Both Sides Don't

This is something Blue Gal and Driftglass have been championing for a long long time.

Vote Them Out

Opinion

The GOP’s blunders take their toll

House Republicans who have become indifferent to the adverse consequences of nihilism and performative politics might want to consider the toll their chaos-producing antics are taking. From vowing to pursue meritless impeachments to nixing a border security measure to please former president Donald Trump, they have given Democrats plenty of ammunition to blast them out of the majority in November.

Republicans, by the admission of conservative Rep. Chip Roy (Tex.), have not a single accomplishment on which to run this year. “For the life of me, I do not understand how you can go to the trouble of campaigning, raising money, going to events, talking to people, coming to this town as a member of a party who allegedly stands for something … and then do nothing about it,” he bellowed on the House floor in November. “One thing: I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing — one — that I can go campaign on and say we did. One!” He got no answer.

Most Republicans voted against the overwhelmingly popular infrastructure bill. Now they routinely claim credit for it. Only occasionally do they get called out for hypocrisy. (Get ready to hear plenty of it as the campaign heats up.) With help from some Republicans in the Senate and very few in the House, Democrats were able to pass the infrastructure bill in 2021. As with infrastructure, Republicans have largely escaped blame for causing economic havoc thanks to Democratic votes for keeping the government open and avoiding a default on the debt.

Now, however, with no one to cover their tracks, Republicans risk making themselves vulnerable to voters disgusted with partisan melodrama. On the impeachment front, Republicans embarrassingly have come up with nothing to justify the impeachments of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas or President Biden. As for Mayorkas, Republicans’ favorite lawyer, Jonathan Turley, wrote in the Daily Beast that “being a bad person is not impeachable — or many cabinets would be largely empty,” nor is doing a bad job. He added that if poor performance were grounds for impeachment, Mayorkas “would be only the latest in a long line of cabinet officers frog-marched into Congress for constitutional termination.”

Norman Eisen, former impeachment counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, along with Democracy 21 founder Fred Wertheimer and researcher Sasha Matsuki, wrote for MSNBC: “Both the Biden and Mayorkas impeachments are clearly not backed up by evidence. … What really concerns us, though, is the way these impeachments will both weaponize a key constitutional remedy and undermine its sober original intent.” In turning impeachment into a “partisan joke” to satisfy four-times-indicted and twice-impeached Trump, they wind up revealing their own recklessness, irresponsibility and deep dishonesty. When Turley, a fierce defender of Trump during his impeachments, and Eisen, a counsel to House impeachment managers, agree these are baseless stunts, the jig might be up for Republicans.

Making matters worse, House and Senate Republicans’ objection to a massive funding bill to secure the border — to make Mayorkas’s job easier — only underscores their cynical disinterest in actually securing the border. Even for some Republicans, this is a bridge too far. “I didn’t come here to have the president as a boss or a candidate as a boss. I came here to pass good, solid policy,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said last week. “It is immoral for me to think you looked the other way because you think this is the linchpin for President Trump to win.”

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) denounced Republicans’ obstructionism as well. “The border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and Congress people that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem — because he wants to blame Biden for it — is really appalling,” Romney said. “The American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border. And someone running for president ought to try and get the problem solved, as opposed to saying, ‘Hey, save that problem! Don’t solve it! Let me take credit for solving it later.’”

Put differently, Republicans’ brazen objection to arguably the most serious border funding measure in decades makes both their Mayorkas impeachment and caterwauling about the border look absurdly cynical, even for them.

Unsurprisingly, the public is not buying any of it. Last year, a Wall Street Journal poll found that, concerning Biden, “while overwhelming shares of Republicans support impeachment and Democrats oppose it, independents on the whole side with the opponents, the poll found, with 51% against impeachment and 37% in favor.” As my Post colleague Aaron Blake found in a December review of polling that showed meager support for impeachment, “If the poll numbers don’t move significantly toward where they were for Trump’s impeachments (and are now for his indictments), a Biden impeachment vote could be tricky for a lot of Republicans — and for GOP leadership. And failing to even hold a vote would be a remarkable capitulation.”

Matters have not improved for Republicans. A USA Today-Suffolk University poll in January found, “Republicans’ impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden could be costing them with voters, particularly with America’s moderates. About twice as many of these middle-of-the-road voters — a crucial bloc for both parties in this year’s presidential election — said they oppose rather than support the House GOP’s recent impeachment inquiry.”

