500,000

Yesterday, The White House acknowledged 500,000 Covid-19 deaths in this country with this moment of silence:

Last August, the previous President acknowledged Covid-19 deaths with this moment of cruelty:

Donald Trump Is Guilty of Pandemicide

Good Morning, y'all!

This may or may not have hit your eyeballs in the past few days. It's from Laurie Garrett, a Polk and Pulitzer prize winning science journalist out of New York City.

Read the piece. Then read it again.

It begins with this:

At long last, we see glimmers of hope. The COVID-19 epidemic in the United States has fallen below the numbers of daily new cases tallied on the eve of the presidential election, the point at which this viral nightmare soared. Using the New York Times’ coronavirus data tracker, on Nov. 1, 2020, there were 74,195 new cases counted in the country; by Feb. 16, new case reports came in at 64,376.

But in between those dates, a national horror unfolded, peaking on Jan. 8 with 300,619 new cases reported in just 24 hours. This staggering wave, one full year into the pandemic, was completely unnecessary for the world’s richest country. Achieving any sense of closure will require holding Donald Trump accountable for the failure.

There is vast evidence of Trump’s negligence during the pandemic’s third wave.

Garrett focuses solely on Trump's actions during the election and then leading up to President Biden's inauguration:

So, I level the charge of pandemicide against Trump for his failure to say or do anything to halt the soaring burden of infection and death across the United States from Election Day to his departure from office. During a period when experts inside his government warned that holiday travel and interactions over Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s could lead to massive spread of the virus, and states clamored for aid to disseminate vaccines, Trump was mum.

And ends with this:

But let history record that no sitting U.S. president—since April 30, 1789, when George Washington took the first oath on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City—has willfully allowed such preventable carnage to unfold on the American people.

Let history record that Donald Trump is guilty of the crime of pandemicide.

Happy Monday!

Meanwhile, Outside...

They say "open with a joke" so here's one:

Global warming isn't real because I was cold today! Also great news: World hunger is over because I just ate.

— Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) November 19, 2014

Yes, I know it's freezing in Texas (but I hear it's lovely in Cancun) but that's local weather. And it's localized in the American midwest. For the global climate there's a different story to tell.

From the scientists at NOAA:

The January 2021 global land and ocean surface temperature was 0.80°C (1.44°F) above the 20th century average and ranked as the seventh warmest January in the 142-year global records. January 2021 also marked the 45th consecutive January and the 433rd consecutive month with temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th-century average.

Here's a chart:

The y-axis is temperature and the x-axis is time. We're now tucked in at the very right hand column on that chart. Notice the upward trend of the maroon bars. Know what that means?

The planet's warming up. Has been for decades. The science says so.

The message finally has a found a place in the Oval Office. As can be seen in the two desperately different responses from two desperately different Presidents.

From the current President:

The United States and the world face a profound climate crisis.  We have a narrow moment to pursue action at home and abroad in order to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of that crisis and to seize the opportunity that tackling climate change presents.  Domestic action must go hand in hand with United States international leadership, aimed at significantly enhancing global action.  Together, we must listen to science and meet the moment.

And from the former:

Trump traveled to Northern California to be briefed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state and federal officials. At one point, state Natural Resources Agency Secretary Wade Crowfoot urged the president to “recognize the changing climate and what it means to our forests.”

“If we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think it’s all about vegetation management, we’re not going to succeed together protecting Californians,” Crowfoot added.

Trump responded, “It will start getting cooler, just you watch.”

Crowfoot politely pushed back that he wished the science agreed with the president. Trump countered, “I don’t think science knows, actually.”

Trump is wrong. The planet is warming up. Has been for decades. The science says so.

Rush Limbaugh, In His Own Words

On Marriage Equality:

They seek to impose their perverted views, their depraved views on family and marriage. Nobody’s denying anybody the right to get married. Marriage? There’s a definition of it, for it. It means something. Marriage is a union of a man and woman. It’s always been that. If you want to get married and you’re a man, marry a woman. Nobody’s stopping you. 

On Women and Contraception:

What does it say about the college co-ed Susan [sic] Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. Okay, so she's not a slut. She's `round-heeled.' I take it back.

On President Obama's Birth Certificate:

Despite ample evidence to the contrary, the country’s most popular talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh, told his listeners on Tuesday that Mr. Obama “has yet to have to prove that he’s a citizen.”

