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

[CaptainEurope]

Over 100 years after Germany stopped being the colonial power in Namibia, the Federal Republic of Germany yesterday accepted responsibility for the genocide committed on the Herero people by the German Empire. We will pay reparations of 1.1 billion € over the next 30 years and the German president will travel to Namibia to issue a formal apology.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Sen. Lisa Murkowski Says Mitch McConnell Is Blocking Jan. 6 Commission For Political Gain

“Is that really what this is about, one election cycle after another?” the Alaska Republican said. Probably, Lisa. Will you let him get away with it? Meanwhile....

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GOP Poised To Block U.S. Capitol Attack Commission With Filibuster

A vote on the procedural motion was bumped to Friday after delays on an unrelated bill to boost scientific research pushed back the schedule. Short and sweet: Qpublicans, most of whom supported Trump's lemmings that stormed the Capitol DON'T want the truth about that to come out. Meanwhile....

**********

‘MAGA Caravan’ Organizer Arrested For Assaulting Cops At Capitol

Kenneth Joseph Owen Thomas from Ohio was arrested for repeatedly attacking, punching and hitting police officers during the Jan. 6 riot. Find them all. Arrest them all. JAIL THEM ALL.

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Joe Biden Calls Out Republicans Who Voted Against Stimulus But Tout Its Benefits

“Some people have no shame,” the president joked. You're dead on right, Joe, THEY. DON'T.

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Fox Corp. Board Member Paul Ryan Unironically Urges Republicans To Reject Trump

Republicans “will not be impressed by the sight of yes-men and flatterers flocking to Mar-a-Lago,” said the former House speaker, who sits on the Fox board. Qpublicans are so far up Trump's ass it's ridiculous.

**********

Deep-Rooted Racism, Discrimination Still Permeate US Military

The military’s judicial system has no explicit category for hate crimes, making it difficult to quantify crimes motivated by prejudice. As a former member of the military, I'm genuinely surprised that's the case.

[Tami]

Dianne Morales Tries to Calm a Sudden Crisis in Her Campaign

The Rev. Al Sharpton hosted a mayoral forum in Harlem on Tuesday night in preparation for his expected endorsement in the Democratic mayoral primary. All the leading candidates were in attendance, save for one — Dianne Morales, who cited a “family emergency.”

In reality, she was meeting with her staff as her progressive grass-roots campaign began to implode.

By Thursday, two high-level campaign staff members had left, two other staff members had been dismissed, a unionization drive had heated up and four employees active in the unionization effort had been fired, leading to a strike among the staff.

The internal strife is a significant distraction or worse for Ms. Morales, 53, who has been able to attract a large number of small donors and an avid group of supporters as the most left-leaning candidate in the field. But the uproar over the unionization effort and complaints of a toxic workplace suggested that her campaign had fallen far short of progressive values.

There is no indication that Ms. Morales will drop out of race. But on Thursday evening, Farudh Emiel Majid, a senior organizer for the candidate, called on her to suspend her campaign, saying she had created “a hostile work environment towards Black and Brown staffers.”

Over five hours at the meeting Tuesday night — after the first resignation, of Ms. Morales’s campaign manager, Whitney Hu — the candidate listened to staff members share grievances about harassment, race-based mistreatment and exploitation and call their working environment toxic. Employees told her they felt siloed; work felt repetitive and unstructured.

[worstblogever]

Here's alleged child-sex-trafficker and some-how-still-a-Congressman Matt Gaetz calling for big tech companies to have those "2nd amendment solutions" used against them.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/matt-...b02a79db8be4f4

GOP stochastic terror, at its most blatant.

[Tami]

As Yang’s New York Ties Are Questioned, He Cites Anti-Asian Bias

Andrew Yang, a son of Taiwanese immigrants and a leading candidate for mayor of New York City, took on issues of race and identity in extraordinarily personal terms on the campaign trail this week, seeking to reframe some criticisms of his candidacy as questions of his Americanness.

Mr. Yang, a former presidential candidate, has in this race spoken out often and forcefully against a spike in anti-Asian violence that has alarmed many city residents.

But his efforts to condemn anti-Asian racism entered a new phase this week, as he criticized unnamed opponents for questioning his New York credentials, while his typically private wife, Evelyn, appeared with him at a news conference to blast a cartoon that portrayed him as a tourist.

