#Republican impeachment stunt

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

This is un-American bullshit.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

A stunt impeachment inquiry.

December 13, 2023

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

          House Republicans will vote to open an impeachment inquiry of President Biden on Wednesday. Why? They can’t say—because they don’t know. Oh, sure, they have baseless conspiracy theories—but no evidence (a common situation with conspiracy theories). So, because they have no evidence to support baseless conspiracy theories, they argue they need an impeachment inquiry to help them pursue imaginary evidence—thereby maintaining the illusion of corruption where none exists.

          Of course, the real reason they will open an impeachment inquiry is because Donald Trump told them to do so. Trump was impeached twice—a level of disgrace achieved by no other president. Trump's solution is to denigrate and debase impeachment so he can argue that impeachments are nothing more than partisan retribution. As always, Trump seeks to undermine the institutions that dare to hold him accountable. Here, he is assaulting the Constitution because its provisions were (rightly) applied in a way never before witnessed in the history of our nation.

          The efforts of House Republicans to evade answering the “Why impeach Joe Biden” question would have been funny if they were not tragic and dangerous. Indeed, several House Republicans admitted that they did not have evidence to impeach Joe Biden—which is why (they claim) they need to open an impeachment inquiry. See Talking Points Memo, As They Admit There’s No Evidence, House Republicans Will Still Greenlight Impeachment Inquiry.

          The tragedy of the stunt impeachment inquiry is that it comes at a time when congressional Republicans are failing at every level in discharging their constitutional duties. Ukrainian President Zelensky visited with President Biden and senior congressional leaders on Tuesday—and left empty-handed. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell—a strong ally of Ukraine—expressed doubt that Congress will authorize additional funds for Ukraine before January, a month after the US will reportedly run out of funds earmarked for Ukraine. See Politico, McConnell: Border-Ukraine deal this year ‘practically impossible’.

          But if action on funding Ukraine is delayed until January, it will be swept into the maelstrom of two deadlines for government shutdowns. Current government funding expires on January 19 and February 2, 2024. While Senate negotiators are reportedly hard at work to reach a compromise, any compromise requires resolving intractable, decades-old issues relating to the management of the US southern border. By tying funding for Ukraine to the resolution of long-standing immigration issues in the US, congressional Republicans seem to be carrying water for Vladimir Putin and (therefore) Donald Trump. 

          Speaker Mike Johnson set an unattainable bar in setting conditions for aid to Ukraine. He said,

What the Biden administration seems to be asking for is billions of additional dollars with no appropriate oversight, no clear strategy to win and with none of the answers that I think the American people are owed.

          Johnson is demanding that the US exercise “oversight” of Ukraine’s “strategy” for defeating an invading Russian army. As the brave Ukrainian people have demonstrated, their “strategy” is to resist Putin’s vastly larger army with every ounce of determination and bravery they can muster. That bravery has held the Russian army at bay for more than 600 days, a stupendous achievement that continues to defy predictions that Ukraine would collapse in a week. The Ukrainian bravery and battlefield success is apparently not enough for the milquetoast Mike Johnson.

          President Biden responded to the vacuous, mealy-mouthed statement by Johnson, saying it was a “Christmas gift” to Vladimir Putin. Biden also noted that news commentators in Russia’s state-controlled broadcast network celebrated the Republican stonewalling of aid to Ukraine. Biden said,

This host of a Kremlin-run show said: ‘Well done, Republicans. That’s good for us,’” If you’re being celebrated by Russian propagandists, it might be time to rethink what you’re doing. History, history will judge harshly those who turn their back on freedom’s cause.

          The GOP’s impeachment and the reluctance to provide more military aid to Ukraine are rooted in Donald Trump's scheme to use his control over Republicans in Congress to inflict political damage on Biden—even if that vendetta hurts the interests of the American people and its allies.

          The good news (explained below) is that Democrats are making progress toward regaining control of the House. Indeed, Speaker Johnson’s stunt impeachment and abandonment of Ukraine will hasten that outcome.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[wilwheaton]

It’s totally appropriate to categorize these kinds of maneuvers by Republicans as performative or as playing politics or as engaging in political stunts. All true. But it’s also fundamentally an abuse of power. House Republicans are hikacking the levers of power that come with the offices they hold to advance their own partisan political aims and hold on to that power.

