”We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here… isn’t that refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama?” — Kayleigh McEnany, 2/25/20 pic.twitter.com/dXKHAKGrUn

— Matt Wilstein (@mattwilstein) October 5, 2020

Jelly: Grape

Jam: Blackberry

And we may have stumbled upon the reason Joe Manchin doesn’t want to vote to confirm Tanden.

So it turns out Neera Tanden criticized @Sen_JoeManchin's daughter for her extraordinary pay increases, after she raised the price of the Epi-Pen from $100 to $600 and moved Mylan's HQ to the Netherlands to reduce taxes. https://t.co/K59rrwM05N. pic.twitter.com/snYaAK9Xfu

— Mark Elliott (@markmobility) February 24, 2021

I am hoping that some day, someone will be able to explain just WTF is going on this off-season because I’ve never seen this kind of thing happen before in 50-something years of watching the Rams.

This is just weird, and begs for an explanation, and I’m surprised that nobody has put together a story because everybody is asking the same question, I think. This is not a staff shakeup after a disappointing season of failed expectations. This is a team on the rise, legitimately in the conversation for next year, and there has been an unprecedented exodus of coaches. Why?

wv wrote:

Nah, i messed up the link, somehow. It was sposed to be the yellow penguin,
which is awesome.

I do not feel like that is sufficiently apologetic.

I gotta say that…Ted Cruz IS a dick. But there is not one goddamn thing he can do about the current crisis. That’s on the governor and state people.

It’s not a good look. But this is about Optics. Maybe he shoulda known better, but this isn’t the best reason to hate Ted Cruz.

Here is another view, from Heather Cox Richardson, an historian who has a sizable following on FB. It proposes a theory for why the Dems abandoned witnesses for pretty simple, practical reasons.

“…Trump’s lawyers proceeded in the impeachment trial with the same rhetorical technique Trump and his supporters use: they flat-out lied. Clearly, they were not trying to get at the truth but were instead trying to create sound bites for right-wing media, the same way Trump and the rest of his cabal convinced supporters of the big lie that he had won, rather than lost, the 2020 election. In that case, they lied consistently in front of the media, but could not make anything stick in a courtroom, where there are penalties for not telling the truth.

In the first impeachment hearings, Trump supporters did the same thing, shouting and lying to create sound bites, and while the sworn testimony was crystal clear, their antics left many Americans convinced not of the facts but that then-President Trump was being persecuted by Democrats who were trying to protect Hunter Biden. So, while it’s reasonable to imagine that witnesses would illustrate Trump’s depravity, it seems entirely likely that, as Trump’s lawyers continued simply to lie and their lies got spread through right-wing media as truth, Americans would have learned the opposite of what they should have.

Instead, the issue of Trump’s guilt on January 6 will play out in a courtroom, where there are actual rules about telling the truth. Trump’s own lawyers suggested he should answer for his actions in a court of law, and in a fiery speech after the vote, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell set up the same idea. But even if that does not happen, the Capitol rioters will be in court, keeping in front of Americans both the horrific events of January 6 and their contention that they showed up to fight because their president asked them to.

The constant refrain of the January 6 insurrection mirrors the Republicans’ use of sham investigations to convince people that Democrats are criminals—think, for example, of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails—except, this time, the cases are real. This should address the problem of manufactured sound bites, and should benefit the Democrats with voters, especially as Republicans are now openly the Party of Trump.

McConnell tried to address the party’s capitulation immediately after the vote with a speech blaming Trump for the insurrection and saying that his own vote to acquit was because he does not think the Senate can try a former president. This is posturing, of course; McConnell made sure the Senate did not take up the House’s article of impeachment while Trump was still in office, and now says that, because it did not do so, it does not have jurisdiction.

McConnell is trying to have it both ways. He has made it clear he wants to free the Republican Party from its thralldom to Trump, and he needs to do so in order to regain both voters and the major donors who have distanced themselves from party members who support the big lie. But he needs to keep Trump voters in the party. So he has bowed to the Trump wing in the short term, hoping to retain its goodwill, and then, immediately after the vote, gave a speech condemning Trump to reassure donors that he and the party are still sane. He likely hopes that, as the months go by and the Republicans block President Biden’s plans, alienated voters and donors will come back around to the party. From this perspective, the seven Republican votes to convict Trump provide excellent cover.

It’s a cynical strategy and probably the best he can do, but it’s a long shot that it alone will enable the Republicans to regain control of the House and the Senate in 2022. For that, the Republicans need to get rid of Democratic votes….”