Republicans overwhelmingly were against Biden’s popular infrastructure bill and in favor of shutting down the government, defaulting on the debt and conducting bogus impeachment hearings that the voters do not want while opposing a tough border control bill. Democrats can hardly believe their good fortune heading into November. Chip Roy likely will not be the only one who cannot think of a single reason to keep them in power.

Compare & Contrast

Dueling Social Media Posts

See if you can spot the difference.

Today's "Deeply Divided"

In what I think may actually be a fair attempt at looking for points of comity and conciliation and common cause, NYT put up a piece about how "we may not agree on much, but most of us agree this joint is failing".

Maybe I'm a little too tuned into "Both Sides", but this sounds a bit suspicious.

In the not so distant past, I've prophesied, "This country is already dead - we're just arguing over who gets to do what with the corpse."

At present though, in my estimation, we're showing some pretty strong signs that we're making the thing work.

These Voters Share Almost No Political Beliefs, but They Agree on One Thing: We’re Failing as a Nation

In a recent poll, some Democrats and most Republicans share a sense of doom.

There are few things that Republicans and Democrats agree on. But one area where a significant share of each party finds common ground is a belief that the country is headed toward failure.

Overall, 37 percent of registered voters say the problems are so bad that we are in danger of failing as a nation, according to the latest New York Times/Siena College poll.

Fifty-six percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said we are in danger of such failure. This kind of outlook is more common among voters whose party is out of power. But it’s also noteworthy that fatalists, as we might call them, span the political spectrum. Around 20 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they feel the same way.

Where they disagree is about what may have gotten us to this point.

Why Republicans say the U.S. is in danger of failing

Republican fatalists, much like Republican voters overall, overwhelmingly support Donald J. Trump. This group is largely older — two-thirds of Republicans over 65 say the country is on the verge of failure — and less educated. They are also more likely than Republican voters overall to get their news from non-Fox conservative media sources like Newsmax or The Epoch Times.

Many of these gloomy Republican see the Biden administration’s policies as pushing the country to the verge of collapse.

“Things are turning very communistic,” said Margo Creamer, 72, a Trump supporter from Southern California. “The first day Biden became president he ripped up everything good that happened with Trump; he opened the border — let everyone and anyone in. It’s just insane.”

She added that there was only one way to reverse course: “In this next election if Trump doesn’t win, we’re going to fail as a nation.”

Many Republicans saw the pandemic, and the resulting economic impact, as playing a role in pushing the country toward failure.

“Covid gave everyone a wake-up call on what they can do to us as citizens,” said Dale Bowyer, a Republican in Fulton County, Ind. “Keeping us in our houses, not being allowed to go to certain places, it was complete control over the United States of America. They think we’re idiots and we wouldn’t notice.”

Why Democrats say the U.S. is in danger of failing

While fewer Democrats see the country as nearing collapse, gender is the defining characteristic associated with this pessimistic outlook. Democratic and Republican women are more likely than their male counterparts to feel this way.

“I have never seen things as bleak or as precarious as they have been the last few years,” said Ann Rubio, a Democrat and funeral director in New York City. “Saying it’s a stolen election plus Jan. 6, it’s terrifying. Now we’re taking away a woman’s right to choose. I feel like I’m watching the wheels come off something.”

For many Democrats, specific issues — especially abortion — are driving their concern about the country’s direction.

Brandon Thompson, 37, a Democrat and veteran living in Tampa, Fla., expressed a litany of concerns about the state of the country: “The regressive laws being passed; women don’t have abortion access in half the country; gerrymandering and stripping people’s rights to vote — stuff like this is happening literally all over the country.”

“If things continue to go this way, this young experiment, this young nation, is going to fall apart,” he said.

More than just on the wrong track

Pollsters have long asked a simple question to take the country’s temperature: Are things in the U.S. headed on the right track or are they off in the wrong direction?

Americans’ views on this question have become more polarized in recent years and are often closely tied to views of the party in power. So it is not surprising, for example, that currently 85 percent of Republicans said the country was on the wrong track, compared with 46 percent of Democrats. Those numbers are often the exact opposite when there’s a Republican in the White House.

Views on the country’s direction are also often closely linked to the economic environment.

Jeezus H Fuq, you guys - the "economic anxiety" thing again?

Fake lord have mercy.

Currently, 65 percent of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction. That’s relatively high historically, though down from last summer when inflation was peaking and 77 percent of Americans said the country was headed in the wrong direction. At the height of the recession in 2008, 81 percent of Americans said the country was headed in the wrong direction.

Oddly (or not), Press Poodles never bother to ask some of the most relevant followups.