Congrats On Your Bogus Impeachment, Champ

I suspect that a a substantial part of the motivation here is not just trying to give Shitler a dopamine hit, but to undermine the seriousness of his two impeachments, and any future impeachments against him and his cult, should they ever return to power.

[fr0ggs]

ukraine aid funding petition:

"The U.S. Senate has passed a $95 billion foreign aid bill with bipartisan support, which includes desperately needed funds for Ukraine. But in the Republican-controlled House, Speaker Mike Johnson is too afraid of Donald Trump to bring it to a vote.

That's why House Democratic leaders are now forcing a discharge petition. We need to put pressure on Congress to bring Ukraine funding to a vote now." - from the petition website

link list:

link 1: https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/12/politics/senate-foreign-aid-bill-ukraine/index.html

link 2: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/2/12/2222991/-Speaker-Mike-Johnson-is-getting-squeezed-from-all-sides-on-Ukraine-aid?detail=emailaction

link 3: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/2/14/2223442/-Speaker-Mike-Johnson-finds-time-for-impeachment-stunt-but-not-to-help-Ukraine?detail=emailaction

link 4: https://www.newsweek.com/discharge-petition-against-mike-johnson-moves-closer-votes-are-there-1872742

[truthdogg]

“THEY DID IT TO US!” Trump claimed in an August post on his struggling Truth Social platform, demanding Republicans impeach Biden or “fade into oblivion.”

***

Partisanship in this impeachment was never meant to be a secret, but that does not mean Republicans are exposing their political motivations. This article can’t even describe them, so it’s increasingly unlikely that many voters will see them either.

The point of a Biden impeachment is closely related to the point of the Big Lie. Neither are intended to succeed or to appear thoughtful. They are intended to undermine Americans’ interest in democracy.

The Big Lie is continually deployed by conservatives not to change the election outcome. It’s too late for that, and they know it. It is used to sow doubt and distrust, so that more and more Americans will decide that voting is inherently unreliable, and that it is no longer the best way to select our leaders.

Similarly, a Biden impeachment circus would be used not to remove Biden in a fair process, but to claim that all impeachments are inherently politically motivated and unfair, and that turnabout is fair play whether warranted or not.

This goes hand in hand with Trump’s constant bellyaching about being “politically persecuted,” and his often-stated promises to illegally prosecute Democrats, judges, attorneys, and civil servants if elected. When Trump claims that all charges against politicians like himself are politically motivated, it clears the way for him to open politically motivated prosecutions of his own. When Republicans openly state that their impeachment hearings are politically motivated, they are doing so to claim that Democrats had the same motivation in 2021.

The two impeachments of Trump did hurt him politically, and Republicans know it. Therefore, they’re trying to negate that black mark—not by giving Biden a similar one, as most pundits and press will claim, but by demonstrating that there doesn’t even have to be crimes or corruption to start this sort of proceeding. They are betting that Americans won’t remember just how bad Trump looked before, during, & after those trials occurred, and that this stunt will make the earlier impeachments of Trump look like a circus as well.

They may be right. Especially if a so-called liberal media outlet like MSNBC can’t even connect the dots to see what’s going on.

[soberscientistlife]

The Daily Beast drops bombshell, reveals that Trumper Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called her fellow Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert “a little b*tch” straight to her face during a heated argument on the floor of Congress today.

But it gets WAY better…

The Daily Beast reports that their feud erupted after Boebert stormed up to Greene to confront her about “public statements” that she had made about Boebert.

Things escalated quickly, as Greene fired back, accusing Boebert of having “copied” her “articles of impeachment” stunt against President Biden, “I’ve donated to you, I’ve defended you. But you’ve been nothing but a little bitch to me. And you copied my articles of impeachment after I asked you to cosponsor them.

The confrontation got even more heated when Boebert responded, “OK, Marjorie, we’re through,” but Greene fired back, “We were never together.”

This is how much class MAGA has. A cat fight of the House Floor.

