Yesterday the NYTimes published an annotated video documenting in extreme detail the events of January 6, 2021, where thousands of insurrectionists attempted to stop the Electoral College certification in an effort to overthrow the US government and install FG as dictator.  It failed spectacularly, but, since one of our major political parties is trying to sweep this effort under the rug and continuing to pay homage to the criminal who incited the entire attack.  This is a must watch for the entire 40 minutes.  Send this link to everyone, especially those peddling the lie that this was “nothing”, because it most certainly not nothing.

So let’s be crystal clear about this issue.  Ashli Babbit, brainwashed by bullshit from Trump and his sycophants, was part of the mob that unlawfully stormed the US Capitol to stop the Electoral College count, violently confronting police who were defending the buildings, the politicians, and staff who worked there.  She was part of the lead group of extremists who was attempting to smash there way into the Speakers’ lobby where US Representatives and their staff were trying to escape.  These extremists smashed the doors to the lobby, and when the windows were broken, Babbit was the first one to attempt jumping through  to pursue those representatives.  A security officer just behind the smashed door fire one shot, killing Babbit.  Babbit was violently breaking the law, endangering herself and everyone around her.  She was killed for that, because the security personnel had one job, and that was to protect the Congress and the Vice President.  Unfortunate, certainly, but she bears 100% responsibility for the consequences of her violent criminality.

There are several videos of the incident and all of them show Babbitt being shot while breaching the door of the Speaker’s Lobby her actions were unquestionably criminal and endangering federal officials.  Shortly after the shooting, though, The Noise Machine cranked up, and has been slowly building momentum to recast Babbitt as a “martyr”.  I even ran across a right-winger on social media last week who said that Babbitt was “executed” for “doing nothing”.  There’s a lot of words for what Babbitt did that day, but “nothing” isn’t one of them.  Trump co-conspirator, Paul Gosar, has gone out of his way to defend Babbitt, even saying last week that officers were “lying in wait” to kill her.  Setting aside the fact that he and other Teabagging Q Republicans should be brought up on insurrection charges, Gosar is playing with fire by repeating Fox  Noise-OAN bullshit, and it’s all part of the orchestrated effort by Republicans to downplay the actual insurrection and felony violence committed by Babbitt and thousands of others that day.

It’s important that everyone else relain clear-headed and focused on bring all these people, including the Inciter-in-Chief to justice.

Yesterday, Michael Gerson published a good piece in the Washington Post about how Republicans lying about the 2020 election are doing so with open eyes, and why that is corrosive to a free society.  He’s right in that Trump is a congenital liar, and everyone knows it.  The ones committing the most egregious lies are those enabling Trump’s lies, those party leaders and politicians who are passing the litmus test by knowingly telling the Big Lie to avoid the wrath and primary threats.

This lying, though, is not new.  Since Reagan, Repubs have made lying the foundation of the party.  Examples: cutting taxes increases revenue; cutting taxes for the rich trickles down prosperity to everyone;  “welfare queens” are lazy and always non-white; companies don’t need regulations since
the “free market” will drive them to do the right thing; Iraq was involved in 9/11; Saddam has weapons of mass destruction; if you’re opposed to war you “hate the troops”; Barack Obama was not born in the US; a gigantic conspiracy of thousands of poll workers, voting machine companies, elected officials from both parties, state legislatures, the US Congress, and even VP Pence caused the 2020 election to be stolen from Trump.  This last lie is now required to be told, and repeated, by all Republicans, no matter where they come from or role they play.  Those who refuse to tell the lie are censured or run out of the party.

When a party’s foundation is all based on a dictated lie as a litmus test, that party is dead.  The GOP has come a long way to this point, but I personally believe it has morphed from political organization to religious cult.  A lot of people reject drawing comparisons between the rise of Hitler to the rise of Trump.  I think they do that our of fear that it may be true.  I believe it’s absolutely the perfect analogy.  It’s well known that Hitler was a psychopath.  He tried to overthrow the Bavarian government in 1923 in the Beer Hall Putsch, which he planned to use as a springboard to take over the German government.  He was convicted of high treason, but during the trial became a national figure, and much of the public adored him.  Upon his conviction he swore to ignore the verdict saying he would be acquitted by the “Eternal Court of History”; indeed, Hitler served less than a year before he was released.  Eight years later he accomplished his goal in taking over the government, leading to World War II.  Hitler’s main weapon?  Lying.  Gargantuan lying, which he required repetition by his followers.  His lying lead to millions of deaths around the world and the collapse of Europe which took a generation to recover.

