President Biden’s Ukraine triumph keeps Putin wing of GOP in complete meltdown

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who refused President Biden's offers of assistance.

Joan McCarter

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday February 21, 2023 · 9:27 AM MST

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The loudest pro-Putin wing of the Republican Party, which is pretty much all of them, absolutely cannot stand that President Joe Biden ruled the airwaves with his historic trip to Kyiv. His nerves-of-steel walk with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the streets of Kyiv, with air-raid sirens blaring in the background, broadcast around the world broke their brains.

Biden’s trip to Ukraine, the maniacs are loudly insisting is further evidence of his war on white people in America. Because he was in Kyiv instead of, you guessed it, East Palestine, Ohio. “You should be standing with East Palestine—an American town in your own country that needs your help,” tweeted Rep. Andy Biggs (R-RU).

“When our border is in crisis, Joe Biden goes home to nap in Delaware. When Ohio burns with toxic chemicals, Biden’s admin says everything is fine. So on Presidents’ Day, I’m not surprised that Biden is ditching America for Ukraine. He ditched America’s interests since the start of his presidency. They can keep him!” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-RU) yelled on Twitter.

That part about how Biden has offered Ohio’s GOP Gov. Mike DeWine assistance, and how he refused Biden’s offer of “anything you need” in the immediate days after the Norfolk Southern train derailment apparently has escaped them. DeWine still has not declared a disaster in the area, despite both of the state’s senators—Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican J.D. Vance—urging him to do it.

It wasn’t until February 17 that DeWine called in the Federal Emergency Management Administration. The train derailed on February 3. Afterward, the federal government, e.g., the Biden administration, did this:

Within hours of the Norfolk Southern train derailment, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) deployed a team to East Palestine to support state and local emergency and environmental response efforts. The Department of Transportation (DOT) also arrived on scene to investigate what led to the derailment. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been closely coordinating with the emergency operations center, Ohio Emergency Management Agency, and Federal partners.

As President Biden told Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro soon after the derailment, the Federal Government stands ready to provide any additional federal assistance the states may need.

But Biden has abandoned the white, MAGA people of East Palestine, Ohio, in favor of the people of Ukraine. And here it gets really in the space between Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-RU) ears. “The U.S. support for war in Ukraine has been like a U.S. proxy war with Russia. But now it’s becoming more like a U.S.- China war through the Ukraine-Russia war. End it now!” Greene tweeted.

Right. China. You know what’s next.

All this sets the stage for Putin’s puppet to ride to the rescue, presumably with paper towels at the ready. Yes, Trump is going to East Palestine for reasons. Which makes it a good time to remind those folks that it was in large part Trump policies, and plenty of donations from Norfolk Southern to DeWine and other Republicans in the state that got us here.

---

President Biden’s surprise visit to Kyiv, Ukraine, on Presidents’ Day was an important moment in American foreign policy, and also an equally important moment in public relations for the Democratic Party. It showed America’s support for a free and independent Ukraine, but not from an imperialistic position. Republicans haven’t had a coherent foreign policy platform besides U.S. imperialism, and now find themselves pulled in various directions as potential conservative presidential candidates try to figure out what exactly they want to pretend to believe in.

 

Maybe Tucker Carlson Meant "Demonic Force" in a Nice Way When He Likened Trump to Satan

 

Fox News host Tucker Carlson speaks at the Washington, D.C. Mandarin Oriental Hotel on March 29, 2019. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)  

 

  readersupportednews.org

Oh, the things you will learn in a court filing from the company suing Fox News for defamation (and $1.6 billion).

Bess Levin / Vanity Fair

20 February 23

Donald Trump has been called a lot of things by a lot of people over the last number of years. “Agent Orange.” “Sentient circus peanut.” “Staph infection on the ass of society.” Something that “came out of a clogged drain at the Wonka factory.” Still, no one expected the ex-president to be described in anything less than glowing terms by the gang over at Fox News, the network that effectively served as state TV while he was in office. And yet, at least one of Fox’s top talking heads likened him to none other than the devil back in 2021, all while slinging the guy’s election lies on live TV.

In a text message to his producer, Alex Pfeiffer, sent the day of the January 6 insurrection, Tucker Carlson—friend to war criminals and serial liars alike—called Trump “a demonic force, a destroyer.” The host added: “But he’s not going to destroy us.” We know this thanks to a Thursday court filing from Dominion Voting Systems, the voting technology company currently suing Fox News for $1.6 billion over the network’s 2020 election coverage. The filing offers an inside glimpse at what the network’s top stars and executives were saying amongst themselves about Trump’s election lies—i.e., that they were bullshit—despite claiming that the election had been stolen with Dominion’s help.