[madamspeaker]

If you were going to draw up a list of the people most responsible for the latest indictment of Donald Trump, the former president himself would be at the top, followed by the prosecutors who have brought the case. Republicans in Congress perversely deserve a great deal of credit, too, since they could have exiled Trump from political life and perhaps spared him more intense legal scrutiny if they had voted to convict him in the impeachment trial over his role in the siege of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Ultimately, however, you cannot tell the story of Trump’s historic indictment without Nancy Pelosi. It was the then-Speaker of the House who insisted that there be a congressional inquiry following January 6. And it was the work of the select committee she fashioned that finally appears to have spurred a reluctant Justice Department to action, setting in motion a more intense phase of criminal scrutiny focused on Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.The resulting indictment closely tracks the select committee’s work and findings, presenting a factual narrative that traces — almost identically — the evidence presented by the committee of a sophisticated, multipronged effort by Trump to remain in power that culminated in the mayhem at the U.S. Capitol.

“I knew on January 6 that he had committed a crime,” Pelosi told me late Friday afternoon, squeezing me in for a roughly 30-minute interview at the tail end of a remarkable week in Washington.

I wondered what was going through her head as someone who had played an essential role in bringing about the most important criminal prosecution in the history of our country, and I was curious, in particular, when it had occurred to her that Trump’s conduct following the 2020 election had not merely been politically destructive or outrageous but may have crossed the line into actual criminality.

During the Trump administration, Pelosi emerged as one of Trump’s most persistent and effective political antagonists, and the personal rancor between the two was often on public display. She went toe to toe with him in the Oval Office. She authorized the third-ever impeachment of an American president after Trump’s effort to shake down Ukraine’s president to get dirt on Joe Biden. She famously tore up Trump’s 2020 State of the Union speech while standing behind him. As Trump’s supporters began to approach the Capitol on January 6, Pelosi said that if Trump joined them, “I’m going to punch him out. I’ve been waiting for this. For trespassing on the Capitol grounds, I’m going to punch him out. And I’m going to go to jail, and I’m going to be happy.”

The rioters proceeded to ransack her office, and instead of punching Trump, who was prevented from going to the Capitol by the Secret Service, Pelosi impeached him again. To this day, Pelosi seems to get under Trump’s skin like no one else. Early Sunday morning, Trump called her “a sick & demented psycho who will someday live in HELL!”

Long before January 6 itself, Pelosi had been preparing for Trump to try to disrupt the transfer of power. “During the election, I thought, ‘He’s going to try to pull a stunt and we have to try to have as many states in the Democratic column as possible,’” she told me, contemplating the possibility that Biden’s victory might not be certified and that the House would have to move to an obscure procedure in which each state’s congressional delegation would cast a single vote to determine the next president.

Trump promptly proceeded to validate that concern, undertaking an extraordinary effort to remain in power after Election Day by falsely claiming that he had won and by trying to work various levers of official power to stay in office. “As we got closer to January 6, I knew he was cooking up all these things, but what was he going to do about it?” Pelosi recalled. “It was clear that he knew he did not win the election,” she explained. “It was clear, and he had to disrupt” the joint session of Congress to certify the election. As the indictment alleges, Trump did this not only by pressuring Vice-President Mike Pence to illegally cast aside Biden’s electoral votes but also by watching with apparent pleasure as a mob tore through the Capitol and by exploiting the violence fed by his lies.

“When we saw what he did on January 6, I knew that was a crime,” Pelosi added. She acknowledged that it is not possible to predict “what can be proven” successfully in court, “but I know he committed a crime that day.”

After Biden’s inauguration, Pelosi set about to organize a bipartisan 9/11 Commission–type investigation into the events that led up to January 6, but she was repeatedly stymied by congressional Republicans. “We yielded on every point,” Pelosi recalled of the negotiations with her Republican counterparts at the time. “We gave them an equal number of commission members, which we always would have done — equal member staff, equal member funding for everything — and equal subpoena power, which the majority never gives away, but nonetheless, we did it because this was so awful for our country, so necessary to have this.”

In what turned out to have been a historic miscalculation, Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell blocked the initiative in the Senate. “He went around to members and said, ‘Do me a personal favor and do not vote for this,’” Pelosi told me. “Even though he knew that night — and said — that the Republican president was responsible, they didn’t even want to have an investigation.”

