Long Week…[DOT 8/1/20]

8/1/21 MegMegMcGee 75

You guys we made to Friday! It seemed questionable…but we did it.

How are those New Year’s resolutions going? Me, I’ve been stress eating chocolate babka and black and white cookies. [shrug]

If this is your bridge too far:

but you were OK with this:

then I don’t give a shit what you think.

Calls intensify to remove Trump from office even as he acknowledges ‘a new administration’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rising-calls-for-trumps-removal-from-office-and-a-trickle-of-resignations-as-washington-reels-from-capitol-assault/2021/01/07/1054a066-510b-11eb-b96e-0e54447b23a1_story.html

Oh hey this is still going on…

Arizona becomes Covid hotspot of the world as governor resists restrictions
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/07/arizona-covid-19-world-hotspot-restrictions-doug-ducey

Bet this guy is rethinking the decisions he made the last few days.

U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund to resign later this month; new Capitol fence in place for 30 days
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/01/07/capitol-protests-dc-live-updates/

If it isn’t the consequences of my own actions:

I’m going to be a grown up and stop staring at Twitter and go to bed, so…

Have a great weekend!

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75 Comments

  3. Oh sure, now all the republicans are jumping ship, they got what they wanted out of cheeto, supreme court, conservative judges seated, tax cuts, the list goes on. They’ve milked that cow dry and now he is a liability, besides, best to resign because Joe is going to replace your ass anyway. In a way I don’t blame republicans for being shocked at the outcome of the election, after all the gerrymandering, voter suppression and dirty tricks how could they lose?! Irony abounds, the last few days have been wild and every time I listen to Joe I start to cry. I don’t know what can be done about the far right crazies, but they won’t have their champion anymore, maybe they crawl back into their caves, that’s ok by me.

    • …there’s definitely a part of me that would be relieved if they crawl back under their rocks…but there’s another part of me that finds it extra infuriating that the likes of betsy devos or elaine chao have the option of just backing out of their position without having to admit that they lack not only courage but any meaningful convictions to have the courage of

      …ducking your responsibilities is a shitty move at the best of times…but when you’ve been holding a position of responsibility you’ve shown no signs of being fit for & you ditch right before you have to go down as either for or against invoking the 25th you have no business claiming it as a sign of any principle other than covering your worthless ass

      …so maybe let them crawl back under them rocks…but at some point you’ve got to get to that part about leave no stone unturned?

    • They’re not going to crawl back into their caves.
       
      We’re going to have to hunt them down, root them out, and bring ALL of them out into the harsh light of day, to let the sunlight disinfect & clean away the rot…
       
      Some of this goes back to the 90’s militia groups, which goes back to the anti civil-rights stuff, which goes back to the 20’s, that was born out of the “Lost Cause” BULLSHIT , which *eventually* came about, because of the lack of courage to cut put the rot, back when the Constitution was created–and had it’s origins in literally the earliest days of the Dutch**  colonies…
       
      Different choruses & refrains of the same goddamn song that’s been sung since my white ancestor got here–and then went back to get the wife, kids, and convince his parents to come on over.. 
       
      It’s gotten this bad, because we allowed it to slink back into the shadows, during & after Nixon.
       
      We need to excavate ALL the rabbit-holes, and drag them ALL out into the light, period.
       
      Because they’re ALREADY planning & plotting–and talking about how “Our NEXT LEADER needs to be *stronger*!”…
       
      (**and British, but MOSTLY the Dutch–and the Dutch West India Company!🙃)

  4. Someone, probably Regnery, will pick up and publish Josh Hawley’s book. Once it comes out and can be had from a third-party seller for $1 or less (so the publisher and Hawley himself won’t see a dime; that should take about 3 days) I will gladly buy a copy and read it. One of my dozen or so strange hobbies, reading and discarding crap like this. 
     
    Did you know that Mike Pence’s daughter, Charlotte, is somewhat of an author? Yes. She wrote a book called “Where You Go: Life Lessons From My Father.” Very strange and deeply disturbing. I found a hardcover copy for 25 cents and of course had to buy it. The minute I finish something like this I get rid of it. I sometimes pack it up and ship it off to a friend who has my own strange sense of humor but if I don’t it goes into a book depository container in my building’s basement, never to be seen again. 
     
    I remember that book in particular because crap like this serves as startling home decor. I’ve mentioned more than once that pre-pandemic we used to have people over about twice a week. We have a dining nook table but that only seats 6, comfortably, so often we find ourselves in a more casual setting standing around the kitchen island or arranged in the living room around our coffee table with some tray tables and chairs brought in. My latest find is always on display. “Where You Go” was at our last and so far final gathering, which took place in February, 2020. One of the guests found the mere thought of its existence as hilarious and asked if she could take it. Then “out of an abundance of caution” (despite what Cuomo and deBlasio insisted about this strange virus we had no need to be concerned about) we stopped hosting large groups and a week or two later stopped having people over altogether.
     