• Hey Dems, you say you don't like what Biden's doing, but we need to know if it's because you disagree with his policies, or is it that you think he should be doing more? Better? He hasn't addressed your pet issue?
• Is your dissatisfaction heightened by Republican obstruction and countervailing of everything he does or tries?
• Do you think your opinion might be affected by either the slant of the wingnut media, or by the chickenshit coverage by the legacy media? How about the gaslighting and outright lies of Republicans in Congress?

What seems surprising, however, is the large share of voters who say we're on the verge of breaking down as a nation.

“We’ve moved so far away from what this country was founded on,” said William Dickerson, a Republican from Linwood, N.C. “Society as a whole has become so self-aware that we’re infringing on people’s freedoms and the foundation of what makes America great.”

He added: “We tell people what they can and can’t do with their own property and we tell people that you’re wrong because you feel a certain way.”

Whatever you do, NYT, don't ask that guy to tell us what any of that means.

Voters contacted for the Times/Siena survey were asked the “failing” question only if they already said things were headed in the wrong direction. And while this is the first time a question like this has been asked, the pessimistic responses still seem striking: Two-thirds of Republicans who said the country was headed in the wrong direction said things weren’t just bad — they were so bad that America was in danger of becoming a failed nation.

“Republicans have Trump and others in their party who have undermined their faith in the electoral system,” said Alia Braley, a researcher at Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab who studies attitudes toward democracy. “And if Republicans believe democracy is crumbling, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that they will stop behaving like citizens of a democracy.”

56 words. These idiots think the whole thing can be summed up in a single 56-word paragraph buried at the end of a piece that few will even find, and most will never finish.

She added, “Democrats are often surprised to learn that Republicans are just as afraid as they are about the future of U.S. democracy, and maybe more so.”

And there it is - straight up and out in the open. Both Sides.

"So, Americans agree: We're fucked - why bother? Thanks for the eyeballs us, folks. And don't forget to click on the ads for dick pills and panty liners while you're here. Thanks again. Have an apple."

Both Sides Don't

It's a slow-moving, not-quite-boiling-over civil war?

OK, let's take a look at who's at war, and against what &/or who.

Republicans are at war against:

• Mickey Mouse
• Barbie
• Science
• Big Bird
• Mr Potato Head
• The green M&M
• Asian-American muppet
• Dr Seuss
• Women
• Voting rights
• Labor rights
• Equal justice
• Democracy

Dems are waging war against:

• Inflation
• Climate Change
• Poverty
• Medical bankruptcy
• Environmental damage
• Unfair taxation
• Predatory lending
• Inequality & inequity
• Police brutality
• Exclusion
• Fascism, theocracy & plutocracy

Don't bring that Both Sides bullshit in here.

Daddy State Awareness, Rule 1

House Republican Report Finds No Evidence of Wrongdoing by President Biden

After months of investigation and many public accusations of corruption against Mr. Biden and his family, the first report of the premier House G.O.P. inquiry showed no proof of such misconduct.

So sad

After four months of investigation, House Republicans who promised to use their new majority to unearth evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden acknowledged on Wednesday that they had yet to uncover incriminating material about him, despite their frequent insinuations that he and his family have been involved in criminal conduct and corruption.

At a much-publicized news conference on Capitol Hill to show the preliminary findings of their premier investigation into Mr. Biden and his family, leading Republicans released financial documents detailing how some of the president’s relatives were paid more than $10 million from foreign sources between 2015 and 2017.

Republicans described the transactions as proof of “influence peddling” by Mr. Biden’s family, including his son Hunter Biden, and referenced some previously known, if unflattering, details of the younger Mr. Biden’s business dealings. Those included an episode in which he accepted a 2.8-carat diamond from a Chinese businessman. G.O.P. lawmakers also produced material suggesting that President Biden and his allies had at times made misleading statements in their efforts to push back aggressively against accusations of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden.

But on Wednesday, the Republicans conceded that they had yet to find evidence of a specific corrupt action Mr. Biden took in office in connection with any of the business deals his son entered into. Instead, their presentation underscored how little headway top G.O.P. lawmakers have made in finding clear evidence of questionable transactions they can tie to Mr. Biden, their chief political rival.

It has not stopped them from accusing the president of serious misconduct.

“I want to be clear: This committee is investigating President Biden and his family’s shady business dealings to capitalize on Joe Biden’s public office that risks our country’s national security,” said Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and the chairman of the Oversight Committee. He emphasized that the president — not just his son — would be the target of his investigation, which he said would now “enter a new phase,” in which he would subpoena specific financial information based on material learned through bank records.

