It could seem that in political circles, courage has almost become its own cottage industry. Cassidy Hutchinson is just the latest to capitalize on her fifteen minutes of courage. Obviously, her testimony took a lot longer than fifteen minutes and I’m sure the decision to testify was an agonizing one. Yet, her courage is a lot more inspiring than that of Mitt Romney.

Testifying and simply telling the truth seems ordinary and I suppose in some points of our history it might have been. One of the considerations here is in describing what Hutchinson is giving up. She is 27 years old. She had a bright future in GOP politics. How many people are capable of being the chief aide to the White House chief of staff in their mid twenties?

So, while the book and the accompanying tour on MSNBC might seem craven and self-interested, we have to remember that her lot in life has been cast. Maybe she lands with MSNBC or another center-left outlet, but in the meantime she is a pariah in GOP circles. This doesn’t even mention that everyone knows her face and we can’t calculate what kind of effect this will have on her personal life.

The personal accounts of what both Rudy Giuliani and Matt Gaetz did to her are disgusting and yet completely believable. We have to remember, she was willing to tell the truth while everyone else was scurrying for the exit. This plays into the little things we don’t think about when someone like her is willing to simply speak the truth about their collective experience.

This is wholly different than Romney and most politicians are like Romney. He is retiring from the senate. He is retiring from public life. His book is essentially his mic drop moment. Everyone of us has that fantasy in our head about who we would tell off and exactly what we would say on retirement day. Most of us don’t follow through. After all, what’s the point? However, he is throwing his hat on sideways, yelling “deuces” and exiting stage left. Sure, he is telling the truth and in a party dominated by liars, but who are we really trying to kid here?

Anyone that is 27 is a kid to me. I’ve taught people that are now 40 years old. I’m trying to imagine any of them in Hutchinson’s shoes. I’ve had some ex-students do some pretty remarkable things. Some are lawyers. Some our doctors. I even have one or two that went into movies and the music industry. I don’t know how many would have the courage to do what Hutchinson did.

I don’t think they would have lied. They would likely have done their civic duty and testified behind closed doors, but this was a story America needed to hear for themselves. This is a story that will take her path in life and throw it on a completely new track. Why shouldn’t see make a few dollars along the way? It will help cushion the blow as she does a hard reset on her life.

Someone is cashing in on his 15 minutes of fame and those minutes are rapidly running out. Kyle Rittenhouse was a student at Arizona State University. Well that turned out to be false. This week he came out and said he was attending Texas A&M University. Apparently, that is news to them. So, he quickly retracted and said he would be attending Blinn Junior College for a year and then transferring to the big school in 2023. Well, as you might have guessed, Rittenhouse is zero for three.

I suppose there is a clown college up the road he can try if he continues to strike out at all of these fine institutions. I really don’t want to cast aspersions upon Blinn College and any other community college. They have a lot of terrific programs that give our students a chance to gain further certifications in the career pathway they chose. For those going onto a four year degree, they offer a very affordable way to get your basics out of the way. One thing they are not is selective. Every kid that applies at our school gets in. So, a failure to get into Blinn is really saying something.

Unfortunately, the end of my high school career was robbed from me. I didn't have the time other students get to properly prepare for the future.

I look forward to attending Blinn College District this year, a feeder school for Texas A&M.

I'm excited to join Texas A&M in 2023!

— Kyle Rittenhouse (@ThisIsKyleR) June 6, 2022

Geez, you can’t help but feel sorry for the kid. I mean, he goes across state lines with a semi-automatic weapon to guard property that’s not his. He subsequently shoots three people where two of them are dead. It could have happened to anyone really. Maybe we could all pause for a moment of silence to ponder the unfortunate future of Rittenhouse’s life. If only he had the time in between a murder trial, numerous guest appearances on conservative television and radio, and whatever speaking engagements he’s had then maybe he would have gotten into at least one of those schools.

Then again, and I’m just spit balling here, maybe those schools would rather not have a kid that’s already killed two people on their campus. Oh heck, who am I kidding? He just didn’t have time to fill out all of the paperwork to get in. I’m sure that must be it. What’s really unfortunate is that no one in his life has bothered to tell him he shouldn’t be bragging about these things. None of this is something to be proud of and really none of us care where he goes. We just like to have a quick laugh at his expense. It’s the very least that he can give us after all he’s done.

Must read.  A great article today by Jennifer Rubin the the Washington Post about stopping right wing myth making.

The Tampa Bay Times got their hands on a House GOP caucus memo that gave members talking points to respond to constituent questions about mass shootings and the need for common sense gun safety legislation.  The answers are as disgusting and disheartening as you would imagine.  They contain the normal boilerplate bullshit, repeating the mental health and video game mantra, even though those myths have been debunked for decades.  No Republican can explain, since mental health problems and violent video games proliferate throughout the world, why the US is a singular outlier when it comes to gun violence generally and mass shootings specifically.  They will dance around the issue, blaming EVERYTHING except the actual problem – the omnipresence of guns and the ease by which they can be obtained.

