All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[worstblogever]

An editorial by Liz Dye.

This is not a post about Liz Cheney.

Okay, well, to be precise, it is a post about Liz Cheney getting booted out of Republican leadership and probably Congress. But in reality it's a story about THEM and US. It's a story about all the times we wondered if the GOP had finally, finally reached the breaking point where Trump's behavior would be so egregious that the GOP would say "enough is enough" and the spell would be broken.

It didn't happen when he attacked Gold Star families who had sacrificed their children in war. It didn't happen with the Access Hollywood tape. It didn't happen when he implored Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's emails. It didn't happen when he cozied up to Putin and shrugged off his seizure of Crimea.

It didn't happen when he blew up NAFTA or started a disastrous trade war with China. You're supposed to threaten to do that ****, while pocketing the benefits of leaving things as they are, dumbass!

It didn't happen when he exploded the debt and raided military funds for his idiotic border wall. It didn't happen when he obstructed the Mueller investigation. It didn't happen when Republicans lost the House in 2018. It didn't happen when he turned public health into a political issue and got 600,000 Americans killed in a viral pandemic.

It didn't even happen when he dispatched a gang of thugs with murder in their eyes to sack Congress.

How could these people abandon everything they ever said they believed in, their "Judeo-Christian" morality, their own safety, not to mention objective reality, for a reprobate carnival barker?

They could, and without difficulty. And we could never get our minds around it.

We who were too pure to stop Ken Starr's nakedly partisan effort to destroy a Democratic president. We who called out Bill Clinton for his disgusting behavior with Monica Lewinsky, which probably wound up costing Al Gore the election. We who meekly accepted the results in Florida in 2000. We who spent a generation tut-tutting over Clinton's inappropriate pardon of Marc Rich. We who frittered away 2016 arguing about coin tosses and whether a teenage Hillary Clinton had supported Barry Goldwater. We who wasted the first four years of the Obama administration trying to make nice with Republicans. We who upheld the filibuster and allowed Mitch McConnell to fill Scalia's seat. We who tossed out Al Franken on principle. We who waited with bated breath to see if Lamar Alexander might actually show some moral courage and demand to see witnesses in Trump's first impeachment. We who somehow still feel the obligation to work with people who are trying to kill us because BIPARTISANSHIP.

We kept expecting them to be like us. And they are not like us.

So, no, this isn't a story about Liz Cheney. This is a story about finally, at long last, when it no longer matters, someone in the GOP finally showing a little goddamn backbone.

Let's be fair — it's a lot of backbone. Cheney knew she'd probably go the way of Justin Amash if she didn't toe the party line, and she did it anyway.

In the New Yorker, Susan Glasser revealed yesterday that it was Cheney, desperately fearful that Trump might stage an actual coup, who orchestrated that January 3 opinion piece in the Post where all 10 living former secretaries of Defense warned the military not to let itself be coopted into helping Trump impede a peaceful transfer of power. That same day she circulated a 21-page memo to her colleagues painstakingly debunking the bogus vote fraud allegations, state by state, and urging them not to contest the results of the election.

The choice was unambiguous: Trump or the truth. And Republicans chose Trump.

[BeastieRunner]

An editorial by Liz Dye.

Rep. Elise Stefanik called Liz a WINO (Woman In Name Only) yesterday, too. The pretense was because she wouldn't do what the men in the party wanted. America will skate backwards faster with those kind of people in charge!

[BeastieRunner]

Beastie's Cartoons of the Week

[BeastieRunner]

What's the GOP today? A party obsessed with 'woke supremacy,' cancel culture and voter suppression.

I found a non-paywall version of this via LA Times.

“The reason we didn’t get an honest President in 1856, was because the old men of the last generation were not Wide-Awake, and the young men of this generation hadn’t got their eyes open,” said William Seward, who became Lincoln’s secretary of State. “Now the old men are folding their arms and going to sleep, and the young men throughout the land are Wide Awake.”

That’s right, America — not only was fighting racism once a Republican thing, “wokeness” used to be a Republican thing.

The GOP shouldn’t be asking themselves, “How do we stop it?” They should be asking, “What in the hell happened to us?”

