When A Bad Idea Sounds Pretty Good

It sounds a lot like the little band of Republican crazies in the House are really stoopid, and maybe they are, but when you leave the other side with a chance to blow up your whole scheme, you may need to rethink one or two things.

On the other hand, if I come at this from the perspective of my belief that Radical Libertarians are always looking for ways to torpedo every institution that keeps a democratic republic afloat, then it makes more sense.

"Why not leave the tools of destruction in the hands of the Democrats, and let them do what we need never to admit to doing?"

paranoia strikes deep

into your life it will creep

it starts when you're always afraid

step outa line, men come and take you away

Fact Check: Can House Democrats Bring Motion to Vacate House Speaker?

After a protracted battle between House Republicans, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has finally begun settling in as Speaker following a series of concessions to a faction on the right of his party.

McCarthy, whose ascension above the dais was halted for several days by representatives from the GOP's Freedom Caucus, led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), has spent his first week in the role introducing committee and rule changes following his deal with party colleagues.

One important concession included reducing the threshold for triggering a vote to remove the Speaker at any given time. However, social media posts now suggest that this new change might make him vulnerable not just to fellow Republicans, but even to the minority opposition.

The Claim

A post published on Reddit on January 11, 2022, which received more than 45,000 engagements, highlighted that under new House rule changes, a Democratic representative could initiate a "recall vote" for House Speaker.

The post included a tweet about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA), claiming she opposed the "compromise to allow one House Member to bring a Motion to Vacate to remove the Speaker because even one Democrat can do it, and she heard Democratic Rep. Al Green is getting ready to do it already."

The Facts

It's true that under rules changes made for the 118th Congress, it will now only take one member to motion for the Speaker to vacate their seat.

The privilege was introduced under early House rules set out in Jefferson's Manual, a book of parliamentary procedure written by Founding Father and former U.S. president Thomas Jefferson, stating: "A Speaker may be removed at the will of the House."

Jefferson's Manual didn't stipulate the number of members required to begin a motion. This remained the case until 2018, when changes enacted by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) lifted the threshold requiring "that a resolution causing a vacancy in the Office of the Speaker will be privileged if offered by the direction of a major party caucus or conference."

The motion to vacate has rarely been used. But the changing of its wording back to what existed before 2018 may remind McCarthy of the House's tools of accountability.

And it's not just the Republican House members that pose such a threat. As pointed out on social media, the re-wording of the 118th House Rules does not prohibit a minority party from bringing such a motion.

The likelihood of any such motion succeeding is another matter, but, in principle, under the current wording, the Democrats could begin a motion to vacate (without any restrictive threshold) and then with a simple majority (requiring some Republican rebels) remove McCarthy.

As Dr. David Andersen, assistant professor of United States Politics at Durham University, told Newsweek, the new rules put McCarthy in an "awful position," leaving it a possibility that Democrats would only need five Republicans to pass a motion to vacate.

"The really interesting scenario is whether five Republicans will get so frustrated with McCarthy that they would do the unthinkable—work with Democrats to oust the Speaker," Andersen said.

"If just five Republicans in the House join together with a united Democratic caucus, the Speaker will be ousted and nothing can be done until a new Speaker is elected.

"Given that 20 Republicans worked to deny McCarthy the seat, once the GOP starts attempting to legislate—and more importantly, once certain members start competing for media attention—this possibility will become very interesting to watch.

"McCarthy can't change the rules now that they have been passed so this is something that he will have to live with for the next two years.

"Honestly, the one person rule doesn't matter too much other than for grandstanding by individual legislators. It is the risk of a 5-member GOP defection that is more interesting."

How long it might take for such an alliance to form is another matter.

For now, McCarthy appears to be meeting some of the wishes of the Freedom Caucus, with Gaetz saying that he had nearly run out of "stuff to ask for" from the Speaker during the negotiations.

This suggests McCarthy may face less pressure from his party, at least in the short term.

Furthermore, the vote for Speaker took so long to pass—a situation described as "embarrassing" to CNN by Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT)—that it may be some time before any Republicans would side with Democrats, in fear of the political repercussions.

But Boebert told Fox News: "I'm proud that we took a few extra days to make sure that we get this right. It may look like chaos and dysfunction, but I'm a mom of four boys that's a part of my everyday life.

"And really last week was the most productive week I have experienced in Congress."

