One more time, from Carey Shenkman and Ahmed Mohamed at TruthOut: "After Capitol Breach, More Domestic Terrorism Laws Aren’t the Answer." The authors remind us that plenty of laws already exist, but typically our governments use these laws to crack down on Muslims and anti-racism protestors, not actual seditionists. And just as our brethren on the right (but not all of them!) applauded the USA PATRIOT Act after 9.11, we shouldn't applaud new laws that constrain our enemies after 1.6, because that always comes back to bite ya.
Surprise, surprise, among Donald Trump's last-minute pardon spree were "at least seven doctors of health care entrepreneurs" who committed massive Medicare and Medicaid fraud. One was a nursing home CEO who used part of the $1 billion he bilked from American taxpayers to buy a $360,000 watch (in case you were fixated on Joe Biden's Rolex!), and you could be forgiven for your skepticism that he really "has been devoted to prayer and repentance" or "is in declining health" at the ripe old age of 52. Law and order!
Uh oh: Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) told the Twitterverse that he met with the "Stop the Steal" seditionists on January 3, and that it was a "great meeting" and that they should "keep fighting." He deleted the twittering the day after their attempted Capitol coup, of course, and said a bunch of tepid things about the importance of law and order that I'm sure he'd have said much more passionately if the seditionists had been blacks or hippies. Plus, by way of excusing their actions, "it comes out of frustration." I'm plenty frustrated with our government, as you may have noticed, but I have attempted exactly zero coups.
Right Wing Watch runs down the various "prophecies" about that Trump second term that did not come to pass. Because he lost by seven million votes, I feel compelled to say with the Italics Hammer. I sure do hope our "liberal" media do a better job keeping these people out of mainstream discourse. I'm old enough to remember when folks who predicted an apocalypse that never arrived were actually ashamed to show their faces in public again.
Been thinking that maybe the whole QAnon conspiracy theory can fit any piece of data into it, and is thus utterly useless as a theory? Well, here are a few more examples of that -- and don't fixate on the folks who feel "betrayed" because their man didn't arrest all the Democrats, because they'll get over it in a couple of days and go right back to being batshit. Also, too, how stupid is it that we're saying the phrase "the best is yet to come" is "popular in QAnon circles"? "The best is yet to come" is one of the oldest phrases anyone knows! What's next, QAnon's appropriation of "yes" and "no"?
Finally, Julie Hollar at FAIR reminds us that "Media Allow Republicans to Use ‘Unity’ as Tool of Division." "Unity" is the new "bipartisanship" -- just as calls for "bipartisanship" actually mean "capitulating to Republicans," calls for "unity" mean "capitulating to Republicans." Ooh, and Joe Biden didn't put a Republican in his Cabinet! Next up in the New York Times: Quislings deserve affirmative action!
Comments