Late this afternoon, SCOTUS surprisingly ruled that the National Archives can release TFG’s  January 6th records to Congress.  TFG lawyers have been throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, in an effort to stop the disclosure.  Characteristically, Clarence Thomas dissented.  Jesus.

TFG at Mara Lago is probably a real shitshow right now.

Well, it’s an election year. Just like any other Texas election, the Republican candidates jostle among themselves to prove which of them is the meanest sumbitch. They pull no punches; in most districts, the winner of the Republican primary will be the de facto winner of the general election.

The race that caught my eye is for U.S. Representative for District 3. This is the district in which I reside and in which I must suffer to see the Republican yard signs in about 1 out of every 3 houses I pass. All of my adjacent neighbors, people I consider kind and often make small talk with, have signs in their yard that say SELF for United States Congress.

Self is challenging incumbent Republican Van Taylor, one of the two Texas Republican representatives that had the cojones to vote for the January 6 commission. This vote, along with the vote to certify the presidential election results (Note: Trump won Texas) has earned him a few primary challengers.

I haven’t seen any poll numbers, but I can tell you that the Republicans of Collin County have SELF yard signs. All of them. I’ve seen 50 or so signs for this guy and not one sign for Van Taylor or any of the other candidates that have declared. He is likely to win the primary based on this anecdotal evidence.

In a ploy to out-sumbitch the rest of the candidates, Self has decided to raise a fuss about a major donor to the Collin County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner. In this annual fundraiser, a dinner is catered and B list Republicans are often paid to headline the event. The 2022 Guest of Honor and headliner is Glenn Beck.

Keith Self wrote the following letter, in which he excoriates the Collin County Republican Party for taking money from a law firm that *checks notes* serves LGBTQ clients. The letter is so poorly written that it is difficult to follow. He is declaring his opposition to marriage equality, and somehow gets a couple of digs at his opponent and shows off his pro-life bonafides, all in one rambling letter. I’ve shared some below, with my comments in bold:

. . . I was disappointed to learn that one of the largest donors to the Collin County Lincoln Day Dinner is a law firm that seems to advocate, almost exclusively, on behalf of homosexual couples. It is not my intent to cast aspersions [That is literally the point of the letter] but I could not sit idly by without saying something. I also feel compelled to remind those in authority that our GOP platform recognizes marriage to be between one man and one woman.

Our faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior has guided Tracy and me throughout our lives. We had the opportunity to have children at one time, but we could not adhere to the rigid rules that the doctor imposed that could have required abortion. [Isn’t this kind of over-sharing? And completely irrelevant?] I share this with you because we deem every life precious, even the lives of those who do not share our values. [We value those who do not share our values, but don’t dare take money from people who are friendly to them?]

What we don’t view as precious are the agendas of those who use positions of power to advance agendas contrary to God’s word. God’s word is clear on homosexuality, but just as clear that Christ came to save.”

The law firm in question is called O’Neil Wysocki. Michelle O’Neil responded as such:

“I am stunned and ashamed for Keith Self and for those who support him in his hateful, bigoted, sanctimonious campaign. 30 years ago I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of this country. I have advocated for thousands of people from all walks of life who needed and deserved a voice in our justice system. I have advocated for those in the LGBTQ+ community to have justice in our legal system for literally longer than I have been a lawyer. I am proud that I have done so. I do not support HATE SPEECH or hateful thought or unconstitutional injustice to any citizen being cloaked in the name of the Christian faith OR a political party.”

Her response is nice, but why on earth are they donating to the Collin County GOP? I guess that’s a question for another day. If I was trying to raise funds for the Democratic party, now would be the time to call O’Neil Wysocki.

Keith Self might be just another sumbitch trying his damndest to appeal to the most hateful and backward of his political base, but his is a serious campaign. The “loud crowd” in Collin County are clear that they want Van Taylor gone. Van Taylor, who is just as anti-gay as the rest of them, signed an amicus brief in the Obergefell Supreme Court case declaring that just because Texas has to allow same-sex partners to marry, they certainly do not have to treat them equally or offer benefits that opposite-sex marriages receive.

Self’s strategy here is to position himself to the right of all of the other candidates. His website opposes Taylor’s membership in the Problem Solver’s caucus that “tries to negotiate big-spending agreements between Democrats and Republicans.” (Why is there a dash between big and spending?)

He is going to send even more National Guard members to guard the border AND close the border to commercial traffic altogether. He will oppose burdensome regulations on private businesses. He will pass regulations that ban private companies from banning Donald Trump’s speech. He will mandate that there can be NO mask or vaccine mandates and make sure doctors are “encouraged” to prescribe meds for COVID that are popular on social media and right-wing blogs. I think this week’s COVID cure from the right-wingers is to drink your own urine. I wish I was making that up. That link is from Reuters, for Pete’s sake.

Last but not least, Keith Self will demand an audit of the 2020 Presidential election in Texas, where Trump won by 5 1/2 points.

This might be amusing if every gay child in Collin County wasn’t passing dozens of homes with his signs in the yard on the way to school each day. Each house with a sign in the yard is one more voter who “opposes” who these children are, how they were born. I hope I am wrong in my prediction that Self will win the Republican primary in March. The race to the bottom continues each election, with no end in sight.

This one’s been brewing for a while, but finally rose to the top of my list to talk about.  Remember early in the fall when “Let’s Go Brandon!” started circulating through conservatives, signs and bumper stickers started popping up, and the meme starting appearing everywhere?  I even saw a baseball cap worn at Game One of the World Series by an otherwise respectable young business man with the slogan emblazoned on it.

