Marjorie Taylor Green is not the Speaker Of the House - but Kevin McCarthy has to coddle her in order to keep the Loudmouth Caucus in line, which means she's calling the shots, so yeah - at the very least, she's The Shadow Speaker.
Marjorie Taylor Green is also not the head of the GOP, but she's the Queen Of The Wingnuts, and so yeah - she kinda is in charge of the party's immediate fortune, so she's calling the shots there too.
Greene has captured a significant minority voting bloc, which gives her enormously out-sized power. Right now, she's still more or less sheltered by being Trump's surrogate, so the question is: How long before she's able to cut him loose so she can go whole hog on her own?
And is everybody good with the Rick Scott thing?
How much more clearly do Republicans have to say it? Right now, we have the basics in place for good solid civic stability - Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid - and the GOP is absolutely intent on killing it all off. Why is that?
House approves measure targeting Biden rule allowing money managers to consider ESG in retirement investing
The House on Tuesday approved a resolution that would repeal a Biden administration rule for retirement investments, marking the latest flashpoint in Republicans’ crusade against environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing.
The Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution was approved 216-204, with Rep. Jared Golden (Maine) as the only Democrat voting with Republicans in favor of the measure.
But while a Democratically controlled Senate and White House mean that the measure is unlikely to amount to more than messaging, it is part of a broader Republican effort to oppose ESG investing.
Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) in a floor speech on Tuesday characterized the regulation as being part of a “woke ESG agenda.”
“Democrats and their radical environmental NGO allies will continue to work in the shadows, strong-arming and intimidating corporations and investors alike, using any means necessary, to conscript the life savings of pensioners and retirees to implement a dangerous … investment strategy,” Burgess said.
The Biden rule Republicans are seeking to repeal clarifies that money managers can weigh climate change and other ESG factors when they make investment decisions.
ESG is a broad term for attempts to invest in an environmentally conscious or otherwise ethically manner. Proponents argue this type of investing allows people to do well for themselves while also doing good for the world, and also contend that it could mitigate some of the financial risks caused by climate change.
But many Republicans argue that ESG investing could harm the fossil fuel industry — and that consideration of additional factors by money managers could come at the expense of profits.
The Dirty Fuels Cartel is a senior partner in the ownership structure of the GOP, and their yacht money is sacrosanct.
The Trump administration previously imposed a rule that said money managers could only make investments based on financial considerations.
And there's the kicker - profit über alles.
But critics said that rule was confusing, and the Biden administration contends in its rule that its predecessor discouraged managers’ consideration of ESG factors “even in cases where it is in the financial interest of plans to take such considerations into account.”
“The Trump rule, it’s extremely convoluted and just confusing,” said Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow, a group that seeks to use shareholder power to push action on climate and environmental issues.
This is how you do it, BTW. There's been some snarky japery online about how Thunberg was joking with the cops and kinda jockeying for good camera angles - implying she wasn't serious about it and so that proved she was "just doing it for the publicity".
Well - yeah - that's how you do this kinda thing. You're not there looking to pick a fight. You're not there to hurt anybody, or to get hurt. You're there to bring a little attention to what you think is an injustice of some kind.
Getting arrested is part of the deal.
It may seem a little weird that there are rules on how you go about breaking the rules, but that's how civilized honorable people behave.
Greta Thunberg detained by the Norwegian police
during pro-Sami protest this Wednesday, March 1
OSLO (Reuters) -Environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg was twice detained during a demonstration in support of Indigenous rights in Oslo on Wednesday, with police removing her and other activists from the finance ministry and later the environment ministry.
Thunberg had on Monday joined protesters demanding the removal of 151 wind turbines from reindeer pastures used by Sami herders in central Norway. They say a transition to green energy should not come at the expense of Indigenous rights.
The demonstrators have in recent days blocked access to some government buildings, putting the centre-left minority government in a crisis mode and prompting Energy Minister Terje Aasland to call off an official visit to Britain.
Norway's supreme court ruled in 2021 that the turbines, erected on two wind farms at Fosen and part of Europe's largest onshore wind power complex, violated Sami rights under international conventions, but they remain in operation more than 16 months later.
It was a bad idea to fuck with Ukraine, and Putin keeps getting very strong and very loud messages about it.
So I'll say it again - Putin will not survive this. It's likely going to take a good while longer, but this spells the end for Vladimir Putin.
On the other hand, it could happen a lot more quickly than I expect. The cracks have really begun to show, and in spite of his doubling down - and tripling down, and fourpling down, trying to bull his way through - at some point, which we may or may not be able to see coming, the whole thing could easily collapse in a big fuckin' hurry.