The Yangs said the New York Daily News editorial cartoon played into anti-Asian stereotypes, and painted it as an example of subtle racism that had crept into the campaign.

Mr. Yang, who was born in Schenectady, N.Y., and has lived in New York City for around 25 years, has faced vigorous scrutiny throughout the campaign over the depth of his civic ties to the city.

His allies say that some of the mockery reinforces stereotypes that cast Asian Americans as outsiders — the “foreign tourist,” as Mr. Liu put it, as encapsulated in the cartoon. He has been ridiculed over his definition of a bodega and his knowledge of subway lines, and he sparked an incredulous online outcry after citing Times Square, near his Hell’s Kitchen apartment, as his favorite subway station.

But Mr. Yang has also drawn criticism over the extent of his knowledge of municipal government and of the city’s fabric — issues that have nothing to do with his identity, but are central to questions surrounding his ability to govern.

Andrew Yang accuses Daily News of racism; NAACP’s Hazel Dukes disagrees

A mayoral candidate who failed to vote in several local elections, decamped to upstate New York during the height of the COVID pandemic, and who recently named the Times Square subway station his favorite among all underground New York City stops called a press conference Tuesday to complain about a satirical Daily News cartoon depicting him as a tourist.

Andrew Yang, a former entrepreneur who ran as a Democratic presidential contender in 2020, is no longer leading the pack in most recent polls of the New York City mayor’s race. Most show him trailing behind Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams.

On Tuesday, he attempted to turn that around by labeling The News’ cartoon, which depicts a smiling Yang emerging from a Times Square subway exit, as racist.

“None of us is more New York than anyone else. We all belong here,” he said Tuesday in Queens. “The kind of leadership we need is going to bring us together.”

“I want to show you. This is the cartoon,” she said, holding up the newspaper. “This cartoonist disfigured Andrew’s face. He has overtly beady, slanted eyes. Now, these white people standing here on the other side have larger eyes and human irises. They’re calling Andrew, this Asian man, a tourist, coming from who knows where, but probably from a land of other people who look just like him with his shifty, beady eyes.”

Evelyn Yang went on to say that after contacting The News, the paper refused to pull the cartoon from its print edition.

Greenman added that the original, online version of the cartoon had been altered for the paper’s print run after concerns were raised about it.

“After Bill tweeted his cartoon yesterday, people reacted badly to how Yang’s eyes were drawn,” he said. “Bill altered the drawing out of sensitivity to those concerns, without changing the concept of the cartoon, which he and we stand by.”

Others pushed back on Yang’s perspective as well.

Hazel Dukes, president of the NAACP’s New York State Conference, said it appeared clear the cartoon was referring to Yang’s “knowledge of the city,” or lack thereof.

“He didn’t do his homework — maybe that’s what they’re talking about — not as an Asian-American. He has not been able to answer some very pertinent questions about life in the city of New York,” said the civil rights leader who was born in Depression-era Alabama. “They’re talking about his knowledge of the city. I would not say we should label that as racism.”

The Daily News Yang cartoon highlights the painful power of media

On Thursday morning, New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang took to CNN to slam a media outlet for depicting him in a political cartoon earlier this week that he dubbed a “racialized caricature” that he believes dangerously plays on the "idea of Asian Americans as permanent tourists and outsiders."

On Monday, the New York Daily News cartoonist tweeted his political cartoon for the paper, which depicts Yang, currently one of the leaders in New York City's mayoral race, with slits for eyes and buck teeth. In the illustration, Yang is being called a “tourist” by white store owners.

On Tuesday, the Daily News published the image, after first tweaking the cartoon Yang’s eyes because, as a Daily News editor noted, “people reacted badly to how Yang’s eyes were drawn.” But the editor still defended the concept of the cartoon, stating the point was to highlight "major gaps in his" — meaning Yang’s — "knowledge of New York City politics and policy."

These are dangerous times for the Asian American Pacific Islander community. There has been a frightening spike in hate crimes and incidents against Asian Americans, with New York City seeing the biggest jump of all major cities. The editors at The New York Daily News absolutely know that, having recently published numerous articles detailing alleged hate crimes directed against the AAPI community in the city. In fact, on Monday, the paper ran an article about an apparent hate crime against an Asian man on the NYC subway.