Pelosi has earned a reputation as one of the most tactically savvy leaders in the history of the Congress, and she chuckled as she recalled McConnell’s maneuvering. “People said to Mitch, ‘You think Nancy is going to let this go?’ What could he have been thinking?”

Pelosi then shifted gears to negotiating over a select committee in the House with Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who took the project about as seriously as McConnell had by proposing to name, among other people, bomb-thrower Jim Jordan to the panel. Pelosi quickly decided the negotiations were not going anywhere, explaining that McCarthy wanted to appoint members who would “totally undermine” the committee. “Okay,” she recalled thinking. “That’s really nice. So you get consultation as to who will serve [on the committee], and I have consulted with you, and I’ve said ‘no’ to who you want. That’s the power of the Speaker.”

Pelosi then assembled a group led by Democratic chair Bennie Thompson and Republican vice-chair Liz Cheney, along with six other Democrats and Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger. It did not take long for observers to conclude that McCarthy may have monumentally misplayed his hand, particularly after the committee produced a riveting series of hearings last summer that were mercifully free of the clownish and disruptive antics of the House GOP’s right flank.

In the course of our discussion, Pelosi was reluctant to take any sort of credit for the committee’s work or Trump’s indictment with the exception of taking “credit for the appointees” on the committee, whom she described as providing a “beautiful balance” in their approaches and a crucial “seriousness of purpose.”

Pelosi said she knew from the beginning that, in order for the committee to succeed, it could not operate in the way of typical committee hearings, and she worked to ensure that the members shared that perspective. “When people were accepting the offer to be on the committee, they knew that it wasn’t going to be every five minutes that they’d be speaking,” she said. “It would be part of the plan [to present] a narrative for the public to understand.”

In the end, Pelosi told me, “the quality of the membership, the effectiveness of the staff, and the excellence of the presentation made it one of the best presentations in the history of our country.”

Meanwhile, there were questions about what the Justice Department was doing to address the potential criminal culpability of Trump and those in his orbit. The committee’s members and staff were uncovering — and presenting to the public — damaging evidence that they had obtained from Trump administration officials, but the DOJ was not pursuing those same threads — despite public frustration among some observers — seemingly content with focusing on the people who had stormed the Capitol or who played a role in organizing the violence that day.

I asked Pelosi whether during this period she had ever tried to speak with Attorney General Merrick Garland, President Biden, or anyone in the White House about making sure the Justice Department was properly investigating Trump’s conduct. “No,” she quickly responded, telling me that she did not think it was appropriate for her to try to influence the department’s work behind closed doors.

“I did want them to pay attention, and I hope that we got their attention,” Pelosi told me. “That’s why the presentation — the narrative — had to be the way it was,” she explained, so that the public record could be as clear and credible as possible. “We couldn’t have people, like the Republicans wanted to put on, who would be disruptive, disruptive, disruptive. Too much was at stake.”

Still, there was palpable anxiety among House Democrats about the Justice Department’s progress — or lack thereof — investigating Trump directly. That anxiety may have reached a high point this June, when the Washington Post published a remarkable 8,000-word story providing the most comprehensive account to date of the department’s investigation into Trump’s conduct.

According to the Post, it took “more than a year” after January 6 “before prosecutors and FBI agents jointly embarked on a formal probe of actions directed from the White House to try to steal the election,” and “even then, the FBI stopped short of identifying the former president as a focus of that investigation.” One source told the paper that “it felt as though the department was reacting to the House committee’s work as well as heightened media coverage and commentary” as the department’s investigation finally gathered steam last year.

“When the Washington Post article came out,” Pelosi told me, “not that it was a complete shock or surprise to our members, but they were very concerned about it.”

Now that Trump has been indicted over his effort to steal the election, we are in the midst of a singular moment in American history — one that will have dramatic long-term implications for our country and one that will likely be covered in history books for generations to come. The difference, of course, is that as we live through this period, we have no idea how it will end — with Trump in prison or with Trump in the White House again.

