For the Record: "The people, through their elected representatives..."

 

if the "unborn" have "rights" the opinion doesn't say so, Chuckles. It's about the rights of state legislatures, not fetuses. Abortion remains legal wherever it's legal now.

And the people of Mississippi and Texas and Oklahoma and Iowa will be completely ignored by legislatures.

— Woke Mob For Taxing Billionaires (@Yastreblyansky) June 24, 2022

... Unelected Iowa judges last week overruled their own 2018 decision protecting abortion rights, setting things up for the state legislature to do exactly what the people expressly don't want them to do. https://t.co/MpCLm4Csb5

— Woke Mob For Taxing Billionaires (@Yastreblyansky) June 24, 2022

Sorry, make that "all or most".

Don't give me this garbage about "turning over decisions to the people through their elected representatives." That's a patent fraud.

— Woke Mob For Taxing Billionaires (@Yastreblyansky) June 24, 2022

Literary Corner: Party of Contempt

 

Facial expression of contempt. Via Wikipedia.

Smart Enough

by Charles Ernest Grassley

I was born at night,
but not last night. So if
I didn’t accept the endorsement
of a person that’s got ninety-one percent
of the Republican voters in Iowa,
I wouldn’t be too smart.
I’m smart enough to
accept that endorsement.

(Via Des Moines Register, 10 October, reporting Trump's rally Saturday, in which he generously endorsed Senator Grassley's bid for re-election, from Grassley's grateful response.) 

That's remarkably candid. The 88-year-old candidate wants to make sure everybody knows he's only got one reason for sharing the stage with the monster. 

He doesn't mind showing his contempt for his voters ("I'm only doing this because you're idiots") and he doesn't mind showing his contempt for Trump ("I'm only doing this because my voters are idiots"), which is surely mutual ("You're only doing this because I'm stronger than you"). Then there's Jeff Kaufman, chair of the state Republican party, suggesting Grassley has only done one thing of any importance in his 45 years in Congress, though he did it three times in the last four years, a job you could easily program a computer to do: "It’s pretty easy to introduce Chuck Grassley. All I need is three words, folks. Three words: Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett. Let’s say it together. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett."

So much contempt. Contempt for poor people, contempt for college graduates, contempt for city dwellers, contempt for immigrants, but such open contempt for each other.

Grassley Misleading

Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) hunting for vital information and not doing anything related to the Trump campaign in any way, shape, or form, of course, because that would be wrong. Via Tennessee Star.

As one of the first to lodge a complaint about young Hunter Biden failing upward into the Ukrainian energy business and making the Obama government look bad for no conceivable reason (May 2014, as soon as the news came out, and I don't know what Chuckles Grassley was up to at the time—actually I do, he was all in a dither about an imaginary "secret hands-off list" that supposedly forced CBP agents to allow a Muslim Brotherhood member to enter the US)—

As one of the original Hunter critics, I was saying, I feel I have a kind of proprietary interest in the story and its second life as a shiny object in the Quest for the Trumpy Grail of some kind of scandal associated with the name of Joe Biden, including the latest effort from the Republicans of the Senate Homeland Security and Banking Committees, which the chairman of the first, stupidest person in the Senate Ron Johnson, has just released. But it's really pretty pallid stuff, as Josh Kovensky/TPM says

The report — which purports to document the effect that Hunter Biden’s position on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma had on U.S. foreign policy — is a rehash of long-debunked allegations that served as the focus of President Trump’s impeachment last year.

But Senate Republicans summed up the result of their probe as well as anyone: “The extent to which Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board affected U.S. policy toward Ukraine is not clear,” the report reads....

And the Wall Street Journal

.@WSJ: "Findings don’t support Trump’s accusation that Joe Biden sought to remove a prosecutor to protect gas firm whose board Hunter Biden served on" https://t.co/ssqEmpco1z

— Andrew Bates (@AndrewBatesNC) September 23, 2020

Flynn Update

Illustration by Simon Landrain/The New Yorker.

The biggest piece of evidence offered by rightwingers for the theory of Obama's conspiracy to do something dreadful to Trump's national security adviser Mike Flynn was the report of a meeting Obama called 5 January 2017, with FBI director Comey, deputy attorney general Sally Yates, vice president Biden, and national security adviser Susan Rice, which Rice memorialized in an email to herself on Inauguration Day two weeks later, released in a redacted version by Chuckles Grassley and Lindsey Graham in February 2018.

Rice's memo said the meeting was "following a briefing by IC leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election," but Obama already knew something about that—Washington Post reported 9 December that Obama had ordered an investigation following CIA conclusions on the hacking—and it seems in particular to have been the meeting where the leadership (Comey, John O. Brennan for CIA, Mike Rogers for NSA, and DNI Clapper) told Obama about the allegations in the Steele dossier, as evidence of how the Russian active measures seemed intended to favor Trump over Clinton in the election, and which Comey briefed Trump about the next day at Trump Tower (the dossier was published by BuzzFeed on the 10th), by way of warning him that the allegations were circulating;

For the record: Cons and Fusion

Firm behind anti-Trump dossier also worked for Russia, Senate witness says

— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) July 28, 2017

In other words, Russia was against Trump in the 2016 Election - and why not, I want strong military & low oil prices. Witch Hunt! https://t.co/mMSxj4Su5z

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 28, 2017

Well, no, not exactly. Or at all, come to think of it. Bill Browder's testimony to the Senate provided no information we didn't already have, and had no bearing one way or another on who Russia supported in the 2016 election, probably, but Trump might do better to avoid the question (which is one of those things the press can't talk straight about, because it involves some unreported speculation, but I can).