Journalist Ann Curry tweeted, “Political cartoons have long been used to otherize Asian Americans as slanty-eyed outsiders. This plays to those same inaccurate stereotypes @NYDailyNews, which in this moment is also potentially dangerous.” The AAPI Victory Alliance tweeted similar concerns, saying, “This is disgusting and wrong. Every single day Asian Americans have to fight the notion that we are foreigners.”

Susan Kang, a professor of political science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and who is Asian American, told The Daily Beast that the cartoon regardless of the intent was still “hurtful,” adding that “there’s a lot of stuff on social media about how people with Asian heritage feel marginalized based on their appearance.”

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Niger Innis, a former Congressional candidate for Nevada's 3rd District who is a frequent quest on FOX News and the national spokesman of the one-time civil rights group CORE, that Niger's dad Roy Innis turned into a black nationalist group that bizarrely would support the re-election of Richard Nixon, and has aligned itself with Republican conservatives and big business for the past 40 years to speak on their behalf and explain why they're totally not racist, against all evidence to the contrary (selling out big for paychecks). Say for example, during the 2012 presidential campaign, Niger Innis claimed that CNN and MSNBC were racist for reporting Herman Cain's long track record of sexual harassment and portraying him as a "oversexed Mandingo". On behalf of energy companies at speaking engagements, Innis has claimed the "War on the Poor" is actually being led by environmentalists, and not industry, and has simultaneously attacked food stamps being issued to the needy because it's akin to "the scraps from Massa's table". Innis also defended the racist remarks of Cliven Bundy in 2014, and has declared all gun control measures racist in their motivation. After the deaths of several young African American men in recent years by police officers in highly publicized incidents often caught on video, downplayed a system rife with police brutality and instead said the real problem was "black on black crime". After only receiving 33% of the vote in the 2014 GOP Primary for the U.S. House seat he was running for, he immediately began crying foul due to election fraud, and demanded a complete audit of the election. .

On this date in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Mike Pape, a candidate for the U.S. House seat for Kentucky's 1st Congressional District being vacated by the retiring Rep. Ed Whitfield in 2016. Pape's first campaign ad which showed three supposed Mexican illegal immigrants bumbling across the border, but stopping to talk, in English, about how they needed to do whatever they could to stop Mike Pape from winning office, because he'd help build a wall between Mexico and the United States, and make life too tough for them. Pape didnt' limit his xenophobia to Mexicans, though, as he not only embraced Trump's ideas for the border wall, but called for a halt to accepting Syrian refugees. Scratch that, he called to a halt completely from immigrants from "countries who sponsor terror", which we're pretty sure would only apply to Muslim countries and forget about countries like Ireland's past. Pape's issue stances also include support for mandatory minimum sentencing for crimes and the death penalty while being staunchly "pro-life", his opposition to same-sex marriage, repealing the Affordable Care Act, and other conservative staples. The only thing that could ever be considered in any way moderate about him is that he acknowledges climate change is man-made, but he still didn't want any regulation to prevent it from getting worse). Pape ended up losing spectacularly in the primary for Kentucky's 1st District on May 17th, pulling down but 23% of the vote.