“From the top down, Fox knew ‘the dominion stuff’ was ‘total bs,’” the filing reads, citing “a mountain of direct evidence.” Positing that the reason the network “peddle[d] this false narrative to its viewers,” attorneys for Dominion said that “Fox’s correct call of Arizona for Joe Biden triggered a backlash among its audience and ‘the network [was] being rejected.’” For example, two days after the election, on November 5, 2020, Carlson texted Pfeiffer to claim that the team that had called Arizona for Biden was going to screw up his reputation as a right-wing crackpot (our words). “We worked really hard to build what we have,” Carlson said, according to the filing. “Those fuckers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me.” Pfeiffer then responded that “many on ‘our side’ are being reckless demagogues right now.” (“Our side” presumably refers to hosts like Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham.) “Of course they are,” Carlson wrote back. “We’re not going to follow them.” He added that the then president was good at “destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”

The filing notes that, days later, Carlson wrote privately that Trump needed to admit “that there wasn’t enough fraud to change the outcome” of the election. Later, he wrote that Sidney Powell, one of Trump’s lawyers, was “lying” about having evidence of fraud. A few days after that, Carlson expressed similar ideas to Ingraham, saying, “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane.” Ingraham responded, “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.” Carlson replied, “It’s unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it.”

And yet, by mid-January, Carlson was apparently all in on publicly pushing Team Trump’s election lies on his viewers. Just weeks after the insurrection and his likening of Trump to the devil, the prime time host had Mike Lindell on his show, where, per the filing, the My Pillow founder “spouted…conspiracies on air after previewing them for Carlson’s staff during a pre-interview.”

In a statement, Fox News said: “There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan.” The network also insisted that Dominion “mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context, and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law.”

ALDOUS J. PENNYFARTHING: President reportedly despises one U.S. senator more than any other. And the winner and new heavyweight idiot is......

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

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Friday February 17, 2023 · 11:40 AM MST

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A lot of great things have come out of Wisconsin. Workers’ compensation. The Wisconsin Idea. The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. People from Kiel dancing to hip-hop at their big-city cousin’s wedding in Appleton. (You may be tempted to drop acid before a Badger State wedding reception, but believe me, it’s really not necessary.) And oh yeah, the cheese. 

But Sen. Ron Johnson is not one of these great things.

Sure, Wisconsin’s worst-ever U.S. senator is Joe McCarthy, but he retains that title only because RoJo is too feckless to craft a Machiavellian plot that doesn’t require twice-daily visits to Culver’s. So it’s great to hear that President Joe Biden—whose latest colonoscopy allegedly revealed what was either a benign polyp or the spongy remnants of Rick Scott’s head following last week’s State of the Union—has a keen dislike for Johnson in particular.

According to Politico’s West Wing Playbook, Biden—who often pushes bipartisan bonhomie as far as it can possibly be pushed—hates Johnson more than any other U.S. senator. Yes, even more than Ted Cruz. Which is a little like hating Benito Mussolini’s pet ferret more than Adolf Hitler, but there it is.

Politico:

Biden holds real antipathy for one Republican above all others: Sen. RON JOHNSON. The president's distaste is so strong that aides recall him expressing joy at MSNBC host JOE SCARBOROUGH’s frequent description of the Wisconsin senator as having “rocks in his head.”

Biden’s disdain for Johnson was evident during last week’s post-State of the Union stop at a union hall not far outside Madison. Reading off a printout, Biden turned to the audience of hardhats: “By the way, you have Senator…” he said before pausing for a beat. Biden smirked. He cleared his throat as the crowd laughed and then finished calling out Johnson. “Ron Johnson, on Social Security and Medicare, quote, ‘We should transfer everything so we have to consider everything every year.’”

Aw, come on now. RoJo doesn’t have rocks in his head. Rocks are stable. His head is more like a vintage Dukes of Hazzard lunchbox stuffed with nitroglycerin and nougat.

According to Politico, Biden, who never served in the Senate with Johnson, acquired a particular distaste for the Wisconsin senator while Biden was vice president, seeing him as someone “who cared mostly about cable hits” and who debased himself in service to Donald Trump. And that antipathy has since grown like a radiant sunflower in Guernsey cow shit. 