Federal prosecutors have examined Hunter Biden’s international business activities as part of a criminal investigation. But the only charges they are considering, according to people familiar with the case, are unrelated to his work abroad. They include tax charges related to his failure to file his tax returns over several years, and a charge of lying about his drug use on a federal form he filled out to purchase a handgun.

To date, Mr. Comer’s committee has issued four bank subpoenas, obtained thousands of financial records and spoken with several people he describes as whistle-blowers. Mr. Comer has also hired James Mandolfo, a former federal prosecutor who has experience investigating foreign corruption, to oversee the inquiry.

Here’s what we know so far.

Businesses connected to Hunter Biden received more than $10 million from foreign companies, some with criminal ties.

The House Oversight Committee report focused on payments made to companies connected to Hunter Biden from businesses and individuals in Romania and China. Bank records obtained by the committee show the receipt of money from a foreign company connected to Gabriel Popoviciu, who was the subject of a criminal investigation and prosecution for corruption in Romania.

In 2015, Mr. Popoviciu retained Hunter Biden, who is a lawyer, while his father was vice president, to help try to fend off charges. That effort was unsuccessful and, in 2016, Mr. Popoviciu was convicted on charges related to a land deal in northern Bucharest, the Romanian capital.

A Shanghai-based company, State Energy HK Limited, that was affiliated with CEFC China Energy sent millions to Robinson Walker LLC, a company associated with Mr. Walker, who then made payments to Hunter Biden and other Biden family members.

Hunter Biden had cultivated a business relationship with Ye Jianming, the founder of CEFC, who has been investigated by the Chinese authorities on suspicion of economic crimes. In 2017, Mr. Ye gave Hunter Biden a 2.8-carat diamond as a thank-you for a meeting.

“What would they be bribing me for? My dad wasn’t in office,” Hunter Biden told The New Yorker in 2019, adding that he gave the diamond to his associates. “I knew it wasn’t a good idea to take it. I just felt like it was weird.”

CEFC had hoped to invest in a liquefied natural gas venture in Louisiana, but that deal ultimately flopped.

Representatives of Hunter Biden characterize his business offerings at the time as providing legal and consulting services.

The payments came at a time when Hunter Biden’s life and finances were spiraling amid his drug addiction, and after the death of his brother, Beau Biden, from brain cancer. Hunter Biden had begun a romantic relationship with his brother’s widow. His business partner, Mr. Walker, and his uncle James Biden were pursuing international business work.

Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, said in a statement that House Republicans had revealed nothing new in their report.

“Today’s so-called ‘revelations' are retread, repackaged misstatements of perfectly proper meetings and business by private citizens.” Mr. Lowell said.

President Biden has falsely denied his son had ties to Chinese businesses.

None of the payments detailed in the report went to President Biden himself, nor has Mr. Comer’s investigation produced any evidence that Mr. Biden ever took a corrupt action in connection with his son’s business dealings.

But Mr. Biden has made several false or misleading statements about the matter.

During the 2020 presidential debate, Mr. Biden claimed that no one in his family had received money from China.

“My son has not made money in terms of this thing about — what are you talking about, China,” Mr. Biden said, turning the charge on his opponent, President Donald J. Trump. “The only guy who made money from China is this guy. He’s the only one. Nobody else has made money from China.”

This year, Mr. Biden also claimed that it was “not true” that family members received more than $1 million from a Chinese firm.

Aides to Mr. Biden said he was speaking colloquially and was pushing back generally on claims that his administration had been corrupted by Chinese money.

Presidents’ families have long made money off the family name.

During his news conference, Mr. Comer acknowledged that Hunter Biden would have been far from the first relative of a president or vice president to try to make money off the family name.

He invoked Billy Carter, the brother of former President Jimmy Carter, who visited Libya and received a $220,000 loan; and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law whose firm has received hundreds of millions from Persian Gulf nations.

“This has been a pattern for a long time,” Mr. Comer said. “Republicans and Democrats have both complained about presidents’ families receiving money.”

However, Mr. Comer has conceded that he has no interest in investigating Mr. Kushner’s conduct.

Officials allied with Mr. Biden played a role in wrongly discrediting Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The report from Mr. Comer came as a second Republican-led House committee is investigating a related issue. The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday released a report about a letter from 51 former intelligence and security officials in 2020 that questioned materials — substantial portions of which were later verified as authentic — from a laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware repair shop and suggested they might be part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

The Republicans argue that the letter influenced the public to discount the materials on the laptop, which contained evidence of Hunter Biden’s drug use and sex life, which they believed would harm his father’s electoral chances against Mr. Trump.