On Thanksgiving:

“What Bradford and his community found,” and I’m going to use basically his own words, “was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else… [W]hile most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years — trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it — the Pilgrims decided early on,” William Bradford decided, “to scrap it permanently,” because it brought out the worst in human nature, it emphasized laziness, it created resentment.

What a great Amurr-i-kun!

Calling Rep Guy Reschenthaler on His BS

On February 14, Guy tweeted:

The Republican Party is ascending. We are the big tent party where it is okay to hold different ideas and viewpoints.

We will never be the party of litmus tests or cancel culture. We are the party that encourages differing ideas and promotes robust debate. pic.twitter.com/TbqhZvHRvG

— Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (@GReschenthaler) February 14, 2021

And a few hours later KDKA reported this: 

Republican leaders from several Pennsylvania counties have voted to censure Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) over his vote to convict President Donald Trump during his second impeachment trial.

Following his vote to convict, Toomey said in part of the former President that “His betrayal of the Constitution and his oath of office required conviction.”

KDKA added a few paragraphs later:

Republican leaders from other counties including Lawrence, Washington, York, and Centre County have also voted to censure Toomey.

Did you know that Guy Reschenthaler represents Pennsylvania's 14th Congressional district and that district includes all of Washington County? 

Newsweek has more on the guy running the Trump show in Washington County:

The chair of the Republican Party in Washington County, Pennsylvania has strongly criticized Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) for voting to convict former President Donald Trump.

David Ball told local CBS affiliate KDKA on Monday that state Republicans had sent Toomey to Washington to represent them and argued that he should have toed the party line.

"We did not send him there to vote his conscience. We did not send him there to do the right thing or whatever he said he was doing," Ball said. "We sent him there to represent us."

Again, this is Guy's district and Guy said the GOP is a big party that encourages differing ideas and promotes robust debate. 

Perhaps someone should tell that to David Ball of the Washington County GOP.

Did you know that the Washington County GOP website has contact info for Mr Ball?

If you're so inclined to point out his (and his party's) BS, feel free to contact him at the email address provided to you by the the Washington County GOP.

Of course, Ryan Deto covered this already:

Less than 1 day apart pic.twitter.com/UeymMhmUsJ

— Ryan Deto (@RyanDeto) February 15, 2021

A Few Words About January 6

These words were spoken recently on The Senate floor:

January 6 was a disgrace. American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of domestic business they did not like. Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor, they tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the Vice President. They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth because he was angry he had lost an election. 

Former President Trump’s actions preceded the riot for a disgraceful — disgraceful dereliction of duty.

And: 

There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. The people that stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President. And having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole, which the defeated President kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth. 

The issue is not only the President’s intemperate language on January 6, it is not just his endorsement of remarks in which an associate urged "trial by combat." It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe, the increasingly wild myths — myths  about a reverse landslide election that was somehow being stolen, some secret coup by our now-President.

And:

This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories, orchestrated by an outgoing President  who seemed determined to either overturn the voters’ decision or else torch our institutions on the way out. The unconscionable behavior did not end when the violence actually began. Whatever our ex-President claims he thought might happen that day, whatever reaction he says he meant to produce by that afternoon, we know he was watching the same live television as the rest of us. A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. 

And:

These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him. It was obvious that only President Trump could end this. He was the only one who could. Former aides publicly begged him to do so. Loyal  allies frantically called the administration. The President did not act swiftly. He did not do his job. He didn’t take steps so Federal law could be faithfully executed and order be restored. No. Instead, according to  public reports, he watched television happily — happily as the chaos unfolded. He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election. Now even after it was clear to any reasonable  observer that Vice President Pence was in serious danger, even as the mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters, the President sent a further tweet  attacking his own Vice President. 

So who said all this? A House impeachment manager? Keith Olbermann? AOC???

No. It was Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell after he voted to acquit Donald Trump for all the actions he described.

He said that The Senate had no authority to "disqualify or convict" a former President, when he was the one who delayed the Senate trial until after Biden's inauguration.

Feel free to quote McConnell at any of your MAGA friends/colleagues when they spit the "it was all a hoax" line at you.

A Chuck McCullough Update (It's About EFFING Time!!)

Yesterday, as I happily toiled at home (at my lockdown job), I received an email from an astute reader. The subject line to this email read simply:

Chuck McCullough

(Long time readers of this blog will know instantly to whom that refers.)