Though Johnson did not cast a vote against certifying Biden’s win, he backed Trump’s false claims of election fraud and spread doubt about the legitimacy of Biden’s election. He went so far as to task an aide with delivering an alternate — and fake — set of electors to then-Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6, 2021 in a bid to keep Trump in power in 2020. Months later when that news came to light, Johnson claimed to have had only a vague awareness of what the document had been. And two years later, Johnson refused to commit to accepting the results of his own midterm election, until he won. There’s also his unabashed skepticism about Covid-19 vaccines, including a recent focus on, as he put it, “advocating for the vaccine-injured.”

Ah, yes, the vaccines. God only knows how many everyday Wisconsinites the multimillionaire Johnson killed with his aimless—and decidedly weird—vaccine skepticism. Though if God does exist, I assume He’ll tell him. Or at least fax Satan a list of names to give to Johnson in person. (Yes, they still use fax machines in hell. Thermal fax machines, to be more specific. Or you can simply email your multigenerational curse requests to Satan@Arbys.com.)

Meanwhile, Johnson’s monomaniacal focus on Biden’s son Hunter has also reportedly angered Uncle Joe, who has noted that, unlike Sen. Scott, Johnson would like to sunset Social Security and Medicare every year instead of once every five. 

When contacted for comment, Johnson was philosophical about his low standing with the president. (Not “philosophical” in the ordinary sense, of course. More like if Kierkegaard got wasted on Jäger and asked the Hamm’s Bear to finish his term paper for him.) 

“I would say I’m probably not his favorite senator,” said Johnson. “I think there's all kinds of personal animus from him toward me. He doesn't like the truth being told.”

Okay, Ron. If you do ever happen to tell the truth, we’ll let Joe know straightaway.

Sen. Ron wondering where his teeth have gone.  Wait till someone tells him Medicare doesn't cover dental.  One more reason to get rid of it.

Bernie Sanders: Nikki Haley’s demand for mental tests is ageist and ‘absurd’

Story by Martin Pengelly in New York

The Guardian

Feb. 19 2023

The Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s demand for mental competency tests for politicians older than 75 is “absurd” and ageist, the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders said.

“We are fighting racism, we’re fighting sexism, we’re fighting homophobia, I think we should also be fighting ageism,” Sanders, 81, told CBS’s Face the Nation.

Sanders has mounted two strong challenges for the Democratic presidential nomination, the first in 2016 when he was 74.

Haley, 51, launched her 2024 campaign this week, calling for a “new generation” of leaders but offering few policy specifics except a call for political term limits and mental competency tests.

She has aimed that talking point at Joe Biden, the 80-year-old president, but not at Donald Trump, the 76-year-old former president who remains her only declared rival for the Republican nomination.

Asked on Fox News Sunday why she was a better choice for the nomination than Trump or anyone yet to declare, the former South Carolina governor said: “Why not me?”

 

ROBERT REICH: Republicans are not the patriots they pretend to be

 

 

Former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich. (photo: Steve Russell/Toronto Star)

 

Robert Reich / Substack

readersupportednews.org 

18 February 23

Democrats must reclaim patriotism and affirm its true meaning

Last Tuesday, House Republicans stood for a 43-minute recitation of the United States Constitution. This came just after Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee instituted a requirement to recite the Pledge of Allegiance before each meeting. Further pledges, flag salutes, and Constitution recitations are planned.

Why are Democrats allowing Republicans to blanket themselves with conspicuous displays of patriotism, especially when the GOP has become the party of traitorousness and treachery?

Recall that eight Republican senators and 139 Republican representatives objected to the certification of electors in the 2020 election, based on no evidence. Many continue to deny the outcome of that election. Several are still repeating Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen from him.

Last June, Rep. Liz Cheney charged members of her own party who continued to support Trump’s Big Lie with “defending the indefensible,” warning that “there will come a day when President Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

Well, Trump is now almost gone. His nascent presidential campaign is sputtering. But instead of ostracizing them, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has given those who defended Trump plum seats on congressional committees.

Democrats should repeatedly speak out against these Republican traitors.

Democrats should also criticize Republican lawmakers who are equating patriotism with white Christian nationalism.

In a recent speech, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — whose popularity in today’s GOP rivals that of Trump — called on Americans to “put on the full armor of God. Stand firm against the left’s schemes.” DeSantis has prohibited the teaching of Black history, prevented teachers from discussing gender identity, and made it easy for parents to remove books from schools. He is now asking state universities for the numbers and ages of students who have sought or received sex-reassignment surgery and hormone prescriptions.

Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado says she is “tired of this separation of church and state junk” and “the church is supposed to direct the government.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene says, “we need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”

Democrats should make clear that Christian nationalism is the opposite of patriotism. America’s constitutional and moral mission has been to separate politics from religion — providing equal rights to Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Mormon, atheist, and agnostic. Real patriots don’t fuel racist, religious, gender, or ethnic divisions. To the contrary, patriots seek to confirm and strengthen and celebrate the “we” in “we the people of the United States.”

Nor do patriots ban books or prevent teaching about the sins of our past.

Democrats must also remind the nation that patriotism requires taking a fair share of the burdens of keeping America going — sacrificing for the common good. Paying taxes in full rather than lobbying for lower taxes or seeking tax loopholes or squirreling away money abroad. Paying America’s debts rather than using the threat of national default to extract political concessions from the other party.

Above all, Democrats should be saying that patriotism involves strengthening our democracy — defending the right to vote and ensuring more Americans are heard rather than claiming without evidence that millions of people voted fraudulently. True patriots don’t put loyalty to their political party above their love of America. True patriots don’t support an attempted coup.

Patriotism means refraining from financial contributions that corrupt our politics. Blowing the whistle on abuses of power even at the risk of losing one’s job. Volunteering time and energy to improving the community and country.

And Democrats need to reaffirm that when serving in public office, patriots do not use their office to increase their wealth. When serving as judges, they recuse themselves from cases where they may appear to have a conflict of interest. When serving on the Supreme Court, they don’t disregard precedent to impose their own ideology.

In sharp contrast to the superficial demonstrations of patriotism now being utilized by the Republican Party, Democrats must remind Americans that one of the major responsibilities of lawmakers and other public servants is to maintain and build public trust in the offices and institutions they occupy.

Now is the time for Democrats to reclaim patriotism and affirm its true meaning.

Some photos are better off without a caption.

Roberts, justices refuse to halt the Supreme Court’s slide into illegitimacy

 

Coke Can Clarence looks at Sonia Sotomayor and says, "Is that a pubic hair on your robe?"

Joan McCarter

Daily Kos Staff

Friday February 10, 2023 · 12:45 PM MST

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The days when the U.S. Supreme Court was above public scrutiny have come to an end, and not a moment too soon. It took a steady stream of ethical boundary-pushing by justices and their spouses alike, not to mention a careening jolt to the right with egregiously rightwing decisions, but we’re finally there. Now the Court, Congress, and the White House have to catch up.

The Court will be the last of those institutions to step up. The Washington Post reported this week that a code of ethics for the justices has been bouncing around among them for “at least four years,” but they have not been able to reach consensus. All other federal judges are expected to adhere to a code of conduct, but the Supreme Court has exempted itself. Because it can.

The Post’s sources, “people familiar with the matter,” say that it is still an “active topic” within the Court, and that “the court’s legal counsel Ethan Torrey prepared a working document of issues for them to consider.” But they have no deadline for deciding what, if any, measures they should take to constrain their behavior. They are subject to a federal law that requires they recuse themselves from  “any proceeding in which [their] impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” but they self-police, deciding for themselves if they should step back from a case before them. There’s little to no transparency from justices on the occasions that they do recuse, or perhaps more importantly, when they don’t.

RELATED: Drip, drip, drip: The Supreme Court’s legitimacy is eroding by the day

Take Clarence Thomas, who refused to recuse from cases surrounding Donald Trump’s election denial despite the very active role his spouse Ginni took in that fight, all the way up to Jan. 6. Not only has Thomas declined to recuse himself from numerous cases over the years in which the politically active Ginni was involved, for decades he failed to report her income from her political work with the Heritage Foundation, Liberty Central and other tea party-type groups.

And if you want to talk about Supreme Court spouse ethical issues, there are the partners of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, both of whom are lawyers. Jane Sullivan Roberts is a high-powered headhunter for high-powered lawyers, for firms, and for individuals regularly appearing before her husband. Jesse Barrett’s law firm opened up a branch in D.C. in the months after her confirmation, where it has a raft of Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 corporate clients that regularly have litigation before the Court.

Like Thomas, neither Roberts nor Barrett have disclosed the full extent of their spouses work, their clients, even their income.

Then there’s Associate Justice Samuel Alito, who has become enveloped in the politically-driven evangelical movement. That involvement might stretch to leaking the court’s decision to members of political action groups. It certainly involves lots of fancy dinners and vacations and travel with these friends that he doesn’t report.

Then there’s the sham internal investigation the Court undertook to find the source of the leak of Alito’s decision overturning abortion rights. The investigation, which did not include the justices themselves, was signed off on by a friend of Roberts’, Michael Chertoff, who also happened to have received a seven-figure contract for “security” at the Court.