I asked Pelosi how she thought this would all end, and she struck a tentative but cautiously optimistic tone. “As we always say, it all depends on what happens at the end of the day, but you have to determine what the end of the day is. Yesterday was the end of a day. The former president of the United States was arraigned, and that was a triumph for the truth.”

“The indictments against the president are exquisite,” Pelosi added, referring to both the latest set of charges and the earlier federal indictment over Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and his subsequent efforts to obstruct investigators. “They’re beautiful and intricate, and they probably have a better chance of conviction than anything that I would come up with.”

As for the prospect of a second Trump term, Pelosi immediately recoiled when I brought it up. “Don’t even think of that,” she told me. “Don’t think of the world being on fire. It cannot happen, or we will not be the United States of America.”

“If he were to be president,” she continued, “it would be a criminal enterprise in the White House.”

There was a time in American life, not that long ago, when that would have been clear hyperbole. These are categorically different times.

[schraubd]

Clown Cars Aren't For Driving They're For Clowning

At the start of the congressional session, I predicted that "endless stunt investigations is all the House GOP will do, because it's all they can agree upon". I'll give myself a pat on the back for that one, as the House -- on its second try -- decided to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for absolutely no discernible reason. It's dead-on-arrival in the Senate, and rightfully so, but we need to reiterate just how pathetic and embarrassing this was. It was embarrassing when it failed the first time, and it's embarrassing that it succeeded the second time. The nominal complaint -- that Mayorkas isn't enforcing border policy to Republicans liking -- is not only not an impeachable offense (except insofar as Republicans believe it's unconstitutional for them to lose elections, which appears to be increasingly their consensus view), but it's doubly-embarrassing to blame Mayorkas for inaction on the border given that congressional Republicans can't even pass their own bill on the border because they think doing so will help Biden in the next election (and because actual policymaking, unlike endless stunt investigations, requires actual position-taking). Republicans dealing with the fact that they are too chaotic and incompetent to even have, let alone enact, an agenda on the issue they say is a Crisis Invasion Destroying America!!1!!1! by impeaching a Democrat is the latest example of the crippling infantilization that has completely overtaken the party. The fiasco did give me a chance to call my Republican congressional representative, Lori Chavez-Deremer (R-OR), and Be Mad At Her, but to by honest my heart wasn't fully in it this time. I genuinely don't understand why Chavez-Deremer even wants to be in Congress at this point. She's not doing anything there -- she's certainly not legislating -- she just mindlessly nods along with whatever ridiculous circus show her more creative MAGA colleagues decide to put forward in any given week. One would think she could do the same thing much more remuneratively as a talk radio host, and with any luck after the next election she'll get that opportunity.  [Image: NYT] via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/RGlWn8f

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Kaili Joy Gray at Daily Kos:

House Republicans really wanted an impeachment of … someone. President Joe Biden, preferably, or his son Hunter, or maybe Hunter’s laptop, or perhaps Hunter’s dogwalker. They decided on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who didn’t commit any high crimes or misdemeanors but did attempt to execute the policies of the administration in which he serves. 

On Wednesday, the Senate took one look at the articles of impeachment oh-so-solemnly delivered by a hard-right House faction just the day before and said, “Nope. Hard pass.” Senators voted to toss the case without wasting their time on a trial. And like that, it was all over. That House Republicans, led by their increasingly endangered leader Mike Johnson, insisted on going through with the whole charade in the first place is a testament to their dedication to absurd stunts, as well as their inability to count. In February, they couldn’t count the number of votes they would need to actually impeach Mayorkas, and their first attempt failed. Once they finally got their precious articles passed, they waited. And waited. And waited. It just never seemed like the right time to send those articles to the Senate because even Republican senators were musing that it all seemed like a ridiculous waste of time.

And like that, it was all over. That House Republicans, led by their increasingly endangered leader Mike Johnson, insisted on going through with the whole charade in the first place is a testament to their dedication to absurd stunts, as well as their inability to count. In February, they couldn’t count the number of votes they would need to actually impeach Mayorkas, and their first attempt failed. Once they finally got their precious articles passed, they waited. And waited. And waited. It just never seemed like the right time to send those articles to the Senate because even Republican senators were musing that it all seemed like a ridiculous waste of time.