Intrigued, I opened the email and the message read in its entirety:

Tee-hee.

Whah?  What happened? Hey Davey, what's the story?

There's an update to Chuck McCullough's story!  Take a look at this from Mick Sintelli of the P-G:

The long and winding legal road of former Allegheny County Councilman Charles McCullough ended Thursday when the state Supreme Court denied his appeal, affirming his theft conviction from more than five years ago.

Really, Mick? "The long and winding...road"? A Beatles reference in your first half dozen words? You Can't Do That. Remember Orwell's first rule in writing well:

Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

It's just Something had to be pointed out, Mick, but couldn't you just Let It Be?  I've Got A Feeling that It Won't Be Long for Chuck McCullough to get a Ticket To Ride to some minimum security prison somewhere but In My Life, making light of someone's Misery is a bad idea.

I Want To Tell You that I'm So Tired of seeing cheap Beatles literary references Here, There and Everywhere. It's All Too Much - Help!

In The End, you did what you did and you're gonna Carry That Weight (for a long time), Because it's just Nowhere, Man. 

Back to Chuck. Mick Not-Jagger of the P-G continues:

The denial from the state’s highest court means McCullough, 65, probably will have to serve the 2-1/2 to 5 year prison sentence that has been on hold for years while the case made its way through the appeal process.

"On hold for years" to say the least.

Let's look at some dates:

• February 9, 2009 - Chuck arrested. That's 12 years and 4 days ago. In other words, this was only 20 days after Barrack Obama's first inauguration. The rest of his two terms as well as all of Trump's hellscape time in the Oval happened between then and now.
  
• April 13, 2015 - Chuck's trial begins. That's 5 years, 10 months ago and 6 years, 2 months and 4 days after his arrest.
  
• July 31, 2015 - Chuck found guilty. That's 5 years, 6 months and 13 days ago and 6 years 5 months and 6 days after his arrest.
• December 15, 2015 - Chuck sentenced. That's 5 years, 1 month and 29 days ago and 6 years, 10 months, and 6 days after his arrest.

Considering Chuck's looking at 2 1/2 to 5 years away, the above time spans seem more or less absurd. Here's the thing: had he started doing his time when he was sentenced (and is there anyone who believes he would have had to do the full 5 years?), he'd be out by now, doing whatever it is disgraced former GOP politicians do once they've been released from prison. Fox News? OAN? Newsmax? 

One final Beatle reference. Chuck McCullough is 65. If only he were 64.

Blue Lives Matter! (But Not So Much To The Trump-Supporters, It Seems)

If you support Donald Trump or defend the insurgency that took place in the Capitol on January 6, you can no longer claim to be part of any sort of "Blue Lives Matter" movement. It's simple.

Here's why. There's this from The New York Times:

One officer lost the tip of his right index finger. Others were smashed in the head with baseball bats, flag poles and pipes. Another lost consciousness after rioters used a metal barrier to push her into stairs as they tried to reach the Capitol steps during the assault on Jan. 6.

“We don’t have to hurt you — why are you standing in our way?” one rioter told the officer as he helped her to her feet, according to court documents. She tried to regroup, but blacked out while making an arrest hours later. Doctors determined she had a concussion.

And:

The Capitol assault resulted in one of the worst days of injuries for law enforcement in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. At least 138 officers — 73 from the Capitol Police and 65 from the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington — were injured, the departments have said. They ranged from bruises and lacerations to more serious damage such as concussions, rib fractures, burns and even a mild heart attack.

Then there's this from USAToday:

Caroline Edwards suffered a head injury when supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Fueled by adrenaline, the Capitol Police officer said she battled armed insurrectionists, white supremacists and other rioters for hours.

And this from a few weeks ago at The Washington Post: 

The physical toll on officers who defended the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack by a pro-Trump mob is becoming clearer, with reports by police officials and federal prosecutors indicating that about 140 officers were injured, the head of the Capitol Police officers’ union said.

“I have officers who were not issued helmets prior to the attack who have sustained head injuries,” Gus Papathanasiou, union chairman, said in a statement Wednesday. “One officer has two cracked ribs and two smashed spinal discs and another was stabbed with a metal fence stake, to name some of the injuries.”

The mob that followed Donald Trump's orders to go the the Capitol to "Stop The Steal" attacked the police guarding that Capitol. It's obvious. You can watch the video yourself. It's undeniable. Trump's mob caused much injury, both physical and mental. That's obvious and undeniable as well.