     

      • I said this before, but my wife is a library director. Shitty conservative books do not check out. You’ll have one or two old Republicans who want to read that shit without paying, but she long ago stopped ordering conservative “authors” because it’s a bad use of funds. She’ll lease them if she absolutely has to by request only. The library is rated on circulation, so the latest John Grisham is a better investment of the book budget. 
         
        Most of the circulation numbers are rigged to get these assholes onto the “bestseller” lists, but the NYT is wise to that bullshit and flags them now. More info here:
        https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/474662-the-myth-of-the-conservative-bestseller

      • Ah, but you don’t understand my joy in physically owning and displaying these things to “shock and awe” my friends. With no friends to shock and awe here in the Casa Encantada I’ve stopped this practice. They are often pretty amusing (the best is when a Presidential candidate releases a manifesto, like Carly Fiorina’s “Rising to the Challenge,” which was—holy shit, it’s not only white men who fail ever-upwards) but any will do. 
         
        The ones I hang onto are sober biographical assessments of the men who actually became president. I have a great one about James Garfield, little remembered now, but a fascinating guy and I bet would have made a great president had he not been assassinated shortly after his first term began. McKinley, another victim of assassination, is another one. I’ve read several books about Nixon. I stay clear of St. John the Kennedy of Hyannisport because while they number in the thousands they are mostly hagiographies and gloss over just how failed his presidency was, to the point where the Democratic machine, which was running things in the early 1960s, was very actively working to deny him a second term and somehow maneuver LBJ in his place. Johnson was a great president, in my mind, and no one can deny a very gifted politician, but he was handed the poisoned chalice of Vietnam by St. John. 

          • That was actually directed to blue dogcollar. 
             
            I am a faithful devotee of my local library, which is a tiny, almost embarrassingly underserved branch of the NY Public Library system. However, it allows access to the vast holdings of the system and that covers three boroughs, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island. In addition, I have a good friend who is a director of a branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, so she’s a good resource. For some reason Brooklyn and Queens have their own systems, probably to maximize bureaucratic chaos, which NYC has raised to a high art, second to none. In that respect New York truly is The Greatest City in the World.

  6. The LCBO near my house is closed down due to a COVID outbreak among staff. The Walmart in the same plaza is still packed all day long.

    Nobody is in lockdown during this “lockdown”. If anything people are just limited in the places they can go so they are all going to the same places which kind of defeats the purpose.

    • I’ve been thinking about that too lately.  I realize that for a lot of communities (mine included), Walmart is one of a very limited number of places to get groceries and basic supplies, but it seems like they’ve gotten some special dispensation in less rural places where smaller shops and restaurants have been closed but the Walmart remains open.

    • I had to google LCBO. You have very strange liquor laws. According to wiki its owner is The Queen in Right of Ontario (The Government of Ontario). I know some states in the US have state monopolies over the sale of alcohol, or at least hard liquor, I don’t know why that’s still the case almost 90 years after the repeal of Prohibition. But I never realized that the Ontario government itself is called The Queen in Right of Ontario. When Charles ascends to the throne, does the name switch over or back to The King of Right in Ontario?

      • The queen is represented by the Governor General with lieutenant governors for provinces that really just function as nonpartisan bystanders as saftey nets to prevent abuse of power. That is my limited unserstanding of it, at least.

        Generally we just say “the crown” and I have never thought of the name changing to King.

        I do know that there is a set “mourning period” during which we might get a national holiday…so there is that.

        “The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen”?

    • Wait, so they closed liquor stores up there?!?
      😕🤯
      That was one of the ONLY things aside from grocery, convenience stores, & takeout, that *we* ended up leaving open… 
      And it was flat-out explained, by our Governor on camera–no less– that the reason the state was deeming liquor stores an “Essential Business,” was because the state’s hospitals, ambulances/paramedic systems, & ER’s couldn’t handle an (entirely *created* and unnecessary!) influx of people dealing with DT’s & the other life-threatening issues of alcohol withdrawal.
       
      It was deemed too much of a public-health risk, by our state’s highest medical folks, to not keep them open.
       

      • Are you kidding? Want to see a legit uprising? Get between Canadians and their beer. They could never shut down the beer and liquor stores.

        They just had to close the one near my place because pretty much everyone who works there has COVID.

        • Oh, got it!!
          Sorry, I misread!💖
           
          Brain’s a bit overwhelmed atm, and I’m not allllways the best, when I’m *not* completely out of my noggin with frustration about folks being “shocked” at *completely unknowable* crap that some of is have been screaming into the void about for…. years now?😉

        • I’m just stunned by places that have package stores that are state-owned or have restrictive liquor laws. Like when I was in grad school in Alabama, the stores and restaurants couldn’t sell booze on Sunday and the grocery stores could only sell beer and wine but hard liquor had to come from the Alabama Beverage Company store and fuck yeah they marked up prices.