Worse, this memo coached House members how to answer the problem which is the answer in the room…violence of extreme right-wingers and white supremacists.  Here’s the coached question: “Do you believe white nationalism is driving more mass shootings recently?”  Here’s the official House caucus answer: “White nationalism and racism are pure evil and cannot be tolerated in any form.  We also can’t excuse violence from the left such as the El Paso shooter, the recent Colorado shooters, the Congressional baseball shooter, Congresswoman Giffords’ shooter and Antifa.”

The letter actually called the El Paso shooter, who was a white supremacist and hated immigrants, a person “from the left”.  They later tried to say that was “a mistake” – no shit, Sherlock.  What the letter blatantly did, though, and what they always do, was to discourage members from telling the truth and to try and frame a false equivalency that “both sides do it”.  Well, both sides don’t do it.  Not even close.  The Anti-Defamation League actually keeps track of domestic violence, and through 2018, not even counting the violence from this year, 73%  of domestic violence in America was committed by rightwing extremists and white supremacists.

So, let’s sum up.  The messaging experts for the GOP are coaching their members to lie, equivocate, obfuscate, and distract from the actual problem of gun violence in America.  That problem is fourfold –

1. It is well known that there are now 400 million guns in circulation in America today.
2. Guns are easily obtainable in many states, and Republicans have been systematically dismantling gun safety laws for the last 3 decades. The assault weapons ban was allowed to expire by Republican leadership and the GWB administration in 2004, kicking off massive growth in assault weapons manufacturing.
3. White supremacism and rightwing extremism exploded during the Obama administration, driven by the corporate backed Tea Party movement which normalized the anti-government, pro-gun culture.
4. Trump has encouraged this culture and has used social media to vilify everyone non-white and non radical conservative.

The combination of these forces has been explosive.  Our homicide rate, which is multiples above the rest of the developed world.  Even so, that rate has been declining, however, in recent years, as red states have stupidly weakened gun laws and encouraged the proliferation of assault weapons, our homicide rate is increasing.  Worse, the incidence of mass shootings has also exploded.  To date this year there have been 262 mass shootings.  There have been almost 9,300 deaths and almost 19,000 wounded.  The gun violence in America eclipses the entire developed world.  Travel advisories have been issued in other countries advising against traveling to the US due to our gun violence.

And what are Republicans doing about this?  What is Moscow Mitch, Trump, and the other shitbags in Congress doing?  Lying. Deflecting. And hiding.  They’re all hiding.  Now is the time for the spotlight of normal Americans calling bullshit on the do nothing Republicans.  Call your Congressperson and Senator.  Write to your local paper.

Raise hell.  Until we get His Orangeness out of the WH, that’s all we can do.

We all remember it – the time that the most respected member of the Bush II administration, sat before the UN’s Security Council blatantly lying about the fake evidence of Iraqi WMDs that didn’t exist.  Colin Powell permanently stained his impeccable reputation by carrying Dick Cheney’s water to invade a sovereign nation just because.  As is well documented now, too little and too late, Cheney and company lied their asses off for months to whip up a case against Saddam Hussein, to justify a full-fledged invasion which continues to destabilize the Middle East to this day.

The War Based on Lies killed over 4,000 American lives, maimed over 30,000, and created an entire generation of veterans with PTSD, and other mental problems.  This is not to mention the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis murdered on their own soil.  Trillions of US tax dollars were spent doing that, and we’re still paying today for a terrible result.  These thousands of people and trillions of dollars paid for Bush II’s re-election in 2004.

Trump and his enablers are doing exactly the same thing again, except this time they don’t have a Colin Powell to lie us into war.  There’s no one in this criminal administration who hasn’t already sacrificed their own reputations and careers and the altar of Trump Loyalty.  Mike Pompeo made the rounds of Sunday talk shows yesterday beating the war drums and miserably failed to make a case that passed the straight faced test.  He presented not one shred of evidence beyond the grainy video of an unidentified boat alongside an unidentified ship doing an unidentified activity.  It looked just like the manure that Powell shoveled in 2003 to the UN. The others banging the war drums all wrecked what little reputation they had last time around and have no credibility this time around.  John Bolton comes to mind as the poster child for lying us into war.

I’m no genius, but I knew from the very first moment that Bush and company were lying in the run up to the invasion of Iraq.  I’m seeing exactly the same thing right now.  Trump is lying.  Pompeo is lying.  They’re all lying to get us into a war because that is Trump’s only chance for re-election.  Let’s not give him that opportunity.

Last week with great fanfare, the Republicans gleefully announced that House Intelligence Committee was ending its probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and that it had “found no evidence” of the Trump campaign colluding with the Russians.  Congressional Dems howled, calling foul and saying that the committee concluded no such thing.  Trump, of course, took to Twitter gloating that he was completely vindicated.

Today, on Meet the Press, Mike Conaway, who chaired the committee after Devin Nunes was forced out, clarified the committee Republicans conclusion – they found no evidence of collusion because…wait for it…they didn’t look.  That’s right, Conaway got on national television and defended his conclusion that there was no evidence of collusion because they didn’t bother to look for it.

House Republicans are blatantly lying to the American people to give cover to Trump.  The longer this goes on, the more I’m convinced that this is going to end really badly.