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Showing posts from January, 2023

A Good Update on the Miserable Career of John Durham

 I occasionally recommend a post from someone else here, which I think gets to the heart of the issue so well that there is no point in my rewriting it.  This is one of those times.  The post deals with the crusade of John Durham, selected to preside over an "investigation" of Obama, Biden and Hillary, which as I have reported on a number of occasions was nothing but an attempt to trump up a bogus right wing smear of all of them.  Durham revealed himself to be a crude, lying right wing hack just like the President who appointed him. Well, here is an article from Mark Sumner at Daily Kos, entitled "Behind the scenes of Durham investigation reveals special counsel engaged in serious abuse of power" which will bring people up to date on what we now know about this serious misuse of prosecutorial power from Durham, former Attorney General Barr and Trump.  Much of it seems to be based on reporting at the New York Times, which is of course behind a paywall; in any even

Gender

I have been following the development of Trans ideology for the last few years.  Much of it is built on a notion of gender that I have come to believe is very misguided.  Without this, a great deal of the assertions of the Trans movement, I believe, collapse.  Well, here are my thoughts on the subject. I want to start out with an attack on someone whose blog I have read for years, and who, I believe, is one of the most important figures in the fight against pseudoscience and the falsification of scientific fact for political purposes, P. Z. Myers.  Myers is a professor of evolutionary biology in Minnesota, and has done tremendous work unmasking the pathetic ignorance that lies behind young earth creationism and other forms of evolutionary denialsim.  Myers is often savagely contemptuous of creationist figures like Ken Ham, correctly pointing out that they are utterly ignorant of evolutionary biology, and that they spout views that any marginally educated person knows to be nonsense.  L

Okay, Somebody Needs to Say This

 And as usual, Green Eagle will go where nobody else will.  After my decades of watching politics, I want to tell you something that I am virtually convinced is true.  If we ever get to know the real origin of the classified documents that have been found in Biden's Vice Presidential papers, it will turn out that they were planted there by Republican operatives.  This is the overwhelmingly most likely explanation of all of this.  And don't even try to argue with me about this.  It is so clear that only a fool could believe otherwise. And let's note that the disgusting coward Merrick Garland, who lives in constant fear that Donald Trump might say Boo to him, took only a few days to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate his boss; this after two years of being afraid to do a damned thing in public about Trump's open criminality and treason. So, when we allocate blame for the disaster that is taking place in front of our eyes, don't forget to include Garland, and

Fighting Fire With Fire

 So, a lot of people seem to be freaked out by Kevin McCarthy's craven capitulation to the wingnut right wing members of Congress in agreeing to reinstate an old rule allowing any member of the House to demand a vote of confidence in the speaker, bringing the workings of the House to a crashing halt any time they were threatened with legislation they didn't like, and potentially destroying the ability of the House to accomplish anything outside of the piggish actions they have promised. Things can have unexpected consequences, however. As far as I have heard, nobody had considered the fact that this rule would be available to Democrats too. Consider this scenario:  McCarthy has threatened to strip the greatest member of the current House, Adam Schiff, of all his committee assignments, in an act of revenge for the House doing the same thing (for very justified reasons) to the execrable traitor, Marjorie Taylor Greene.  In return, I would suggest, Schiff might decide to demand a

A Warning to Remember

I am enjoying the spectacle of House Republicans making absolute fools of themselves, failing to pick a speaker, as much as anyone.  However, please remember this: In a few days or a couple of weeks, the Republicans will find some way out of this mess and will pick a speaker who will, incidentally, almost certainly be more intransigent and right wing than Kevin McCarthy.  From that moment on, we are going to be treated to the sickening spectacle of our Federal government being ravaged by elected representatives of the American people.  We are going to be subject to an orgy of piggishness and corruption the likes of which has never been seen in this country. So get ready for it.  This current clown show is just the calm before a very ugly storm.

An Outside Speaker?

With the Republicans in the House degenerating into complete chaos, several people have pointed out that nothing in the Constitution requires that the Speaker be a member of the House.  This is not actually a new idea among Republicans- over the last two years, a number of right wingers have suggested making Donald Trump the Speaker, presumably to be followed by a huge competition among the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to see who could murder Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, making Trump the President, this being the current state of Republican respect for the Constitution. Anyway, I have another suggestion- a person who has a long history as a Republican, yet who has the respect of many Democrats, and who is an experienced former member of the House:  Liz Cheney. Note: this is not a serious suggestion, because Liz is a hard core right winger whose legislative priorities would be worse than Kevin McCarthy's.  But boy would it be a great way to own the Cons, the way they think they are a

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

 I am sure I have enjoyed the spectacle of grotesque Republican incompetence that is playing out in the House right now, as their new House majority tries to pick a speaker, as much as anyone.  It is a thrill to see CNN referring to "Republicans in disarray" for once, instead of the usual "Democrats in Disarray" which accompanies virtually every thing the Democrats ever try to do.  I must remind you though that for Republicans, even this monumental display of ineptitude serves a purpose.   For decades, Republicans, whose true mandate from their billionaire benefactors is to prevent the will of the people from ever impeding the insatiable hunger of the rich.  One of their favorite methods to accomplish this is to convince voters that our government is a gigantic clown show.  For this purpose, given the both siderism surgically grafted onto our mainstream press by the Republican party, it makes no difference that the clowns are all on their side of the aisle.  If they