The Senate mercifully says "nope" to the phony and meritless partisan impeachment of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas by voting to dismiss both of the charges. #MayorkasImpeachment

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Republikkkans have nothing but cheap stunts and dirty tricks.

🖕🤡

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Read Alejandro Mayorkas' letter in response to the MTG/Trump impeachment gambit. It's a superlative document. And I've never been more proud to have once been his law partner. https://www.documentcloud.org/.../24391336-dhs-secretary...

[Robert Scott Horton]

* * * *

Update on effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas.

A House committee voted to advance the impeachment resolution against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the House floor for a vote. As of Tuesday evening, it seems likely that the resolution will pass, but with a three-vote margin in the House, the outcome is not certain.

A NYTimes analysis piece explains the obvious—that Mayorkas has not committed constitutional “high crimes and misdemeanors.” See NYTimes, Karoun Demirjian, Impeachment Case Against Mayorkas Ignores Government’s Immigration Powers.

As Demirjian explains, the number of migrants detained at the border far exceeds the available facilities to house detainees. So, the federal government must exercise discretion in deciding which migrants to continue to hold in detention. The unsurprising answer is that the federal government prioritizes the detention of detainees who pose a national security threat or have criminal histories.

It is that exercise of discretion that the House believes is an impeachable offense. Demirjian writes,

What the charges do not take into account, however, is that Mr. Mayorkas also has the legal authority to determine which migrants to prioritize for detention, given limited bed space and long backlogs in the immigration courts.

The Senate will not convict or remove Secretary Mayorkas. The impeachment is a performance worthy of the theater of the absurd and Mao’s “reeducation camps” in the Cultural Revolution. And it is a complete waste of time by a Congress whose major accomplishment this year is extending the deadline for passage of a 2024 budget that should have been approved no later than June 30, 2023.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[rickmctumbleface]

For days now, lots of reporters are asking all the Republican politicians what their impeachment of Biden is about, and everyone of them just dodges the question. Not one of them gives any real answer. Because they have nothing at all. Zero, zip, zilch. It's all an empty political stunt to distract from the Trump clown show in progress, where REAL crimes against democracy happened.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

By Kirk Swearingen

In the face of what seems like endless gun carnage in the U.S., Republican politicians call for more mental health funding even while withholding it. Not only are there now more guns than people in this country, many Republicans and the right-wing media continue to profit by leading people, especially younger men, to despair.

They're projecting their own unexamined mental health issues on others. As Salon's Amanda Marcotte has often pointed out, for Republicans it seems that every accusation is a confession.

When Donald Trump and his confederates claim that Democrats cheat in elections, that's what is known as a tell, since cheating at elections is precisely what they themselves are trying their best (or worst) to do.

When Ivy League–educated Republicans attack the liberal "elite." When Trump Republicans profess outrage about the "Biden crime family." When the malignant narcissist who formerly occupied the White House claims that liberals (whom he claims are "socialists," "radicals" or "Marxists") are out to destroy the country. Every accusation is a confession.

So Republican politicians and their media allies call for more mental health spending as a supposed solution to the gun violence crisis, one suspects that's a reflection of their own mental strain in championing an absurd interpretation of the Second Amendment and steadfastly ignoring the fact that people in other large Western nations have issues with mental health too, but for some reason don't shoot each other, or themselves, nearly as often.

Many men who vote Republican, it seems, are too focused on propping up their fragile masculinity to seek help in any case. (It might make them look like "betas.") Far too often, a right-wing man gets so worked up about a perceived threat to his manliness that he goes on a shooting rampage with assault-style weapons, which the Supreme Court has helpfully explained is every American's God-given right, under the twisted logic that there was no "history or tradition" in the 18th century of prohibiting high-powered firearms that hadn't been invented.

So many American conservatives live in a seemingly incessant state of fear — about books and experts and science and liberals and immigrants and independent women and people of color and people with different sexual preferences or gender identities — that it's no wonder they appear mentally and emotionally unhealthy. Then there are the evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who form the most reliable MAGA Republican base: Their alleged belief in Jesus Christ has become so warped they now perceive their savior in the person of our twice-impeached, four-times-indicted ex-president. None of this signals a group of well-adjusted human beings. The HBO series "The Righteous Gemstones," a dark comedy about shallow, grifting televangelists stunted and spoiled by wealth, has to work hard to outdo what we see at Trump rallies.