What’s the orgin of this meme?  Well, Brandon is actually a real person, Brandon Brown. He’s the perfect American story – started racing go-carts when he was 8 years old, and over the past 20 years worked his way all the way up to driving in NASCAR stock car races.  But he’s not some fancy schmanzy high paid driver sponsored by Mountain Dew.  He has his own car, funded by himself and his father with minor sponsors.  He started running out of money this year, and as a final appeal for sponsors, he posted an ad on social media saying “put your name on my rear”, and that landed him two sponsors with enough money to keep racing.  With that extra money, he raced at Talladega and brought home the victory.  In the excitement of the win, he didn’t notice the event that threatens to wreck everything he’s earned.

In the live post race interview on the track broadcast on national television, some assholes in the stands started chanting, “Fuck Joe Biden!” over and over.  As the chant grew, the interviewer tried to make light of the chant, saying the crowd was chanting, “Let’s Go Brandon!” and a meme was born.  Like everything else that occurs in the right wing echo machine, the meme took on a life of its own, even being repeated on the US House floor, and by governor Ron DeSantis who rebranded the Biden administration as the “Brandon administration.”

Ha ha.  It’s super funny to use someone else’s name as a swear word, right?  Brown at first thought it was funny right up to the point where sponsors started backing away from him, not wanting to get embroiled in partisanship, especially when the name of the sponsored person is being used in a phrase substituting his name in an expletive that implied the word “fuck”.  Right wingers often ignore the fact that the fully HALF of all Americans who disagree with them also spend money.  Sponsors of television shows, sports teams, and yes, NASCAR sell their goods to everyone, not just radical partisans who believe that their political opponents must be denigrated and even eliminated from the public stage.  That belief is called eliminationist, and is exactly what bred the violent insurrection that actually attempted to murder those who disagreed with their leader and overthrow the US government.  Most responsible companies don’t want to be associated with that kind of hatred because it’s bad for business.  Brown is even trying to get ahead of this issue by changing the meme from “Let’s Go Brandon!” to “Let’s Go America!” in an attempt to walk the fine line between not pissing off the NASCAR base and not losing sponsors.  It’s not easy, and most likely impossible.

The “Let’s Go Brandon!” meme perfectly encapsulates a key feature of the right wing noise machine – they repeat these kinds of memes so much that it develops callouses in the users’ psyches to the point that hateful and violent rhetoric it is no longer shocking to them.  Why do  I say that?  I say that because it’s true.  Think about it – at the beginning of the pandemic that’s now killed almost 1 million Americans, Dan Patrick actually said that old people needed to die for the sake of the economy. Instead of being excoriated for such eliminationist rhetoric,  Far right Americans AGREED, screaming, “Right! The economy is more important than old people!”  Tucker Carlson feeds a continuous stream of this radical hate speech every night on national television.  Hate speech is now embedded in the DNA of the right wing and drives the public policy they espouse.

People repeating this hate speech don’t give a flying shit about the consequences of that hate speech, but the damage is real and gets people hurt and even killed.  Brandon Brown is the innocent victim as this massive meme threatens to destroy his sponsorship chances  and career just so they can say “Fuck Joe Biden!” in public and get away with it.  The real tragedy here is not that this kind of behavior is a flaw of conservatism today, it’s a feature.

In a curious turn today, Rootin’ Tootin’ Rick Perry was named as the author of a text to Mark Meadows titled “AGRESSIVE STRATEGY” outlining how Trump, through a compliant Mike Pence, could steal the 2020 election for himself, overturn the will of the US electorate, and return himself to the office that he had just lost in a free and fair election.  A source knowledgeable about the investigation confirms that the text was sent from Perry’s personal phone.

With the misspelled title, I can believe it was Perry who sent the text, but I don’t believe he actually authored it.  Why?  Because Rick Perry is a dumbass who’s never had an original thought during his entire career.  I can believe that a staffer or right wing operative wrote it, and Perry sent it to get Meadows attention.  Perry’s office has already denied anything to do with it…next Perry will say that his phone was hacked a’ la Anthony Weiner’s denial of his dick pic.

Besides the poor spelling, it’s totally believable that Perry sent the text.  After all, after 4 years brown nosing and groveling to Trump, Perry fully expected another 4 years on the government tit before joining the ranks of lobbyists and wanted to stay in office himself.

I think I’m going to pop some popcorn.

Thanks to Horace down at the Phillips 66 for the tip.

On January 6, Donald Trump, Jr. sent an urgent text to his dad’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

From the Washington Post:

Trump Jr. to Meadows: “He’s got to condemn this … ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough.”

Of course, it isn’t the substance of the text message that is revealing – it’s that Donald Trump Jr. has to go through Mark Meadows to talk to his own father.

That’s really something, isn’t it?

The January 6th released a 51 page report last night, including references to emails and texts to and from Mark Meadows, who’s likely to be charged with Contempt of Congress today for defying a committee subpoena.  What did one January 5th email say?  It said that the National Guard was on standby to, “Protect Trump people.”  That’s right, apparently Meadows was involved in trying to use the National Guard to help Trump overturn the election.  That explains, more than any other explanation, why the Pentagon and National Guard leadership took hours to respond.  They were on standby to defend the wrong side, and when the violent mob stormed the Capitol Building, someone in leadership likely balked at helping them.

Now let’s think about this.  Just the previous summer Trump used the National Guard to violently clear Lafayette Square for a political stunt that included a photo op while holding and upside down Bible in front of St. John’s church.  Then he wanted to use that same force to overturn the election.  Luckily, he didn’t succeed, but that doesn’t mean he won’t try it again.  The truth will come out.  Tick, Tick, Tick…