This attack never would have happened but for Donald Trump. Donald Trump brought about all those injuries on those police officers.

Blue Lives Matter? Not so much to those supporting the twice impeached Trump.

Some Thoughts On Yesterday's Trial Proceedings

First, Dan Rather:

The evidence is damning, chilling, and overwhelming. Only cowardice and complicity stands in the way of conviction.

— Dan Rather (@DanRather) February 10, 2021

Yep. That's about right.

More from Dan Rather:

I firmly believe that the vast majority of American citizens will see this clearly for what it is. But our voices are on the sidelines for now, other than the pressure of conscience we can bring to bear on the 100 senators who will stand in judgement. That these same women and men were also in the crosshairs of the murderous mob and that the trial is taking place at the scene of the crime, makes the events transpiring today on Capitol Hill even more surreal. 

• For the senators, there can be no hiding from this historic decision... silence or procedural excuses equal complicity.  
• For the rioters, there can be no leniency... terrorists are inspired by weakness.
• For the instigators, there can be no immunity... to drum up a mob hellbent on violent injustice is to encourage insurrection. 
• For those in the right-wing media who aided and abetted the lies, there can be no normalizing... their role in setting the stage for the insurrection is cemented by hours of television and thousands of tweets. 
• For those who have dabbled in the false equivalence framework so prevalent in Washington, this must be the end of that... there can be no comparison between the actions of the previous president and his enablers, abetters, and cheerleaders, and any "other side." Thankfully, I think many in the press have long ago realized this and have reported accordingly.

Some might argue that this is a rush to judgement, that the president's counsel has a right to present their case. That is indeed true. But you would have to be willfully ignorant, or cynical to the point of malevolence, to not see and hear with clarity the evidence as it stands.

The Senate must convict Donald Trump.

If This Isn't Treason, There Is No Treason

 

The Trial Starts Today

It begins today with this:

In a grievous betrayal of his Oath of Office, President Trump incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol during the Joint Session, thus impeding Congress’s confirmation of Joseph R. Biden, Jr. as the winner of the presidential election.As it stormed the Capitol, the mob yelled out“President Trump Sent Us,” “Hang Mike Pence,” and “Traitor Traitor Traitor.”The insurrectionists assaulted police officers with weapon sand chemical agents. They seized control of the Senate chamber floor, the Office of the Speaker of the House, and major sections of the Capitol complex. Members and their staffs were trapped and terrorized. Many officials (including the Vice President himself) barely escaped the rioters. The line of succession to the Presidency was endangered. Our seat of government was violated, vandalized,and desecrated. Congress’s counting of electoral votes was delayed until nightfall and not completed until 4 AM.Hundreds of people were injured in the assault. Five people—including a Capitol Police officer—died.

And before anyone says it, yes this trial is constitutional. From Uber conservative lawyer Chuck Cooper (as reported in The Hill):

An attorney for former national security adviser John Bolton is arguing that the Senate impeachment trial of former President Trump is solidly grounded in the Constitution and should proceed. 

"The strongest argument against the Senate’s authority to try a former officer relies on Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution," attorney Chuck Cooper wrote in The Wall Street Journal. 

The section of the Constitution Cooper cited dictates the president, vice president and all civil officers of the United States "shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

"The trial’s opponents argue that because this provision requires removal, and because only incumbent officers can be removed, it follows that only incumbent officers can be impeached and tried," Cooper noted. "But the provision cuts against their interpretation. It simply establishes what is known in criminal law as a 'mandatory minimum' punishment: If an incumbent officeholder is convicted by a two-thirds vote of the Senate, he is removed from office as a matter of law."

However:

"Given that the Constitution permits the Senate to impose the penalty of permanent disqualification only on former officeholders, it defies logic to suggest that the Senate is prohibited from trying and convicting former officeholders," Cooper wrote in the Journal. 

Lock him up.

 

Finding A Lurking Rchard Mellon Scaife (1932 – 2014) In The News

Geez, the man's been gone for 6 and a half years and I am still finding him lurking in the background of our diseased political discourse. 

Here's how I found the lurking Scaife.