Ukraine has been making some very bold moves. This one reminds me of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in 1942.
Drones fly deep inside Russia; Putin orders border tightened
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Drones that the Kremlin said were launched by Ukraine flew deep inside Russian territory, including one that got within 100 kilometers (60 miles) of Moscow, signaling breaches in Russian defenses as President Vladimir Putin ordered stepped-up protection at the border.
Officials said the drones caused no injuries and did not inflict any significant damage, but the attacks on Monday night and Tuesday morning raised questions about Russian defense capabilities more than a year after the country’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor.
Ukrainian officials did not immediately take responsibility, but they similarly have avoided directly acknowledging responsibility for past strikes and sabotage while emphasizing Ukraine’s right to hit any target in Russia.
Although Putin did not refer to any specific attacks in a speech in the Russian capital, his comments came hours after the drones targeted several areas in southern and western Russia. Authorities closed the airspace over St. Petersburg in response to what some reports said was a drone.
Also Tuesday, several Russian television stations aired a missile attack warning that officials blamed on a hacking attack.
The drone attacks targeted regions inside Russia along the border with Ukraine and deeper into the country, according to local Russian authorities.
A drone fell near the village of Gubastovo, less than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Moscow, Andrei Vorobyov, governor of the region surrounding the Russian capital, said in an online statement.
The drone did not cause any damage, Vorobyov said, but it likely targeted “a civilian infrastructure object.”
Pictures of the drone showed it was a small Ukrainian-made model with a reported range of up to 800 kilometers (nearly 500 miles) but no capacity to carry a large load of explosives.
Russian forces early Tuesday shot down another Ukrainian drone over the Bryansk region, local Gov. Aleksandr Bogomaz said in a Telegram post.
Three drones also targeted Russia’s Belgorod region on Monday night, with one flying through an apartment window in the capital, local authorities reported. Regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said the drones caused minor damage to buildings and cars.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Ukraine used drones to attack facilities in the Krasnodar region and neighboring Adygea. It said the drones were brought down by electronic warfare assets, adding that one of them crashed into a field and another diverted from its flight path and missed a facility it was supposed to attack.
Russia’s state RIA Novosti news agency reported a fire at the oil facility, and some other Russian reports said that two drones exploded nearby.
While Ukrainian drone strikes on the Russian border regions of Bryansk and Belgorod have become a regular occurrence, other strikes reflected a more ambitious effort.
Some Russian commentators described the drone attacks as an attempt by Ukraine to showcase its capability to strike deep behind the lines, foment tensions in Russia and rally the Ukrainian public. Some Russian war bloggers described the raids as a possible rehearsal for a bigger, more ambitious attack.
Andrei Medvedev, a commentator with Russian state television who serves as a deputy speaker of Moscow’s city legislature and runs a popular blog about the war, warned that the drone strikes could be a precursor to wider attacks within Russia that could accompany Ukraine’s attempt to launch a counteroffensive.
“The strikes of exploding drones on targets behind our lines will be part of that offensive,” Medvedev said, adding that Ukraine could try to extend the range of its drones.
Russia hawks urged strong retaliation. Igor Korotchenko, a retired Russian army colonel turned military commentator, called for a punishing strike on the Ukrainian presidential office in Kyiv.
Another retired military officer, Viktor Alksnis, noted that the drone attacks marked the expansion of the conflict and criticized Putin for failing to deliver a strong response.
Also on Tuesday, authorities reported that airspace around St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, was temporarily closed, halting all departures and arrivals at the main airport, Pulkovo. Officials did not give a reason for the move, but some Russian reports claimed that it was triggered by an unidentified drone.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it was conducting air defense drills in western Russia.
Last year, Russian authorities repeatedly reported shooting down Ukrainian drones over annexed Crimea. In December, the Russian military said Ukraine used drones to hit two bases for long-range bombers deep inside Russian territory.
Speaking at Russia’s main security agency, the FSB, Putin urged the service to tighten security on the Ukraine border.
In another development that fueled tensions across Russia on Tuesday, an air raid alarm interrupted the programming of several TV channels and radio stations in several regions. Russia’s Emergency Ministry said in an online statement that the announcement was a hoax “resulting from a hacking of the servers of radio stations and TV channels in some regions of the country.”
In Fog of East Palestine’s Crisis, Politicians Write Their Own Stories
The train derailment in Eastern Ohio has spawned conspiracy theories and contradictory narratives, with politicians from both parties parading through town to further their agendas.