This is what Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming is asking. She is on the cusp of losing her GOP leadership position in the House because she refuses to support her party’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

“The question before us now is whether we will join Trump’s crusade to delegitimize and undo the legal outcome of the 2020 election, with all the consequences that might have,” she wrote in the Washington Post, noting China is seizing the moment to call democracy “a failed system.”

Hard to argue that given the collective shrug from congressional Republicans following the Jan. 6 attack. Hard to argue given what her party is currently doing.

I think the bolded part of the article is spot on ... did they forget what they were?

[worstblogever]

Rep. Elise Stefanik called Liz a WINO (Woman In Name Only) yesterday, too. The pretense was because she wouldn't do what the men in the party wanted. America will skate backwards faster with those kind of people in charge!

Meanwhile, yesterday on Tucker Carlson, he had Marjorie Taylor Greene on to insinuate that Kevin McCarthy is gay.

We know McCarthy doesn't have control of the loons, but is he too stupid to realize they're after him next?

[Malvolio]

Meanwhile, yesterday on Tucker Carlson, he had Marjorie Taylor Greene on to insinuate that Kevin McCarthy is gay.

We know McCarthy doesn't have control of the loons, but is he too stupid to realize they're after him next?

And of course, Greene had to imply that being gay would necessarily be a bad thing, just like when Ann Coulter suggested that John Edwards might be gay.

[BeastieRunner]

Meanwhile, yesterday on Tucker Carlson, he had Marjorie Taylor Greene on to insinuate that Kevin McCarthy is gay.

We know McCarthy doesn't have control of the loons, but is he too stupid to realize they're after him next?

[Tami]

Meanwhile, yesterday on Tucker Carlson, he had Marjorie Taylor Greene on to insinuate that Kevin McCarthy is gay.

We know McCarthy doesn't have control of the loons, but is he too stupid to realize they're after him next?

Uh, yeah, he is. He's probably convinced himself that the Republicans will take back the House and Senate and that he will be in charge and that everything will be Trumpy-dory.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Meanwhile, yesterday on Tucker Carlson, he had Marjorie Taylor Greene on to insinuate that Kevin McCarthy is gay.

We know McCarthy doesn't have control of the loons, but is he too stupid to realize they're after him next?

Short answer---YES! I'm guessing Craven Kevin won't say anything to refute that smear because he doesn't want to rock the the boat, not after Moscow Mitch boasted that the GQP was united in it's goal of obstructing Biden's presidency. I wouldn't be surprised if McCarthy figures it's better to be called gay than a traitor to the party, and be next to get a knife in the back after Liz Cheney....even though that might happen anyway.

[Jack Dracula]

Meanwhile, yesterday on Tucker Carlson, he had Marjorie Taylor Greene on to insinuate that Kevin McCarthy is gay.

We know McCarthy doesn't have control of the loons, but is he too stupid to realize they're after him next?

She’s probably trying to strong-arm McCarthy into giving her a plumb committee appointment like Michele Bachman did to John Boehner.

[BeastieRunner]

Just heard that Gaetz WROTE down all his crimes???

WTF ...

[mogwen]

Just heard that Gaetz WROTE down all his crimes???

WTF ...

What? Have you got a source, please? If true, that's just fantastic!

[BeastieRunner]

What? Have you got a source, please? If true, that's just fantastic!

Everyone in here has already talked about it.

I am just now hearing about the Greenberg pardon letter.

Seriously ... you don't write down you and your buddy's crimes!

[mogwen]

Everyone in here has already talked about it.

I am just now hearing about the Greenberg pardon letter.

Seriously ... you don't write down you and your buddy's crimes!

Greenberg wrote down their crimes, not Gaetz

[worstblogever]

Everyone in here has already talked about it.

I am just now hearing about the Greenberg pardon letter.

Seriously ... you don't write down you and your buddy's crimes!

Greenberg wrote down their crimes, not Gaetz

The reveal to this is... they sent that letter to Trump asking for a pardon...

So Trump was aware Greenberg and Gaetz were diddling a kid and chose to do absolutely nothing about it, said nothing about it... with all his social media posts promoting Q, he had someone trafficking children for sex, and looked the other way.

If he runs in '24, I'd love to see this get thrown into Trump's face.