Reading through this column from Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times, (a column that begins with a reference to disgraced Republican Marjorie Taylor-Greene's quiet endorsement of Frazzledrip), I found this:

Contemplating Frazzledrip, it occurred to me that QAnon is the obscene apotheosis of three decades of Clinton demonization. It’s other things as well, including a repurposed version of the old anti-Semitic blood libel, which accused Jews of using the blood of Christian children in their rituals, and a cult lusting for mass public executions. According to the F.B.I., it’s a domestic terror threat.

But QAnon is also the terminal stage of the national derangement over Clinton that began as soon as she entered public life. “It’s my belief that QAnon really took off because it was based on Hillary Clinton,” said [Mike Rothschild, whose book about QAnon, “The Storm Is Upon Us,” comes out later this year]. “It was based specifically on something that a lot of 4chan dwellers wanted to see happen, which was Hillary Clinton arrested and sort of dragged away in chains.”

"Frazzledrip" is a particularly crazie bit of QAnon crazie, as explained by Goldberg:

The lurid fantasy of Frazzledrip refers to an imaginary video said to show Hillary Clinton and her former aide, Huma Abedin, assaulting and disfiguring a young girl, and drinking her blood. It holds that several cops saw the video, and Clinton had them killed.

Later, Goldberg writes:

Looking back to the 1990s, it’s easy to see QAnon’s antecedents. In “Clinton Crazy,” a 1997 New York Times Magazine story, Philip Weiss delved into the multipronged subculture devoted to anathematizing the first couple. He described “freelance obsessives, the people for whom the Internet was invented, cerebral hobbyists who have glimpsed in the Clinton scandals a high moral drama that might shake society to its roots.”

And guess what we find in Weiss' story? That's right:

In early 1994, [Ambrose] Evans-Pritchard had made his way to Arkansas along with several other professional journalists. One was Micah Morrison, a Bennington graduate who became an ideological samurai for Midge Decter at the Committee for the Free World, worked for The American Spectator and later signed on with The Wall Street Journal's editorial page; another was Chris Ruddy, a ferociously dogged reporter who says he lost a job at The New York Post partly because he would not let go of the Vince Foster story. Ruddy now works for The Tribune-Review, a right-wing Pittsburgh paper, and his stories are reprinted in newspaper advertisements around the country, paid for by the Western Journalism Center in Sacramento, Calif. Richard M. Scaife, an angel of the far right, owns The Tribune-Review and contributes money to the center.

Christopher Ruddy, Richard Mellon Scaife, and The Western Journalism Center. 

We've seen these names before haven't we?

I realize there's a lot more to QAnon than the seeds planted by Scaife and the Clinton Crazies all those years ago. But those seeds were planted and they grew into the ideas driving the Trump mob that swarmed over the Capitol exactly a month ago.

Ain't life grand?

Representative Guy Reschenthaler's Hypocrisy On "Cancel Culture"

Seems like our guy in the House is finally talking to some local news media - in this case the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

And while the bulk of the reporting in this piece in today's P-G is about Reschenthaler’s laughable defense of the twice-impeached Donald Trump, for example:

“I think that history will regard his legacy in a very favorable light, and I think his impact is here to stay,” Mr. Reschenthaler said. “He would be given at least one Nobel Peace Prize had he not been a Republican — I truly believe that.”

Tucked in at the end is this part about so called "Cancel Culture" and how it's all the fault of the Democratic Party:

This week, House Republicans took part in two key votes involving the actions of own members — and Mr. Reschenthaler said he voted to keep the party together.

On Wednesday, Republicans voted to keep Ms. Cheney in her current leadership role after her vote to impeach Mr. Trump. Mr. Reschenthaler, who is on the House GOP leadership committee, said he voted to keep her.  

And:

On Thursday, Mr. Reschenthaler voted against a measure to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., of her standing committee assignments as a result of comments she had made in the past. The House voted, 230-199 with 11 Republican members voting with Democrats, to remove her from her committee assignments.

Mr. Reschenthaler said he did not agree with Ms. Greene’s statements, which included racist and anti-Semitic remarks and called for violence against members of Congress. But he said he decried the move by Democrats as “cancel culture” and something that could spark Republicans to go after certain Democratic members in the future.

Yea, "cancel culture" among the Democrats.

What does this mean, then?

In case you've forgotten, that's a picture of the pro-Trump forces who swarmed the Capitol in order to stop Congress from confirming Joe Biden's electoral college win. This was one month ago.

Looks like they wanted to cancel the results of the 2020 election, doesn't it?