To Democrats, the train derailment and chemical leak in the hamlet of East Palestine, Ohio, is a story of logic, action and consequences: Rail safety regulations put in place by the Obama administration were intended to prevent just such accidents. The Trump administration gutted them.
All of which is actually true, but notice how the phrasing invites the inference that it's really just a political opinion on the part of the Dems.
And that's an important preface, cuz here comes the Both-Sides Razor-Blade-In-The-Apple:
To Republicans, East Palestine is a symbol of something far larger and more emotional: a forgotten town in a conservative state, like so many others in Middle America, struggling for survival against an uncaring mega-corporation and an unseeing government whose concerns have never included the likes of a town of 4,718 souls.
Carrying those irreconcilable narratives, politicians have begun parading through East Palestine with their own agendas to pursue. On Wednesday, it was the former president and current presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump, handing out branded water and campaign hats, while assuring the supportive crowd, “You are not forgotten.”
On Thursday, three weeks after 38 Norfolk Southern rail cars carrying toxic chemicals skipped the tracks in East Palestine and, days later, a plume of vinyl chloride was intentionally released over the town, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg arrived, having spent days jousting with Republicans over safety regulations.
“What I’m really proud of is the community that I saw here,” he told a retinue of right-wing reporters shouting questions at him. “You’ve got federal agencies, you’ve got local first responders, you’ve got states, but most of all you’ve got a community that’s been through a lot, that I think is pretty frustrated with people trying to take political advantage of this situation.”
In some sense, both sides are right, both sides are wrong and, in the bifurcated politics of this American moment, none of the arguments much matter.
In 2015, after the deadly derailment of an Amtrak train traveling too fast outside Philadelphia, President Barack Obama moved to mandate the installation of lifesaving automatic braking technology by 2023 over the protests of the largest rail companies. In 2018, as part of a broad regulatory rollback, Mr. Trump repealed the rule.
But, according to the website PolitiFact, the rule would have had no impact on the East Palestine derailment. The Norfolk Southern train would not have been covered because it would not have been categorized as a high-hazard cargo train. Besides, the National Transportation Safety Board initially pointed to the failure of a wheel bearing, not the train’s speed, as the cause of the derailment.
Such details did not stop the White House from issuing a formal statement on Wednesday with the headline, “Republicans, stop dismantling rail safety and selling out communities like East Palestine to the rail lobby.” Nor did it dissuade the anti-Trump Lincoln Project from releasing a video on Wednesday squarely blaming the former president.
Still, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, Jennifer Homendy, called the accident “100 percent preventable” at a news conference on Thursday in Washington.
“I don’t understand why this has gotten so political — this is a community that is suffering,” she added.
Republicans have simply ignored that debate, instead pressing the seemingly contradictory cases that the Biden administration cares more about Ukraine than East Palestine and that the White House concocted the downing of three unidentified flying objects to distract attention from the derailment — which would imply that, in fact, officials care a lot.
The derailment’s aftermath coincided with Mr. Biden’s surprise visit to Ukraine — by rail — and his speech in Poland, in which he pledged billions of dollars more in military support for Ukraine. That fed the Republican narrative that, for all his talk of caring for blue-collar workers, the president would rather deal with geopolitics than a domestic problem.
Neglect and the late arrival of assistance became the dominant talking points about Eastern Ohio on Fox News and in an array of other conservative news outlets, even as the Biden administration said repeatedly that federal officials had arrived on the scene of the accident within hours.
And in Columbiana County, where East Palestine sits, Republicans have been playing on their home field. Mr. Trump won the county with 72 percent of the vote in 2020, against Mr. Biden’s 27 percent.
“On Presidents’ Day in our country, he is over in Ukraine,” Mayor Trent Conaway of East Palestine fumed this week. “That tells you what kind of guy he is.”
Conspiracy theories have only deepened the trauma, bouncing around far-right podcasts and conservative celebrities’ social media accounts before reaching Congress via Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the once-fringe Republican from Georgia whose alliance with Speaker Kevin McCarthy has brought her to the center of congressional power.
“East Palestine, Ohio, is undergoing an ecological disaster because authorities blew up the train derailment cars carrying hazardous chemicals and press are being arrested for trying to tell the story,” she wrote on Twitter over dramatic footage of the fiery plume and its aftermath. “Oh but UFO’s!”
The Trump campaign on Thursday abetted the narrative with a day-by-day timeline of “Neglect and Betrayal,” including “Feb 5: Shoots the spy balloon down” and “Feb 13: Dodges questions about unidentified objects downed on Sunday,” followed by, “Feb 16: Delivered a response to unidentified objects in the sky and screened the movie ‘Till.’”