On this date in 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Robert Bentley, who was forced to resign from office in disgrace when Bentley fired the top cop in Alabama, who dropped a dime to the media about Bentley cheating on his wife of 50 years on his way out the door, saying he was near Bentley once when he dropped his phone, and it had a sexually explicit text on it directed towards a Governor’s aide on it. Audio quickly surfaced of Gov. Bentley making sexual comments on the phone towards his mistress... and that recording was made by Mrs. Bentley, who confronted the governor about the affair in front of their adult children before filing for divorce. It's only a surprise that it took SO LONG for news of the affair to come out, after all, Bentley would answer the door to his hotel rooms while traveling in his boxers, expecting the aide to be on the other side, only to give random unfortunate souls an eyeful. It would not simply remain a family matter, because in an added twist, Bentley used government resources to carry out the affair and cover it up, which is grounds for impeachment, which opportunistic Republicans in Alabama were more than willing to do. The Alabama state Attorney General, Luther Strange, was in charge of the investigation into any wrongdoing during that time, but in a brazen bit of corruption, Bentley appointed him to be the next Senator from Alabama once Sen. Jeff Sessions was narrowly appointed to be the next U.S. Attorney General. Anyway, on April 9th, 2017, Bentley resigned in disgrace after taking a plea deal to accept punishment of only misdemeanors and refunding money to the state to avoid jail time. Bentley's actual time as governor was filled with several embarrassing moments, such as the time he gave a speech on MLK Day in 2011, always a great opportunity for Alabama Governors to distance themselves from the shameful past it had during the era of George Wallace. Well, for whatever reason, Bentley used the speech to downplay racial division, but chose to try to start religious divisions by saying, "So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother." On immigration? Well, in September of 2011, Bentley signed HB 56 one of the more draconian anti-immigration bills in the country into law, sparking a Justice Department review... and only after a Mercedes-Benz executive got arrested under that piece of legislation did Bentley and Alabama Republicans scramble back to the drawing board to amend it to prevent it from infringing upon immigrants who weren't... y'know... not white. Bentley was staunchly anti-abortion signing harsh anti-choice legislation that aimed at closing the majority of, if not all of the abortion clinics in Alabama. Gov. Bentley was also part of the GOP's efforts to disenfranchise voters with stricter Voter ID requirements, and even moved to close DMV offices where new IDs could be acquired... predominantly in parts of Alabama where the population leans... y'know, the not-white parts of the state. Bentley’s legacy is tainted, and his career is over.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Here's alleged child-sex-trafficker and some-how-still-a-Congressman Matt Gaetz calling for big tech companies to have those "2nd amendment solutions" used against them.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/matt-...b02a79db8be4f4

GOP stochastic terror, at its most blatant.

If a Democrat had taken leave of his or her senses and called for Faux News and other right wing media outlets to have "2nd Amendment solutions" used against them, Qpublicans like Gaetz would be screaming bloody murder so damn loud, they'd be heard on the International Space Station. Meanwhile, I hope no one holds their breath waiting for Craven Kevin McCarthy to dismiss Matty Perv for issuing what was clearly a threat, and had done so THE DAY AFTER the mass shooting in San Jose. Reprehensible!

[worstblogever]

On this date in both 2018, and 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Georgia State Senator Michael E. Williams, who was elected to his first term in office back in 2014. After being the first Republican politician in Georgia to endorse uber-racist presidential candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 elections, in the 2018 elections, Williams has opted to not run for a second term in the Georgia State Senate, instead opting to aim much higher early in his career, thinking he had a crack at becoming the Governor of Georgia in 2018. Williams drew headlines four times Michael Williams during his campaign for governor. The first time he distinguished himself as being a concern was in June of 2017, when he appeared at an anti-Sharia Law rally being held in the name of paranoid Islamophobia by the anti-Muslim hate group, ACT for America, where he was more than willing to pose with the Georgia Security Force 3% Militia, who just so happen to be a hate group with dual interests, intersecting as not just rabid anti-Islamic nuts who infamously protested a mosque being built in Newton County, and also were not long prior holding a in defense of Confederate monuments. They’re a nice intersection of hate, and Williams was more than happy to pose with them for a photo where they were flashing white supremacist signs. It was only after the Southern Poverty Law Center and the media took note of their friendly little meeting that Williams’ spokesman gave the meager defense that he thought the militant racists were just “pro-gun supporters”. So Williams went to an Anti-Islam rally and hung out with Neo-Confederates… but it’s not like he’s staunchly defending Confederate monuments himself or anyth- oh, whoops, he has, on live television, such as in August of 2017 when he was outraged at the thought of monuments being defaced, blaming it on Antifa, and falling all over himself in outrage that anyone would want to blast the face off of Stone Mountain Georgia. Enough so that only a few weeks after the mass shooting in Las Vegas, that was carried out by way of using bump stocks to make the guns used fully automatic, that Michael Williams announced that he would be raffling off bump stocks at one of his campaign rallies. And then Williams went on CNN to defend his criticisms of Delta Airlines, after it decided to end a discount partnership with the NRA following the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida. Williams began outright lying around this time to say that Delta was still clearly acting on partisan lines because it offered discounts to employees of Planned Parenthood. On air, anchor Brianna Keilar called him out for making an untrue statement, and he doubled down, defending his lie because he and other GOP State Senators in Georgia “looked it up on Google” and then spent a couple days arguing with Keilar on Twitter, claiming that he’d defended his statement. He then began touting his idea to solve our immigration crisis with a “deportation bus” that would catch, per the painted on sign on its windows, “murderers, rapists, kidnappers, child molestors, and other criminals”. Yes, because this bigot also can’t spell. The end result of the ad was… Williams got banned from Youtube for violating their terms of service because he was sharing super racist views. Michael Williams ended up finishing fourth on the GOP Primary in his quest to become the next Governor of Georgia. But it was what happened AFTER the election that we found far more satisfying… it seems that Williams fell victim to a break-in at his own campaign offices, and then filed a fraudulent insurance claim that estimated the value of the computers stolen at almost thirty times their actual worth. Williams ended up giving a guilty plea to a lesser charge and got four years of probation for the crime.

