First, some good news: the Writers Guild of America (or WGA) won a two-year battle with their now largely bankster-funded talent agencies. And they didn't have to go on strike to do it! In fact, with all the TV that's on now, they still got a lot of work; they didn't have their old agents around to help them get work, but they worked around that. Read the whole thing, and be reminded of two lessons: 1) banksters ruin everything, and 2) but not if we all fight them together.
When I heard that Michigan state Senate Majority Mike Shirkey (R) claimed that the January 6 coup attempt was "all staged" and of course not at all started by the "Trump people" we were all able to identify as social media celebrities, I wondered how he felt when armed right-wingers stormed his own Capitol building last April. But when I found out he also said he'd thought of challenging Michigan's Democratic Governor to a fistfight, I had my answer. Some people just like violence.
A sizable group of Never Trumpers get together on a Zoom call to talk about maybe forming a new center-right party oh why do I bother. They will fail, not just because the "center" part of the "center-right" formulation is to laugh -- come on, Evan McMullin is not a moderate! John Sherman Cooper was a moderate! -- but because, well, all the enthusiasm is on the Trumphole side now.
Former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel announces a 2022 Senate run, having recast himself as a Trumphole, though he so far hasn't recast himself as someone who can form a coherent thought outside of tired talking points. Maybe being a Trumphole will be enough, though I think either Tim Ryan or Dennis Kucinich would be formidable opponents, even in a Trump-captured Ohio; in the meantime, Josh Mandel is our new Face Even a Mother Could Punch. (Mr. Mandel also said it might take "months" or "years" or "decades" to prove that Mr. Trump actually "won" the 2020 election. Can't anybody tell what a con is anymore?)
American Enterprise Institute (or AEI) study finds nearly three in 10 Americans saying violence may be necessary to solve our thorny political problems; among Republicans, that number rises to almost four in 10. Of course, no one thinks they're violent unless pushed too far, and everyone defines "being pushed too far" differently. And though those definitions might range from "you attacked my family" to "you criticized my racism and sexism," they all seem apocalyptic to those who hold them. So we need to have a healthy sense of what's survival and what isn't -- and we also need to be ready to work around those who can't tell the difference.
Finally, in light of horrifying recent testimony at the Senate impeachment trial, David Frum finds Republicans "shrinking before the eyes of the whole country" in their complicity with the nefarious events of January 6, and their refusal to take real accountability for them. And for a moment I actually wondered for a minute why establishment Republicans seem to have such trouble getting rid of the dead wood in their party! Silly me -- the establishment is the dead wood, and the upstarts are doing just fine getting rid of them, though the journey from upstart to establishment will get shorter as time goes on. Remember when Marco Rubio was a fresh young Tea Party fellow? That was just a decade ago, and his good thing's about to end, whether Ivanka Trump ends it or not.
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