A so-far secret part of that report apparently revealed that Chertoff didn’t do much to improve internal security—protocols to secure the Court’s work are regularly ignored by justices, by clerks, and by other personnel.

So, yes, it’s about time the Court stop policing itself in utter secrecy. There needs to be transparency and accountability and it’s not just liberals saying it. The American Bar Association adopted a resolution this week urging the Court to finally adopt the code of conduct.

“An independent judiciary is the cornerstone of the rule of law and our constitutional republic,” the resolution reads. “It protects the liberty of the people. Yet public support for an independent judiciary can only be sustained if there is public confidence in the legitimacy of the judiciary. Public confidence requires that the public believe judges act ethically according to standards firmly grounded in judicial independence, integrity, and impartiality.”

The ABA came to this resolution over concerns that public confidence in the Court’s legitimacy has eroded. “If the legitimacy of the Court is diminished, the legitimacy of all our courts and our entire judicial system is imperiled,” the resolution said.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, in between its critical work getting those Biden nominees through, has the bandwidth to hold hearings on this issue. At the very least, it should hold hearings; at the most, it should advance existing bills “that create original, constitutional solutions for dealing with the lack of accountability at our nation’s highest court.”

Coke Can Clarence and Mrs. 2-Liter Coke.  They don't talk politics together.

Nikki Haley launches GOP campaign by insulting Americans age 75 and over. Great start!

She wasn't bitching about old people when she was working for Donald Doofus.

The South Carolina governor and former U.N. ambassador launched her campaign Wednesday with, among other things, a call for “mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old.”

Rex Huppke

USA TODAY

Watch out, mid-to-upper septuagenarians. Newly minted GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley has questions about your mental acuity!

The South Carolina governor and former U.N. ambassador formally launched her campaign Wednesday with, among other things, a call for “mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old.”

That line was surely aimed at pleasing Republicans who’ve convinced themselves that 80-year-old President Joe Biden is senile (while also being a devious criminal and an all-powerful leftist singlehandedly transforming America into a socialist hellscape). But it was also a shot at 76-year-old former President Donald Trump, a candidate as well, and at a sizable swath of the GOP’s most reliable base of voters.

A Pew Research Center study of the 2020 presidential election found voters ages 75 to 92 were the only ones who clearly favored Trump over Biden, by 58% to 42%.

As a liberal, I can see why you might want to check the mental competency of anyone who supported Trump, but from a strategic point of view, launching your Republican campaign with a heavy dose of ageism seems unwise.

Haley 2024 - Unwise!

Of course “Unwise!” may as well be Haley’s campaign slogan, given that a new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed she’s supported by a non-whopping 4% of registered Republicans. And that was before she suggested people in their mid-70s might be incompetent.

In her speech, Haley called for “a new generation of leadership” while reciting what sounded like an “Every Republican Talking Point From The Last 40 Years” Mad Lib.

The South Carolina governor and GOP presidential candidate declares racism over!

The first woman of color to run for the Republican presidential nomination, Haley declared America is “not a racist country.” As she was saying that Wednesday, a white man in Buffalo was being sentenced to life in prison for killing 10 people in a racist mass shooting, admitting during the sentencing: “I shot and killed people because they were Black.”

Between that, a rise in anti-semitism and the fact that, according to Gallup polling, 64% of Americans “believe racism against Black people is widespread” in the United States, I’d say the jury’s still out on that whole “racist country” thing.

Hi, I'm Nikki Haley, and I'm not old like some people

But setting all stump-speech pablum aside, Haley made clear she’s going to leverage her age for advantage in the primary race. At 51, she’s 24 years away from requiring the kind of mental competency test she suggested, a fact I’m sure will weigh heavily on the minds of voters who think the average 75-year-old should be set adrift on an ice floe.

You can see the political ads now: “Hi, I’m Nikki Haley. Are you ready for a new generation of leadership? Do you think politicians like Joe Biden and my former boss who I would never insult, Donald Trump, should be sent upstate to farm pancakes and catch butterflies? Do you want a president who has the guts to look your pop-pop or mee-maw in the eyes and say, ‘You’ve reached an arbitrary age, so I no longer think your brain works right’? If so, and if you are under the age of 75, I’m asking for your vote.”

I can almost feel the Haley-mentum already. (If you’re over 75 and not feeling the Haley-mentum, please immediately get a mental competency test.)

Ooooops!  Here they are again.  What a cozy couple.