Pence the day after the infamous Trump-incited riots at the Capitol led to the deaths of five people, including a Capitol police officer.

"On the phone, the next day, talking about what happened, McDaniel became emotional," the Post writes. "She wanted Pence to know he was still welcome to come to the RNC meeting. He did not go. McDaniel fought back tears."

So, the Washington Post is trying, desperately, to prop up Romney McDaniel and provide some sort of lifeline for the Republican Party. What we are watching is the implosion of the party in real time. As I have said many times to myself and out loud, how the fuck did Liz Cheney become the voice of reason? How did we end up in a place where you could amplify the batshit crazy raving and drooling of the various people who now serve in Congress as Republicans and not end up in a straitjacket?

The money is drying up. Romney McDaniel is responsible for losing the House in 2018, a Senate seat in Alabama (briefly), the Senate in 2020 and the presidency. In any other era, she would have been fired for incompetence before any of these things happened.

And yet, here we are. She's still in control of the Republican National Committee and corporate America is now waking up to the fact that the GOP is the most toxic brand in America. Martin Pharmaboy Shkreli is more marketable. The Manson Family is more well-liked. Virulent strains of herpes have broader appeal to more Americans and a better outreach to rural communities. The Republican Party is the Shingles Party, and that's only because getting shingles is easier to deal with when it shows up at your home.

Talk about job security. If you end up with a job in the RNC, you can wake up next to Don Junior, his crazy girlfriend, her lap dance chair, and eleven dead hookers in a vat filled with meth and cream cheese and you can still expect another two years of raking in the big bucks.

Nevertheless, She Persisted

 

You gotta love it when Republicans get all mad about something that they did just a few short years ago.

And, Just Like That, Russia is Coming Apart

 

Maybe Vladimir Putin should think about living out the rest of his days in the South of France, surrounded by all of the other oligarchs. A nice pension of five rubles a day would be appropriate.

Protesters in St Petersburg are breaking through police cordons. It’s getting rather ugly in several Russian cities. pic.twitter.com/ACXeOM7bc8

— Matthew Luxmoore (@mjluxmoore) January 23, 2021

Definitely a Cult of Personality

 

Remarkable work by @erinscottphoto.

The Trump Regime is an actual cult. It is a cult of personality that resembles all the awful ones in history. There were numerous examples of this throughout Latin America and Africa as emerging nations were captured by the local kleptocrats and allowed to exist as de facto money printing schemes that enriched the people who had access to guns.

Peter Navarro is scurrying out of the White House with a useless trophy. He stumbles through the gutter, hoping no one can see what he is absconding with. Someone paid for that image to be blown up and framed, and it likely wasn't Navarro, so what you are witnessing is a case of petty theft of government property.

What does he think having that photo will do for him? Will it remind him of his time in the cult? Who will deprogram him and help him wash away the stain of failure? He joins the rest of his colleagues in leaving a White House where they thought they were tasting victory every single day.

All they got in return were ashes in their mouths. That's all Navarro is walking away with, the empty, bitter taste of failure that will cling to him forever.

John F Kennedy:

We will not prematurely or unnecessarily
Risk the course of worldwide nuclear war
In which even the fruits of victory
Would be ashes in our mouths

Help People and Improve Their Lives

 

Rebecca Traister has it completely right and you should read her article:

It is also the starkest possible evidence that Democrats must steer straight toward the kinds of mechanisms that are this calamity’s direct and robust inverse: toward strengthening and empowering a populace, toward a governance that prioritizes dignity and care and safety and security for everyone, not just the already powerful. That means money, and a speedy, determined reknitting of a social safety net that has been maliciously unraveled over decades.

Which necessarily means governing like you are trying to save not just your own jobs but your nation and its people: from a coup, from a contagion, from the daily perils that have engulfed them for too long and from which our government has done too little to protect them.

Part of why so little has been offered to those who have needed it is that the Democratic Party, which is purportedly (if sometimes implausibly) supposed to represent the vulnerable, has approached politics and power with fear, not assuredness or moral authority.

For decades, practically since the very civil-rights (and women’s, and gay-rights) movements that provoked the hard-right backlash contractions that found their apotheosis over these past four years, Democrats have governed from a crouch. They have run nervously from the barest suggestion that they might indeed want to create a durable, inclusive republic in which government takes an active role in supporting and making life better for the governed.

I want to see the moral authority of feeding, clothing, sheltering and caring for the needs of the American people become more than just populism. I want it to be the just work of a caring nation. 

As painful as it was to see the yahoos and nincompoops overrunning the House and Senate yesterday, what's more painful is knowing that they will feel justified in their actions if we continue to ignore the needs of the American people and serve corporate interests. Their worldview isn't necessarily all about Trump. It's far more shitheaded than that. They feel justified because they have been fed a lie that says that their government has never done anything for them.

Democrats have to make it painfully obvious that someone gives a shit about people. And then we have to make sure there are no elections where people say fuck it and don't vote.

The central organizing principle of the Democratic Party should be the elimination of all forms of white supremacy. You want to take care of people and solve their problems? You can't do that until everyone gets equal treatment under the law.

Newsweek is a Media Junk Property Now

 

The quickest way to destroy the reputation of the publication that you bought is to turn it into a wingnut grievance machine and watch the money come pouring in, right?

Fucking Newsweek, what a joke.