No Meghan, they can't, because 47 Republicans authorized Y'all Qaeda to come back anytime Commandante Don calls on them. https://t.co/AiQNq5t90h

— Nina Burleigh (@ninaburleigh) February 15, 2021

WSWS Offers Its View

It’s an op-ed, and much longer on claims than on evidence, as usual.

Democrats’ impeachment cover-up leaves coup-plotter Trump emboldened
Andre Damon
10 hours ago
The US Senate voted Saturday to acquit President Donald Trump for “incitement of insurrection” in connection with the attempted coup of January 6, 2021.

The verdict marks a milestone in the breakdown of American democracy. A president sought to overthrow the separation of powers and install himself as dictator, and Congress refused to take the most basic action to hold him accountable.

By voting to acquit, 43 Republican senators gave aid and comfort to a fascist coup attempt. Their votes showed what they would have done had Trump succeeded: they would have endorsed and supported the overthrow of the Constitution.
Trump’s “legal” defense was a combination of incompetent sophistry and raving hysterics, making the fascist argument that his insurrection was the outcome of—or even the appropriate response to—left-wing demonstrations against police violence. Trump lawyer Michael Van der Veen declared that the Capitol riot was “pre-planned by fringe left” groups.

Emerging from the impeachment trial emboldened, Trump stands secure in his position as the head of the Republican Party. “Donald Trump is the most vibrant member of the Republican Party,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close Trump ally, gloated on Fox News Sunday. “The Trump movement is alive and well.”

This outcome was aided by the Democrats, who sabotaged Trump’s prosecution. The Democrats purposely protected Trump’s co-conspirators. This includes the 147 Republican House and Senate members who voted against the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory, along with those who provided the political framework for the January 6 insurrection with charges of a “rigged” election. It also includes those forces within the state who secretly worked with Trump to orchestrate a stand-down of federal forces on January 6.

Throughout the trial, the Democrats begged and pleaded with the same Republicans who encouraged and took part in Trump’s drive to overturn the election.

The Democratic impeachment managers never once addressed themselves to the American people or sought to explain the political strategy behind the insurrection. They did not once mention what was happening inside the Capitol while Trump was inciting the mob–the objection by one congressman and senator after another to the electoral vote totals certified by the states in an election Trump lost by over seven million votes.

The only reference to the Republicans’ objections during the entire trial was a video played by the Democratic impeachment managers of the rioters ransacking the desks of members of the Senate, in which one of the insurrectionists declared that Republican Senator Ted Cruz was “with us” because he backed Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.

The Democrats also deliberately excluded any discussion of why the rioters were allowed to overrun the Capitol without any opposition from the tens of thousands of National Guard and federal military forces stationed in and just outside Washington. The day after the riot, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan said that his request to deploy the Maryland National Guard to Washington to support the Capitol police was held up for 90 minutes by the acting secretary of defense, who had been installed by Trump after the November 3 election. It was only the secretary of the Army who gave the authorization to release the Guard.

Yet there was no investigation of which elements in the military chain of command facilitated the stand-down and whether this was done at the orders of Trump.

Even as they limited their case to Trump’s actions alone, the impeachment managers kneecapped the prosecution on even the extremely limited, legalistic grounds for impeachment they had set out.

On Friday night, Washington Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Republican, released a statement making clear that Trump actively supported the insurrectionists in a phone conversation with Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. According to Herrera Beutler, when McCarthy pleaded with Trump to stop the attack, Trump openly sided with the insurrectionists, saying, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”

With the Democrats in control of the Senate, not only Herrera Beutler, but dozens of other people with first-hand knowledge of Trump’s attempt to overturn the election and the stand-down of federal forces could have been subpoenaed and forced to testify under oath.

But despite winning a vote to bring Herrera Beutler and possibly other witnesses to testify, the Democrats abruptly backtracked, hastily bringing the trial to an end less than 24 hours after Herrera Beutler’s statement.

The record of Trump’s first impeachment—centered around the Democrats’ differences with Trump over foreign policy—spanned thousands of pages. The impeachment process unfolded over a period of three months, including many witnesses called before the House committees considering the charges.

But after the greatest assault on constitutional government in the country’s history, the Democrats devoted less than a week to the Senate trial, on the grounds that the impeachment was a distraction from other legislative priorities. This claim was proven to be a complete fraud when the Senate adjourned for a week immediately following the impeachment vote, and senators left town for the recess.