The Judiciary Committee report detailed the role played by Antony J. Blinken, now the secretary of state and then a Biden campaign official, in spearheading the letter, and said a C.I.A. employee had been involved in soliciting at least one signature for it.

The intelligence officials maintain their letter stated they had no evidence of a Russian disinformation campaign, and that they were merely stating an opinion.

Mark Zaid, a lawyer who represents seven signatories to the letter, said on Twitter that the report merely proved that “private citizens lawfully exercised 1st Amendment rights” and added that there was not “even one falsehood” in the letter.

“I know of no signatory who retracts a single word,” Mr. Zaid wrote.

It's classic. Spend months on DumFux News spouting off about the Biden Crime Family, then spend lots of time and money and effort finding nothing to support your suspicions, and then issue your findings, claiming to have found all kinds of shady shenanigans on the part of every relative of every American politician since the dawn of the republic - and so "we've proven what a scum that Biden guy is - and his demon spawn too!"

Some things:

• "Everybody does it" is a way to tear down government in general, which is what the basic plan has been for a long time. So when their latest Blockbuster Investigation du Jour fizzles - as they always do - the fallback position is "Both Sides", and they know they can count on the Press Poodles to run with it (as the NYT just did) 
• They need to gaslight the shit outa the rubes. ie: "The fact that there's no evidence of wrongdoing is itself evidence of wrongdoing, because it just goes to show you how diabolically clever those guys are"
• GOP accusations are confessions (Daddy State Awareness Guide, Rule 1) - because they can't believe it's possible for anyone to live his life while not breaking the law

This stoopid shit ends only when we smarten up enough to vote these fuckers out. So let's do that.

The Reverse Razor-In-The-Apple Trick

The NY Times is notorious for their bullshit horse-race both-sides approach to political coverage and commentary.

You have to have that wishy-washy above-it-all attitude to get any of the prime slots from the Sulzberger family, and Peter Baker is a Poodle Among Poodles. He can hide a razor blade in an apple with the best of 'em.

But what happens when you look at polling and find:

1. Could be big trouble for Biden
2. But polling is just a snapshot in time
3. And that poll looks kinda bogus

???

You've got the perfect opportunity to make yourself look like an ace reporter while saying practically nothing. So you lead with the razor blade, then surround it with apple, and then make it go poof - nothing here at all really. Just 1500 words of public masturbation material that might get Mr Baker on MSNBC a coupla more times. 

Biden Casts Himself as the Trump Beater. Polls Suggest That’s No Sure Thing.

While the president argues that he is the one best positioned to stop his predecessor from returning to the White House, surveys indicate that he starts the 2024 race facing enormous challenges.

WASHINGTON — Boiled down, President Biden’s argument for running for a second term rather than ceding the ground to the next generation is that he is the Democrat most assured of beating former President Donald J. Trump next year.

But a striking new poll challenged that case in a way that had much of the capital buzzing the last couple of days. Taken at face value, the poll showed Mr. Biden trailing Mr. Trump by six percentage points in a theoretical rematch, raising the question of whether the president is as well positioned as he maintains.

No single poll means all that much, especially so early in an election cycle, and the president’s strategists as well as some independent analysts questioned its methodology. But even if it is an outlier, other recent surveys have indicated that the race is effectively tied, with either Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump holding narrow leads within the margin of error. Taken together, they suggest that the president opens the 2024 campaign facing enormous challenges with no guarantee of victory over Mr. Trump.

- more -

Sick of you constantly pimping the drama, Press Poodles.

Trump, and his MAGA gang, and the plutocrats backing them, are a major threat to American democracy. Maybe you could just come out and fucking say that.

And somebody - please, somebody - tell Donna Brazile to fuck off already.

We Deserve Better

First, Paul Gosar does the Daddy State thing perfectly, accusing Mark Milley of conspring to overthrow the government.

Then we get to the part where I'm reminded that, it used to be, conservatives were known for being frugal. We wanted to make sure we were spending the money on the right things and for the right reasons.

And now? Cheap - just flat-ass fuckin' cheap shit, penny-wise-and-pound-foolish fuckery.

And stupid.

But not stupid. Not really. Because, as we hear from Maxwell Frost (at about 3:20), we're spending way more on contractors than we are on the people who're actually on the line, ready to do the fighting and the bleeding and the dying - so the plan to privatize everything is well under way, and still being executed right under our fucking noses.

BTW, I think Max Frost would be a great name for a private detective in a Mickey Spillane novel.