Given the disruptive power motion to vacate could wield, why hasn't it been used more?

A 2015 fact check by Ballotpedia found that the rule has only been used in 1910, to remove Republican Speaker Joseph Cannon, and in 2015 against Republican Speaker John Boehner (although in Boehner's case, he retired before the motion could even reach a vote).

As mentioned, a motion brought by the Democrats, unless orchestrated with support from a sufficient number of Republicans, would be unlikely to succeed. As for Republicans, McCarthy still has the majority of support from GOP House members.

In theory, there may be little to stop a series of motions to vacate (particularly now the privilege is fresh in the mind of House members), perhaps as a way to frustrate the GOP's legislative efforts.

Notably, there is little indication at the moment that this strategy is being explored by the Democrats, including Rep. Al Green (D-TX), who was mentioned in the original comment.

A representative of Green told Newsweek by email that the congressman "has no such plans and has never discussed any aspect of such plans with anyone," adding that this publication's inquiry "is the first time Congressman Al Green has ever heard of this."

Still, if that were to change, such a move could trigger the introduction of rules or changes to better protect the Speaker (including altering or reversing rules on the motion to vacate). This might make it harder for Democrats to change the Speaker (should they wish to) and weaken the hand of McCarthy's opponents.

"We are sailing into uncharted waters. The reversion to former institutional rules takes place amid unprecedented partisanship and bitter intra-party divisions within the GOP," Morgan said. "No one knows for sure what may happen, but we can speculate.

"McCarthy is between a rock and a hard place. Whatever procedural maneuvers he comes up with, the bigger picture remains the same in terms of the dilemma he faces. He has to keep his far-right Republicans on side, but this may cost him any hope of cutting deals with the opposition Democrats to keep government going.

"GOP right-wingers tend to target the deficit and the public debt when they face a Democratic president (less so when one of their own is in the White House) and may demand huge spending cuts. If McCarthy bowed to their demands, the Democrats would come out swinging.

"Such cuts would have little hope of getting through the Senate, of course, and would face a presidential veto if they did. So, we may get into a position of government shutdowns early in the Congressional year.

"We could be back into Clinton-era standoffs over the budget as in 1995-96, but then it was the GOP Congress vs. a Democratic president. This is a much more complex political situation and therefore harder to resolve."

Newsweek has contacted the House Conference Chair, House Republicans, House Democrats and Kevin McCarthy for comment.

Today's Tweet

Jan6 stuff:

The Justice Dept is crushing its US Capitol riot trials

My latest ==> pic.twitter.com/L8KxdFSmNR

— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) January 14, 2023

Overheard

Me:

Speaking of things they tell you are "good for you", here's a common formula:

...so tell me - which of those chemicals would you like to have in your body?

Him:

None of it! That's what I'm saying - big pharma and all these so-called doctors are pumping poison into us!!

Me:

Well, Mr Genius, that's the chemical makeup of an apple (🍎), and you are a living testament to the fact that anti-vaxxers don't know what the fuck they're talking about.

Today's Reddit

At the end of this shit - no matter who "wins" - Ukrainians will never embrace the Russians as if they were new-found friends and family. Russia will always be the enemy.

What the fuck is Putin thinking?

Слава Україні

🌎🌏🌍❤️🇺🇦

Today's Press Poodles

Maybe the title of this post should be "Today's Razor Blade In The Apple".

WaPo decided to run a story about how a current president was in possession of classified documents that he had no business possessing at the time he came to possess them, but instead of indicating anything that has anything to do with the real (possible) problems that might arise from such possession - including how maybe the whole government should be a tiny bit more careful with National Fucking Security - somehow the takeaway on the story - the headline - reads: "Man Often Goes Home After Work."

So I'm left to wonder:

• Are there glitches in the system bad enough to allow this kinda shit to just slip thru the cracks?
• Did WaPo editors need a good stiff Both Sides fix, so they had to equate Biden going to his house in Wilmington with Trump charging us thousands of dollars per night so his Secret Service detail can stay at a golf resort?
• Maybe they were trying to trivialize it with a little self-parody.
• Seriously - what in the blue-eyed buck naked fuck are you trying to say, WaPo?