Come on, it's not like we weren't warned about all this. Remember Trump's infamous 2016 response to Hillary Clinton: "No puppet, no puppet … You're the puppet!" Did that sound like a mentally well-adjusted adult? Or an adult of any kind? How about this lovely Mother's Day greeting, earlier this year. Who defends themselves against allegations of criminal actions by saying, "I'm a legitimate person"? Who frequently posts in all caps on social media, flinging incomprehensible accusations at political opponents?

As for anti-"woke" warrior Ron DeSantis, his campaign against Trump appears to be a spectacular failure, even as he apparently mimics Trump's fragile ego, accompanying vindictiveness and bizarre obsession with manliness. Like "personality" Tucker Carlson's 2022 special on "The End of Men," DeSantis' anti-Pride video was pretty darned homoerotic.

Along with the right-wing cable news machine profiting by actively diminishing the mental acuity of its viewers, "manfluencer" grifters like Andrew Tate, selling "alpha male" misogyny to lonely, insecure young men, have made fortunes encouraging them to become misogynistic white nationalists — essentially mini-Trumps, but with actual muscle tone (not just in risible fantasy). It's good to see some mentally healthy young people fight back with satire.

When a serial liar and hatemonger like Trump remains the choice of a large majority of Republican voters even after two impeachments, an ever-growing count of felony indictments and an ongoing attempted coup; when voters send deeply unserious, dysfunctional or delusional individuals to Congress as their representatives; when fascist-fanboy Governors like DeSantis and Greg Abbott model their states after authoritarian regimes and deploy stochastic terrorism to put marginalized populations at risk of violence, is it any wonder that ordinary citizens feel permanently on edge, in a state of chronic existential dread?

But the right won't give up — I don't mean on issues of principle or policy, since it doesn't have any, but in its crusade to "own the libs," take rights away from people who are not like them and enforce theocratic minority rule. In fact, that mean-spirited crusade is the basis of the right's tribal identity. As Adam Serwer of The Atlantic famously pointed out some time ago, the cruelty is the point:

“Taking joy in that suffering is more human than most would like to admit. Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.”

As I reread those lines, I think back to the cheering and laughter of the Trump supporters during CNN's pathetic "town hall" rally for Trump in May, as he turned in his typical shameless performance of lies, bluster, bullying and whining. Here's a suggested campaign slogan: "Trump 2024: Come for the Lying, Stay for the Crying." As Salon contributor Mike Lofgren has observed, the GOP's "heart of darkness" has moved beyond just whining; They want retribution, payback for all the real or perceived slights they have suffered, and they believe only their cult leader can deliver it.

Brian Klaas, a professor of global politics at University College London, writes that we end up with bad people in power so often for three main reasons: power acts as a magnet for corruptible people (often "Machiavellian narcissists, perhaps with a dash of psychopathy thrown in too"); holding power tends to corrupt people; we tend to give people power for the wrong reasons.

"Corruptible people are disproportionately drawn to power, disproportionately good at wriggling their way into it and disproportionately likely to cling to it once they've got it," Klaas notes. We can fix this, he argues, by fixing our political system, recruiting better candidates and instituting real accountability for wrongdoing. Good systems, he says, attract good people. Fighting corruption is an integral part of the Democratic Playbook published by the Brookings Institution. A political system dominated by money, "dark" or otherwise, is not working.

Most politicians would not entertain the thought that they are mentally unwell. They are simply playing the game; looking to gain advantage in any way that works and is not blatantly illegal (with some notable exceptions. But does that kind of Machiavellian behavior, part of the "dark triad," suggest a well-functioning mind and spirit? We too often shrug at politics, accepting the narrative that it's just a game. But it's not; it is freedom or tyranny, dignity or subjugation, life or death.

Those who dehumanize their political opponents by referring to them as enemies and who call teachers, librarians and parents "groomers" have mental health issues far exceeding those of young people struggling with questions of sexual orientation or gender identity. Men who work to limit women's autonomy over their own bodies, or for that matter conservative women who punch down to bolster their fragile status have serious issues to work on and should quit afflicting them on the rest of us.