          Meanwhile in Missouri, the grocery stores have better hard liquor selections than the Alabama Beverage Company stores I had to shop at. Shit, one chain, Dierbergs, has house label bourbon and vodka. Gas stations sell whatever alcohol they want. Walgreens had hard liquor and cigarettes when I was a kid (now they just have beer and wine). Etc etc. 

          Like why make it hard to buy alcohol? People aren’t going to stop buying it.

      • Florida was the same. Same logic. We’ve got a large elderly population, many of whom have been practice alcoholics for decades. I’m not too close to the nursing home industry these days, but we used to see doctors writing prescriptions for a set amount of alcohol daily. Nope, shutting down won’t work here either. 

  7. Hawley, the lying flaming bag of dog doodoo, whines that his book being left unpublished, is “Orwellian” and a First Amendment violation.
     
    He knows better. He is an Ivy League lawyer and knows businesses have the right to sell whatever books they want. And Orwell was a socialist who hated the linkages between governments and big business. And even more strongly, he was furious about language twisting liars, like Hawley.
     
    Just like he feels about the tech companies, what Hawley wants for publishers is conservatives in government telling them what to do. He wants to be Big Brother, spouting all day that war is peace.

    • Oh, he absolutely knows better, he’s just an amoral opportunistic asshole that thinks he can ride “Trumpism” to the White House. And it was a pretty good plan, too, right up until the “Trumpists” invaded the Capitol. Then he had the opportunity to say, oh, hey, wait, this is fucked up, and instead he doubled down on “opportunistic asshole.” I’m not counting him out, but he’s got to swim out of a serious septic tank full of shit. And others like Cruz (also in the shit tank) are pulling him down like a drowning man clinging to a life preserver, and ones who escaped the shit tank like Cotton and Rubio are busy kicking him back down into the tank. 
       
      The problem with operating on the default setting of “opportunistic asshole” is that you make no friends along the way, and enemies aren’t inclined to help you. You’d think an Ivy League lawyer would know that, but that’s the “asshole” part of the equation. 

    • Missourian here. Danforth, one of the most influential Republicans to ever come out of Missouri (retired now), said that mentoring Hawley was the greatest mistake of his life. 

      My friends and I were stunned at him being so blunt. It was nice to see. 

      Also, the head of the Missouri GOP has resigned. She said the party wasn’t concerned enough about the capitol riots/coup and she wasn’t comfortable being involved. 

    • It’s always squirrels. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out they fomented the DC riots, just to distract us from their plan to rule the Earth. 
       
      And crows. Keep an eye on THOSE motherfuckers. 
       
      I’m also highly suspicious of horses, but they lack organizational skills. 

    • An impeachment pending and a worsening pandemic…I’d think this was a rerun of 2020 if not for the fucking Voltron of squirrel kings forming in NYC.

      God help us all!

  9. Meanwhile, while all our attention was on the asshats…
     
    https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/health/us-coronavirus-thursday/index.html
     
    and if you think this was a final straw for Trump supporters?
     
    https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/01/07/poll-shows-nearly-half-gop-voters-lied-right-wing-media-approve-us-capitol
     
    and my plea of the day to watch the NBA & appreciate the greatness of this man…
     
    https://www.yahoo.com/sports/le-bron-james-questions-treatment-trump-supporters-attacking-capitol-nba-000956386.html
     
     

    • …given that the invasion of government buildings has happened a few times in various states in the last year or so…& that something very much like what happened at the capitol has been openly discussed in some of the more right-wing-nut-job circles the internet runs to since at least around christmas-time…which is the sort of thing security agencies used to refer to as “chatter” iirc…I find it profoundly unconvincing that the feet-dragging from the people who could have have quelled this shit wasn’t entirely knowing…& ought to be fully culpable…& it seems similarly probable to me that for at least some proportion of the crowd (likely a minority) it was an entirely premeditated effort

      …the use of largely too-dumb-to-know-that supporters of the lies they’ve been peddled to provide a smokescreen of deniability is very much a feature not a bug to both sets of those people…which should be screamingly obvious in the sense of making people want to scream that it isn’t fooling them?

  11. and I find this part of this article especially interesting…
    One person arrested was charged with possessing a “military style automatic weapon” and 11 molotov cocktails, prosecutors said. Another defendant was charged with assaulting a police officer with a hockey stick. Yet another, who needed a Russian interpreter, told a judge, “I don’t know what unlawful entry you are referring to.”
     
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/capitol-siege-arrests/2021/01/07/661292a2-5105-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html

    • I’m late to this story, but boy am I glad to see that quote at the end by Biden:
       

      “He exceeded even my worst notions about him,” Biden said. “He’s been an embarrassment to the country, embarrassed us around the world. He’s not worthy to hold that office.”

       
      I know Biden is not going to thrill me with his continued reach-across-the-aisle methods, but at least he is publicly acknowledging how awful Trump really is, even though it won’t win him any votes.

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