Document discovery spotlights Biden’s frequent use of Wilmington home

The president spends many weekends at his Delaware residence, making it almost a second White House

WILMINGTON, Del. — President Biden had wrapped up a routine weekend visit to his home here in December, one that included pre-Christmas errands at a local strip mall, a stop at his nearby golf club and an evening Mass at a church that sits five minutes from his house. But the day after he left and returned to Washington, his lawyers alerted the Justice Department to some troubling news: Inside the garage, they had located a batch of classified documents that dated to Biden’s time as vice president.

That finding has set off a political furor and prompted Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel. But beyond that, it has drawn attention to what has become a de facto extension of the White House, a place where Biden goes most weekends in an attempt to maintain the routine he has kept throughout his political career.

It has been a dream home that he and his wife constructed. It has been a cozy retreat where he spent months of covid quarantine and ran a winning campaign. It has been the scene of family celebrations and family strife.

And now, it is the scene of a special counsel investigation.

Biden often travels with a National Security Council aide, and accommodations have been made on the property so that he can handle classified materials and conduct secure phone calls. Ironically, those security accommodations — where he as president is allowed to deal with classified matters — are on the same property as the garage that held classified materials he was not authorized to have.

That two-car garage is where he keeps his prized open-top 1967 Stingray Corvette, a gift from his father for his first wedding with the engine rebuilt by his sons for Christmas. In a video released by his campaign in August 2020, Biden is seen backing the car into the garage, where a messy pile of materials appears to include a cardboard box and a lampshade.

Asked this week why sensitive materials were found in the same area as he keeps his car, Biden retorted, “By the way, my Corvette’s in a locked garage, okay, so it’s not like it’s sitting out in the street. As I said earlier this week, people know that I take classified documents and classified materials seriously.”

The idea of going home on the weekends, and even evenings, is hard-wired into Biden’s political identity. He started the practice when he first came to Washington — becoming a senator in 1973 shortly after his wife and daughter died in a car crash — when he took the train home each night to Delaware to be with his sons as they recovered.

Biden has largely kept that approach as president, using the White House as perhaps the country’s highest-profile version of corporate housing. He travels home most weekends, easing into a predictable routine of golf, family dinners and church.

When he was home in December, he stepped into a local Jos. A. Bank for the second time in several months. He made a brief stop at Fieldstone Golf Club and attended Mass on Saturday night before returning to his house. As his family that weekend marked the 50th anniversary of the crash that killed his wife and daughter, he was joined by nearly everyone in his immediate family, including his son Hunter, daughter Ashley and a half-dozen grandchildren.

Biden left Wilmington that Monday, and the next day, Dec. 20, is when Biden’s lawyers informed the Justice Department that the additional documents had been found in the garage, according to Garland. That triggered the FBI to go to the home and secure the documents.

Biden was also at the house last weekend. On Wednesday, his lawyers said they had discovered another classified document in a room adjacent to the garage.

“Of course the president has facilitated access to his residence to his personal lawyers so they can conduct the searches to ensure any records are properly in possession of the government,” White House spokesman Ian Sams said.

Timeline of Biden documents

The White House on Friday did not respond to questions about whether the documents found at Biden’s home were left there when he was vice president, or were simply stored in his home after he left office. Biden himself was not involved in the discovery of the documents, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject.

During his time as vice president, Biden also had a secure facility at his house that enabled him to handle classified information. That facility was decommissioned when he left office.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who chairs the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter Friday to the White House expressing concern that Hunter Biden, the president’s son, may have had access to the garage at a time when he was engaged in foreign business dealings, and he asked for information related to the documents. The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), is also launching an investigation and sent a letter to Garland on Friday saying it was looking into the Justice Department’s actions as it investigates the handling of classified documents.

Most presidents in some way return to their former homes during their time in office. George W. Bush often spent time in Crawford, Tex., Ronald Reagan visited his ranch in California, and Donald Trump traveled to his properties in New Jersey and Florida. John F. Kennedy rarely spent weekends at the White House, often traveling to Palm Beach, Fla., Hyannis Port, Mass., or the Virginia countryside.

But for Biden, home is closer to Washington, and he is unusual among presidents in going there so often — in some cases, just for a single night.

“In the modern era, presidents have spent a considerable amount of time away from the White House,” said Timothy Naftali, a historian and the former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. “What I think is remarkable about how he spends his time is how he concentrates his time in one non-White House getaway.”