Trump is more like Hitler than anyone wants to admit.  He has the same personality traits including toxic narcissism and total disregard for human life.  Like Hitler, he freely used the levers of government to enrich himself, protect his co-conspirators, and punish his enemies.  He politicized everything from science to law enforcement.  If allowed back in, he will follow the same path as Hitler, and if we ignore it, the chance of history repeating itself is highly likely.

All the lights about Trump are flashing red, and his enablers are speeding along the road that will most certainly lead to disaster for all of us.

Latest lie from the GOP and its official networks – “Colorados voting laws are like Georgia’s, so MLB shouldn’t have moved the All Star game there.”  As we all know, the controversy began when Georgia Repubs, not liking the results of the 2020 election, rammed through a whole new set of voting restrictions designed to suppress the votes of those they don’t like.  They lied that it was about “election integrity”, but we all know that’s pure USDA Grade A bullshit.  It’s about voter suppression, though they’re working hard to make it look like what it’s not.

In response to the bill, many large corporations belatedly condemned the law (after their customers and activists protested).  MLB announced they were pulling the All Star game from Atlanta and subsequently moved it to Denver.  The immediate response of Repubs?  Corporations should stay out of politics (except for donating money to us).  They also started lying about Colorado’s voting laws, falsely claiming that it’s laws are worse than Georgia’s.  Of course, that’s not true, not even close.

Jen Psaki was asked about that lie in the WH press briefing, and she set the record straight –

Boom.

The 2021 Power Catastrophe was decades in the making, especially after 1999 when ERCOT with the PUC blessings established a “market based” power generation regime.  Independent power producers (IPPs) are paid only for power they generate, not for investment in weatherproofing or maintenance.  As a result, many plants simply shut down when it’s not economic to generate power, and shut down when the weather gets extreme as it has been this week.  That’s exactly what happened this week; when fuel gas supply skyrocketed due to demand, power generation became uneconomic because most contract prices for power are fixed.  Rather than operate at a loss, the IPPs shut down, knocking over 4 million Texans off the grid.  That result is unacceptable, and everyone, including Greg Abbott and John Cornyn know it.  Rather than take responsibility for the catastrophe that they helped create (along with Rootin’ Tootin’ Rick Perry) they immediately called for an “investigation” into their own goddam actions and decisions that they made.  The other thing they did?  They lied that the problem was caused by “frozen windmills” and solar panels.  Cornyn even retweeted a picture of a helicopter deicing a wind turbine IN SWEDEN, claiming it was in Texas.  Abbott got on Fox News, and told the same lie that renewables don’t work and the Green New Deal would destroy the economy.  That’s correct – Cornyn and Abbott are politicizing a crisis where Texans are dying to score cheap political points. Cruz, of course, when called out for mocking California last summer during the wild fires, characteristically crawled back under his rock.

Here’s a map of current power outages nationwide.  Have a look at this, knowing that the same weather that affected Texas also crossed the western United States and is currently moving into the eastern United States:

Notice anything interesting?  There are no extended power outages outside of Texas in the areas managed by ERCOT.  The line across the Appalachians is where the storm currently is and where power will be quickly restored.  Texas, not so much.  This is a massive failure in public policy caused by decades of mythological and magical thinking that the “free market” cures all ills and that the federal government is always bad.  Neither has ever been true and never will be.

So, when your Republican friends start howling about “frozen windmills” stop them in their tracks and call bullshit.  Because it’s bullshit.

It’s amazing how effective multiple billion lawsuits are at stopping illegal behavior.  Lou Dobbs, one of the worst human beings on the planet, has been well known for his incendiary commentary on television for years; he started at CNN as a normal business anchor but moved to Fox Business in 2011.  He was one of the original Obama haters and became unhinged when Trump started making noise about running for president.  Like Sean Hannity, Dobbs was all in on Trump every day, all day.  After Trump lost the election, Dobbs started repeating the same bullshit being spread by Trump, Giuliani, and Powell, especially the lies about Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems.  Those companies finally got a belly full of the defamation, and both sued.  Smartmatic upped the ante big time, naming Dobbs, among other deplorables in their $2.7 billion suit against Fox.  The network unceremoniously showed him the door this afternoon.  It’s over.

Good riddance.  So many more to go.