Facebook announced today that Trump was banned from Facebook for two years from the January 6th insurrection to overturn the results of the election in his favor.  He will be considered for reinstatement at that time if the danger for violence has subsided.  That’s bullshit.  Everyday since January 6 Trump has publicly made statements perpetuating The Big Lie, amplifying the lies from his surrogates and the entire Republican Party.  The appropriate decision would have been to ban him for life from the platform because he’ll never change.  Alternatively, I would be OK with the two years AFTER he repudiates his lie and stops telling it as well as all of his sycophants stop repeating the lie.  Two years from THAT action would be appropriate.

I’m not holding my breath, though.

This was written by Fenway Fran – a founding member of my band, Bitchin’ Betty and the Sequined Backhoes.  She moved to Washington state and I’ll be damned if anybody knows why.

It’s Pride Month, rainbow flags are flying high. Here in the Other Washington (the state), even our little downtown of several blocks sports the colorful banners. We live on the cusp of the state’s Cascade east/west divide. Our end of the county is deep purple, but you need to drive just a few miles east to be in MAGA country.

Moses Lake is an oasis in central Washington. A family was motoring on the lake, their boat decked out with Pride flags, when they were harassed by two men and a woman on another boat. At first, the flag fliers thought the people were yelling support, but as they got closer, the woman was flipping them off, and they were yelling about gays and flags. Then they raced around the flag boat half a dozen times, screaming their fool heads off, and finally sped away when they noticed one of the Pride guys had his phone out. That’s when Karma hit big time. As they raced away, their boat EXPLODED! And they were rescued by…the Pride Guys.

The account that made the WaPo is fantastic, complete with video and quotes from the Pride Guys.

Mini Trump, Dan Crenshaw, has just stepped in it, and he’s being unmercifully mocked.  Imitating Trump, he’s trying to whip up outrage over the fake issue of “woke” policies in the US military…you know, those terrible policies like racial and gender equality, non-discrimination, and inclusion.  He has asked that “whistleblowers” in the military report, through his “Whistleblower Form” all “woke” policies that are supposedly destroying the military as he remembers it.  And the results are hilarious, quoting from movies like A Few Good Men, Stripes, MASH, and others.  Here’s a few great examples of the reports Crenshaw is now receiving:

pic.twitter.com/VIEUHqZmAY

— Matt Separa (@MattSepara) May 29, 2021

https://twitter.com/FlaBeJota/status/1398756227920896000?s=20

Top 3 Whistleblowers on Team Crenshaw/Cotton so far:

1. Major Frank Burns
2. General Dreedle
3. General Jack D. Ripper

These patriots have had enough and won't stay silent any longer! pic.twitter.com/1e1iHtXuaZ

— Christopher Ankersen (@ProfAnkersen) May 30, 2021

https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1398786540419964933?s=20

It goes on and on and is most entertaining.  Crenshaw wins the National Embarrassment of Texas award for today.

Our favorite make-up lady, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniels, is whining publicly again.

Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel excoriated the Commission on Presidential Debates in a letter on Tuesday, threatening to advise any future Republican nominee against participating in general election presidential debates unless significant changes are made to the commission.

Before I begin reading the news story, I knew for a damn fact that they wanted to make the debate impossible because Republicans don’t have policy or a platform. There’s only so many times you can give your enemies silly names and say patriot and beautiful without beginning to sound like bully with limited verbal skills.

But, here’s the deal. They think that the people who moderate the debates are all leftwing partisans. I’m pretty sure they will demand that Tucker Carlson host all the debates, and General John Kelly on the nights Tucker is getting his hair done.

They are also upset that during last the last election they shut off the microphone of the person who wasn’t speaking.  That was so unfair to their candidate, who talks all the time.

And, here’s the big one.

At one point, the letter lauds Trump for “his background in television” because it led him to realize that the acrylic glass shields the commission was using to combat the coronavirus would cause the candidates to see their reflections once the stage was lit.

“Had it not been caught by the President of the United States, the CPD’s unforced error would have caused a surprising and awkward distraction for both candidates once the cameras started to roll,” she writes.

Okay, first of all, it wouldn’t have bothered her candidate at all because vampires can’t see their reflection.  Second of all, her candidate is overcome with his own beautiful when he sees himself.  Yeah, it’s awkward but definitely not a distraction.