“There’s no real downtime for a president. The presidency moves with the president,” Naftali added. “It doesn’t matter where they are. With the advent of secure videoconferencing, presidents can meet with their national security team practically anywhere.”

Biden has said he never desired to live in the White House and has spoken wistfully about his time at the Naval Observatory, the comparatively secluded vice president’s residence. He does not like the cloistered feeling of the White House, the idea that security protection might prevent him from fixing his own breakfast or walking around in his bathrobe.

“Living in the White House, as you’ve heard other presidents who have been extremely flattered to live there, has — it’s a little like a gilded cage in terms of being able to walk outside and do things,” Biden said in a CNN town hall a month into his presidency.

Two years into his term, Biden has spent all or part of 194 days either in Wilmington or at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, according to a tally by the Associated Press.

Biden’s presidency has transformed Wilmington’s leafy Greenville neighborhood, bringing security officers, barricades and armored vehicles traveling along formerly quiet roads. Still, it is not hard to feel distance from the bustle of Washington driving down the lush roads that lead to a home filled with light and family photos.

Biden has long had an obsession with real estate. Earlier in his life, he had considered being an architect, and when he first married, he was eager to find a place to raise a family.

“I’d thought about houses quite a bit already,” he wrote in his 2008 memoir “Promises to Keep.” “My idea of Saturday fun was to jump in the Corvette with Neilia and drive around the Wilmington area scouting open houses, houses for sale, land where we could build.”

“Even as a kid in high school I’d been seduced by real estate,” longing for a neighborhood with tall elms and oaks, manicured lawns and interesting homes, he added.

He spent his early money moving into bigger and more stately houses and upgrading furniture, and he spent weekends on improvement. Soon his personal homes became his political war rooms. For years, his advisers gathered at a Biden home they called “The Station.”

In 1996, the Bidens sold “The Station” and purchased lakefront property on 4.2 acres for $350,000. That is where they built their current Colonial-style home with a gable roof and hardwood floors, three bedrooms and four full baths, according to local property records.

The Bidens later added a two-story cottage to the property where Biden’s mother lived. After she died in 2010, Biden rented the space to the Secret Service, earning some $172,000 over about six years, according to purchasing orders from the Secret Service.

The property is meaningful to Biden, and when he openly talked about taking out a second mortgage to help the family of his son Beau with finances, then-President Barack Obama adamantly objected.

“I’ll give you the money,” Obama said, according to Biden’s 2017 book “Promise Me, Dad.” “I have it. You can pay me back whenever.”

The house has been the scene of important meetings, such as one where his grandchildren urged him to run for president. It has been the scene of trauma and angry confrontation, for example when Hunter stormed out angrily after his family staged an intervention to try to stem his drug addiction, as Hunter himself has recounted.

When Biden’s life, like most of America’s, was altered during the spring of 2020, he retreated to his home in Wilmington. He and his wife would walk at the track next door. His grandchildren would come over and Biden would toss them ice cream bars from the porch. Geese could at times be heard honking in the background during events on Zoom.

After a long week — one consumed with the new revelations around classified documents — Biden on Friday boarded Marine One, joined by one of his longest-serving aides and closest advisers, Steve Ricchetti, who was also his chief of staff at the end of the vice presidency. About 50 minutes later, they arrived in Wilmington, where Biden is spending most of the weekend.

Bio-Engineering

Loss of epigenetic information as a cause of mammalian aging

Highlights

• Cellular responses to double-stranded DNA breaks erode the epigenetic landscape
• This loss of epigenetic information accelerates the hallmarks of aging
• These changes are reversible by epigenetic reprogramming
• By manipulating the epigenome, aging can be driven forward and backward

Summary

All living things experience an increase in entropy, manifested as a loss of genetic and epigenetic information.

In yeast, epigenetic information is lost over time due to the relocalization of chromatin-modifying proteins to DNA breaks, causing cells to lose their identity, a hallmark of yeast aging.

Using a system called “ICE” (inducible changes to the epigenome), we find that the act of faithful DNA repair advances aging at physiological, cognitive, and molecular levels, including erosion of the epigenetic landscape, cellular exdifferentiation, senescence, and advancement of the DNA methylation clock, which can be reversed by OSK-mediated rejuvenation.

These data are consistent with the information theory of aging, which states that a loss of epigenetic information is a reversible cause of aging.