And then there was this:

Even after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and forced lawmakers to go into lockdown, 121 House Republicans voted to decertify the Arizona’s electors and 138 House Republicans voted to decertify Pennsylvania’s electors in an effort to overturn President-elect Biden’s victory.

Guy Reschenthaler is on both lists. He voted to decertify the electors from Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Looks like Guy Reschenthaler was looking to cancel the votes of millions of US Citizens, doesn't it?

On the other hand, Guy won't hold accountable the woman (Rep Marjorie Taylor-Greene) who: 

• questioned the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11
• wondered (in public!) whether there's a Jewish conspiracy to burn California forests from orbit
• called for the public execution of leading Democrats including Speaker Nancy Pelosi (how's that for "cancel culture"?)

But he will vote to cancel millions of votes from Pennsylvania and Arizona.

So what about this "cancel culture" Congressman?

Today's Republican Party

We'll start with this tweet from yesterday:

This morning, we laid to rest the brave officer who lost his life on January 6th. This afternoon, the GQP gave a standing ovation for the conspiracies that killed him.

— MeidasTouch.com (@MeidasTouch) February 4, 2021

First, the brave officer:

Congressional leaders paid tribute Wednesday to slain U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick in the building he died defending, promising his family and fellow officers that they will never forget his sacrifice.

Sicknick died after an insurrectionist mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, interrupting the electoral count after then-President Donald Trump urged them to “fight like hell” to overturn his defeat. The U.S. Capitol Police said in a statement that Sicknick, who died the next day, was injured “while physically engaging with protesters,” though the cause of his death has not been determined.

And now the standing O:

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) apologized for her past controversial remarks and embrace of the QAnon conspiracy theory during a heated closed-door House GOP conference meeting — and received a standing ovation at one point from a number of her colleagues.

Greene told her colleagues that she made a mistake by being curious about “Q” and said she told her children she learned a lesson about what to put on social media, according to two sources in the room.

She also denied that she knew what Jewish space lasers were and defended her comments that past school shootings were staged by stating that she had personal experience with a school shooting.

So what was it that she was apologizing for?

QAnon: 

Followers of "Q" often believe that the world is controlled by elite members of a secretive satanic child sex-trafficking ring.

"Q is a patriot, we know that for sure," Greene said in a video from 2017, in which she recapped some of Q's predictions and why she supports them.

"There's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it," she said, referring to Trump.

I don't think this was just Q-curious.

On the Jewish space lasers, while she didn't actually use the term "Jewish space lasers" she did get achingly close:

Rep. Greene is a proponent of the Camp Fire laser beam conspiracy theory. She wrote a November 17, 2018, Facebook post -- which is no longer available online -- in which she said that she was speculating “because there are too many coincidences to ignore” regarding the fire, including that then-California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) wanted to build the high-speed rail project and “oddly there are all these people who have said they saw what looked like lasers or blue beams of light causing the fires.” She also speculated that a vice chairman at “Rothschild Inc, international investment banking firm” was somehow involved, and suggested the fire was caused by a beam from “space solar generators.” 

Greene added: “If they are beaming the suns energy back to Earth, I’m sure they wouldn’t ever miss a transmitter receiving station right??!! I mean mistakes are never made when anything new is invented. What would that look like anyway? A laser beam or light beam coming down to Earth I guess. Could that cause a fire? Hmmm, I don’t know. I hope not! That wouldn’t look so good for PG&E, Rothschild Inc, Solaren or Jerry Brown who sure does seem fond of PG&E.”

For those who don't see it, whenever a right-winger talks "Rothchild" they're going full on on an old-school anti-Semitic conspiracy theory:

The Rothschild family is arguably the most famous European banking dynasty in modern history. In the late 18th century, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the family patriarch, founded his first banking house in the German town of Frankfurt. His sons expanded the bank into a multinational enterprise, and, with their newfound wealth, the Rothschilds were able to influence their local economies. One Rothschild loan paid off French war indemnities in the 1870s, while another allowed the British government to become the powerful Suez Canal Company’s primary shareholder. However, the Rothschild family’s rapid accumulation of wealth and power was met with one odious reaction: rampant anti-Semitism. As a Jewish family, the Rothschilds have been targeted by conspiracy theorists as a prime example of Jews allegedly using their money to control global financial institutions.

On the school shootings: 

In a previously unreported interaction, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) agreed with a 2018 Facebook comment that the deadly mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was actually a “false flag” planned event. 