It is worth comparing the way in which the second impeachment of Trump was conducted with the investigation of the Watergate scandal under the Nixon administration. The Senate hearings that began in February 1973, chaired by Democratic Senator Sam Ervin, led not only to Nixon’s forced resignation in the face of virtually certain impeachment, but also to the exposure of FBI and CIA involvement and the criminal conviction of nearly two dozen people. And all that was triggered by a single burglary carried out by five people, in which no one was injured, let alone killed.

The Iran-Contra hearings in 1987 also had significant consequences. The investigation revealed that the Reagan administration flagrantly violated the Boland Amendment, passed by Congress to prohibit US government assistance to the Nicaraguan Contras. It also exposed the existence of the Rex 84 plan for the mass detention of “subversive” elements.

The Democrats’ deliberate sabotage of their own case in the second Trump impeachment was widely noted by legal observers. “If the House was going to impeach, it should have framed the case to make it as difficult as possible for the Senate to acquit,” wrote Michael W. McConnell, a constitutional professor at Harvard Law School.

“It is abundantly clear,” he noted, that Trump “sought to intimidate members of Congress and other officials to block Mr. Biden’s election, and that he failed in his duty to do what he could to end the violence once it started. Those would be ample grounds for conviction.”

But any investigation of the Republicans’ efforts to overturn the election and the stand-down of federal forces would have implicated precisely the forces the Democrats were most concerned with protecting.

Following the impeachment vote, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made clear the Democrats’ motivation for protecting Trump’s Republican co-conspirators. “We need a strong Republican Party,” Pelosi said, echoing an earlier declaration by Biden.

In choosing between the interests of the ruling elite and democratic forms of government, the Democrats will side with the needs of America’s plutocracy every time. The Democrats have proven once again that they have no interest in defending constitutional forms of government in the United States. The defense of democratic rights must and will be carried out through the independent mobilization of the working class on the basis of an anti-capitalist, socialist program.

Billy_T wrote:

That makes sense. Protecting themselves while protecting Trump in effect. But it’s a perverse bargain. They wouldn’t be in danger if not for Trump. Not politically or literally. And that part puzzles me. The GOP, if it wanted to, could shut Trump down, along with his entire base, if they got on the same page against him, as they are now pretending to be for him.

I think this is just math.

The Republican candidate for president has won the popular vote once out of the past 8 elections.

Only 25% of the country identifies as Republican, and a quarter of them are 65+, and more than half are 50+.

To the extent that they have been successful, it has been largely due to gerrymandering and a wide variety of voter suppression tactics.

What I’m saying is… they can’t afford to alienate any Republicans. The Trump wing of the party has already thrown down people who are not sufficiently “loyal.” Perdue and Loeffler lost because part of the Trump base was alienated from voting.

I think the anti-Trump GOP had their perspective voiced by McConnell yesterday. They would like to see Trump go down to criminal charges which removes him from the scene, and they won’t be blamed for it.

Trump may be a convicted criminal by 2024, if not by 2022. There are several breeches in Trump’s hull, and he may sink all on his own without the GOP having to alienate anybody. I think that is the play.

InvaderRam wrote:

that was a very good listen.

made me think. the one thing that could appeal to jj watt. and if i was the rams’ front office this is how i would sell it if they really want to sign him. is the opportunity to play alongside aaron donald. two guys. two peers. very few players have ascended to the heights that these two players have reached. and the opportunity to not only play with one another. but to practice with one another day in and day out. to learn from each other. to push each other. well. that would be very special…

or you can go play with your brother in pittsburgh.

I would think the pull to play with his brother, who is not a bad player, would be stronger. If he’s going to give a discount….

Billy_T wrote:

Biden stopped the XL pipeline, for instance, reversed dozens of Trump’s earth-killing orders, stopped our support of the Saudi’s war in Yemen, and is actually trying to defeat the pandemic. Environmentalists are hopeful, for the first time in years, that progressive change is possible.

I read somewhere that Warren Buffet contributed millions of dollars to Biden’s campaign.

And the Buffett is the owner of Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway Company, the largest freight railroad in North America, and the one person who benefits the most financially from the transport of oil from Alberta to Texas, the route of the XL Pipeline.

Furthermore, the news of the XL cancellation has overshadowed the news that Biden has approved 31 new drilling permits on federal lands and coastal waters ALREADY. Here’s an article from Rigzone, the oil industry employment clearinghouse.

So… environmentalists might just want to join wvram in going “over the edge,” because pinning one’s hopes on Joe Biden’s environmental progressivism is questionable.