So, I guess I’m back to what I suspected first.  No policy or platform.

Republicans are flogging their latest fake outrage about “critical race theory”, turning a long used academic term into a boogeyman using their normal tactic, which is accusing others of doing precisely what they’re doing, which is dividing people by race.  In recent years, they’ve weaponized academic terms to politicize any thought that might vary from their narrow views, like “critical thinking”, last year’s boogeyman.  We’ll talk about critical race theory in a future post, but for now, let’s talk about their latest focus, critical FLAG theory.  During Trump’s 2016 campaign, he sold all kinds of cheesy crap from China with his name plastered all over the items, but there were two big sellers: MAGA hats and Trump flags.  Both really caught on, but the flags were the item that Trumpists LOVED.  They would put them on their trucks and race around in what they termed “Trump trains”, blocking traffic and doing their best to piss off everyone around them, which is usually the goal for most of them because “owning the libs” is a key tenant of Trumpism.  They also do Trump Boat Parades, which famously sank more than a few boats on Lake Travis last summer.  They seemed to believe that the more flags they have on their truck or boat, the more likely he would win the election, so Critical Flag Theory was born which translates as: Trump’s electoral win probability is directly correlated to the sum of the flags flown per vehicle multiplied by the number of said vehicles.  I’m not making this up.

This year, as Trump speaks of being “reinstated” to the Oval Office in August and Mike Flynn talks at a QAnon conference of a military coup to do that, the TRUMP WON flag parades have already started in an effort to increase the probability of it happening.  Trump’s reinstatement has been predicted through the latest devised Critical MyPillow Theory, promulgated by none other than Cheap Chopped Foam in a Bag founder, Mike Lindell.  Lindell announced last week on Steve Bannon’s HateCast that he has evidence that the election was stolen and when he takes it to the Supreme Court they will oust Biden and reinstate Trump.  Never mind that there is no mechanism to actually do that, even if it was remotely true; all the Trumpists have jumped on board:

Clearly based on the photo above, Trumpists are attempting to raise the value of Critical Flag Theory by squaring the total of flags flown.  Yep, that’s the ticket.

Author’s note: Thank you to a number of our commenters for cluing me into this story in the comments of my last piece.

Back in the 1990s there was a whole national debate about whether the president should be given the ability to use a line item veto. The intentions were good at the time. Based on the legislative process, pork was beginning to run out of control. Of course, no one is quite sure when the pork problem really began.

One person’s pork is another person’s bacon. At least that’s what they say. The idea was that the president would veto the parts of bills that were wasteful and leave the good parts of bills intact. It seemed like such a good idea, but the constitutionality came into question. Furthermore, it didn’t seem like such a good idea in retrospect.

The problem is that it gives the executive too much power. The legislative process is like a dance. Legislators get to add stuff they want to any bill and fellow legislators and the executive have to decide whether they want to kill the whole thing to combat the bad additions. It’s a fascinating process for people that are political junkies.

The prospect of bypassing that whole dance to eliminate waste seemed like a good idea at first. Unfortunately, it bypasses the reason for the dance. It gives the chief executive legislative powers and that throws a whole monkey wrench into the separation of powers. Leave it to Greg Abbott to provide a first-hand demonstration of why the line item veto is a bad idea.

Recently, Abbott threatened to veto a portion of the bill that funded the legislature and their salaries. Legislator salaries are barely a thing. It’s more an honorarium than a salary. The biggest losers are the staffers that rely on those salaries to live. They lose all that if Abbott follows through.

The proponents of the line item veto never considered this possibility. Abbott says he is withholding their salaries until they do their job. What exactly does he think their job is? I am just a humble political science guy with but a Bachelor’s Degree in political studies, but it seems to me the legislature is there to pass and reject bills. Isn’t that what they did?

Naturally, that’s not how Abbott sees it. He is angry that the Democrats pulled a maneuver that prevented the voter suppression bill from passing. The governor will have to wait until the special session to keep more Texas citizens from voting. In the meantime, he wants to punish legislators and their staffs for the inconvenience.

In the meantime, we thank the governor for his demonstration. People on both sides of the aisle thought the line item veto was a good idea. It seemed like a creative way to keep spending under control. We never imagined a state or national executive would abuse their power this way. Thank you Greg Abbott for giving us an education.