In a separate Facebook post in 2018, Greene also claimed: “I am told that Nancy Pelosi tells Hillary Clinton several times a month that ‘we need another school shooting’ in order to persuade the public to want strict gun control.” 

Yea, her "experience" (whatever it was) certainly invalidates the above.

By the way, she's also done this:

Marjorie Taylor Greene has begun systematically removing social media posts amid scrutiny of past controversial comments about executing Democrats and backing conspiracy theories. Most of 2018 and 2019 is gone from her Facebook. https://t.co/c4ZEgQf4LV

— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) January 28, 2021

And all it took was a simple "apology" for her to get a standing ovation from some of her GOP colleagues.

This is the new GOP.

The House Trial Brief

Read it.

And excerpt:

In a grievous betrayal of his Oath of Office, President Trump incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol during the Joint Session, thus impeding Congress’s confirmation of Joseph R. Biden, Jr. as the winner of the presidential election.As it stormed the Capitol, the mob yelled out“President Trump Sent Us,” “Hang Mike Pence,” and “Traitor Traitor Traitor.”The insurrectionists assaulted police officers with weapon sand chemical agents. They seized control of the Senate chamber floor, the Office of the Speaker of the House, and major sections of the Capitol complex. Members and their staffs were trapped and terrorized. Many officials (including the Vice President himself) barely escaped the rioters. The line of succession to the Presidency was endangered. Our seat of government was violated, vandalized,and desecrated. Congress’s counting of electoral votes was delayed until nightfall and not completed until 4 AM.Hundreds of people were injured in the assault. Five people—including a Capitol Police officer—died.

Trump's mob attacked the Capitol to stop the Congress from confirming Joe Biden as president.

It's that simple.

If that's not treason then there is no treason.

Representative Guy Reschenthaler Is Being Dishonest With His FB Memes.

Today, Representative Guy Reschenthaler posted this on this Facebook page:

His text reads:

Two weeks in and Joe Biden has already killed 1.5 million jobs. His promises to help our economy recover are empty thanks to his all-out war on blue-collar workers. [Emphasis added.]

 Already? Wow - what are his sources for this devastating information?

Look down in the lower right hand corner it reads:

Source: The Heritage Foundation, TC Energy and API

Hmm. I wonder if they say what Guy says they say. Don't you?

Heritage Foundation on the 400,000 jobs lost by rejoining the Paris Accords:

Based on regulations and emissions reduction targets set by the Obama administration, Heritage economists estimate that by 2035 there will be: an annual average loss of nearly 400,000 jobs, a total income loss of more than $20,000 for a family of four, and an aggregate GDP loss of over $2.5 trillion – all for a few tenths of a degree Celsius in abated warming,” says report author Nick Loris. [Emphasis added.]

You'll note that this is an update of an article from 2016 - so it's not new. However look at the text. It says that the Heritage Foundation economists estimate that by 2035 there'll be an annual yearly loss of 400,000 jobs., meaning that by that point (which is 15 years from now) the average annual job loss would be 400,000

But didn't Guy say that Biden has already killed that number of jobs in only two weeks?

Yes, yes he did.

Lie #1 from Guy Reschenthaler.

TC Energy on the 11,000 jobs lost by Biden stopping the Keystone Pipeline:

The pipeline company TC Energy told AFP in an email that the lost jobs are below any of the cited figures.

“This is to confirm that 1,000 unionized jobs will be lost with the presidential permit being revoked for Keystone XL,” said Terry Cunha, a spokesman for the Calgary-based firm. 

“Jobs will be lost in Canada and the US,” he added later, referring to the 1,000 positions.

Didn't Guy say that TC Energy said that 11,000 jobs? But didn't TC Energy say that it's 1,000 American and Canadian jobs?

Yes, and yes.

Lie #2 from Guy Reschenthaler.

The API (that's the American Petroleum Institute, of course) on the 1,000,000 jobs lost due to Biden's pause on new oil leases on Federal land:

Nearly one million jobs would be lost by 2022, with top production-states suffering significant losses.

As with the Heritage Foundation "research" this is not new. The report is from last September.

Didn't Guy say that these jobs were already killed in the past two weeks by President Biden's actions?

Yes he did.

Lie #3 from Guy Reschenthaler.

Guy should show his constituents more respect and not lie to them so often.