Batting down another conspiratorial rumor, the East Palestine fire chief, Keith Drabick, had to spend time this week assuring people that medical identification bracelets being passed out to residents in case they showed signs of debilitation were not tracking devices for the government.
The fever pitch of distrust was understandable for a community that saw what appeared to be an apocalyptic plume of chemicals rise from the wreckage on the rail line, then filmed dead fish and frogs in East Palestine’s streams and complained of headaches, sore throats, coughing and skin rashes — all as government officials assured them the air and water were safe.
But if East Palestine felt ignored in the immediate aftermath of the derailment, its travails are now playing out on a vast national tableau of partisan politics.
The environmental activist Erin Brockovich is planning a town hall event on Friday at the town high school. Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman-turned-conservative-gadfly, took a spin through the town earlier in the week, then rushed to the television cameras to describe it.
The Fox News anchor Bret Baier did concede that visits to train derailments by transportation secretaries, including Mr. Trump’s, Elaine Chao, were rare, especially when the accidents did not cause fatalities.
But more broadly, the derailment has been a chance for Republicans and their supporters in the conservative news media to showcase the white, working-class voters who flocked to Mr. Trump, and whom Mr. Biden has struggled to win back — and the power that Mr. Trump and other celebrities who remain in his orbit still hold in places like East Palestine.
After Mr. Trump on Wednesday praised John Rourke, the owner of the Florida-based company Blue Line Moving, for his relief efforts in Ohio, Tucker Carlson invited Mr. Rourke onto his top-rated cable news show to let him rip into the current president.
“The fact that President Biden has refused to come to this small town when he’s supposed to be Scranton Joe, a small-town hero of the working man, and he can’t even show his face in a town of American citizens that need his leadership, that need the government’s help terribly, he proved what everybody, I think, already knew in this country, is that he’s not the leader for this country,” Mr. Rourke said Wednesday night. “Donald J. Trump is the leader that we all know he is, and he is the leader of this country.”
On Thursday, Mr. Buttigieg showed up after weeks of Republican taunts demanding to know why he had not bothered. But it was Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Trump confidant, who garnered much of the attention from residents and local politicians as he toured the accident site and signed memorabilia.
“Politicians come in and they make a big show and then they don’t come back,” he said, promising, “This is a come-back situation.”
I'll start by saying there's nothing that will "defang Republican criticism", as Ms Cox puts it.
Given what we know so far about the behavior of DumFux News in the Dominion v Fox lawsuit, "conservatives" don't give one empty fuck about the truth - it's been an open secret for decades that finding the demarcation point between Republicans and Rupert's Gang Of Merry Pranksters is nigh-on to impossible.
Second - and this has come to be one of the big ones in my mind - there's still an awful lot of housecleaning to do before the Justice Department can be said to be relatively free of the kind of inside rot that makes it all but sure that every investigation is wired to some degree against whoever the GOP has decided needs to be tagged a "dangerously liberal".
And there's the rub - it's always pretty clear that the point of the exercise is not to prove anything, but only to plant the seeds of doubt, no matter how ridiculous. In fact - for some of the rubes - the more ridiculous the better.
Ana Marie Cox, trying to play PR Consultant. She makes some valid points reminding us that politics is a shitty game, but as always, NYT pays people to keep us on the knife's edge.
Whatever else happens we can't lean too far one way or the other because asshole conservatives buy dick pills and panty liners too.
So maybe Cynical Mike would like to know how the New York Times is so much different than DumFux News?
Nah - I'll think about that some other time.
Hunter Biden Has Some Explaining to Do
Name a recurring Fox News segment, and there is a Republican congressional investigation for it: the origin of the coronavirus, the threat to our capital markets, supposed collaboration between social media companies and the Democratic Party. Some representatives have launched an investigation into whether the Department of Justice targeted parents who protested vaccine and mask mandates at school board meetings. No bit of pique is too tangential to escape their notice; Lauren Boebert recently demanded during one of these investigations that former Twitter representatives answer for her perceived shortage of likes: “Did either of you approve the shadow banning of my account @LaurenBoebert? Yes or no?”
Nothing feeds the perpetual outrage machine like a sprawling investigation into a vague but titillating scandal. And no pursuit is more vague and more titillating than the so-far-fruitless obsession with Hunter Biden.