On this date in 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Ted Crockett, the former Shelby County Commissioner who was a 2018 candidate for the Alabama House of Representatives from District 45. Ted Crockett is the former spokesman for Roy Mooreduring his ill-fated attempt to get elected to the Senate, Crockett defended the worst of Moore’s racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and yes, all the accusations of him spending his 30s sexually pursuing underage girls. In the process, Crockett taught us all a lot about him, as well, including his belief that homosexuality should be a crime. Only a year later, Ted Crockett was running for the Alabama House of Representatives, and continued being a theocratic loon, including insisting that Muslims should not be allowed to run for public office, because they refuse to swear on a Bible… which Jake Tapper had to point out to him that the law does not necessitate the book in question being a Bible, and it is chosen by the political figure. Upon learning this fact, Crockett was just completely befuddled. Alarmingly, Crockett only missed being elected in the GOP Primary by about 700 votes, even after showing himself to be some sort of younger clone of Roy Moore so we will set aside his profile at this time to take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 989-50, since this was established in July 2014.


Jo Rae Perkins

Welcome to what is the 989th profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling Jo Rae Perkins, who unsuccessfully ran for U.S. House of Representatives in Oregon’s 4th Congressional District in 2014, 2016, and 2018, losing each time to the also bats*** Republican Art Robinson in the GOP Primary for that seat. She has run afoul of the law before, having been charged with harassment and hindering prosecution in 2005, and twice filed for personal bankruptcy, in 1997 and 2009. But recently, she was a 2020 Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Oregon candidate who yes, is the latest in a far too line of folks we’ve profiled who ran for office while being supporters of the Qanon Conspiracy theory.

Just in case you think she might not actually believe in something so stupid, and was just milking the hype for potential votes, she swore an oath to Qanon online, promising to be a “digital soldier” for them, and specifically mentioned them in her victory speech after the GOP Primary:

"I stand with President Trump. I stand with Q and the team. Thank you Anons, and thank you patriots. And together, we can save our republic.”

When CNN went to interview her about her reprehensible belief in it, she was bewildered to see the reporters who showed up were wearing masks during the Covid-19 pandemic and let them know they “didn’t work”:

Reporter: "Do you not believe in wearing masks?"
Perkins:" Do you see one?"
Reporter: "I do not. But what's your answer?"
Perkins:" No."
Reporter:" Why not?"
Perkins:" They do absolutely nothing to protect you.”
Reporter: "How do you know that? Are you a scientist?"
Perkins:" No, I don't need to be a scientist. I've done tons of reading.”
Reporter:" Oh. Are you a doctor?"
Perkins:"I don't need to be a doctor either. I know how to read."

Joe Rae Perkins got a far too high total of 39% of the vote in the 2020 election. She since has announced she will run for U.S. Senate again in 2022, looking to unseat Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, but her path to victory looks pretty much blocked given that she has posted video of herself in attendance at the January 6th rally that devolved into a violent coup attempt being carried out on behalf of Donald Trump.

To give you an idea of how extremely conservative the eastern portion of a blue state like Oregon is, they still voted for her in 2020, and she one a third of the counties in the state. Should she win the GOP Primary somehow in 2022, we would expect a repeat of her performance, if not a worse showing.

[worstblogever]

If a Democrat had taken leave of his or her senses and called for Faux News and other right wing media outlets to have "2nd Amendment solutions" used against them, Qpublicans like Gaetz would be screaming bloody murder so damn loud, they'd be heard on the International Space Station. Meanwhile, I hope no one holds their breath waiting for Craven Kevin McCarthy to dismiss Matty Perv for issuing what was clearly a threat, and had done so THE DAY AFTER the mass shooting in San Jose. Reprehensible!