PS) Cell Press is an all-science publisher of over 50 scientific journals across the life, physical, earth, and health sciences, both independently and in partnership with scientific societies. Many of Cell Press's journals are among the most reputable in their fields.

Cracking Down

Yes, the Jonathan Reesers of the world are stupid, brutish and dangerous.

But in one very real and very important way, they're the symptom of the disease, and not the cause.

The Setup

The Reveal

The payoff

And if there's any kind of "blessing" that could possibly grow from this irredeemable dung heap, it's that these jerks have been egged on to the point where they're doing their shit out in the open now. They've been conditioned to believe they're in the majority - that their shitty attitudes and shittier behavior are the norm - and will be rewarded - so they air it all out in the public square.

Nerds

I think I've got a pretty good handle on "Well ya gotta start somewhere', and Small Steps, and such like that there, but I'd rather have this thing playing the piano than making a fist and lifting weights, y'know?

Still - gotta love me some nerds.

@CloneRobotics -  Łukasz Koźlik - Poland

Podcast

MSNBC and The New York Times are not your liberal friends.

Plus The Mystery Of The Missing Headline - right here on The Professional Left Podcast

Today's Oy

We are the stoopid country.

In what has to be the absolute epitome of elitist bullshit, we've decided corporations can be tried for, and convicted of, and punished for their crimes as if they are in fact people - but somehow the people who benefit greatly from the illegal operations of those corporations just kinda skate by.

To be sure, Weisselberg isn't skating - even a few months at Riker's Island is a possible life sentence for a 75-year-old - but these decisions, and the way the law apparently works, makes it look like he's just the patsy on this caper, and the company gets barely a slap on the wrist, having been ordered to pay a lousy million-six for 15 years of fraud.

Fifteen years

And excuse me, but what about the guy whose name is on the letterhead? 

Can somebody please tell me - what's the fuckin' point here?

Donald Trump's company to be sentenced for 15-year tax fraud

NEW YORK, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Donald Trump on Friday will learn how the company that bears the former U.S. president's name will be punished after being found guilty of scheming to defraud tax authorities for 15 years.

A New York state judge will impose the sentence after jurors in Manhattan found two Trump Organization affiliates guilty of 17 criminal charges last month.

The sentencing comes three days after Justice Juan Merchan of the Manhattan criminal court ordered Allen Weisselberg, who worked for Trump's family for a half-century and was the company's former chief financial officer, to jail for five months after he testified as the prosecution's star witness.

Trump's company faces only a maximum $1.6 million penalty, but has said it plans to appeal. No one else was charged or faces jail time in the case.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office, which brought the case, is still conducting a criminal probe into Trump's business practices.

Bill Black, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law specializing in white-collar crime, called the expected penalty a "rounding error" that offers "zero deterrence" to others, including Trump.

"This is a farce," he said. "No one will stop committing these kinds of crimes because of this sentence."

The case has long been a thorn in the side of the Republican former president, who calls it part of a witch hunt by Democrats who dislike him and his politics.

Trump also faces a $250 million civil lawsuit by state Attorney General Letitia James accusing him and his adult children Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump of inflating his net worth and the value of his company's assets to save money on loans and insurance.

Bragg and James are Democrats, as is Bragg's predecessor Cyrus Vance, who brought the criminal case. Trump is seeking the presidency in 2024, after losing his re-election bid in 2020.

At a four-week trial, prosecutors offered evidence that Trump's company covered personal expenses such as rent and car leases for executives without reporting them as income, and pretended that Christmas bonuses were non-employee compensation.

Trump himself signed bonus checks, prosecutors said, as well as the lease on Weisselberg's luxury Manhattan apartment and private school tuition for the CFO's grandchildren.

"The whole narrative that Donald Trump was blissfully ignorant is just not real," Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass told jurors in his closing argument.

Weisselberg's testimony helped convict the company, though he said Trump was not part of the fraud scheme. He also refused to help Bragg in his broader investigation into Trump.

The Trump Organization had put Weisselberg on paid leave until they severed ties this week. His lawyer said the split, announced on Tuesday, was amicable.

Weisselberg, 75, is serving his sentence in New York City's notorious Rikers Island jail.

State law limits the penalties that Justice Merchan can impose on Trump's company. A corporation can be fined up to $250,000 for each tax-related count and $10,000 for each non-tax count.

Trump faces several other legal woes, including probes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House, and efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.