To be fair, a great many of us in America face our own mental health issues across the political spectrum. More of us, almost certainly, should seek the counsel of friends and professionals. We are chronically depressed and lonely. Political polarization has separated friends and family members from each other. The religious right has embraced an evangelism of intolerance against other people whose mental and emotional struggles they don't understand. While Republicans play-act as defenders of the working class, they labor tirelessly to drive working people deeper into lives of endless labor and debt servitude.

As the late, great American novelist Kurt Vonnegut would have said, about this and about his currently banned books: "So it goes." I don't think he meant to indicate cynical acceptance, more like an acknowledgment of humanity's deep history of stupidity and intolerance — and the need to carry on nonetheless. So we work diligently to maintain our own sense of self, our fragile balance, our purpose and our will — even in a country where, far too often, the inmates are running the asylum.

[neuropsyche]

BREAKING: MAGA Congressman Matt Gaetz lets the cat out of the bag on his own party and admits that the impeachment inquiry into President Biden is a total sham.

This is going to INFURIATE other Republicans...

According to new reporting from NBC News, Gaetz stated during a Zoom fundraiser that he doesn't "believe that we are endeavoring upon a legitimate impeachment of Joe Biden.”

He went on to tell MAGA criminal mastermind Steve Bannon that the impeachment efforts are a "forever war" and will "drag on forever and end in a bloody draw."

He added that the failure to send a formal subpoena to Hunter Biden indicates that Republicans aren't serious about the impeachment but instead want to use it to attack Biden.

The remarks come right on the tail of Gaetz's successful effort to remove Kevin McCarthy from the Speakership and indicate that he isn't done attacking his own party just yet.

In this case, Gaetz is right for once. The impeachment inquiry has been a cheap PR stunt from the beginning. Republicans have no real allegations to level at Biden and have been relying on vague accusations of "corruption."

The simple truth is that Joe Biden is the most successful president in recent history and Republicans have nothing to attack him on.

[schraubd]

Steeled for Stealing

Last night, I had -- well, epiphany is probably too strong of a word. Crystallization, perhaps. A thought I already basically knew just became clearer in my mind. Namely: that the next time a major Republican candidate tries to overturn the results of an election, they're going garner a lot more support from the Republican establishment (in particular, the GOP judiciary). Oddly enough, it was the 5th Circuit's latest ivermectin ruling that triggered the realization. Even at the start of the pandemic, we wouldn't see right-wing judges pulling stunts like this. The seals were still in place; it takes time for them to crack. But as they start to come undone, there's no backstop of legal or ethical duty to hold them in place. Despite Trump's regular warnings (dating back to 2016) that he would not respect the results of an election that he lost, few in our political and legal elite really believed that he would go through with an overt plan to steal the election. Remember "What's the downside for humoring him?" It wasn't real until suddenly it was. And as a consequence, Republican elites hadn't really braced themselves to go all in for election theft. It's not just that it was too much, it was that it came too fast. They weren't ready. But with time and distance, the Republican Party has come to assimilate Trump's actions as justified (same as they've done for every other one of Trump's abuses). Those who actually did unashamedly oppose Trump's actions have been ruthlessly purged from the party. Nascent momentum to support consequences for Trump during the second impeachment trial have entirely disappeared as far as the GOP is concerned. The unthinkable became thinkable, and Republicans have had four years to come up with clever rationalizations and apologias for why actually overturning democratic elections is fair play and What The Founders Would Have Wanted. I've remarked before that GOP election theft attempts are akin to the carnival game where you swing a hammer and try to ring the bell. They weren't strong enough to ring it the first time. But they're getting stronger. It's not just that the next attempt will be less slap-dash and more well-organized (though it is that). It's also that the GOP has had time to mentally brace itself that stealing elections is appropriate, even necessary, and certainly just. In 2020, virtually all GOP judicial actors refused to go along with Republican efforts to steal the election. Come 2024, I do not expect to see that unanimity anymore. They've steeled themselves for stealing, and next time they will come harder than before. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/nhSVrPx