I have seen Republicans like MTG and right-wing media outlets like Prager-U beginning to equate support for "Black Lives Matter" to "a domestic terror group", whose goals are to peacefully protest until there's accountability for police officers murdering people of color...

Meanwhile, they can all for shootings against supposed "censorship" by social media platforms for not allowing them to promote election fraud lies that literally inspired domestic terrorists to attack Congress.

Bunch of whiny, bleating fascists.

[Kirby101]

Over 100 years after Germany stopped being the colonial power in Namibia, the Federal Republic of Germany yesterday accepted responsibility for the genocide committed on the Herero people by the German Empire. We will pay reparations of 1.1 billion € over the next 30 years and the German president will travel to Namibia to issue a formal apology.

Good for Germany. If Germany is giving Namibia a billion Euros, Belgium owes the Congo at least 100 billion.

[Tendrin]

To give you an idea of how extremely conservative the eastern portion of a blue state like Oregon is, they still voted for her in 2020, and she one a third of the counties in the state. Should she win the GOP Primary somehow in 2022, we would expect a repeat of her performance, if not a worse showing.

The same counties who have loons who want to leave the state to join into 'Greater Idaho'. Basically, the same old racist, white-man's-country bullshit.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Just read a conspiracy theory on Twitter that one reason Mitch McConnell wants the 1/6 commission killed dead was to protect Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The reason? His right wing leaning wife was said to have financed the transportation that brought busloads of Trumpanzees to Washington who later participated in the riot at the Capitol. If that's true, then Thomas could wind up in a spot of bother if that tidbit comes out in the wash for all to hear after the commission gets underway. Whether or not there's any meat on that bone is anybody's guess.

[Tami]

Russia Appears to Carry Out Hack Through System Used by U.S. Aid Agency

Hackers linked to Russia’s main intelligence agency surreptitiously seized an email system used by the State Department’s international aid agency to burrow into the computer networks of human rights groups and other organizations of the sort that have been critical of President Vladimir V. Putin, Microsoft Corporation disclosed on Thursday.

Discovery of the breach comes only three weeks before President Biden is scheduled to meet Mr. Putin in Geneva, and at a moment of increased tension between the two nations — in part because of a series of increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks emanating from Russia.

The newly disclosed attack was also particularly bold: By breaching the systems of a supplier used by the federal government, the hackers sent out genuine-looking emails to more than 3,000 accounts across more than 150 organizations that regularly receive communications from the United States Agency for International Development. Those emails went out as recently as this week, and Microsoft said it believes the attacks are ongoing.

The email was implanted with code that would give the hackers unlimited access to the computer systems of the recipients, from “stealing data to infecting other computers on a network,” Tom Burt, a Microsoft vice president, wrote on Thursday night.

Last month, Mr. Biden announced a series of new sanctions on Russia and the expulsion of diplomats for a sophisticated hacking operation, called SolarWinds, that used novel methods to breach at least seven government agencies and hundreds of large American companies.

That attack went undetected by the U.S. government for nine months, until it was discovered by a cybersecurity firm. In April, Mr. Biden said he could have responded far more strongly, but “chose to be proportionate” because he did not want “to kick off a cycle of escalation and conflict with Russia.”

[seismic-2]

Just read a conspiracy theory on Twitter that one reason Mitch McConnell wants the 1/6 commission killed dead was to protect Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The reason? His right wing leaning wife was said to have financed the transportation that brought busloads of Trumpanzees to Washington who later participated in the riot at the Capitol. If that's true, then Thomas could wind up in a spot of bother if that tidbit comes out in the wash for all to hear after the commission gets underway. Whether or not there's any meat on that bone is anybody's guess.

I'm not sure just what spot of bother Justice Thomas would be in. After all, Supreme Court Justices don't have to run for re-election. Anyway, his wife (who is a private citizen) could make the point that she was just helping bring people to attend the pro-Trump rally (as misguided and stupid as that was) and not to attack the Capitol (which, in fact, the majority of the rally-goers didn't do).

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Well, it's official: Senate Qpublicans blocked the formation of the bipartisan 1/6 commission, the vote being 54-35.