Thom Hartmann reminds us that our Senate has changed the filibuster before at least three times. Thus you can answer the numbnuts who declare that any change to the filibuster now that Republicans use it as routinely as they draw breath would be "unprecedented." I swear, the older I get, the more I think people just torture the word "unprecedented" until it tells them exactly what they want to hear. Sometimes I think people torture that word even more than they torture the word "conservative."
Michael Pollan wonders if maybe we all ought to give up caffeine. Caffeine does have its good points -- apparently it can help you fight cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and depression, among other maladies -- but at least one scientist says you might be giving all that back in lost sleep! Also, too, maybe we're not really wired to do this work-work-work thing all our lives. Certainly our labor seems to benefit our bosses more than it benefits us, and really, is that what caffeine drives us toward? (Full disclosure: I kicked it once, but I like the taste of black tea with sugar too much.)
As I contemplate Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance's statement that "I’m not just a flip-flopper, I’m a flip-flop-flipper on Trump," I think Democrats had better use "flip-flop-flipper" in a hundred attack ads if he gets the nomination, and if they don't, they deserve to lose. And if they lose with Tim Ryan as their standard-bearer, then they deserve to lose all the seats. (Also, "most of the people there" on January 6 were "actually super peaceful," Mr. Vance? In other news, most of the air molecules COVID patients breathed in the moment they got infected were super-harmless.)
I'm not surprised to learn that "Just Say We Won" was Rudy Giuliani's entire strategy for convincing people that his client, and not Joe Biden, won the Presidency in 2020. But I'm pleased to see more reporting about our judges reckoning with the absurd weakness of their case. Months after the Big Man himself complained that judges wouldn't let the lawyers see all the affidavits his campaign had collected, we hear that at least one Michigan judge found that "the affidavits filed to support (claims of voter fraud) included obvious errors, speculation and basic misunderstandings of how elections are generally conducted in the state." People do have eyes to see that.
When I hear that Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) tried to intimidate House Democrats into opposing big tech-focused antitrust legislation by reminding them how much of the big tech money she's gotten over the years has found its way to their campaigns, I wondered how many Trump supporters will disrupt any of her town halls like they did Katie Porter's earlier this week. Approximately zero, I suspect, even though Ms. Lofgren is much, much closer to their version of the corrupt, out-of-touch Democrat than Ms. Porter is. Like I said, they're intellectually dishonest.
Finally, just in case I'm not making myself absolutely clear, Dr. Fauci said it was "horrifying" to hear CPAC attendees actually cheer news that we haven't met President Biden's 70-percent vaccination goal, but I didn't react that way. Here's how I reacted: they're assholes, what do you expect? I sometimes fancy myself a fisher of souls, but the older I get, the less I want to cast my line into cesspools.
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