For two years now, conservatives have accused President Biden’s wayward son of influence peddling, money laundering, bribery and illegal foreign lobbying — and they have sought to turn his misadventures into a tawdry, sprawling hydra powerful enough to entangle and distract the whole administration. With control over House investigations, they may finally get what they want: a chance to turn Hunter Biden’s life inside out.
It may counter every instinct a loving parent (or a political consultant) could ever have, but the president should want a version of that, too. During Hunter Biden’s active addiction, Joe Biden made it clear to his son and the world that his paternal love was not contingent on his son’s behavior. Now is the time to make it clear that his behavior does have consequences. Joe Biden should clearly call for his son to cooperate — not with the Republican circus on the Hill but with the Justice Department. That would let Hunter Biden stand on his own and allow the administration to focus on issues that matter most to the American people.
Up until this point, the Biden family has — publicly, at least — brushed off Republican threats: “Lots of luck!” Joe Biden told them last fall. Jill Biden simply asserts that “Hunter is innocent.”
But even the most optimistic Democrats know Hunter Biden has some explaining to do. The Justice Department has been investigating him since 2018. Last fall, The Washington Post quoted sources close to the inquiry saying the department had enough evidence to charge him with criminal violations regarding tax crimes and lying on a federal form.
Of course, cheating on your taxes and lying on a form are nothing compared with the operatic tale of corruption at the highest levels spun out by Tucker Carlson et al. But the president’s Hunter Biden problem goes beyond the strict letter of the law. All Republicans want to do is conjure the clingy atmosphere of deviousness that Hillary Clinton never escaped.
Last month, Hunter Biden introduced a daring tactic in his defense: His legal team requested that the Delaware attorney general, the Justice Department and the I.R.S. investigate the key figures responsible for perpetuating the laptop story and disseminating his personal information without his permission.
As wild as the accusations against him are, the one nugget of irreducible truth is Hunter Biden’s privilege. It has served him as a just-about-literal get-out-of-jail-free pass. The same is true for countless other politicians’ kids — certainly including Donald Trump’s. But pointing out the double standard won’t be enough to defang Republican criticism. And neither will just waiting for it all to blow over.
Democrats have tried ignoring Republican fishing expeditions before, hoping that the accusations would evaporate or that voters wouldn’t really care. Sometimes that works. (R.I.P., Operation Fast and Furious.) But with enough prolonged effort, they really can do damage. They succeeded in tarnishing the Clinton brand forever.
Whatever Hunter Biden did or didn’t do, if his father endorses the Justice Department investigation — and promises to stay out of it entirely — that would elevate law enforcement’s slow and steady conventional machinery over the thirsty ravings of far-right Congress members. (As a bonus, the Justice Department will be far less likely than Congress to delve into the most salacious elements of this story.)
And then there’s the fact that Joe Biden built a national profile as an eager participant in the war on drugs, which sent hundreds of thousands of people — primarily Black men — to prison. His son wound up a working artist in Malibu, Calif. Joe Biden’s honesty about that could dampen the nefarious background noise of “rules for thee but not for me” that followed the Clintons wherever they went. His reputation as an essentially honest politician (and a kind, loving father) is the mortar that has glued his career together; not admitting that his family has benefited from his position in this one case gives every other accusation a toehold.
Hunter Biden has endured considerable scrutiny, but he has advantages that most people don’t: No matter what happens, he is unlikely to find himself destitute or without opportunities. Even more of a privilege, perhaps, is that his family has such clear, unconditional love for him. As a person in recovery, I’ve been moved every time Joe Biden has come to his son’s defense. I know that his testimony to Hunter Biden’s value as a person has helped destigmatize the disease of addiction on a significant scale.
Being willing to fight for his son against all comers has been one way for Joe Biden to show love. Letting his son stand on his own two feet and loving him all the same is another.
When the USSR crapped out in the late 80s - early 90s, it became the wild west. For years, Russia was where Milton Friedman's gang of merry economic shock therapy practitioners got to apply his totally fucked up "Unfettered Free Market Capitalism" theories.
Poppy Bush sent Bob Strauss to help the transition, thinking a little "kinder gentler" window dressing would help keep things calm, but the scramble was on, and there would be almost literally nothing left on the carcass when the Soviet State Assets had been auctioned off to - or flat-out stolen by - the oligarch buzzards.
Enter Bill Browder, who's not exactly one of the bad guys, but definitely someone who was pretty much blinded to the shitty behavior going on all around him, as he concentrated on taking advantage of the new-found riches made available by privatizing the Russian government.
If you're OK with what Putin's up to, you're gonna fuckin' love the shit we can look forward to if we allow the GOP to continue with their American Plutocracy Project.
